Warden of the Beast World: Everyone is a Hakimi

Ghost Hunter achieved his breakthrough in the dead of night.

That night, Ye Tang went to bed early. During the day, she had roasted three batches of lamb chops, two boxes of oysters, and a whole roasted lamb for her five sugar daddies. She was so tired that she didn't even have the energy to open the spicy strips that had just been restocked in the Space Supermarket. After taking a shower, she collapsed onto the bed and drifted off to sleep with even breathing.

As usual, Ghost Hunter lay on the carpet by the bedroom door to keep watch, his silver-gray wolf body resembling a silent sculpture in the moonlight.

He didn't do anything intentionally. He simply closed his eyes and, as usual, sensed his spiritual domain. That domain, which was once riddled with cracks and riotous nodes, had been largely repaired after half a month of careful nurturing by Ye Tang.

The water Ye Tang fed him was sweet and delicious, the catnip was refreshing, the smoky aroma of roasted meat oil mixed with cumin and chili powder, and the warmth of her fingertips brushing through his fur when she rubbed his head every day—these small, inconspicuous things gradually filled the cracks in his spiritual realm, like a kintsugi craftsman repairing broken porcelain with lacquer and clay, making the repaired patterns even more resilient than before.

Then that change happened.

Without any warning, it was as if a door he had never known existed had been pushed open from the inside. In that instant, his mental energy field expanded, reorganized, and solidified rapidly, with fine crackling sounds emanating from deep within his bones, and his muscle fibers being reforged in a cycle of tearing and regeneration.

The whole process was quiet yet intense, as if a spark that had been dormant for more than a decade had suddenly exploded in his chest, and scorching energy surged out along every nerve ending, cleansing him from the inside out.

When Ghost Hunter opened his eyes, the moonlight had shifted. He looked down at his forepaws—they were a size bigger than before, with thicker, more robust muscles beneath the silvery-grey fur. His skeletal structure had also changed; every vertebra from his shoulder blades to his spine had become thicker and stronger. He stood up and silently walked into the living room, where he saw his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window.

A giant, silver-gray wolf, nearly 1.5 meters tall at the shoulder and over 2 meters long, appeared. It was twice its size compared to before its breakthrough. With a slight thought, the S-rank ceiling he had witnessed since childhood—the insurmountable barrier for generations of the Gray Wolf Clan—silently shattered beneath his feet. In its place lay an unprecedented, vast, and unfamiliar realm.

SS-rank. The Empire's fourth SS-rank combat force.

Youlie stood in front of the French windows for a long time. The Canglang clan did not have the bloodline of ancient divine beasts, nor the primordial heritage of the White Tiger clan, nor the Nirvana talent of the Vermilion Bird clan, nor the ancient contract of resonance between the mermaid clan and the ocean.

The Azure Wolves are the Azure Wolves, relying on generations of discipline, loyalty, and the hard-earned skills honed on the battlefield. Without the blessing of bloodline talent, the highest combat power an orc can achieve in their lifetime is S-rank—a conclusion written in the empire's textbooks for two thousand years.

When he broke through to S-rank at the age of seventeen, the entire Canglang clan held a three-day banquet. His father, drunk, patted him on the shoulder and said, "Youlie, this is where you are in this life."

It wasn't a blow, it was a fact. He accepted it. Having been stationed in the Northern Territory for so many years, he had countless times felt that the upper limit of S-rank was like a transparent dome hanging over his head, impossible to push or break through, leaving him no choice but to bow his head and accept his fate to be the strongest in that rank.

Then a little female appeared. She fed him roasted meat, gave him water, stuffed catnip into his mouth, and rubbed his head every day, praising him as a "good dog, so well-behaved." Half a month, just half a month. That ceiling that had shrouded the Canglang Clan for two thousand years was casually pierced by her with roasted lamb leg and spiritual spring water.

The next morning, Ye Tang was awakened by the sunlight streaming through the curtains. She rubbed her eyes groggily as she walked out of the bedroom, her hair a mess like a bird's nest, and the memory of dreaming about eating hot pot the night before still lingering in her mouth.

She yawned, her bare feet touching the living room floor, preparing to go to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee—then she froze as if a pause button had been pressed.

A large dog crouched in the living room, so big it almost filled the entire space. Its shoulder height was nearly level with her chest, and its body length stretched easily from one end of the sofa to the other. Its silver-gray fur gleamed with a cool metallic sheen in the morning light. Its four legs were like four iron pillars wrapped in a velvet blanket, its paws resting on the floor tiles, each toenail gleaming with a healthy yet dangerous light.

