Warden of the Beast World: Everyone is a Hakimi

Chi Xiong looked at his grandson's stubborn expression and remained silent for a while before slowly saying, "If you want to get married, I wholeheartedly support it."

Of course he knew who Chiheng wanted to marry—Ye Tang, the double-F-class female who brought her grandson back from the brink of collapse to normal within a month.

After receiving the ten million yuan reward from Lu Yu, he sent people to investigate further, becoming increasingly satisfied with the investigation. A female capable of controlling Chi Heng was rarer than any ancient divine beast bloodline. He placed his hands on the table, his tone unusually serious, "However, shouldn't you inform your mother about this?"

"No!" Chi Heng's reaction was even more intense than when his secrets were exposed; he almost jumped up from his desk. "Mother will definitely not agree!"

The mere thought of his mother's perpetually dignified face made him feel uncomfortable from head to toe. His mother, Bai Jianjia, was a direct descendant of the Peacock Clan and a female with A-level mental strength. Within the empire's aristocratic circles, she was always the most elegant, the most poised, and the most approachable—at least outwardly.

After marrying her father, Chi Yan, she used her aesthetic sense and strict standards of etiquette to transform the originally rugged and unrestrained image of the Vermilion Bird Clan into one of exquisite beauty. At aristocratic banquets, everyone praised her for her refined taste.

But behind closed doors, her obsession with bloodline bordered on pathological. She herself was a member of the Peacock Clan, lacking the bloodline of an ancient divine beast, which was the thing she hated most in her life.

She couldn't accept that she was "just" a peacock, so every beast husband she had had to possess the bloodline of a divine beast. Chi Heng's father—Chi Xiong's only son—was the one with the purest bloodline among her many beast husbands, a direct descendant of the Vermilion Bird, with an impeccable purity of ancient divine beast blood.

Therefore, among all his brothers, Chi Heng had the purest bloodline, the highest talent, and the strongest combat power, naturally becoming his mother's pride. But that was the pride of the "Young Clan Chief of the Vermilion Bird Clan," the pride of having the "best bloodline talent," the pride of being envied by other females at noble banquets for "your son is so outstanding," and had nothing to do with Chi Heng himself.

Chi Heng had never told anyone about his memories from when he was five years old, not even his grandfather. That year, his mother took him to a noble banquet, where all the attendees were females and cubs from various divine beast bloodline families.

His mother dressed him up beautifully, making him look like a little adult from head to toe. At the banquet, a child of similar age—whom he couldn't remember which family he belonged to—deliberately pushed him while playing, shouting, "Your mother is a peacock, and you're a mongrel."

He immediately pounced on the other person and fought him, winning and pinning him to the ground, punching him several times. The little boy ran crying to an elder for support, but the elder came over and pointed at him, scolding him for being "ill-mannered."

Enraged, he set the cub's clothes on fire. Then he heard someone in the crowd say, "So what if they're from the Vermilion Bird Clan? They're just as crude." Those words shattered the smile on the mother's face.

She didn't react immediately, but gave him an extremely cold, stranger-like look before politely saying goodbye to the host family and taking him to the hovercar to go home. The moment the car door closed, her slap landed on his face.

When he got home, he saw for the first time the madness beneath his mother's dignified face. She ripped off his clothes, pinned him to the ground, and beat him many times. She screamed as she hit him, and he couldn't quite remember what she said, only that she said, "You've made me lose all face."

He didn't cry, nor did he explain. But amidst the burning pain in his back, he suddenly understood something: his mother didn't love him.

What his mother loved was a perfect statue of the "Young Chieftain of the Vermilion Bird Clan," a figure that would make other noblewomen envious. But his true self—Chi Heng—was fiery, prone to fighting, burning people's clothes, and often called vulgar—something his mother wished she could tear off.

From then on, he stopped pretending in front of his mother. If she liked elegance, he became rude; if she liked obedience, he became a troublemaker. He fought, burned down houses, and caused trouble, each time provoking his mother's hysterical rage, but he didn't care.

He even enjoyed the look of her mask shattering each time she flew into a rage—at least in that moment, she was real. Finally, his mother couldn't take it anymore. She dumped this unruly troublemaker on his grandfather, saying, "Let him learn some manners from you." But Chiheng knew she just didn't want to see him anymore.

Chi Xiong fell silent. When his son married Bai Jianjia, he had advised him to reconsider, but his son was so captivated by Bai Jianjia's elegance and beauty that he wouldn't listen to anything he was told.

Over the years, he watched Chi Heng grow from a lively and energetic little chick into a notorious troublemaker throughout the empire, and watched Bai Jianjia use Chi Heng as a tool to show off, flaunting his talent outside while complaining about his personality at home.

He knew everything, but as a grandfather, all he could do was clean up the mess after the boy got into trouble, quietly pull strings when he was imprisoned, and send him to Zero Prison when he was on the verge of collapse—that was the last thing he could do for his grandson as the Minister of Security.

The gift, however, produced a miracle. Looking at his grandson, who was now taller than him and whose face showed embarrassment at having his past exposed and resistance when his mother was mentioned, yet who was leaning on the desk with unprecedented seriousness and said, "I want to get married," he felt both bittersweet and gratified.

"Xiao Heng, if your mother finds out, she'll cause trouble for Yetang..." Chi Xiong said slowly. He had witnessed Bai Jianjia's methods firsthand—he dared not imagine what would happen to that woman's elegant mask if she knew that the female Chi Heng was going to marry was a double-F-class orphan with no bloodline, no family background, and not even out of infancy. Bai Jianjia couldn't touch Chi Heng, but she had plenty of ways to make things difficult for Yetang.

Chi Heng's pupils contracted sharply. He had been so focused on competing with You Lie that he had completely forgotten about this. What would his mother do if she knew he was going to marry Ye Tang?

He would mock Ye Tang's status and humiliate her in the most vicious ways within aristocratic circles. His hands slowly clenched into fists, his knuckles cracking, and what burned in his crimson-gold eyes was not anger, but a light more intense and sharper than anger.

"If she dares to cause trouble for the warden, I'll burn all the feathers off the Peacock Clan and turn their entire clan into bald pheasants!" Every word Chi Heng spoke seemed to have been tempered by real fire; it wasn't just angry talk, but a promise. He couldn't protect himself when he was five years old, and now he was thirty-five, an S+ level combatant, one of the youngest clan leaders in the empire. If he couldn't even protect the female he loved, he wouldn't be Chi Heng.

Chi Xiong looked at the fire in his grandson's eyes, remained silent for a moment, then a slight smile appeared on his lips, the first smile of the evening. This kid is serious.

He opened the drawer, took out the seal of the Vermilion Bird Clan chief and a list of assets, and slammed them on the table. The crimson cover was branded with the Vermilion Bird family crest, and inside was a densely packed list of assets, each page stamped with the Empire's certified sealing wax.

"Three mansions in the east of the capital, two estates in the west, mining rights to three spirit mines in the Flame Ridge Mountains, all shares in six auction houses under the Vermilion Bird Clan, lifetime beneficiary rights to the Ministry of Security's special allowance account—and these,"

Chi Xiong then pulled out a stack of gold-embossed documents from the drawer, each bearing the energy seal of the Imperial Ministry of Finance. "These are annuity bonds from the Imperial Central Bank. They pay out no less than 80 million in dividends annually. The principal cannot be withdrawn, but all the returns belong to the holder. These were deposited in your name the year you were born. They were originally intended as a safety net for you, but now they are all yours."