Warden of the Beast World: Everyone is a Hakimi

Ye Tang stood to one side, having heard every word Jing Yao had said. Abandoning a minor female could result in a life sentence. She had only known that being thrown out of the Ye family was a miserable experience, but she hadn't realized it was such a serious crime under the law.

Doesn't that mean she holds a trump card that could blow up the Ye family? Wasn't that old scoundrel quite the smooth talker just now, waving the banner of "for the good of the detainees," standing on the moral high ground and spouting nonsense, as if Ye Tang's management of Prison Zero was a scourge on the empire's heroes? Now it's her turn to be on the high ground.

Ye Tang took a deep breath, then turned around and walked briskly into the corridor. Everyone thought she would say a few sarcastic remarks to She Qing and then gracefully end the conversation—after all, her combativeness in arguing with others had been evident to all.

However, Ye Tang stopped in front of Jing Yao's observation area. She looked up through the crystal glass wall at the white tiger that was perched high up, overlooking the whole situation. Her eyes no longer held the fierceness that had just been arguing with people. Instead, they held a kind of cautiousness that made people's hearts tighten.

"Marshal," her voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly through the suddenly quiet corridor, "Abandoning a female cub...can it really be punished this severely?"

Jing Yao slightly raised his tiger head on the stone platform. His amber tiger eyes calmly gazed at her, showing no surprise, no doubt, only understanding. He roughly guessed what Ye Tang wanted to do, but he didn't intend to expose her.

Not only did he not expose her, he even set a stage for her. His voice was deep and steady, with the unquestionable authority of a marshal reading a battle report at a military conference; every word was like a stone driven into the ground.

"Yes. Article 12 of Chapter 7 of the Imperial Law states that abandoning or abusing underage females is punishable by up to life imprisonment."

Have it.

Ye Tang silently gave Jing Yao a thumbs up. As expected of a marshal, their teamwork was even more seamless than in rehearsals. She lowered her head, her shoulders twitching slightly, then turned away and quickly wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

Everyone assumed she was wiping away tears, but only she knew that she was quickly wiping the corner of her eye with half an onion she had taken out of her spatial storage. The pungent smell of the evaporating onion juice filled her nostrils, and her tears instantly flowed like a dam bursting.

"Waaaaah..."

Ye Tang cried so hard her shoulders trembled, her eyes and nose were red, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She was completely different from her usual sharp-tongued and argumentative self.

Seeing her like this, Chi Heng hurriedly pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his robe. Before he could even hand it over, his own eyes welled up with tears. Ling Shou leaned against the wall, lowering his arms that had been crossed. A hint of helplessness flashed in his hawk-like eyes. Even Lu Yu stopped typing, a rare hesitation appearing in his eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses—this military colonel, who was used to seeing big scenes, was just as inexperienced when faced with a woman's tears.

"They also abused me," Ye Tang's voice trembled with sobs, broken and intermittent, sniffling with each word, "They didn't give me food, so I was so hungry in the backyard that I ate tree bark... In winter, without heating stones, I was covered in frostbite..."

These are the original owner's memories, truly etched into this body. When she speaks them, she doesn't even need to act; she only needs to dredge those images from the depths of her mind to bring tears to her eyes. "They wouldn't let me go to school, and I even had to learn the alphabet by peeking through the crack in the door..."

She Qing's face went from ashen to deathly pale. If the Imperial Supreme Court found out that the Ye family not only abandoned and abused underage females, it wouldn't be a matter of a few years' sentence; the entire Ye family would be thoroughly investigated and punished.

"They even threw stones at me!" Ye Tang cried even louder, her tears dripping onto the ground. The tear-inducing effect of the onions, combined with her genuine anger, far exceeded her expectations. She could even feel the tip of her nose tingling and numbing.

"They hit me with the bones of a ferocious beast! I... I've grown up like this, and I don't even have a name on the family tree... Waaah..." The more she spoke, the angrier she became, and the more tears she shed—for the original owner who had silently breathed her last in the backyard, for those eighteen years of darkness. There was an element of acting in her lament, but more than that, it was a belated cry of injustice on behalf of the original owner.

"If it weren't for... if it weren't for my good fortune, and Colonel Deer's willingness to hire me, sob sob sob... I'd probably have starved to death in the forest long ago, becoming a grinding toy for ferocious beasts... no one would even have collected my bones..."

The corridor was so quiet that only her sobs and the chattering of She Qing's teeth could be heard. Jing Yao stood up from the stone platform, his massive white tiger body walking to the observation wall. His amber tiger eyes no longer held only calm cooperation, but rather the true majesty and coldness of a marshal that had been awakened.

He knew Ye Tang was acting; a female who dared to touch his head with her bare hands and could scoop up the vast ocean with a net couldn't possibly be so fragile. But her tears were real; the onion was just a catalyst. In that tear brought forth by the onion, soaked the real past.

"Well done, Ye Jia." Jing Yao's voice was as cold as the icy plains of the North. His amber pupils narrowed to slits, and the pressure of his peak S-rank mental power silently pierced through the walls, making the temperature in the corridor seem to drop a few degrees.

"No, Marshal—" She Qing struggled to stand up and explain.

Chi Heng was faster than him.

"My little warden—!" Chi Heng's eyes were already brimming with tears, which burst forth the moment Ye Tang burst into sobs. He rushed forward, opened his arms, and pulled Ye Tang into a tight embrace.

His wings folded, completely enveloping the petite female, leaving only a few stray strands of hair sticking up on her head. He cried louder than Ye Tang, his voice booming, tears streaming down his face like broken beads, all dripping onto Ye Tang's head.

"You've suffered so much—it must have hurt a lot—does it hurt—tell me if it hurts, waaaah—" Chi Heng wailed as he wrapped Ye Tang even tighter in his arms. The downy feathers at the base of his wings popped out automatically and piled thickly on her back like a warm down comforter.

He completely forgot that he was in the corridor, forgot that there were a bunch of people watching, and forgot that he was the young patriarch of the Vermilion Bird Clan. He cried like a child whose candy had been taken away, his face covered in tears and snot, which all smeared onto Ye Tang's hair.

Ye Tang buried her face in the soft fur on Chi Heng's chest that hadn't yet receded, tears still flowing from the onion, but she was desperately trying to press the corners of her mouth down.

This dead bird, how could she continue acting? She was almost bursting into laughter. But the play had already gone this far, with She Qing still lounging across from her and Jing Yao still holding down the fort behind the glass wall, she couldn't afford to ruin it all.

So she went along with it and nestled into Chi Heng's arms, her shoulders still trembling. Her voice, muffled by Chi Heng's robe, was thick with a nasal tone: "Yes... my life is so miserable... if I hadn't met you all, I don't know if I would still be alive now..."

Hearing her say that, Chi Heng cried even harder, wrapping her up so tightly she could barely breathe. Ling Shou stood beside the glass wall, his hawk-like eyes churning with a mix of emotions. His mouth opened and closed, as if he wanted to say something but didn't know what to say.