Free Web NovelChapter 246: Chapter 246: The Red Bead Carved with a Fishtail
Once the game was dressed, it was Yu An’s time to shine.
She had brought a dazzling array of seasonings, leaving Ao Si so bewildered that he decided to just wait to be served.
He didn’t just wait around, either. He and several guards scrambled up the trees like monkeys and picked a pile of fruit. Meanwhile, Yu An roasted the meat and chatted with the guards beside her.
The guards were both male and female, and as they chatted, she casually brought up the recently implemented rules, asking for their opinions and suggestions.
At first, they stammered and hesitated, afraid to speak for fear that Yu An would punish them for saying the wrong thing. But when they saw that she genuinely wanted their opinions, they finally began to speak freely.
Yu An listened intently, giving Ao Si a look that told him to take notes.
’The people’s opinions are valuable. Brainstorming is the only way to reduce errors in decision-making, after all.’
The Beastman World seemed fine on the surface, but in reality, it had been ravaged by the Beast God’s selfishness. Yu An mused to herself, ’I have to clean up this whole mess before I can leave for the Upper Realm.’
The meat skewered on branches SIZZLED as it roasted, fat dripping into the fire below. The aroma of meat mingled with charcoal and drifted toward them.
The skin of the meat was crisp, but the inside was tender and juicy. Yu An used a small knife to score the surface before brushing on a layer of honey.
As the sweet and savory aroma spread, the guards’ mouths began to water. They felt they could eat five whole flatbreads with just the smell of the meat alone!
"Hey, you few over there! Stop eating your flatbreads and come get some roasted meat."
A few guards, their stomachs growling with hunger, had already started gnawing on their dry rations. Yu An’s sharp eyes spotted them, and she called them over to get some meat.
One of the guards asked in surprise, "Hall Master, we get some too?"
"Of course," Yu An said, placing the roasted meat onto a large leaf provided by Lu Lu. She joked, "The North Hall Master and I can’t finish all this by ourselves."
"Don’t just stand there. Eat up so you can rest. We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow."
Ao Si didn’t stand on ceremony, tearing off a piece with his bare hands. The skin was crisp, while the inside was tender and succulent. The hot juice seared his tongue, leaving behind a faint, sweet aftertaste. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
"Sho... Sho good!"
Ao Si gave a thumbs-up and then devoted himself to savoring the delicacy.
Yu An also toasted the guards’ flatbreads until they were crispy on the outside. She then sliced them open and stuffed them with roasted meat and greens, which cut the richness of the meat and made for a filling meal.
One person got creative and added sliced fruit to theirs. Yu An tried it and dubbed it "the Connoisseur’s Creation."
Yu An rarely left the Beast God Hall, so in the eyes of the guards, she had always been a lofty, unapproachable figure. They never expected her to be so down-to-earth.
Over the course of a single meal, the distance between Yu An and her guards shrank considerably, and they started speaking more boldly.
Several of them began quietly complaining that the previous administrative system was a chaotic mess. They added that the former Hall Masters, who had appeared incorruptible, had in reality all been lining their own pockets.
"The rats in their houses were fatter than cats!"
At first, they only spoke in hushed tones, but seeing that Yu An was listening intently and even asking follow-up questions, they grew more and more animated.
By the time Yu An had her fill of the gossip, she had also gained a solid grasp of how things used to be in Beast God City.
In short, the system was a mess. They excelled at keeping up appearances, but in reality, corruption was rampant from the very top to the very bottom. This left honest people feeling more and more stifled, with nowhere to turn for justice.
If someone committed a crime—murder or arson, for example—and they were connected to a Hall Master, the Hall Master would have someone "take care of it."
But that didn’t mean dealing with the criminal. It meant eliminating the victims.
If all the victims were dead, there’d be no one left to make a fuss, right?
This chaos continued until Yu An took power—or, to be more precise, when Ao Yi and the three others were made Hall Masters. Those four were a breath of fresh air compared to all who came before!
Hearing someone praise him, Ao Si proudly puffed out his chest. "You can rest assured, I will never tolerate such wickedness! With the new rules our Hall Master has proposed, Beast God City—no, the entire Endless Land will become a better and better place!"
Yu An couldn’t help but smile. After a moment, she proposed a trip to the Divine Mountain the next day.
Ao Si asked, "Hall Master, a round trip to the Divine Mountain takes a whole day. If we stay for any amount of time, it will take two days at minimum. Aren’t you in a hurry to find Lord Han and the young master?"
Yu An waved her hand. "There’s no rush. We’ll be passing by the Divine Mountain anyway. I miss some of my old comrades and want to go see them."
Hearing her say this, Ao Si had no objections. "Shall I accompany you, then? Or should we all go?"
"I’ll be fine by myself," Yu An declined. "You all wait here. I’ll go alone and won’t be long."
Ao Si didn’t think twice and immediately agreed. ’After all,’ he thought, ’Yu An is much more powerful than I am. If we ran into trouble, it’s not even clear who would be protecting whom.’
’Besides, what danger could there possibly be on the Divine Mountain?’
The next morning, Yu An headed up the mountain alone. The path was rugged, and she made her way up relying on hazy memories. The training ground was at the summit, still a long way off.
When she encountered a particularly difficult section, she would grab onto vines and swing across. ’I have to admit,’ she thought, ’this is actually pretty fun.’
She walked from morning until afternoon before she finally reached the summit. Ahead, a faint golden light shimmered. That was the training ground.
The entrance to the training ground was guarded, so Yu An didn’t use the main gate. Instead, she followed Lu Lu’s lead and squeezed through a small hole in the wall.
This place was nearly identical to the training ground from the fabricated memories the Beast God had planted in her mind. The moment she stepped inside, the reek of blood filled the air.
People were injured and even died in the training ground at every moment of every day. The stench of blood had seeped into the very foundations of the place.
Yu An covered her nose, taking out a homemade mask to put on. Only then did she feel some relief.
Her purpose for coming here was to find Mo Yan’s parents. Fortunately, the Beast God had everyone who was captured registered, so she just needed to find and check the roster.
"An’an, the roster records their real names. Follow me..."
Lu Lu led her on a winding path. Whenever there were guards ahead, Yu An would steer clear of them ahead of time.
After ducking past another patrol, Yu An lay on a rooftop, her gaze following them thoughtfully.
When Lu Lu noticed she wasn’t following, it hurried back and poked her. "An’an, what’s wrong?"
"It’s nothing," Yu An said, giving the patrol one last glance. "Let’s keep moving, Lu Lu."
’Did I see that wrong? That patrol... they didn’t look like Beastmen. Were they... pure humans?’
’They weren’t like the beastmen who couldn’t transform. That group didn’t seem like they were from the Beastman World at all.’
It wasn’t until nightfall that Yu An finally made her way to the storeroom where the rosters were kept. It was still guarded, but that posed no challenge for her.
She used her Wood Element Ability to command nearby plants to loosen the soil, digging a tunnel for her to crawl through. Lu Lu then shot up, sealing the entrance. No one would ever spot the hole without looking very closely.
The inside of the storeroom was lit by Fluorite. It wasn’t as bright as lamplight, but it was enough to see clearly.
The moment Yu An entered, she gasped in shock at the sight of what was piled up inside.
Gold and silver made up only a small fraction of the hoard, piled carelessly in a corner. The vast majority of the items were perfectly round, blood-red orbs, each about the size of a child’s fist. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
Yu An had no idea what they were. She picked one up at random to examine it more closely and noticed a faint pattern carved into its surface.
"Is this... a fishtail?"
