Beauty and the Beasts

Cortis weaved through the mountains with Bai Qingqing in his arms. Seeing Bai Qingqing devoid of all strength, he asked worriedly, “Are you hungry?”

Bai Qingqing rolled her eyes and shot Cortis a look that implied he was asking the obvious. It was noon and she hadn’t yet eaten a meal. How could she not feel hungry?

Cortis jolted Bai Qingqing upwards and placed the sack of rice on Bai Qingqing’s body. “Then eat this.”

Bai Qingqing stared at Cortis with dull and lifeless eyes. “Are you trying to be funny?”

Cortis said, clearly shocked, “Don’t tell me rice needs to be roasted as well?”

The speechless Bai Qingqing suddenly felt that the beastmen’s village was highly civilized and advanced.

“Do you have a flint?” Bai Qingqing asked.

Cortis answered, “I have one wrapped in my snakeskin.”

Ok, there’s a source of fire. But without a pot, how are we going to cook?

Gazing around at the leaves of the plants surrounding them, Bai Qingqing was wondering if she could fold the large tree leaves into a pot to cook porridge in it. Then, she suddenly caught sight of several large bamboos.

“Ay! That can be used!” Bai Qingqing excitedly exclaimed as she pointed at the bamboos. “We can cook rice in bamboo!”

“Rice in bamboo?” Although Cortis didn’t understand what that was, he swam towards where Bai Qingqing was pointing.

The bamboos were sparsely grown, but every single one of them was thick as the surface of a bowl, making them highly suitable for cooking rice in bamboo. Bai Qingqing asked Cortis to set her down, and she then tried to break the large bamboos.

“Find me a sharp rock. I’m going to break the bamboo.”

Cortis laughed. “Breaking them is a simple feat.”

He placed his hands on the bamboo, his transparent nails indistinctly reflecting a sharp glow. When he gently sliced the bamboo with his fingernail, a large opening appeared in the bamboo, and it then lost balance and fell to one side.

Because the bamboo wasn’t completely cut, during the process of falling, the root of the bamboo split into several pieces. Thankfully, though, the bamboo on top was still complete.

The dumbfounded Bai Qingqing stared fixedly at Cortis’s fingernails. Are his fingernails knife blades?

Bai Qingqing’s “admiring” gaze worked very well on Cortis. He shook his tail and said, “You like it? I’ll give you a piece then.”

When Bai Qingqing heard this, her heart quivered. Was she about to witness a bloody scene?

However, Cortis didn’t proceed to pry out his fingernail. He lowered his head and looked at his snake’s tail. Then, after a careful selection, he pried out a black scale from his stomach the size of a chicken’s egg.

“Be careful, don’t hurt yourself.” Cortis handed his scale to Bai Qingqing with a faint smile.

Bai Qingqing received it, still dazed. She tried the sharpness of the scale’s edge with her hand, and right away, she felt a piercing pain from her finger as a bloody slit formed.

So sharp!

If she was going to kill herself in the future, she would just use this to slit her neck.

“What are you doing?” Cortis anxiously yelled, grabbing Bai Qingqing’s hand and placing her finger into his mouth.

His gums felt cold as well. Bai Qingqing could feel his slim, long and cold snake’s tongue curling around her finger. She could even sense the part where his tongue forked. This caused her finger to turn numb and goosebumps to appear all over her arm.

Bai Qingqing tried retracting her arm, feeling uneasy about Cortis’s concern towards her. “I didn’t know your scale was so sharp. I won’t do it again.”

Cortis glanced coldly at Bai Qingqing, before letting go of her finger. Right away, his snake tongue transformed into a normal human tongue that could speak. “If there’s a next time, I’ll take back this scale.”

Bai Qingqing instantly moved the scale behind her back and declared with her head raised. “Since you gave it to me, it’s mine now. You can’t take it back!”

Cortis’s red pupils quickly shrunk a little, his heart beating furiously.

The female likes my scale. Is she beginning to like me?