Aaron sat dazedly on the grass, looking up into the distance. Christian walked over holding a pile of firewood and kicked Aaron’s butt.

"Why are you sitting around like a shitting goose? Let’s go back."

Aaron let out a long sigh, grabbed his pile of firewood, and sluggishly followed Christian, constantly mumbling: "I miss Walter so much, I wonder how his injuries are doing."

Christian gave Aaron a disdainful smirk and scolded: "You still dare to long for someone else’s Sub-Beast, can you beat that tiger? Not to mention, the way you tucked your tail and ran looked very cowardly, you know? It would be weird if a Sub-Beast paid attention to you."

Aaron pouted: "I don’t want to mate with Walter, I just find talking to him very compatible. He doesn’t think it’s shameful for a beastman to fight using weapons. You know it too, when I hunt, I like smashing the prey’s head with a rock the most."

*Are you actually proud of that?* Christian rolled his eyes. Even though after his claws had all dulled, he also had to use rocks and sticks to hunt and feed over a dozen lives, but before that, Christian was still a qualified beastman, okay? Not like this cowardly Fox, who had liked using underhanded tricks ever since he started learning to hunt. Back when the tribe was still around, Aaron was the most mocked target, but unexpectedly, when the tribe was about to perish in the blizzard, it was Aaron’s unorthodox tricks that saved everyone.

"You wait for me a moment, I will check if any prey has fallen into the trap." Aaron put down his bundle of firewood and parted the grass to check Aaron’s trap. Sure enough, there were two plump rabbits and a wild chicken in the trap. The pit was quite deep, so any animal falling in would either break a wing or a leg.

---

"He dug a hole, then covered it with leaves and hung a piece of fresh meat in the middle, and he actually caught prey with that." Sane recounted this to Kaelen with an expression that was hard to describe: "In their group, there is also a Sub-Beast who knows how to heal, two old beastmen who know how to use mud to build stoves, and the rest haven’t done anything yet so I don’t know what they can do."

Hearing this, Kaelen marveled that after randomly picking up a group of people, everyone turned out to be an elite. That Silver Fox beastman knew his weakness was poor jumping ability and his claws weren’t sharp, so he came up with a way to set traps and use weapons to hunt. This was a cunning individual with a sharp mind; if taken into the tribe and trained further, the fox would definitely become a brilliant strategist.

The other people in their group each had their own specialties. It made sense; if they didn’t have top-tier survival skills, they wouldn’t have survived the blizzard and the magical beast forest until they met Zale’s group.

Sane lowered his voice and said: "That Rabbit clan Sub-Beast definitely has a problem. He constantly approaches the beastmen guarding the tribe, asking about the location of our tribe. Fortunately, the guarding beastmen have all undergone training, so they haven’t been bewitched by the Rabbit."

Kaelen frowned and brought a hand to his neck, making a slashing motion across it. Sane chuckled, rubbed Kaelen’s head, and said: "Let’s first observe his movements to see if we are truly being targeted by Cipher. Once we know, it won’t be too late to eliminate the Rabbit."

Kaelen nodded, then wrinkled his nose and said: [You should find some work for Anthony to do. He follows Walter around all day, it’s so annoying to watch!]

"Didn’t you tell me to send someone to pick white-core fruits? I already sent him. I even made Anthony search the surrounding area to see if there are any more of those trees."

[You understand me the best, hehe~]

"Achoo! Achoo!" Anthony sneezed a few times, rubbed his nose, and then bent his butt to plant young corn saplings in the field. He heard that as long as he planted all three hundred yellow-seed fruit plants, it would be enough contribution points to exchange for candy, so Anthony eagerly took the job before leaving the tribe to pick white-core fruits.

Without someone sowing discord in the middle, Anthony finally understood just how stupid he had been. He realized he liked Walter after he had already hurt Walter, and the sad thing was that Walter wouldn’t even give Anthony a chance to make amends. No matter how hard he tried to approach Walter, the Sub-Beast acted as if he couldn’t see Anthony.

"Anthony, what are you doing spacing out over there? If you don’t work faster, you won’t make it in time for dinner before the evening class starts!"

A Tiger clan beastman walked by, and seeing Anthony sitting there in a daze holding a sapling, called out to remind Anthony. He snapped back to reality, then mumbled a few times and continued planting.

Recently, the tribe was implementing an illiteracy eradication policy, dividing into groups of forty people per class, teaching five classes a session, rotating day by day. After finishing one cycle, it would circle back to the first group. The hunting group missed the class sorting time, so they were placed in a separate class, and today was the start of their first lesson.