Ye Tang rubbed her eyes, thinking she had gotten too excited. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, silently counted to three, and then opened them again. The giant wolf was still in the living room, looking at her with a very familiar, somewhat lazy and innocent gaze.

"Dog?" she called tentatively.

Ghost Hunter nodded at the enormous wolf head.

Ye Tang's expression went through a complete psychological transformation—confusion, shock, doubt, and self-persuasion. She walked around You Lie twice, looking him up and down several times.

Silver-gray fur, gray-blue eyes, a tuft of downy hair on the tips of her ears that she rubs every day, and a small patch of silver-gray on the tip of her tail that is slightly darker than the rest—it is indeed the dog she has raised for half a month.

But the size was wrong, the model was wrong, and the scale was completely different. Youlie felt a little guilty from her circling steps, and his ears twitched slightly back. This reaction only made Ye Tang more certain that it was him; her dog always made that guilty ear movement when caught stealing lamb legs.

"How did you grow so big?" Ye Tang reached out and compared her hand to his shoulder, and found that before she had to reach down to touch his back, but now his hand could just touch a little above his shoulder when he held it out horizontally.

She's 1.66 meters tall, and this wolf's shoulder height is estimated to be at least 1.5 meters. In just half a month, it went from an Alaskan size to the size of a small carriage; even growth hormones couldn't achieve this growth rate.

Ye Tang's intuition told her that something was extremely wrong. No matter how well she fed it—plenty of spiritual spring water, unlimited roasted meat, and catnip as a treat—a normal dog couldn't possibly double in size in half a month.

This is no longer just about "eating well and developing well"; it's a biological miracle. She stared into the hunter's grey-blue eyes, the expression in them all too familiar, yet all too intelligent. A dog's eyes shouldn't hold such a calm, cautious, complex emotion—observing her reactions while simultaneously devising a strategy.

"You're an orc, aren't you?" she suddenly asked, her tone tentatively calm, but her eyes were sharp as knives.

Ghost Hunter's ears perked up, and then he made a reaction that, in retrospect, seemed all too natural to himself—he tilted his head.

The enormous wolf's head was tilted to one side, one ear erect while the other drooped slightly, its gray-blue eyes wide open, and its mouth slightly parted, revealing the tip of its tongue. This expression, called "confusion" on a dog, "feigned ignorance" on a husky, looked extremely incongruous and hilarious on Ghost Hunter's face, given his imposing physique that could frighten even a grown man. What beastman? He's just a big dog. I don't understand what you're talking about.

Looking at his head tilt, Ye Tang hesitated, swallowing back the question that was on the tip of her tongue. She glanced at him suspiciously, then looked down at herself.

Her original height was 1.62 meters. From the first day she transmigrated to the beast world, she had precisely measured all the data of this body. She was malnourished, had stunted growth, and had a pitifully small frame.

But now, her wrists, which used to be so thin they could be snapped in one pinch, have become fleshy and well-proportioned, her calves have developed muscle definition, and her complexion has changed from sallow to rosy. She has grown four centimeters taller, and her physique has evolved from being out of breath after walking two steps to being able to push a fully loaded food cart up and down the corridor five times in one go without stopping.

These are all facts. Her own body has indeed changed. If even she can go from a weakling to a normal person in half a month, then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable for her dog to grow a size larger from the same diet... does it?

"Could it really have mutated?" she muttered to herself, her brows furrowed slightly, her fingers unconsciously twirling the tuft of downy hair on the tip of Ghost Hunter's ear.

"Yes, yes, it's mutated." Ghost Hunter nodded sharply, his tail swaying behind him with a powerful gust of wind.

Ye Tang stared at him for several seconds, then took a deep breath and announced with a confident tone as if she had just finished a complex internal debate: "That's right, I've already encountered something like transmigrating to the beast world, so what's so surprising about raising a dog to adulthood? My food is indeed very good. I'm definitely a qualified zookeeper."

In just three seconds, she went through the entire process from doubt to logical consistency to self-affirmation. Then, she patted Youlie's fluffy head, turned around, and went into the kitchen. "What do you want to eat this morning? With your current size, you'll need to eat more."

Youlie watched her retreating figure and slowly exhaled. He had gotten away with it. But another voice in his mind was calmly reviewing the situation; his breakthrough was no accident.

The water, catnip, and different foods that Ye Tang fed him every day systematically improved the physical and mental strength of the beastman.