When Sang Luo woke up, she was stark naked and locked in an iron cage.
A man's hand was reaching toward a place it shouldn't.
She screamed and kicked him squarely in the crotch. The man cried out in pain, clutching his lower body as he collapsed.
While the cage was still open, Sang Luo bolted for the door.
Inside the cage were another twenty or thirty scantily clad young women. When they saw her escape, they screamed and scrambled out of the cage as well.
A group of tall Beastmen in black uniforms rushed in, blocking the doorway to capture the fleeing females.
In the chaos, Sang Luo scrambled out a window. Luckily, it was the ground floor, so she wasn't hurt. She was so terrified she could barely think, assuming she'd been trafficked into some illegal brothel. Spotting a scrap truck being loaded nearby, she dove right inside.
The moment the truck's cargo bay closed, she peered through a crack and got a clear look at the men who had burst out of the main gate. They had beast-like ears and tails!
And on the plaque hanging right over the main gate, two large words were painted in vermilion—
[Female Shelter]
'Beastman... Female... Shelter...'
'What the hell? Where am I?'
'What in the world is going on?'
Sang Luo realized an absurd truth—she had transmigrated!
Sang Luo had transmigrated a million years into the future.
Environmental degradation had led to human extinction, and now genetically evolved Beastmen dominated the land. They were valiant warriors, extraordinarily powerful, but they faced a single existential crisis: a scarcity of females.
The female-to-male ratio had already reached 1:20, and it continued to decline every year.
For the sake of survival and procreation, families practiced polyandry. Females were encouraged to take on multiple partners as a contribution to their tribes, cities, and the Empire. But with demand far outstripping supply, a large number of males were still unable to find a female. To relieve their desires, a related trade had sprung up in the shadows.
...
CRASH!
The scrap truck left after dumping its load of trash in a vacant lot amidst the ruins.
After confirming no one was around, the stunning, raven-haired, snow-skinned girl scrambled out of the garbage pile. She had intended to find some clothes, but after only a few steps, her cheeks flushed crimson and her breathing grew heavy.
She was seized by a frantic urge to find a man and release her desire.
'Those bastards had this trick up their sleeve!'
Her nose began to bleed. If she couldn't find a man to satisfy this urge today, she would likely die out here in the wilderness.
Sang Luo staggered onward, frantically searching her surroundings.
And there, by a river not far off, was a man!
He was sprawled on the ground, motionless.
He was a mangled, bloody mess, his face unrecognizable.
Sang Luo thought it was a corpse dumped in the wilderness. Fighting down her fear, she crawled over and held her fingers under his nose, only to find he was still breathing, however faintly.
'He's alive! That's all that matters!'
'He's usable!'
The man's fingers twitched, a sign he might be waking up. A moment of clarity washed over Sang Luo, and she scrambled off him. She grabbed the large clothes lying nearby and threw them on. She had been too frantic when she'd taken them off to notice, but now she realized they looked like a military uniform.
A squad of Beastmen appeared in the distance, wearing the same uniforms as the ones from the Female Shelter. Sang Luo didn't have time to think; she just ran.
The moment she left, the man on the ground whose first time she had just taken suddenly opened his eyes. They were a pair of captivating, narrow purple eyes, whose beauty a thousand words could not begin to describe!
The man's eyes were filled with shock. His genetic frenzy was gone!
He pushed himself into a sitting position, his gaze dark and inscrutable.
'Interesting...'
"Quick, after her! I saw her! That female ran this way!"
The Beastmen from the shelter gave chase.
The man shot them a single cold glance. The group of Beastmen instantly exploded into gore, and his figure vanished among the ruins.
...
Sang Luo didn't know how long she ran, but she finally made it out of the ruins and into a lush, primordial jungle.
Exhausted, her legs gave out, and she tumbled off a cliff, losing consciousness.
As it happened, a Hunting Team was passing by and brought her back to their tribe.
The Kordo Tribe was a small to medium-sized tribe in the Rubel Forest. Located on the border between the North and South Continents, it was plagued by constant war and was severely underdeveloped. Most of the Beastmen there still lived a primitive, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The tribe was holding its triennial coming-of-age ceremony, where the witch doctor performed a rite for the newly adult males and females. At the same time, the females would choose their desired young males as partners.
The coming-of-age ceremony was drawing to a close, leaving the Male Beasts who hadn't found a partner dejected. But then they saw the Hunting Team return, not only with abundant supplies and Beast Crystals, but also with a young female from the outside. Many of the males gathered around for a look.
Before they could even get close, they were hit by a putrid stench that made them recoil.
The stench was coming from this young female of unknown origin!
The female was thin and frail, covered in wounds and blood. Her face was also scraped and disfigured from the fall.
