Several months ago, when he was leaving Beast Gathering City, An Jin had mentioned that Sheng’an City had very few Flying Beastmen. He had immediately taken several dozen of his most loyal Eagle Beasts and followed her here.
Looking back at that decision now, it seemed incredibly wise and correct.
Song Yi transformed into his beast form—an enormous, slender, and beautiful Golden Eagle. His body was covered in iridescent feathers that shone like gold, and he landed before her like a small airplane.
An Jin endured the faint, sharp pain in her abdomen and gently gripped the golden feathers on his wing. With a slight tilt of his wing, Song Yi lifted her onto the center of his back.
"SCREE~"
Hold on tight to my feathers. Whatever you do, don’t fall off.
Amazingly, An Jin understood the eagle’s language. She nodded and tightened her grip on the harder, longer feathers on his back, a little worried she might pluck him bald in one spot.
’I’d feel terribly guilty if I made such a beautiful Golden Eagle go bald.’
Her body suddenly felt weightless. By the time she opened her eyes again, she was already thousands of feet in the air.
The Beastmen walking on the ground below gradually shrank, first into black dots, then disappearing from sight entirely.
The once vast and glorious city was now reduced to the size of a thumbnail in her mind’s eye.
But the feeling was completely different. Seeing her city for the first time from this vantage point, looking down upon it from so high above, filled her with an immense sense of control and pride.
Song Yi quickly completed a patrol of the city with her. After a moment’s thought, he asked considerately, "Do you want to go see Beast Gathering City? A round trip would take me a day at most."
"No, let’s head back. I’m a little hungry." ’Most importantly, the system hadn’t issued any relevant directives.’
Song Yi concealed the flicker of disappointment in his heart. ’He had wanted to spend more time with her.’
"But I don’t want to go back inside yet. Fly a little lower and circle near the city. I’d like to see what everyone is up to." Her injury did have one obvious benefit: she could finally take the time to quietly observe the lives of the Beastmen at a grassroots level.
This was the only way to understand their true thoughts and daily inconveniences, which would in turn provide the most effective blueprint for the city’s future construction.
"Alright."
Song Yi hid his delight.
The Golden Eagle spiraled down from the sky. The city, which had seemed so distant, rushed into view, with houses and farmland appearing right before her eyes.
She saw many Beastmen in the new foundry, burning Energy Ore. They were swinging their fists, sweat flying as they began to smelt and hammer the iron.
She had already taught them the method for smelting ironware. She believed good news would come soon.
Song Yi then flew her to the lower reaches of the Great Soup River, in the southwestern part of the city.
A crowd of busy Beastmen and females were gathered by the river. Some were washing clothes with Chinese honey locust, while others were carrying stone vats to fill with water.
Back when this was just a small tribe, the Beastmen often had to run back and forth between the river and their homes. But now that the city was so much larger than an ordinary tribe, all that running back and forth was sure to waste a great deal of time.
Moreover, the Beastmen used a massive amount of water. With their large families, they could often go through a large stone vat of it in just half a day.
The Beastmen themselves didn’t find it inconvenient. After all, in the underdeveloped Beast World, they had done things this way their entire lives. They were accustomed to this labor, and they couldn’t conceive of a more convenient way to get water.
This backward method of fetching water might not reveal its drawbacks in a small tribe living by the water’s edge, but as the city continued to expand, it was not a sustainable solution.
’I have to solve the Beastmen’s water problem as soon as possible.’
A preliminary blueprint was already forming in An Jin’s mind.
Just as she was thinking this, the bright sky suddenly turned overcast, and a drizzling rain began to fall.
Pelted by the raindrops, Song Yi began to list to the side, his once-stable flight growing turbulent.
My feathers are getting wet. It’s very uncomfortable. He needed to find shelter from the rain immediately; flying in it was torture.
’The cloud cover is thin, and it’s just a single patch drifting south. It looks like this rain won’t last long.’
An Jin wasn’t worried.
They were still some distance from the city center, so Song Yi took An Jin to his nest to wait out the rain.
Strangely enough, after Song Yi had brought several dozen Eagle Beasts to live in the city, they had all scorned the simple wooden houses. Instead, they each found a tree to their liking in the surrounding forest and began building their nests.
The bigger and taller the tree, the more they liked it.
—It allowed them to overlook everything, made reconnaissance easier, and gave them an advantage when hunting.
’So this is the nature of an Eagle Beast?’
As the highest-ranking Leader Eagle, Song Yi had claimed the tallest, most immense tree for himself—a tree dozens of feet high with a trunk so thick it would take nearly ten people to encircle it with their arms.
He temporarily settled An Jin into his massive nest, which spanned several hundred square feet.
The nest was kept immaculately clean and tidy; there wasn’t a single stray feather to be seen in the woven branches. The edges were adorned with all sorts of fresh flowers and fruits, filling the air with a faint, sweet fragrance.
An Jin couldn’t help but look toward the entrance of the nest, where the Golden Eagle stood shaking his feathers dry.
’...Wow. This was one classy eagle boss, with taste and an eye for aesthetics.’