Su Cha glanced at Cang Yuan.
Seeing that he remained silent, she knew he didn’t mind and simply agreed.
“It’s not impossible, but eating here is very expensive.
It costs twenty shell crystals per meal,” she said.
Hearing this, Mu Beichen almost jumped out of his skin.
“Even robbers aren’t this ruthless!
Do you have any idea how much meat twenty shell crystals can buy?”
Su Cha simply threw him a single sentence—”Eat it or don’t, and if you don’t, fix the wall and get the hell out”—before continuing to cook.
In the end, unable to resist the mouthwatering aroma wafting through the air, Mu Beichen reluctantly pulled out twenty shell crystals and placed them on the table.
He wanted to see what kind of delicious food this little female was making that justified such an outrageous price.
Mu Beichen found a place to sit directly opposite Cang Yuan, staring unblinkingly as the other man sharpened his bone knife.
After attempting to strike up a conversation and not even receiving a single glance in return, Mu Beichen completely gave up on interacting.
He turned around to watch Su Cha cook instead.
He muttered to himself, wondering how any female could possibly like such a boring male.
As soon as the words left his lips, a sudden chill ran down his spine.
He turned around but found nothing out of the ordinary.
The inside story of the original host’s bonding with Cang Yuan was only known to the parties involved and the Clan Leader.
Because of this, many Beastmen in the tribe had ridiculed the original host.
Su Cha quickly finished cooking the meal, which consisted of three meat dishes, two vegetable dishes, and a soup.
She served pan-fried steak, braised pork, stir-fried sliced meat with wood ear mushrooms, sautéed leafy greens, hot and sour shredded potatoes, and pork rib and radish soup.
Considering that males loved meat and had large appetites, Su Cha had intentionally fried a few extra steaks and prepared a variety of flavors.
Mu Beichen had never seen a lunch with such perfect color, aroma, and taste.
He immediately began praising it while digging in.
“Su Cha, the food you make looks incredibly delicious.
Do you guys always eat this extravagantly?”
Su Cha rolled her eyes at him and silently shoveled rice into her mouth.
As Su Cha had expected, the three of them polished off everything, not leaving a single drop of soup behind.
Mu Beichen patted his stomach in satisfaction.
“Su Cha, your cooking is just too good.
This is the most delicious food I’ve eaten in years.
I really want to take you back to my tribe just to cook for me.”
Su Cha gathered the empty bowls.
“You wouldn’t be able to afford the fees.”
Mu Beichen was left speechless.
He thought she was entirely too ruthless!
Seeing Su Cha’s busy figure, then looking at the leisurely Cang Yuan beside her, Mu Beichen began to feel an imbalance in his heart.
He wondered what kind of dumb luck this bastard had stumbled into to meet such a foolish female.
Every female he had ever seen was pampered by males.
It was extremely rare for a female to cook for a male, and the most important point was that she cooked so well.
“Females are born delicate.
How can you just sit around resting while letting Su Cha do everything?” Mu Beichen said, visibly displeased.
“These are things that males are supposed to do.”
“Shut up and hurry up with fixing the wall.
If you spent the time you use to meddle in other people’s business on Yunxi instead, you wouldn’t be in your current situation.”
Before Cang Yuan could respond, an impatient voice rang out from the kitchen.
“That’s only because of you…” Mu Beichen said aggrievedly.
Left with no other choice, he grumbled and cursed as he went off to figure out how to fix the broken wall.
Cang Yuan glanced at Mu Beichen’s retreating figure, then looked toward the kitchen.
Lowering his eyes, he resumed sharpening the bone knife in his hand.
“Cang Yuan, where did you get that scale?
Can you…”
“No,” Cang Yuan interrupted directly, his rejection crisp and decisive.
Seeing Su Cha deflated, Mu Beichen secretly chuckled to himself from the sidelines.
The villain was still as cold as ever toward her.
Su Cha was an easygoing person and didn’t feel pressured in the slightest.
She simply turned her head and fiercely glared at the fawning snake.
Mu Beichen easily spent thirty beast coins to hire three Beastmen from the tribe to help fix the wall.
After that, he would occasionally come over to freeload meals.
Su Cha didn’t refuse anyone, as long as they paid up.
However, she noticed that the hostility between Mu Beichen and Cang Yuan was growing increasingly heavy.
According to the original book’s timeline, Mu Beichen would soon become the female lead’s second male.
In the story, the two of them were enemies from the moment they appeared.
Her presence had directly caused them to meet earlier than scheduled.
Even without the female lead acting as a catalyst, their mutual animosity hadn’t diminished in the slightest.
