Warden of the Beast World: Everyone is a Hakimi

Ling Shou stood on the perch, looking down at the food tray being pushed in through the teleportation port.

A bunch of catnip, a nutritional supplement, and a plate of vegetable salad.

Vegetable salad, again. Lettuce leaves, cherry tomatoes, a few slices of cucumber, all laid out plain on a plate, without even a squeeze of salad dressing.

He is a bird of prey. The Sky Falcon Clan are the rulers of the skies, and their first dish on the menu is argali, followed by snow hare, and then cattle and sheep offered as tribute from other tribes.

Vegetables? In his eyes, vegetables were what ibex ate, and he ate ibex. This little bean sprout treated him like chicken.

As Ye Tang pushed the food cart to the entrance of Observation Zone No. 3, she heard a series of urgent ringing calls coming from behind the glass wall—not just once, but repeatedly, like sending a telegram.

She walked over and saw Ling Shou standing on the inner stone platform, his wings slightly spread, his eagle eyes filled with protest. He lowered his head and pecked at the edge of the plate with his beak, pushing the plate towards the conveyor belt with precise force, the plate hitting the metal frame with a crisp sound.

"Little bean sprout, explain yourself."

"Explain what?"

"What's this?" Ling Shou pointed to the vegetable salad with the tip of his wing.

"Vegetable salad, don't you know what that is?" Ye Tang said matter-of-factly. "It's for getting vitamins. You eat meat every day, how can you not eat vegetables?"

"I am a bird of prey."

"I know you're a bird of prey, but even birds of prey need a balanced diet. Look at you, your feathers aren't as shiny as they used to be, you must be lacking vitamins."

Ling Shou glanced down at his wings. His silver-gray falcon feathers were smooth and glossy, gleaming with a metallic sheen under the simulated sunlight. Each feather was neat and sharp, of such high quality that it could be featured on an Imperial military propaganda poster.

Where are his feathers not shiny? He just groomed them yesterday! He looked up abruptly, his eagle eyes wide, ready to retort, but Ye Tang had already pushed the food cart toward Observation Zone Four.

In Observation Zone Four, Chi Heng was happily unwrapping a box of chocolate ice cream with its beak. Next to it were a plate of crispy, honey-glazed chicken wings and a large bowl of fruit salad. The fruit salad contained strawberries, watermelon, honeydew melon chunks, and was drizzled with condensed milk.

Looking at the few bland lettuce leaves and cherry tomatoes on his plate, and then at the fruit salad drizzled with condensed milk in front of Chi Heng, Ling Shou's eagle eyes were brimming with resentment. He took a deep breath and decided to swallow his anger for now—there was another delivery tonight, he'd deal with it later.

At dinner time, Ye Tang pushed a larger food cart than at lunchtime into the corridor. She delivered grilled steak to Jing Yao, black pepper chicken legs to Han Zhou, a grilled meat platter with vanilla ice cream to Chi Heng, and garlic grilled shrimp and seaweed soup to Cang Ming. Each person had a customized menu, and the corridor was filled with the aroma of the dishes as they were served.

Then she stopped at the entrance to observation area number three and pushed in a tray. Catnip, nutritional supplements. That's all.

Ling Shou stared at the plate for several seconds before pressing the call button. Ye Tang leaned against the armrest of the food cart, arms crossed, watching him through the glass wall.

"Where's my salad?"

"Didn't you skip lunch? If you're not going to eat it, don't waste it. I gave Chiheng an extra meal."

Ling Shou choked. He hadn't eaten the salad at noon because he thought it was for feeding chickens. Now, even that was gone. Chi Heng peeked over from next door, half a roasted chicken wing dangling from his mouth, his bird-like face full of schadenfreude.

"Little Sprout," Ling Shou took a deep breath, "you're settling a personal score."

"What do you mean by settling personal scores? This is called distribution according to need. If you don't eat the vegetables, I'll give them to those who do. Is there a problem with that?"

"Just because I don't eat vegetables doesn't mean you can withhold my rice!"

"Isn't the nutritional supplement food? Isn't catnip food?" Ye Tang counted on her fingers for him. "The nutritional supplements provided by the Empire are S-grade special supplies; countless people outside would love to eat them but can't. The catnip is freshly picked; ask Jing Yao and the others if they rely on it to stay alive every day. I've given you both, and you're still saying I'm not giving you food?"

Lingshou found himself logically cornered. He flapped his wings and then closed them again, his eagle eyes surging with various urges to refute, but every word that reached his lips proved untenable. Finally, he jumped down from his perch, stood in front of the glass wall, looked down at the female outside who was shorter than him, and changed tactics.

"What do you want from me to cook for me properly?"

"Pay."

"Besides paying money."

"There's no room for negotiation."

Ling Shou turned around in anger and flew back to the top of the perch, his back to her, his wings tightly folded. A silver-gray feather drifted down from his wing and landed leisurely on the stone platform.

