"Rules are dead, but people are alive," Consort Dan said lightly, then suddenly added in a quiet voice, "The rules also forbid men from bullying women, yet you still bullied me."
Jiang Chen chuckled sheepishly, rubbing his nose with nothing to say.
The atmosphere was strange. After an awkward silence, Consort Dan was the one who broke the tension.
"Jiang Chen, I'm sorry."
"What?" Jiang Chen frowned. "It seems like that's something I should be saying."
"I shouldn't have been so willful, and I shouldn't have drawn on your face." Jiang Chen hadn't expected Consort Dan's tone to be like this.
"All right, I'll admit that maybe yesterday put a bit too much pressure on me and I lost control for a moment. A man hitting a woman is always wrong."
In truth, what Jiang Chen had done hardly counted as hitting. It was more like an adult scolding a child — just a bit of discipline.
"You're still talking about it," Consort Dan said, half-shy and half-annoyed.
"All right, I'll drop it. By the way, nice elasticity." Jiang Chen burst out laughing.
"You pervert!" Consort Dan blurted out in her fluster, then sighed softly. "Jiang Chen, you really are a little demon. In my whole life, I've never taken such a big loss."
"You took a loss? Four spirit beast cubs — I bet you're grinning in your sleep."
The moment spirit beast cubs were mentioned, Consort Dan's mood instantly brightened. She wore a proud smile and set down the bamboo basket on her back.
Four fluffy little cubs, clearly still naive about the world, chirped and chattered in various voices, making faces at Jiang Chen and his companions.
"Jiang Chen, do you think they might be hungry?"
"Obviously. Can't you see their eyes have turned green from hunger?" Jiang Chen tossed a few of the fruits he had picked from the cave down to them.
The four little cubs immediately fell into a vicious scramble for the food.
What surprised Consort Dan was that these four cubs, who usually seemed to get along perfectly well, became startlingly ferocious the moment food appeared. Their fights had a life-or-death intensity to them.
"The spirit beast world truly is survival of the fittest, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" Consort Dan asked, a bit puzzled.
"Simply put, these four spirit ape cubs, though born of the same mother, will likely have only one survive in the end. They'll have to kill their siblings, eat their siblings, and the one that emerges victorious is the final winner. Just watch how they fight over food. Perhaps, when they reach adulthood, they'll even fight to the death with grown apes of their species over territory, never stopping until one dies. That is the law of survival for spirit beasts — natural selection. They're born into this cycle, and no one can escape it."
Jiang Chen wasn't just saying empty words. His knowledge of spirit beasts told him that most of them were like this. The higher their spiritual intelligence, the more true it became.
"One mountain cannot hold two tigers — that's exactly this principle.
On the contrary, it was the lower, less spiritually evolved beasts, or those that naturally preferred to gather in groups, that would form herds.
Take the Golden-Winged Sword Birds, for example.
It wasn't just the Golden-Winged Sword Birds. In the vast world, the number of spirit beast species was beyond counting, and gregarious spirit beasts were as numerous as the hairs on a bull. Some species were so numerous they became plagues, forcing even spirit beast kings ten or a hundred times more powerful to give them a wide berth.
Consort Dan looked thoughtful. Her beautiful eyes lingered on Jiang Chen's face for a moment before she sighed. "Jiang Chen, is there anything you don't know?"
"Is there anything I don't know?" Jiang Chen chuckled, and a flash of sorrow crossed his face. In truth, there really was.
In that moment, he suddenly thought of his past life — his father, the Heavenly Emperor of his previous existence. What had become of him? And how had he himself been reborn into this world?
These things he truly did not understand. Even with knowledge that could rival the heavens, with wisdom that had once been supreme across the Myriad Heavens Planes, he was still completely in the dark about these matters, with no clue whatsoever.
"Lady Consort Dan, consider that right now we're standing inside a circle. All we know are the things within this circle. The far greater unknown is the world outside it. Only when we step outside the circle do we realize how little we truly know."
Jiang Chen's words weren't put-on profundity — they came genuinely from the heart.
A look of surprise appeared in Consort Dan's delicate eyes. She hadn't expected that Jiang Chen, a young man known for his humor and brashness, would suddenly say something so thought-provoking.
"Let's go." Just as Consort Dan was still pondering his words, Jiang Chen called out.
"Where are we going?" Consort Dan asked.
"That Liu Can is one of Ye Dai's people. I have a feeling something's off about his showing up. We need to check whether that little punk Ye Dai is up to something."
Consort Dan was briefly taken aback. She hadn't really wanted to get involved in the scheming between princes. From her lofty vantage point, it didn't much matter who became Crown Prince or who became King.
Even if Ye Dai or Ye Rong became King, they wouldn't dare act recklessly in front of her, Consort Dan.
However, after last night's battle, Consort Dan seemed to have unconsciously accepted the shift in their dynamic. From the beginning, where she had clung tightly to control, she had now naturally fallen into following Jiang Chen's lead.
Jiang Chen moved at an unhurried pace, and the route he took appeared to involve no scouting, no deliberation.