Anthony had to admit that when Sane and Kaelen teamed up, they could always come up with initiatives beyond anyone’s imagination. Thinking about getting to study with Walter tonight, his planting speed became a bit faster...

"Hello everyone, I am Collins, your homeroom teacher. Today we will learn to recognize letters..."

The center of the tribe was brightly lit by the fire; groups of tribesmen sat neatly at their desks, and the resonant sound of reading echoed throughout the valley, so lively that the group of people on the prairie could also hear it. They thought Crimson was performing some kind of ritual, so they hurriedly dropped the work in their hands, closed their eyes, and prayed together.

Dew started to fall from the sky, and the sound of reading gradually subsided. Collins put down the ruler in his hand and said: "That’s all for today’s lesson, now we will listen to a travelogue story together. This story is called The Cinderella Boy."

The group of tribesmen who didn’t have class and were chatting in the distance all looked over simultaneously. Oh, there was even storytelling today, they didn’t have that yesterday. The whole crowd scrambled to grab their stools and squeezed in with the studying group. The teachers took a look around, and seeing that everyone in the tribe except those busy standing guard was fully present, they nodded in satisfaction.

Very good, it saved the trouble of having to tell it over and over again. And so, the Crimson tribesmen began to listen to the first mind-opening story of their lives: The Cinderella Boy.

The Cinderella Boy was a Sub-Beast belonging to a middle-tier noble family; his story was not a dreamy travelogue about beautiful romantic love, but rather a case of a property inheritance dispute between the son of a deceased mate and the current mate of a minor noble family within the complex family society of high-level beastmen.

Everyone knew, high-level beastmen often had lifespans several times longer than Sub-Beasts. When a mate passed away, that beastman had the right to choose another mate if he wanted. The majority of beastmen chose to live in solitude for the rest of their lives, but there was also a small number of beastmen who couldn’t bear the loneliness and married another mate.

The Cinderella Boy lived in such a family. After his Daddy got a new mate, his status in the family became very awkward, and even the right to inherit property was schemed and stolen away by his step-Papa.

With the support of the old butler, the Cinderella Boy used his beauty to seduce the beastman prince—the one who held absolute power in the Beast City—and relied on the prince’s authority as backing to settle the score with the family that had stripped him of his property inheritance rights.

Using the story as a medium, the teachers mercilessly exposed the nature of infighting within Beastman society:

For example, the Cinderella Boy who only possessed beauty was originally just the eldest son of a minor noble family, unfit for the position of a prince’s consort; by ruining his own family, he had even less hope of elevating his social class.

For example, how the prince utilized the Cinderella Boy’s hatred towards his family to legally seize their property—as a prince, would he be easily bewitched by a beauty to the point of losing his mind?

If the Cinderella Boy could be so divinely beautiful, could he have lived so miserably for the past eighteen years? It was all driven by benefits!

The teachers then brought up several practical examples. Nyx directly used Jaxon as an example of philanthropy being exploited by others as a tool to seize the tribe; or like a certain soft-hearted beastman, who was provoked by a scheming Sub-Beast in the middle, causing the relationship between him and his mate to increasingly fracture to the point of being irretrievable;...

The more the tribesmen listened, the more indignant they became, and the more Anthony listened, the lower he bowed his head, not daring to look up. He felt that he was exactly the Cinderella Boy whose weakness was grasped by the prince, utilizing Cinderella Boy’s hatred to seize the noble family’s property. Caleb had exploited Anthony’s benevolence to infiltrate their team, and also exploited Anthony’s emotional cluelessness to drive a wedge in the relationship between him and Walter; planning to step into their relationship, using this matter to infiltrate and search for confidential information within the tribe. Unfortunately, he realized it too late, to the point where the relationship between him and Walter was almost irretrievable like the couple in the teacher’s narrative.

Walter looked at the lowered head of a certain stupid tiger and gave a cold smirk. Fine, at least Anthony could still be saved.

An adapted travelogue story had directly exposed the filth hidden deep within the internal affairs of the Beastman world, bringing a direct perspective to the beastmen who possessed intelligence but lacked vision in the Crimson tribe.

At the very least, they had learned one thing: they needed to tightly grasp their weaknesses in their own hands, not letting others exploit them to harm themselves and affect the tribe’s interests.

And most importantly: do not trust strangers, do not trust strangers, do not trust strangers!

Important matters must be said three times!