Warden of the Beast World: Everyone is a Hakimi

A night of fierce fighting.

The battle at the mahjong table was fierce. Ling Shou lost utterly, and all the cash he brought ended up in the pockets of Ye Tang and Qi Xuan. Even the few silver buttons on his cuffs were pawned to Ye Tang to pay off his debts.

He sat at the table, staring at his empty chip box, his eagle eyes filled with resentment and doubt about his very existence. Chi Heng had neither won nor lost, managing to preserve his capital and escape unscathed—an extraordinary feat for a firebird whose brain was never used for serious matters. He stretched contentedly, his wings flapping out from under his robe.

Ye Tang and Qi Xuan made a fortune. Qi Xuan used his tail to push all the gold coins one by one in front of Ye Tang, his movements serious and focused, his icy blue vertical pupils shining brightly under the light above the card table: "Here, sister. All for sister."

"Little Qi Xuan, you won this yourself, you keep it." Ye Tang quickly pushed the gold coins back. Although she was greedy, she wasn't so heartless as to plunder a cub's savings.

"Qi Xuan, there's money. Sister, take it." Qi Xuan tilted his head and thought for a moment, then used the tip of his tail to push the gold coins forward a few inches, his eyes clear and open.

"Alright, alright, little Qi Xuan is such a good boy." Ye Tang stopped refusing, put away the pile of gold coins, and smiled so hard that her eyes curved into crescent moons.

Watching this scene unfold, Chi Heng leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. Even a tiny dragon the size of a palm could generate gold coins to make Xiao Tangtang happy. He turned around and pulled out all his wealth to compare with this old man's; who had more gold coins was uncertain. He decided against it; all his wealth was already in Ye Tang's hands.

"Ah, so sleepy, time for bed." Ye Tang stretched and yawned as she stood up from the mahjong table. Too lazy to clean up the mess of mahjong tiles and scattered chips, she went straight to the bedroom.

Qi Xuan was a step ahead of her. With a push of his four little paws, he leaped from the mahjong table to the edge of the water vat and gently jumped into the vat filled with spiritual spring water. He poked half his little head out of the water, a small mint leaf still hanging on his tiny dragon horn, which was the size of a grain of rice. His tail swayed contentedly in the water, and his face was full of the satisfaction of a child who had obtained his beloved toy.

Chi Heng followed behind her, carrying his own quilt as he entered the bedroom with practiced ease. He sat on the floor saddle, his chin resting on the soft cushion beside the bed, watching Ye Tang turn over.

"Little Tangtang, I'm jealous." His long, crimson hair was scattered on the carpet, his wings drooped at his sides, and he exuded an aura of "come and coax me."

"He's just a little kid, he doesn't understand anything, why are you jealous?" Ye Tang turned to face him.

"He's a male beast, a male beast! A male beast over five hundred years old!" Chi Heng almost jumped up from his bed. The old cucumber was painted green with unparalleled skill, and he even said "Sister, take it," and "Give it all to sister." All eight hundred of his schemes were hidden in his palm-sized cub form. The SS-level combatants he knew were all more cunning than the last.

Ye Tang couldn't help but laugh. She gently kissed Chi Heng's forehead, and when her lips touched that warm, smooth skin, Chi Heng froze as if a pause button had been pressed. His wings froze in mid-air, and his eyes widened. He touched the spot where he had been kissed, feeling that small patch of skin burning hot.

Last time, Ye Tang kissed his cheek as an SS-level breakthrough reward; this time, the kiss on his forehead was a reward for appeasing his jealousy. Every kiss had a legitimate reason. "That's more like it." Chi Heng rolled over on the floor, clutching his blanket, his tail wagging happily inside the blanket.

"Be good, stop making a fuss, go to sleep." Ye Tang ruffled his hair.

"Hmm." Chi Heng closed his eyes, mentally calculating what reason he should give Ye Tang to kiss his lips next, since he had already collected cheek and forehead kisses. He would study this topic tomorrow; he would go to sleep first.

Lu Yu couldn't sleep all night. The sound of mahjong tiles swirled in his mind all night, accompanied by the image of Qi Xuan stacking tiles with his tail and the crisp "I won!" He tossed and turned in bed, flipping his pillow several times, but still couldn't fall asleep. So he simply gave up and put on his military uniform at daybreak, driving straight to the Imperial Research Institute.