That was evidence of losing the argument. Ye Tang pushed the empty food cart out, and when she passed Observation Zone No. 4, Chi Heng called her back.

Chi Heng transformed into human form.

His eyes were crimson, like those of a beast, with a slightly gleaming pupil. His skin was fair, his features bold and handsome, his eyebrows slightly upturned, exuding a natural, untamed, and wild youthful spirit.

He casually draped a dark red robe over his shoulders, the hem half-open, revealing faint dark red feather patterns spreading below his collarbone. He still held the unfinished chocolate ice cream in his hand, leaning casually against the inside of the observation wall, raising his chin at Ling Shou outside the glass wall.

"Tell me, what good does it do you to offend the warden all the time?" Chi Heng took a bite of ice cream, his tone clearly gloating.

Ling Shou also transformed from the perch into human form. His long silver-gray hair was tied back, with a few strands falling in front of his forehead. His features were cold and sharp, with a high nose bridge, thin lips tightly pursed, and a pair of slightly upturned silver-gray eyes that were now staring coldly at Chi Heng.

He wore a silver-gray sleeveless short robe, revealing two well-defined arms. His skin was a shade darker than Chi Heng's, and he looked like a knife that had been sharpened to an extremely thin edge. He stood in front of the glass wall, arms crossed, facing Chi Heng across the corridor.

"She called me a free-range chicken, a flat-feathered bird, and an illiterate."

"Don't you also call me Little Sprout?" Chi Heng licked his ice cream.

"Did I describe her wrong? She's so small." Ling Shou gestured with his hand—he looked down at the area below his chest, which was about the height of Ye Tang's head.

Chi Heng tilted his head and thought for a moment, then took a bite of ice cream and mumbled, "She wasn't wrong in her description. You do have feathers, you're naturally flat-feathered, you're naturally a bird, a free-range chicken—you did walk around the ground several times this afternoon, so she was right."

Ling Shou slowly turned around, staring at Chi Heng, two dangerous flames burning in his silver-gray eyes: "Come here, let's have a fight."

"A brute."

Ling Shou thought he had misheard. His pupils dilated slightly for a moment, then refocused, and he repeated in a confirming tone, "What did you say?"

"You brute," Chi Heng said, ice cream stick dangling from his mouth, leaning against the glass wall, his crimson eyes filled with an unwitting innocence, "always ready to fight. What else could you be but a brute?"

Ling Shou took a deep breath. He admitted that he wasn't exactly good-tempered—the Skyfeather Falcon Clan were birds of prey, and birds of prey were never known for their good temper; it was determined by their physiological structure.

But when it comes to brute force and fighting, who in the entire empire can out-brute this firebird? Chi Heng of the Vermilion Bird Clan, with S+ combat power, is always looking for other male beasts to fight, from the southern border to the northern border, from the East Sea to the Western Regions. He will fight if he can use his hands, but he will never use his brain. He will take whatever he wants and fight if he is unhappy. He has no manners whatsoever, regardless of gender.

The Empire's undisputed number one brute, whose personality assessment in internal military documents states "extremely belligerent, advised to avoid one-on-one contact with those of equal or lower combat strength." Now, this number one brute, with an ice cream stick in his mouth and his head tilted, calls him a brute in that self-righteous tone.

"Chiheng," Ling Shou pressed the call button and spoke slowly and deliberately into the communicator, "you, a firebird who's fought your way from the Southern Frontier to the Western Regions, who attacks anyone you don't like, and who even dares to beat up your own clan's elders, what right do you have to call me a brute?"

Chi Heng blinked. His brain processed this information noticeably slower than in a normal conversation. The Vermilion Bird Clan's way of thinking was always straightforward; he never considered the cause and effect before fighting, he would just start fighting and think about the consequences.

Now that Ling Shou had said such a long string of words, he needed to digest it slowly. After a while, he made a response that Chi Heng considered completely logical: "I didn't hit you. You were the one who tried to hit me first. So you're a brute."

"you--"

"Besides," Chi Heng stuffed the last bite of ice cream into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed, pointing to the next table, he added, "I gave the warden his food allowance, but you didn't. I eat chocolate ice cream, you eat nutritional supplements. I eat fruit salad, you don't even get vegetable salad. Doesn't that prove anything?"

Ling Shou's clenched fist bulged with veins. For the first time in his life, he was rendered powerless by the logic of "you didn't pay, so you deserve it," and the one who challenged him was Chi Heng—the universally acknowledged number one brute, Chi Heng. Something must be wrong with this world.

"You just wait," Ling Shou pointed at Chi Heng, two suppressed fires burning in his silver-gray eagle eyes, "When Little Sprout comes to deliver food tomorrow, I'll throw money in her face. Then you won't be the only one getting ice cream."

"Oh," Chi Heng pulled out a new ice cream from his robe, this time vanilla flavored, and slowly tore open the wrapper. "Good luck."

"..." Ling Shou turned around and slammed his fist on the stone platform.