Jiang Zheyu recalled the novel she'd read, wondering where she'd seen the name Bai Ruo before.
And just like that, she remembered.
Just as she suspected, Bai Ruo was also a villainess in the novel.
When the heroine was disguised as a man, Bai Ruo had taken an interest in her—the kind of interest that involved wanting to torture her.
Later, when the heroine revealed her female identity and was pursued by numerous powerful figures, Bai Ruo flew into a rage out of humiliation and targeted the heroine at every turn.
In the end, Bai Ruo reaped what she sowed, thrown onto the Exile Star by the heroine's harem.
Exile Star—a planet with no laws and utter chaos, a gathering place for crazed Beastmen who had lost their sanity to Beastification.
Jiang Zheyu climbed into Bai Ruo's Hovercar. Now she understood how Bai Ruo had shown up at her house the second after she'd deleted her as a contact.
The transportation was so fast, she felt like she'd only been in the Hovercar for a minute before they arrived at the destination Bai Ruo had mentioned.
She was dressed in a pink, casual tracksuit. As she stepped out of the Hovercar, she tilted her head up slightly, gazing at the suspended roadways that crisscrossed the sky like a flowing river of stars.
Towering, ice-blue skyscrapers with a hyper-futuristic feel shot up from the ground, stretching as far as the eye could see. Above, hovertrains and starships streaked by like beams of light.
She could hardly make out the shapes of the vessels with her naked eye; all she could see were the trails of silver light they left in their wake.
Jiang Zheyu had only ever seen such a grand spectacle in movies. To actually stand here in this high-tech interstellar era, to witness it with her own eyes, filled her with a sense of awe that words couldn't express.
"What are you spacing out for?" Bai Ruo had taken a few steps before noticing Jiang Zheyu hadn't followed. She frowned slightly; she had found Jiang Zheyu's behavior strange the entire way.
Throughout the trip, no matter what Bai Ruo said, the girl had either looked completely absent-minded or responded with distracted, perfunctory grunts.
"Right, coming." Jiang Zheyu tore her gaze away and hurried to catch up.
As she walked on, she noticed faint, intermittent stares and looked up to see where they were coming from.
Two Male Beastmen waiting for a hovertrain saw her looking and hastily averted their eyes.
Jiang Zheyu looked away as well. In truth, she had felt those faint stares on her ever since she got out of the Hovercar.
She'd assumed it was because of her makeup and hadn't paid it much mind.
But that wasn't the reason at all. It was because she was a female. In this interstellar era, with its scarcity of females and abundance of males, a female with spiritual power was an even rarer and more precious commodity.
"Holy shit, I thought that female in the pink tracksuit was a hottie, but I didn't expect her face to look like... that. Scared the hell out of me." A Male Beastman in the distance patted his chest in fright. Recalling the vibrant, youthful back that had made his heart flutter, he quietly added, "She's actually pretty hot, as long as you don't look at her face."
"You're being picky?" another Male Beastman retorted. "If any female looked our way, we'd be laughing in our sleep. By the way, what number are you in the queue to apply as Qing Yue's Beast Mate?"
"Over one hundred and thirty thousand..."
「Night K.」
"Miss Bai is here." The attendant at the entrance respectfully and deftly led Bai Ruo inside.
They didn't go to the private rooms on the upper floors, nor to the booths on the main floor. Instead, they headed for a private room in the basement.
With a wooden expression, Jiang Zheyu followed Bai Ruo into a private room.
The scene before her was the same as the background in the photos she'd seen of the original owner abusing Beastmen.
It was a very large room. One wall was covered with a massive rack of torture implements. Another was divided into five small, square chambers: an electrocution chamber, a glass water tank...
Jiang Zheyu felt a wave of unease and couldn't stop her brows from furrowing.
"You've been here so many times and you're still not used to it?" Bai Ruo said, looking at Jiang Zheyu. The mockery in her eyes was blatant, as if to say, 'What a wimp.'
Jiang Zheyu had no desire to speak to Bai Ruo.
A noise erupted from behind them—the violent CLANG of iron chains mixed with bestial roars.
Jiang Zheyu spun around and jumped in fright, instinctively stumbling back a few steps.
At the door stood a handsome youth, restrained by chains. He had a pair of black wolf ears, but one was missing its top half, while the other hung at an unnatural angle, as if it had been forcibly broken.
His black wolf tail hung limply like a bristly, worn-out broom, covered in bloody gashes. It was even missing patches of fur, revealing mottled red and black skin underneath, as if it had been burned.
He snarled, baring sharp fangs that glinted coldly in the light. His black eyes were bloodshot, and the crazed killing intent radiating from him was just like that of a Beastman who had fully succumbed to Beastification.
"This is a partially-Beastified Beastman," Bai Ruo said, strolling to Jiang Zheyu's side. Her eyes scanned the Wolf Boy's injuries. "Looks like others have had their fun with him. I'm surprised he's still so defiant. But the more rebellious they are, the greater the sense of accomplishment when you finally break them."
The moment Jiang Zheyu saw the boy, she remembered him. And she remembered how the original owner had 'played' with him.
To put it simply, the original owner had been captivated by his looks. She'd walked right up to him and declared that she would be his Female Master, only to be brutally rejected. Utterly humiliated, the original owner refused to give up and planned to have the Empire forcibly assign the boy to her as a Beast Mate. But then, to her shock, the boy actually ran away!
The Imperial Army made a show of searching for him, but the matter was eventually dropped.
After all, the Empire was huge, and there were plenty of other single males.
So the original owner had gone to Bai Ruo, used her family's influence to have the boy captured, tortured him in a secret chamber, and then tossed him out.
After that, the boy had vanished without a trace.
Jiang Zheyu looked at the scarred boy in the distance. 'So he really did end up on the Exile Star,' she thought. 'And now, somehow, he's been dragged back from there to Night K to be tortured as a Beastman.'
"You should have handed him over to me back then." Bai Ruo seemed to recall the incident as well, turning to Jiang Zheyu. "I can't believe you just tortured him and then let him go."
Her eyes seemed to be saying, 'You really are a fool.'
Bai Ruo quickly averted her gaze. "Forget it. I didn't realize he was so durable back then. Now, I had to wait a whole month for my reservation just to get one day with him."
'A month!'
Jiang Zheyu couldn't even begin to imagine how many wounds covered the boy's body.
A Male Beastman's body might have a powerful Healing Ability, but even that couldn't withstand this kind of torture.
The door to the room swung shut.
Inside the room, only Jiang Zheyu, Bai Ruo, and her two Beast Mates remained.
Bai Ruo walked over to the wall of instruments, selecting a tool as if she were picking out a precious treasure.
Jiang Zheyu stood frozen to the spot. The Wolf Boy lunged at her repeatedly, trying to tear her apart, but the silver collars and chains on his limbs stopped him every time.
The chains weren't anchored to anything, yet they held the boy fast, preventing him from breaking free no matter how painfully he struggled.
She had no idea what kind of cruel, interstellar material these things were made of.
Bai Ruo had already selected a barbed whip and was walking toward them.
Jiang Zheyu recalled the original owner's memories of how Bai Ruo had tortured and killed Beastmen in the past. Remembering the Beastmen that Bai Ruo had "played" with until they died, she found it harder and harder to breathe.
She was afraid of the Beastman, who could erupt into violence at any moment.
But what she couldn't tolerate even more was watching someone else be brutalized right in front of her.