TFBAT – Chapter 29

As soon as those words were spoken, Chi Yuyang was stunned.

But the playful expression on Yuan Wu’s face made her sense that something bad was coming.

“Your wife is yours now, but who knows—maybe after some time, she’ll be mine.” He openly admitted his interest in Chi Yuyang.

His confident tone left Chi Yuyang even more confused, and even a little repulsed.

“We’ve only met twice, right?” She had to wonder if this was a trap Yuan Wu had set, trying to control her mind.

“Yes, two times aren’t enough?” Yuan Wu’s face suddenly turned serious. “Chi, I like you.”

“……” Faced with this bizarre and ill-timed confession, Chi Yuyang quietly shrank back behind Hu Jin.

She let Hu Jin hurl an attack at Yuan Wu.

The strike shot out like lightning, so fast the animal skins at Yuan Wu’s feet were whipped up by the force.

But he didn’t let his emotions control his body.

At the same time, she noticed Hu Jin’s movements were unexpectedly sharp and clean.

Just as the blow was about to land on Yuan Wu, his figure suddenly flickered and vanished.

A moment later, he reappeared in the same spot where he had been sitting.

“Cough, cough, cough.” With his reappearance, the sound of coughing returned.

Hu Jin narrowed his eyes. “Does it hurt?”

“Quite a bit.” Yuan Wu replied coldly.

As soon as he said that, he broke into another violent cough.

Chi Yuyang, watching from the side, still didn’t quite understand what had just happened.

Did Hu Jin hit him or not?

“It’s a trick of the eye,” Hu Jin explained in her ear. “I hit him. He just pretended I didn’t.”

So that was just saving face.

Chi Yuyang shook her head.

“You think you can make my wife fall in love with you in a week? Dream on.” Hu Jin exposed his intention outright.

Yet Yuan Wu showed no trace of embarrassment. “How would I know unless I try?”

He then looked toward Chi Yuyang. “You’ve got cocoa beans in that cloth bag of yours, don’t you?”

The moment she had approached, he’d caught the scent of them.

“Cocoa beans?” Chi Yuyang was startled.

“The very thing that restrains tiger beastmen. You’re clever, figuring out that I’d hidden them among the Sheep Tribe.” Greed gradually surfaced in Yuan Wu’s eyes.

“We’re really a perfect match.”

“……” Chi Yuyang felt she could not understand the thought process of ape beastmen. Especially when he called her clever—it sounded more like mockery.

After all, as a modern person, Yuan Wu’s way of speaking made her deeply uncomfortable.

He was smart, yes—but it was a self-righteous kind of smart.

Thinking of this, Chi Yuyang turned her gaze toward Hu Jin. The fierce look on the young man’s face had yet to fade, but when he felt her eyes on him, his lips curved into an unintentional smile.

It was like a reflex—whenever he saw her, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Hu Jin, don’t hit him anymore.” Chi Yuyang tugged at his slightly raised arm. “If you kill him in one blow, then he won’t have to suffer slowly from his illness.”

The smile that had just appeared on Yuan Wu’s face froze instantly.

Even Hu Jin was stunned for a moment.

“Wife, you’re right.” He reacted, and right in front of Yuan Wu, he leaned over and kissed the corner of Chi Yuyang’s lips.

This time, Chi Yuyang didn’t stop him.

Instead, she responded.

She tiptoed up and deepened the kiss.

“Cough, cough…”

As Chi Yuyang and Hu Jin kissed as if no one else was around, Yuan Wu fixed his gaze on Chi Yuyang’s profile.

In truth, even the ape beastmen—closest in form to humans—rarely understood the meaning behind a kiss.

Beastmen were beasts first, then people.

To them, licking each other in their beast forms expressed intimacy far more naturally.

In Yuan Wu’s eyes, the scene before him was unpleasant, but it couldn’t really provoke him.

Chi Yuyang, of course, didn’t know this.

To Hu Jin, however, she was the one who had taught him the meaning of a kiss—and he had developed a great interest in it.

“Done licking yet?” Yuan Wu frowned.

Human-shaped licking seemed strange to him.

What was stranger still was that he could sense Hu Jin’s violent emotions being soothed.

As a master of mental control, he was extremely sensitive to emotional shifts. That only made him more interested in Chi Yuyang.

No wonder he had his eyes on her—she could actually calm the fury of a tiger beastman.

But Chi Yuyang and Hu Jin ignored him.

After a long while, when Chi Yuyang felt Hu Jin’s body reacting, she finally ended the kiss.

Any longer and Hu Jin would need another cold bath in the stream.

She touched his round ear.

Hu Jin’s emotions always showed on his face—she never had to waste effort guessing.

That alone made him infinitely better than Yuan Wu.

“Chi, what do you think of my proposal?”

A slightly seductive voice came, reminding Chi Yuyang that Yuan Wu was still in the room.

“Hu Jin, what do you think?” Chi Yuyang let him decide.

“Three days.” Hu Jin looked at Yuan Wu, his gaze instantly turning icy, filled with his unique aura of pressure.

“Good.” Yuan Wu tapped his cane. The beastman who had led them earlier walked in. “He’ll take you to your lodging for the next few days.”

Chi Yuyang took Hu Jin’s hand and followed the ape beastman out.

The sound of coughing echoed behind them, but she never once turned her head.

“Interesting.” Yuan Wu closed his eyes. “I like a challenge.”

When he finished, he could no longer hold up his body and collapsed onto the animal skins.

“A fourth-rank beastman’s strength…”

He didn’t want to admit it, but when faced with such power directly, a sliver of fear crept in.

—

Chi Yuyang and Hu Jin were taken to a stone house not far from Yuan Wu’s residence.

“If you need anything, tell the chief.” With that, the ape beastman left.

Chi Yuyang looked around the stone house.

Other than a few animal skins, there was only a pile of firewood stacked in the corner.

“Hu Jin,” Chi Yuyang didn’t sit down on the skins, “when you go hunting later…”

“Animal skins. I know.” Hu Jin nodded.

Seeing that he had guessed what she was about to say before she even finished, Chi Yuyang couldn’t help but laugh.

“Hu Jin, it’s so good to have you.”

“Wife, don’t fall for Yuan Wu.” Hu Jin pulled her into his arms. “Anything he can do, I can too.”

Before Chi Yuyang could reply, he quickly added: “The first time I saw you, I already decided you were my mate.”

“That’s one time less than him.”

“……” Chi Yuyang choked on his words.

When he said this, his tone carried a childish stubbornness that made her heart tremble.

When Yuan Wu had said he liked her after just seeing her twice, she had felt nothing but ridicule.

But when Hu Jin said it this way, she was touched.

“By the way, Hu Jin, how did you figure out Yuan Wu’s target was me?”

It surprised her that Hu Jin had noticed Yuan Wu’s strangeness before she had. That seemed more human than beastlike.

But Hu Jin answered earnestly: “As long as a male doesn’t have a mate, he could be your candidate mate. Yuan Wu just stared at you a few times too many…”