Beauty and the Beasts

Their bodies involuntarily trembled as they lowered their heads and nibbled at the dumplings. Even when the piping hot dumplings scalded their lips they didn’t dare make a sound.

A male patted his female comfortingly and said to Winston, “You guys aren’t the ones who bought them? Some time ago, a group of wolf beastmen offered to buy each female for ten jars of salt.”

He lowered his gaze and said helplessly, “As we were in an urgent shortage of salt at the time, my village sold two females first. Else, we wouldn’t have had any salt to eat. This time, when you guys offered twenty jars of salt for one female, the village sold my spouse.”

The other males also chimed in with their own village’s situation. All of them confirmed that their village had more or less sold some females prior to this, but not as many as this time.

Winston’s brows furrowed tightly. He sensed a competitor.

Who could possibly offer such a great quantity of salt in exchange for females?

One needed to know that even for the City of Beastmen in its heyday, they would only bring out a hundred salt jars every year, and they would only manage to purchase five females at the most.

Splash! Bluepool formed ripples on the water surface as he slapped upon it. He poked at Bai Qingqing’s back and said softly, “Hey, let me eat some.”

Deep in thought, Bai Qingqing was so startled that she drew in a gasp.

The remaining dumplings were placed in a large stone bowl, and Bai Qingqing filled up a bowl for Bluepool. “You gave me a scare. Here.”

Bluepool was about to receive the bowl from her when he felt the fins all over his body open. The intense sense of danger made him go into a defensive posture instinctively.

Raising his head, he found himself looking into a pair of silver tiger eyes. His body tensed up, not daring to move.

Shucks, I’ve been discovered!

This tiger king wasn’t on familiar terms with him. Surely he wouldn’t slaughter him? Was it too late to jump into the water now?

However, Winston merely asked this, “Will you merfolks befriend the land beastmen?”

Bluepool paused slightly. “What do you mean?”

Winston said, “There are no villages more powerful than the City of Beastmen over this land. I suspect some merfolks are providing salt for free.”

Realizing Winston wasn’t coming after him, Bluepool relaxed and sputtered with laughter. “Impossible. It’s not so easy to separate salt from the seawater. There’s no way we’d be so generous.”

Winston’s brows furrowed even more deeply now. The more unknown, the more dangerous.

Bai Qingqing twirled the hair before her chest with two fingers. “Winston?”

“Mm?”

“Err… Jean has returned to the sea, and she has an enormous group of merfolk backing her. Parker saw that it was the ape king who sent her back.”

Even though those merfolks were more or less completely wiped out by Curtis, a centipede did not topple over even when dead. They must surely have a lot of salt kept in store. Also, not to forget, there were formidable merfolk on the land.

“So, it’s them.” Winston relaxed upon hearing this. “Don’t worry. Eat up, food’s getting cold.”

Winston’s steadiness set Bai Qingqing’s heart to ease. She nodded and responded, “Mm.”

“Young males may begin to challenge each other!” The tribal head’s voice boomed over the bonfires.

The males who had been eagerly waiting for this moment let out excited roars. Several of them dashed to the empty battleground simultaneously.

The atmosphere heated up instantly.

As the bought females had to choose a male from the original residents of this village, they had to somewhat keep an eye on the duels even if they couldn’t stop themselves from eating.

The duels tonight were much more intense than the previous time, with continuous roars and howls. If Winston hadn’t set a rule that no one was allowed to kill or maim his opponent, the duels would have been even fiercer.

The females were in high spirits from viewing the fights, but Bai Qingqing couldn’t bear to watch on anymore. Holding her bowl, she got to her feet.

“Parker, I want to go home. Can you bring me back?”

“Okay.”

Parker got up right away and sent her back to the tree hole before he was chased away by her to go eat something.