The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"A little shrewdness? Does that mean you have to be careful when you're wary of others?" Alicia asked, clearly not understanding.

"No, the 'heart' here refers to the 'heart' in the martial arts concept of 'heart, skill, body'," Shuangye explained calmly as she slowly paced towards the direction where Fish was hiding. "For the best martial artists, in addition to having keen senses and being able to detect their targets at all times, honing their 'heart' is also essential. It was precisely by eliminating distracting thoughts and relying entirely on my inner senses that I was able to perceive Prince Fish's location."

"Ugh, who cares about your mystical nonsense?!" Yue Die shouted impatiently. "Instead of continuing to spout nonsense, why don't we make a bet like I did!"

"Let's make a bet? How?" Alicia asked, somewhat confused.

"Of course—that's how it is!"

"Meow!"

Just as Moon Butterfly was shouting, several streams of tomato juice, tinged with orange, swept towards Fish in a fan shape. He had to quickly duck to avoid the attack. Unlike Frostleaf's mysterious and precise attacks, Moon Butterfly clearly didn't have the patience to carefully search for Fish's location, so she simply chose to fire randomly at the general area where he might be hiding, hoping to hit him by chance.

However, to her great surprise, the randomly fired tomato juice actually hit a target.

"Ouch! I've got tomato juice in my eye!"

The scream came from none other than Xiaoxing. And the instant she cried out, Fish noticed that this little girl, so adept at concealing herself, had silently circled around to the front of him in that short time, and was hiding behind a small bridge he was about to cross!

Clearly, unlike the others who were all talk and no action, Xiaoxing had figured out her strengths and weaknesses from the very beginning and found a way to leverage her strengths... Unfortunately, this plan, which seemed excellent no matter how you looked at it, was unexpectedly ruined by Yuedie's "blind princess sweeping" tactic.

Before Xiaoxing could recover from the chaos, Fish quickly went around to the back of a clump of decorative bushes and ran off in another direction. But soon, footsteps followed him from behind.

Without a doubt, that was Frost Leaf!

"Eh..." Fish nervously swallowed. Although he had a good impression of this fast-moving, taciturn horse girl, and didn't care who would get the title of "First Concubine" and become a viscount of the Duchy of Fayun, he still didn't intend to be caught by her so easily, even based on his competitive spirit.

After all, if he were too easily subdued, he probably wouldn't be able to hold his head high in front of Shuangye in the future. Having Anjie, a strong-willed wife, to keep him in check is already tough enough; if there were another one... that would definitely not be pleasant.

But where should they hide next?

Unlike others who rely on their five senses to directly search for targets, Shuangye seems to possess a skill she boasts about called "Mind's Eye." In past casual conversations, she claimed it was the result of repeated training in the power of "heart"; Huangyan explained that the so-called "Mind's Eye" is likely the product of long-term training, where the subconscious mind overfits to various scattered pieces of information that are usually difficult to notice, and draws conclusions bypassing the surface consciousness. In any case, attempting to hide directly in front of her is certainly not a wise move.

So Fish decided to do the opposite.

Beside a decorative pavilion, Fish found a small wooden tub. This type of tub seemed to be used for people soaking in the hot spring to place dry towels, soap, or even bottles in the water, but Fish simply picked it up and tossed it into the water.

Although Fish spent his time in Oasis Harbor living a life of leisure and generally lacking in skills, he still learned several things, one of which was skipping stones. Bored out of their minds, the young people of Oasis Harbor loved to gather on the breakwater and engage in this simple activity with stones and seashells, even placing bets on it. Fish had won quite a bit of pocket money in these games.

Although the feel of a wooden basin is quite different from that of pebbles and seashells, it doesn't matter to a seasoned skipper like Fish: he simply tossed it casually, and the basin bounced seven or eight times on the steaming hot spring surface, making a series of "splashing" sounds, as if someone was hurriedly wading away.

Of course, this tactic did work.

Despite being known for her almost supernatural "mind's eye," Frostleaf prioritized trusting her hearing when a more "conclusive" clue appeared. As the footsteps behind her changed direction, Fish quickly and stealthily made his way to the other end of the basement under the cover of the misty steam.

Besides the steam generated by the large amount of hot spring water, as well as numerous decorations and obstacles, hide-and-seek players have another special advantage below: the dim lighting.

Although the Grand Duke who built the Château de la Campanile prepared a large number of lighting fixtures in the basement, including large lights that were partially embedded in the ceiling, as well as stone lanterns and lanterns scattered throughout the pavilions, most of the lamps could only emit a dim yellow light due to the electric lighting technology of the time and the fact that the bulbs were rarely used and thus lacked replacements. The lighting range was no wider than that of kerosene-fueled lanterns.

This dim lighting was naturally advantageous to Fish—cat-type new humans are accustomed to operating in darkness, and their flexible bodies are perfectly suited for moving nimbly in narrow spaces filled with obstacles. Moreover, the trace sulfur compounds in the hot spring water, originating from deep within the volcano, were a great help: the subtle odor of sulfur was enough to mask human scent, preventing fox-type new humans like Xiaoxing, with their keen sense of smell, from using their sense of smell to compensate for their inability to see their targets.

Simply perfect!

With their initial pursuit and interception thwarted by Fish, the girls immediately changed tactics, spreading out to conduct a grid search of the entire basement. Although they were supposed to be competitors, their previous combat and survival experience taught them that temporarily allying with their rivals when they had a common goal was quite necessary.