An Ning opened her office door early in the morning and saw her most outstanding student standing there. Lu Yu's white shirt was still impeccably tailored, and his gold-rimmed glasses were neatly perched on his nose, but the dark circles under his eyes betrayed the fact that he hadn't slept all night. His usually refined and composed face carried the urgency of someone who had just run out of the battlefield and urgently needed to report important military information to his superiors.

"What's wrong, Lu Yu?" An Ning stepped aside to let him in, then walked to the coffee machine and pressed the button. She had stayed in the lab until the early hours of the morning again last night, and now she needed a cup of strong coffee to wake up her brain.

"Teacher, Qi Xuan has recovered."

Anning nearly dropped her coffee cup. She whirled around, her amber eyes wide, her voice echoing through the office door and down the hallway.

Qi Xuan's mental collapse was not ordinary; his mental core was directly corrupted by the Fallen Beast. An ordinary collapse is like a nerve string snapping, but the Fallen Beast's corruption is like the entire instrument rotting away.

The Imperial Sanatorium tried for three years, and she personally led a team of S-level therapists to conduct dozens of joint interventions. The best result was only to temporarily suppress his berserk state and allow him to regain his senses for a few more moments in his berserk state before he was sent to Prison Zero. However, after only two or three days, her student came to tell her that Qi Xuan had recovered.

"Teacher, please listen to me." Lu Yu pressed her down into a chair and recounted everything that had happened last night. She explained how Ye Tang had soothed Qi Xuan in his berserk state by singing nursery rhymes, how she had fed him a bottle of beast milk to turn him into a cub, and how he had gone to deal with military documents without checking the surveillance footage.

When he patrolled late at night, he found that Observation Zone No. 5 was empty. He rushed to the living area and saw that Ye Tang, Chi Heng, Ling Shou and Qi Xuan were playing mahjong around an automatic mahjong machine. Qi Xuan used his tail to stack the tiles. When he won a round, he pushed the tiles over and shouted "I won!"

An Ning found it increasingly fantastical. An SS-level combatant, sentenced to death by the Imperial Research Institute, was cured by a little female through singing nursery rhymes and breastfeeding? And instead of resting after being cured, she was playing mahjong in the middle of the night?

"I'll go myself." An Ning suppressed her excitement, grabbed her lab coat, and headed out.

When Anning arrived at Prison Zero, Lu Yu pushed open the gate to the living quarters, and Anning immediately saw the legendary dragon.

Qi Xuan was lying on the edge of the water vat, half of his body submerged in the spiritual spring water, the tip of his tail swaying contentedly on the surface of the water, and blowing a small transparent bubble, fast asleep.

An Ning wasn't sure if she was seeing things, so she took off her glasses, wiped the lenses with her sleeve, and put them back on. She stared at the palm-sized dragon for a long time. It was definitely Qi Xuan; she was all too familiar with those frost-white and ice-blue gradient scales.

She had performed mental manipulation on him dozens of times, and each time she would see his scales covered in blood and sweat, frantically ramming against the restraints in his berserk state. But now he lay quietly on the edge of the water tank, his small horns crystal clear, his scales shimmering in the sunlight.

"Where's Warden Ye?"

"She's probably still sleeping." Lu Yu glanced at his watch. He hadn't slept last night, went to see his teacher early this morning, and was back in the morning. Ye Tang had played mahjong all night and was most likely catching up on sleep. He tentatively asked, "Teacher, should I go wake her?"

"No, don't disturb Warden Ye's sleep." An Ning made a shushing gesture. She now looked at Ye Tang more like a granddaughter. She could restore the combat power of several people sentenced to death within a month. Not to mention sleeping until noon, she would wholeheartedly support turning Zero Prison into a resort.

An Ning stopped talking and squatted down to examine the patch of catnip that Ye Tang had planted in the yard. The emerald green leaves gleamed with a healthy, oily sheen in the morning light, and subtle energy seemed to be slowly coursing through the veins.

She recalled the hundred catnip plants that the research institute had purchased from Ye Tang. In their most sophisticated laboratory, they used the best nutrient soil, the most precise temperature control, and the most standard light cycle, and even tried different proportions of spring water. As a result, only 30% survived.

The wild crabapple trees planted in the yard, with ordinary soil and natural sunlight, without even a shade, grew more luxuriantly than any of the experimental plants in the research institute.