Of course, she thought that another major reason for this was simply that Mu Beichen had an incredibly cheap mouth.
That night, the first spring rain since the cold season suddenly began to fall.
It came down in a PITTER-PATTER, accompanied by the faint rumbling of thunder.
Su Cha remembered the villain’s leg injury.
In the original book, rainy days were always exceptionally unbearable for him.
Lighting a stalk of candle core grass, Su Cha draped an animal skin cloak over her shoulders and headed toward the villain’s room.
Most Beastmen possessed night vision, and the original host had originally had it too.
Unfortunately, ever since her soul entered this body, many things had been changing.
For example, Beastmen could easily detect the scent of a male on a bonded female, but she couldn’t smell a thing.
Her physique was becoming increasingly human.
Pheromones—something only Beastmen could pick up on—were a biological feature she completely lacked since taking over the body.
Su Cha was just hesitating over whether to knock when she heard a muffled THUD from inside, followed by a suppressed groan.
Casting her doubts aside, Su Cha pulled out her bone knife and directly picked the lock.
The moment she pushed open the door, entering her sight was a pair of Cui-green eyes tinged with red.
His tightly pursed lips were bleeding, and his deeply furrowed brows revealed his suppressed agony.
Su Cha sharply caught the flash of murderous intent in those jade-green eyes.
Her footsteps halted at the doorway, unsure whether to advance or retreat.
Now that the plot had collapsed, it wasn’t entirely impossible for the villain to make a move against her ahead of schedule.
“Get out!” The low, hoarse voice was thick with hostility, sounding like a wild beast prowling in the dark night.
The villain was the villain, naturally exuding an intimidating aura.
However, uttering that single word seemed to have drained all of Cang Yuan’s strength.
The pain was tearing his consciousness apart, leaving him no spare energy to pay attention to his surroundings.
Su Cha hesitated for a moment but still walked over to the bed.
Seeing that Cang Yuan was enduring the pain to the absolute limit, yet still biting his lip so hard it bled rather than letting out a single sound, she couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for him.
The author had merely skimmed over the villain’s tragic past with a single stroke of the pen.
But now that all of this was a tangible reality, she realized just how much agonizing torture the villain had to endure.
Su Cha pinched Cang Yuan’s jaw open and forcefully stuffed a painkiller inside.
She lifted his head and gently massaged his neck, only letting go when his Adam’s apple bobbed slightly, swallowing the pill.
She reached out and took his pulse.
His leg injury was infected, and the poison in his body was also acting up.
Everything inside him was a chaotic mess.
Su Cha didn’t know who had poisoned him.
It hadn’t been mentioned in the original book, which only stated that the residual poison in the villain’s body had flared up during his most crucial battle, leading to his death.
Su Cha had seen a similar poison in the modern world called Soul-devouring.
It was an extremely tormenting toxin.
Starting from the day it was ingested, it would flare up once a month, causing pain so severe that the victim would wish for death.
This poison wasn’t instantly fatal, but it would ravage the body, gradually wearing the victim down through sheer agony until they became frail, or even died directly from the shock of the pain.
She had no idea why such a poison would exist in the Beastman world, and she marveled at how the villain had managed to survive the past twenty-odd years.
The painkiller could only numb the sensation of pain.
Cang Yuan’s body gradually calmed down, but noticeable tremors could still be seen.
Su Cha took a few more herbs from her spatial storage, mixed them with the medicine she had prepared earlier, and spent half an hour quickly brewing a concoction.
“My medicine isn’t cheap.
If it weren’t for the fact that we’re in the same boat, I would’ve just left you to fend for yourself,” Su Cha grumbled under her breath as she carried the bowl into his room.
Cang Yuan’s consciousness was already recovering.
Due to his subconscious resistance, feeding him the medicine proved exceptionally difficult, and his lips ended up bleeding from being knocked against the rim of the bowl.
Seeing that Cang Yuan’s condition had improved, Su Cha breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to return to her room.
It was only then that she realized Cang Yuan had grabbed her wrist in resistance while she was forcing the medicine down his throat.
His well-defined knuckles were glowing with a faint blue light.
Su Cha knew that this was the manifestation of combat power in the Beastman world.
Turning Cang Yuan’s arm over, she indeed saw six silver-white beast marks on the inner side of his forearm.
It turned out that the villain was already this strong at this point in time; he just couldn’t use his combat power due to his physical condition.
Su Cha tried to pull away, but the more she struggled, the tighter his grip on her wrist became.
The blue light also deepened, as if a moment of carelessness would result in him snapping her wrist right in two.