Beauty and the Beasts

“Where’s Curtis? He must be furious.”

Bai Qingqing had a huge headache. She wondered if the females of this world were taught how to control their mates at a young age. Every one of them had so many males, and yet they all seemed fine. She, on the other hand, couldn’t even act as a mediator for two males.

Parker comforted her, saying, “Don’t think too much. Curtis said he’s heading out for a few days. He even told me to focus on hunting and get Winston to protect you.”

Bai Qingqing was surprised. “Is he going far away?”

The white tiger lying down in the corridor suddenly raised his head. He could be Bai Qingqing’s personal bodyguard for the next three days? The corners of his mouth curved up slightly.

“What did he go out for?” Bai Qingqing placed a hand on Parker’s shoulder and asked him impatiently. She had forgotten about Parker’s injuries, and her hand was on the more badly bruised area that she had massaged.

Parker frowned and endured the pain without moving. “He said he’s going to check on the water source flowing towards the City of Beastmen. He told me to make more stone tools because we might need to store water,” he said.

“Will the river dry up during the hot season?” Bai Qingqing was immediately reminded of the word “drought”—something she regularly saw on “Animal World”. Wilted grass, a dried-up river, thousands of beastmen huddling over a tiny puddle of mud…

Bai Qingqing began to worry deeply.

“It dries occasionally, but the lake in the Camel Hump Valley is very deep. We won’t run out of water,” Parker said.

Bai Qingqing still remembered the clear lake—that was where she and Curtis had met back then. She felt much more relieved since it was such a large body of water.

…

Curtis swam to one of his old nests at the waterfall. The water in the waterfall had thinned out, revealing his cave behind it.

“Ssss~” Curtis flicked out his tongue. The lack of moisture in the air caused his brows to knit together more tightly.

The water level’s already subsided this much? If the waterfall stops flowing, the river in the City of Beastmen will definitely dry up. The light rainy season ended early this year, and we’ve only entered the hot season for a month. There are still two months to go. Will we be able to pull through? 

For a very long period of time, Curtis loved to swim in this lake. However, he didn’t have the slightest bit of interest in doing that today. He climbed up the rocks beside the waterfall, thinking that he would go further upstream to take a look.

Curtis returned home exhausted three days later.

Parker had made many stone tools over the past few days. Most of them were relatively deeper stone buckets. Since there was still enough water in the river, they were used to make grape wine. Every time he went hunting, he paid special attention to grapes, or what was known as bubble fruits in this world. In three days, he had made four buckets of wine, one bucket of which was made from green bubble fruits.

When Curtis returned home, Bai Qingqing was using large bamboo chopsticks to stir the grape mush. She turned around in happiness when she heard a familiar hissing sound.

“You’re back!”

Bai Qingqing was then pulled into a tight hug.

Curtis’s body felt as cold as always. However, his skin felt dry, and she could seemingly feel his rough snake scales.

“I missed you so much,” Curtis said in a hoarse voice from above. Bai Qingqing rubbed her face against his chest and said, “You must be tired. I’ll go with you to the lake to rest for a bit.”

“Okay.”

With Curtis looking after the house, Parker went to the fields to harvest rice. He returned home while carrying golden yellow crops in less than an hour. There was only a large handful of them, and they would only add up to about five and a half pounds of rice after stripping them of the grains.

Curtis and the little snakes soaked in the river in their backyard. When Bai Qingqing heard movements in the house, she ran to the door and shouted, “Parker? Quickly come to the back. We’ll peel the rice together.”

“Coming!”

Parker put down the grains by the river and sat down. He then picked up an ear of wheat and began to peel off the rice grains one by one.