"Mali, where did you pick up this female? She's so skinny, and why does she stink so much? Anyone who didn't know better would think you pulled her out of a garbage dump!"
A female's natural scent was a strong indicator of her fertility. The more it drove Male Beasts wild, the more fertile she was considered. In all their lives, they had never encountered a female who smelled so bad!
She looked like she'd been abandoned by her tribe—the lowest-grade of weak female!
"We found her at the foot of a mountain in the war-torn region. We didn't think much of it at the time. We saw she was unconscious, and we couldn't just stand by and watch her get eaten by wild beasts, so we brought her back..."
"Who would want such a stinky female? Whoever brought her here can take her back to their den."
"No, no, I don't want her either," the Beastman named Mali said, waving his hands frantically.
None of the other Beastmen stepped forward either.
Being near such a smelly female killed any desire to mate.
Sang Luo woke to find herself surrounded by fifty or sixty tall, burly male Beastmen. Most were bare-chested, wearing only shorts, their muscular bodies exuding an untamed wildness. Yet, strangely, they all wore troubled expressions. One of them, seeing she was awake, even took a couple of steps back.
An old Si Wu walked over. "Any foreign female must have a partner within the tribe to be allowed to stay and live here. If no one wants her, she can only be sent to the Female Shelter."
To put it nicely, it was the Female Shelter. In reality, it was a legally established red-light district and a female breeding center.
In the shelter, females were treated as commodities and divided into two groups based on their value.
Those with reproductive ability would be made to bear children for the Male Beasts without partners. They would give birth endlessly, forced into pregnancy again right after giving birth, until their fertility was completely drained. They wouldn't last more than a few years before dying of exhaustion.
The females with low reproductive ability were even cheaper. They would be bought by Wandering Beasts for a small price to be used as tools for sexual relief. Their bodies could hardly withstand the abuse, and they lived even more miserable lives.
For a female, entering the shelter was no different from a death sentence.
Sang Luo shuddered at the sound of those two words. She had just escaped from that hellhole; she absolutely could not be sent back! She tried to protest, but her voice was hoarse and she couldn't make a sound. Not only was her body injured from the fall, her vocal cords had been torn as well.
"Oh, so she's a mute?"
A wild and handsome Beastman stepped out from the crowd and said with a wicked smile, "A weak and crippled female like this should be paired with the weakest male. I say we just give her to Lan Cang!"
"He was seriously injured two years ago, and it ruined him. I heard he even lost his ability to procreate. He can't even be considered a proper male anymore. The two of them are a perfect match!"
The crowd burst into laughter.
Suddenly, all the laughter vanished.
Sang Luo followed their gazes toward the newcomer.
He was slender and tall, somewhere between a youth and a young man. His physique was superb, with the kind of lean, solid muscle that could only be forged through years of high-intensity training. But perhaps due to an old, hidden injury, his frame was a little too thin, and his complexion was somewhat pale and listless. He wore a translucent black collar around his neck.
He was coldly handsome, with narrow, single-lidded eyes, a high-bridged nose, and thin lips. A rarity among the motley-hued Beastmen, his black hair and black eyes gave him a striking appearance. Unfortunately, a scar running from the bridge of his nose across his left cheek marred this beauty.
"This weak female has no takers for now. If you are willing, you can keep her," the Si Wu said meaningfully. "Your mating season is approaching. If you don't bond with a female to soothe it, you might really lose control completely and regress into a mindless beast..."
Lan Cang's steps faltered. His cold gaze landed on Sang Luo for a moment before quickly flicking away.
After he was severely injured and his power plummeted, he had no intention of finding a female to suffer with him.
"I don't need..."
Before he could finish his sentence, the young female stumbled out of the crowd and threw her arms around his waist, holding on for dear life.
The young man's body stiffened. He looked down.
"Let go."
The young female tilted her head back, staring at him intently. Half her face was a ghastly sight, her hair and face still caked with filthy blood. At first glance, she looked like a Fierce Ghost come to claim his soul.
'I want you!'
She couldn't speak, but her gaze was startlingly direct and raw.
'I have to live!'
'I won't be sent back to the shelter!'
'I've just arrived here, and I don't understand anything. This tribe is my best chance of survival.'
Sang Luo had to find a man to keep her. The man before her was her only chance.
"You..." Lan Cang met her searing, bold gaze and felt an embarrassed urge to look away. But she quickly rose onto her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek, her soft lips brushing gently over the scar he tried to hide from the world.
The young man's body shuddered.
They were so close that beneath the coppery tang of blood, he caught an unexpectedly faint, indescribable fragrance. Heat flooded him, and a desire that had been suppressed for years instantly awoke.
Lan Cang's breath hitched. He swept her up into his arms.
"This female, I'm keeping her!"
After tossing out that sentence, he ignored everyone else and strode away with her in his arms.