Chapter 956: The Stray Cats in the Forbidden City

As soon as he entered the restricted zone, it was like it was totally separate from the noisy, public areas. The fear of being overwhelmed by a large group of tourists totally vanished, and he could finally admire the true Forbidden City.

The first feeling he had upon entering the forbidden area was that it was quiet. It was really too quiet. Besides the one or two employees that occasionally walked past them, there was basically no one on the road. There was little grass and the ancient trees covered them. A pair of copper lanterns with stone bottoms were situated on both sides of the road in intervals, and walking there was like wandering through thousands of years of history.

Wen Li watched how Zhang Zian looked around, curiously looking at the city. With a chuckle, she said, “Did you think that the restricted areas in the Forbidden City were very mysterious, and now that you’ve seen them, they turned out to be just like this?”

She had guessed a part of it correctly.

Actually, the main reason Zhang Zian was looking around was that he was looking for the thing that he suspected to be an elfin that had run away earlier. It was not convenient to explain that to her, so he decided he might as well just silently agree with her guess.

“May I take photos? Being able to come into the restricted areas is rare,” he requested, waving his phone. The thing that had run away was only suspected to be an elfin. What was he to do if he missed the real elfin because he had some prior misconceptions?

“Go for it,” she generously agreed.

Zhang Zian was touring around with her while he used the Game Capture Interface to scan his surroundings. He didn’t want to miss a single corner.

Concerning the restricted areas in the Forbidden City, there were a lot of rumors and it was sometimes hard to differentiate the truth from the lies. Some people said that, hidden in the closed-off areas, were the treasures of the Emperors of the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. There were even people who said that the reason the Forbidden City did not open up the restricted areas was because at night, there would be magical incidents that happened there.

The truth was, based on what he had seen and heard along the way, he could entirely overturn the baseless rumors. The reason the areas were not open to the public was because they had yet to be completely restored, and it was not time to open them to the public.

Every time he passed a palace, he would peep through the open gate into the corner of the courtyard like a leopard. The grey colored palace was surrounded by scaffolding and piles of stone; it was clearly still under repair.

As a cultural relic with a history that stretched over several hundred years, the repairs of the Forbidden City were much more complicated than that of ordinary houses. Experts who had been engaged in the field for decades led graduate students to carry out the repairs bit by bit with a lot of care. Any carelessness could lead to irreversible damage to the cultural relics.

Therefore, although it looked like a construction site, there were only a few people working there. They wore yellow safety hats and repeatedly checked drawings. The progress of the work was extremely slow. After all, it was slow work that produced delicate work.

Of course, there were also some palaces inside the restricted area without scaffolding, which could be that the external reinforcement work had been completed, the internal repair work was underway, or that it was not its turn to be reinforced yet.

He had also noticed that there were a lot of stray cats there––they were on the walls, in the corners, at the doorsteps, and under the windows. They enjoyed the spring sunshine in various places all over the city.

Most of the cats liked the quiet. The ordinary, open areas were crowded with tourists, and some naughty kids liked to pull the tails of the cats. There were no stray cats in the open area; they all went to the restricted areas to enjoy the peace and quiet.

Every time they met a stray cat, Wen Li would say their names with sincere familiarity.

The history of the Forbidden City keeping cats had started in the Ming Dynasty. A “Cat Room” was even created in the Ming Dynasty specifically to take care of the cats in the palace. After that, they would choose the best cats and present them to the emperor. The emperor would keep the cat he liked the most for himself and gift the rest to the members of the royal house.

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After many years of historical changes, the palace cats that had been respected had already been scattered.

Wen Li introduced some of the stray cats that could be the descendants of the palace cats. There were some that had run over from the nearby stray cats, so they had not been able to differentiate them for quite some time.

Including Snowy, the stray cats all had markings on their ears to show that they had already undergone sterilization.

Wen Li had even proudly said that the buildings in the Forbidden City were mostly made of wood, but they had yet to have a mouse outbreak in many years. She gave partial credit of that to the stray cats.

Seeing the infertile cats that had been fed until they were so fat and lazy, Zhang Zian decided to reserve his opinion about what she said. Perhaps the reason why Wen Li was saying that was because she wanted to come up with a reasonable excuse for why the Forbidden City workers kept cats and liked cats.

The stray cats were the real owners of the ancient building. They could skillfully squeeze through the gap under some of the locked courtyard doors, or between the drainage channels on the courtyard wall, or they could even jump over the wall.

Visiting the Forbidden City was a very boring thing. After all, all the palaces were kind of the same, just with different professionals leading them. Every time Wen Li passed a palace, she would tirelessly tell Zhang Zian about the name and the origin of the palace, which concubines once lived in them, and what interesting stories had happened there.

Not only was Zhang Zian listening intently, but he was nodding his head continuously, feeling that the trip was not in vain. Even the elfins were listening seriously.

The more northwest they went, the more the buildings around them became… old. They were entirely unlike the beautiful buildings in the open area. Perhaps that was what the Palace Museum really looked like after hundreds of years of storms and wars. The beauty was beautiful, but it was not real.

“Our destination is in front of us.” At the east wall of the Jianfu door, she pointed her finger at the building in the middle of some ancient trees.

The Jianfu Hall was a very large area, but where they were going was not the main Jianfu Hall. Instead, it was a small courtyard by the side of the hall.

At the first glance of the courtyard, Zhang Zian did not dare to believe his own eyes. That too was ruined, right?

The rows of rooms in the courtyard could no longer be described as just grey and dirty. It was almost the same as an abandoned, broken temple. The windows were hollow, without glass or window paper. The paint was almost entirely gone. If Zhang Zian were to rub the windows with his fingers, they would be covered in a layer of gray dust.

If it was not the Forbidden City, he dared to bet that no one would want to enter the house.

Wen Li understood his feelings and smiled bitterly. “There’s no other way. This has yet to be put on the schedule to be fixed, and this courtyard itself does not have much importance. It’s of the lowest priority.”

She walked to the door of the compartment; that door was also very broken and was only used as a decoration.

What was out of Zhang Zian’s expectations was that she did not directly push the door to enter. Instead, she raised her voice and said towards the broken and ruined compartment, “I’m entering.”

Before she said anything, Zhang Zian had long ago taken a rough look at the inside of the house from the hole in the window. It was totally dark inside, and although he could not see too clearly, he could be sure that there was not a single human in the house. Who was she talking to?

Thinking about the scary, magical rumors he had heard, although Zhang Zian did not believe in those things, his back still turned cold.

Could it be that the rumors were true and that there was indeed some kind of unnatural thing or creature there?