The mocking tone still rang in Jiang Mian’s ears.
Jiang Mian’s fists clenched.
In an era where humans kept Beastmen, wasn’t every Beastman supposed to be completely subservient to their master?
Even if their deference wasn’t sincere, the chips in their brain areas forced them to feign compliance just to survive.
Yet these five Beastmen the original owner kept seemed to be competing over who was more fearless of death, who was more rebellious.
They all seemed to wish they could drag the original owner to die with them.
Now, the original owner was gone, and she had inherited this mess.
That meant all the despicable things the original owner had done would now be blamed on her.
A chill ran through Jiang Mian, and her feet seemed to grow even colder.
She silently looked down.
‘How could her feet not be cold?
She’d just scrambled off that Butterfly Beastman’s bed without even grabbing her shoes before running for it.
Then, right after she’d finally sorted out her thoughts, that Wolf Beastman had shown up at her door to confront her.
She’d completely forgotten about her shoes!’
Jiang Mian quickly shut the door.
She put on a spare pair of shoes and, drawing on the original owner’s memories, found the bathroom and hurried in for a hot shower.
In the bathroom, Jiang Mian saw the face of this body.
It wasn’t the mangled face from her gruesome death she had seen on the Star Network, but one that was pure and enchanting.
It had dark, starry eyes, waist-length hair, and a single beauty mark at the corner of one eye that made her look both exquisite and innocent.
Through the original owner’s memories, Jiang Mian knew that she hadn’t always looked this way back on the Remote Star.
Back on the Remote Star, the original owner’s skin had been dry, her hair full of split ends, and she had been malnourished.
She had a naturally gaunt and severe appearance.
It was only after she was brought back to the Imperial Capital Star that she was pumped full of injections and had a little work done to end up looking like this.
She scrubbed at her face.
‘How could someone so beautiful be so rotten on the inside?’
When she came out of the bathroom, she saw the cosmos through the glass window.
Meteorites and stars dotted a black canvas, interspersed with auroras, all beautiful and magnificent.
The scenery on the way to exile was beautiful, but the destination was anything but.
X1 Planet, the world she was being exiled to, was not only more remote than the Remote Star where the original owner had grown up, but it was also 90% polluted.
For a pure human with only F-level Healing Power, being exiled there was tantamount to a death sentence.
And then there were the five Beastmen in their manic phases who wanted to kill her at any moment.
Jiang Mian thought about the five Beastmen the original owner had kept.
‘How could their names be exactly the same as the five future great Beast Masters?’
The very Beast Masters who would one day turn villainous, slaughter humans, and establish the five great Beast Cities.
Jiang Mian: “…”
‘This was a horror story.’
A thought flashed through her mind.
Her future Snake Beast Master…
she seemed to have locked him in a small, dark storage room for three days without food.
Jiang Mian scrambled to put on her shoes, grabbed a key and a few bottles of nutrient solution, then yanked open the door and left the room.
Soon, she was running to the storage room door.
She quickly used the key to unlock the padlock and shoved the door open.
The storage room was pitch-black.
Light from the corridor spilled inside, illuminating a cloud of dancing dust motes.
“Lin…” ‘Lord.’
“Lin… Lin Yu.” Jiang Mian had nearly called him Lord Lin out of habit.
She had forgotten that the Lin Yu before her was not yet the great Beast Master of the future.
Jiang Mian had been kept by him for ten years, and had also served as his Beastman Doctor for several of those years.
Aside from being unable to leave the villa, Lin Yu had actually been very good to her.
In the era Jiang Mian came from, pure human females were on the brink of extinction.
It wasn’t surprising that the Snake Beast Master had kept and protected her.
After spending ten years with him, Jiang Mian knew perfectly well that the older Lin Yu suffered from incurable manic phases, stomach ailments, headaches, and had difficulty controlling his emotions…
Jiang Mian never knew what he had experienced in his youth.
After all, back when he was young, her parents hadn’t even been born yet, let alone her.
After all, a Beastman’s lifespan was ten times that of a pure human.
Jiang Mian quickly fumbled for the light switch by the door, only to find that it was broken.
She had no choice but to head toward the darkest corner, knowing he would seek out such a place to let the darkness consume him.
“Lin Yu, Lin Yu…” Jiang Mian said as she slowly approached.
She couldn’t see clearly, but she was sure he was in that dark shape huddled in the corner.
But Jiang Mian didn’t dare get too close.
‘Just because I was on good terms with the future Lin Yu doesn’t mean the original owner was.
Besides, this is the young Snake Beast Master.
He doesn’t even know me!’
‘She was close to the several-hundred-year-old Snake Beast Master, but she was a complete stranger to the twenty-something-year-old version.’
‘I wonder if the young Snake Beast Master is easy to get along with?’
‘Though, given her current identity, probably not.
Right now, he’s just one of the Beastmen who wants to kill her.’
As her eyes gradually adjusted to the dark, she began to make out the man’s silhouette in the corner.
A slender man was slumped in the corner, his head leaning against the wall.
His dark, shoulder-length curly hair obscured half of his pale, gaunt face.
Below a tattered black shirt, a massive black snake tail was coiled.
It was bleeding, staining the dim floor a dark shade.
Many of its scales were missing, scattered across the filthy ground, their faint light barely visible.
Jiang Mian had never seen Lord Lin look so pathetic.
She hesitated for a moment before taking a few steps forward and crouching in front of him.
She subconsciously reached out to take his hand and check his pulse, but before she could touch him, her wrist was seized in a tight grip.
A jolt of pain shot through her wrist.
Jiang Mian wondered if her right hand had broken some divine law today; this was the second time it had been painfully grabbed.
Lin Yu turned his head to stare at her.
His dark, curly hair fell over one eye, while the other, a deep crimson, glinted in the dark with the scarlet light of a cold-blooded predator.
His pale, thin lips moved, spitting out a single word: “Out.”
Jiang Mian froze, caught by the coldness in his eyes.
She knew that in her current role, he would never let her near him.
Lin Yu had already thrown her hand off.
“I’ll leave in a moment.” Jiang Mian had no choice but to place the nutrient solutions on his hand, which rested limply on the floor.
She spoke slowly, “Your confinement is over.
Here are some nutrient solutions.
You should…” ‘…drink them quickly and get out of here,’ she meant to say.
Her professional instincts must have been kicking in again, because she couldn’t stop herself from nagging.
A loud SMASH echoed.
Shards of glass from the nutrient solution, along with a strawberry-colored liquid, scraped across Jiang Mian’s forehead, bringing a faint sting.
Her nagging words died in her throat.
Lin Yu had crushed the nutrient solution she gave him.
The glass shards not only cut his hand, but also scraped across her forehead.
Jiang Mian was stunned.
Lord Lin had never treated her this way.
She looked at him, yet it felt as if she were looking through him, at someone else.
Lin Yu merely lowered his long, raven-feather lashes, his expression sullen and filled with disgust.