Beauty and the Beasts

Thousands of beastmen swarmed towards the ape king’s castle, causing it to be tightly packed outside.

This was the first the ape king received such enthusiastic treatment in his ten years of ruling, and yet, it wasn’t done out of support for him. This caused him to have an extremely dark look on his face.

“Don’t panic, everyone, and don’t make any wild guesses. Although the water level in the river has significantly subsided, this is just a natural occurrence. Doesn’t this happen every year?” the ape king said amiably. His voice significantly calmed down the crowd of beastmen.

“But the tiger king said that the river will dry up if it doesn’t rain. Please use your magical powers to check!”

So many beastmen responded to this call that the ape king couldn’t turn them down.

The ape king clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

The noisy beastmen crowd immediately became silent. After three to five minutes, the ape king faintly opened his mouth, and his soft voice traveled far.

“I see the bed of the river… a thin stream of water flowing… drinking blood!”

The ape king opened his eyes as if he had woken up with a start, and his expression became darker. Of course, this could have been due to using too much of his mental power.

The beastmen’s hearts went up and down as the ape king spoke and were eventually in suspense.

“What drinking blood? We stopped drinking raw blood hundreds of years ago.”

“So the drought is real? But there’s still a bit of water in the river, right?”

“What happens after? Does the heavy rainy season come after that?”

The ape king staggered two steps and didn’t say a word. He held onto the wolf king and panted heavily.

Bai Qingqing, Curtis, and the others stood at the edge of the crowd. Bai Qingqing looked at the ape king with suspicion and asked, “Really? He can see the future?”

If even the ape king thought that there would be a drought, he definitely would’ve informed everyone in the beginning. Suddenly saying it now made it seem like he had communicated with the gods.

Winston and Parker stared at the ape king intently. Parker replied to Bai Qingqing distractedly, “You only just arrived here, so you don’t know. The ape king’s very capable. Everything he’s said has come true in the end.”

“Really?” Bai Qingqing thought, So this is his mental power? 

Bai Qingqing still wasn’t convinced. The ape king’s words weren’t unusual. If he could read the weather just like Curtis, even if he was weaker than him, he would have figured out after the prediction about the drought was spread.

As for drinking blood… if there was an excessive shortage of water, it would be very normal to get it from blood, then. Moreover, they were beastmen that could transform into wild beasts.

The ape king’s words were logical and could be followed. The only thing Bai Qingqing couldn’t explain was that the ape king was convinced that there wouldn’t be any rain in the near future. That was something that Curtis wasn’t certain about.

…

The weather took a turn for the worse. The ground got drier and the river became a stream. After briefly sticking to the ape king’s prediction, the river quickly dried up. Even the clear lake was showing signs of drying up.

What was more despairing was that the animals in the mountains were migrating.

There were more than ten thousand beastmen in the City of Beastmen and the surrounding villages, and all of them depended on the animals in this mountain forest to survive. If the animals migrated, they would have no choice but to also become vagrants.

There was a limited amount of stored water at home, and no one knew when the drought would end. Curtis dug a deep hole in the yard and threw the little snakes inside as the coolness would reduce their need for water.

The air in the sky had become drier. Bai Qingqing felt more comfortable after moving the bedroom to the first floor.

“I haven’t showered in days. I’m going to rot,” Bai Qingqing said as she scratched her body. When she pulled her hand away, the areas under her fingernails were filled with dirt. She flicked the dirt off with absolute disdain.

“Parker will have water to bathe with when he returns home,” Curtis said as he comforted her.

“Mm.”

After a while, Parker returned while carrying a stone basin. Bai Qingqing walked up to him in anticipation. Oh my god. The basin’s full of mud.