"Hmm, this is going to be troublesome."

"After realizing that the other side had changed tactics, Fish muttered to himself—although there were only six of them in total, the basement wasn't very big. A field of vision of less than ten meters is narrow, but it also means that each person can see a range of nearly twenty meters to their left and right. With the six of them spread out, they could stretch out a search line of 120 meters, which would be more than enough to search the basement from one end to the other."

What's most infuriating is that, having faced countless life-or-death situations before, Fish's companions had already learned the necessity of caution. After setting up the search line, they immediately began meticulously searching every nook and cranny where someone could hide. Under these circumstances, continuing to try to hide in narrow caves, under bridges, or in vegetation was pointless; being caught by some lucky person was only a matter of time.

Fortunately, Fish devised a solution almost immediately under such unfavorable circumstances.

"Hey, where's Mr. Fish?" After spending over twenty minutes searching almost the entire basement horizontally, Yue Die asked irritably, "We've practically searched everything down here, why haven't we seen him yet?"

"Maybe it's because you were too careless," Frostleaf scoffed. "Haven't you heard the saying, 'Cats are liquid'? As a feline Newtype, Mr. Fish can hide in far more places than you think. If it happens to be within the search area that a blockhead like you is in charge of, it's not surprising that he got missed."

"You dare to mock me? I was the one who searched most thoroughly of everyone, I even picked up and checked every single stone in the bushes!" Yue Die shouted. "I think it was you, you idiot with only swordsmanship in your head, who missed it!"

"Hmph, hmph, hmph, thank you for your praise," Frostleaf sneered, usually serious to everyone except when facing his nemesis, when he revealed a mischievous expression. "That's right, I am indeed wholeheartedly devoted to swordsmanship. However, the more thorough one's understanding of swordsmanship, the more complete one's perception of this world becomes."

"That's utter nonsense. I've practiced swordsmanship for so many years, how come I haven't felt anything..."

"You mediocre fellow have at best only memorized a lot of sword moves. But for a superior swordsman like myself, the sword is the heart, and the heart is the universe. After unifying consciousness with sword intent, I can see through all illusions and disguises, and directly observe the essence of all things..."

"How arrogant! If that's the case, then why don't you find Mr. Fish?"

"Give me a little more time, and it's not impossible." Shuangye stopped and began to concentrate again, trying to use the "Mind's Eye" technique from her swordsmanship to locate Fish... Then, she did indeed sense "something".

"Behind you!"

"Ha, you cunning fellow! Trying to play these 'watch your back' tricks on me again, don't you? You think I'm that easy to... Eh?" Before Yue Die could finish speaking, she actually felt something strange coming from behind her!

"Whoa?!" Moonbeam had barely cried out in surprise when Frostleaf across from her raised her water gun and sprayed a whole bunch of tomato juice at her. The juice missed Fish, who flashed past behind her, but hit Moonbeam with perfect accuracy!

"Aaaaaah, my eyes!" With tomato juice splattered all over her face and head, Yue Die couldn't see where she was going and slipped, falling into the artificial river filled with hot spring water. The sound of her falling into the water immediately attracted the attention of the others. Soon, Xiao Xing and Mei Lu also raised their water guns and fired wildly in the direction of the sound... and sure enough, they hit each other.

"Alas--"

"Waaah—"

After that, the entire search line immediately descended into chaos. Everyone, including Shuangye, frantically fired water guns and threw rotten tomatoes in the direction from which the commotion was coming, only to either miss or hit their target directly...

...Meanwhile, Fish managed to escape to the other end of the basement amidst the chaos and sat down in a gazebo.

"Phew... thank goodness I thought of this." Fish breathed a sigh of relief after stopping.

The tactics he just used were actually quite simple: first, he didn't choose to hide, but instead stood openly in front of a low bridge. Because the basement was full of decorative sculptures, and the moisture made it difficult for others to distinguish between the sculptures and people from a distance.

More importantly, everyone assumed that Fish would prioritize using his flexibility to hide in a difficult-to-find corner. Therefore, he would be subconsciously treated like a statue and wouldn't be noticed immediately.

By doing this unconventional approach, Fish bought himself a little time. Then, when Moon Butterfly, who was busy bickering with Frostleaf, approached, he risked rushing past her, which resulted in Frostleaf accidentally attacking him.

Previously, when Huang Yan was educating Fish about basic military knowledge, he mentioned many cases of accidental attacks and chaos caused by darkness and fog. This was especially useful when "allies" had ulterior motives. Although everyone had reached a consensus on "searching and capturing Fish," there was only one "first among the concubines" and the corresponding viscount title!

Therefore, this fragile cooperation would be broken as soon as they realized that Fish was already in front of them.

Once everyone is in a chaotic frenzy of blind shooting, it will be easy for Fish to escape in the confusion.

"Seriously... I didn't expect everyone's tactical awareness to have improved to this level," Fish muttered to himself after catching his breath among a pile of artificial rocks. "That's something to celebrate. However, I really haven't decided on this kind of thing yet... To decide to marry everyone now, and even arrange the order of positions, is just too much to ask..."

"Thump!"

Just as Fish was talking to himself, he suddenly heard the sound of a heavy object falling into the water not far away! His keen ears immediately told him that the weight of the object was about the same as that of a light person!

Wait, could it be...?

"Ah—ah—help!" Along with the sound of falling into the water came a piercing scream.

That's Melu's cry!