ABFMV Chapter 3 Part 2

Behind him, massive crimson wings spread wide.

Like a deity looking down upon ants.

But the horns growing from his head were a clear reminder: he was not a god.

He was a—

Hybrid.

Chi Mo panicked, stumbling to the doorway, pointing at Qi Ye. “A monster! He’s a monster! Capture him!”

Soldiers raised their particle rifles, but with a single flap of his massive wings, Qi Ye swept the weapons aside.

Another snap of his fingers and golden flames erupted from Chi Mo’s home. This fire was unnatural—no firefighting equipment could extinguish its unchecked spread.

The soldiers had never witnessed such a bizarre, terrifying spectacle—even facing the insect clan hadn’t been like this.

All that remained for them was a scorched battlefield, and the pale-skinned Qi Ye had vanished.

Pain from his torn flesh and searing blood forced him to leave.

Using his wings, he soared out of the city. The sensation was strange, as if flying was an instinct, as natural as breathing.

But the power soon waned. Like a falling meteor, he plummeted into the polar sand seas.

He assumed a beast form.

A small white cat.

At the same time, Qi Ye fully received his inheritance and finally understood his true nature.

In the earliest, most chaotic days of the star system, the five races coexisted peacefully. They watched out for one another, maintaining friendly relations.

Gradually, territorial disputes and schemers destabilized interspecies relations.

Eventually, each race claimed exclusive lands, forbidding outsiders and banning intermarriage.

Cross-species unions had always been rare, and even when they occurred, producing offspring was difficult.

Qi Ye’s ancestors were among the few who had mixed blood outside the insect clan.

Because of the ban, they chose to live on land, where humans and beastmen could still coexist relatively peacefully.

Over time, due to the difficulties of mixed-blood reproduction, only Qi Ye’s mother remained of that lineage.

She met an insect clan member disguised as a human. They fell in love.

Miraculously, Qi Ye was born.

The cost: his mother’s health rapidly deteriorated, and she died within a year.

His father, grief-stricken, cared for him until his own death, after which it was discovered that Qi Ye carried insect blood.

Curled up into a tiny white ball, he truly was a hybrid…

How could a small white cat survive in the polar sand seas?

He began scavenging the hard bread tossed by beastmen and nibbling the withered grass in the desert.

Dignity was useless here; survival required abandoning it.

After wandering for an indeterminate time, a beastman captured him.

They claimed they wanted to provide a meat dish for their family.

Bound with electric ropes, he struggled violently, repeatedly shocked into submission.

Now, he could not access his full power.

Qi Ye had reverted to beast form due to the backlash from overusing his strength.

This was the cost of forcing his power before he could control it—he had exhausted everything.

He could only maintain the form of a small beast.

Powerless to resist, he avoided becoming the beastmen’s meal.

The beastman couple’s daughter first saw the cat and immediately wanted to keep him as a pet.

The stubborn parents had no choice but to go along.

This was not the start of happiness, but the beginning of a nightmare—starting when Qi Ye accidentally scratched the little beastman.

His untrimmed claws were meant to gently pat the child’s stomach, but they drew blood.

The little beastman screamed in pain. The parents rushed over.

They scolded him as a worthless creature, wasting food and hurting their child.

“Worthless… hey, why not turn it into something that can earn money?”

At first, Qi Ye didn’t understand, but he soon did.

The beastman couple bought a ferocious wild dog. The next day, they locked him and the dog in a cage for combat shows.

In the cage was one piece of raw meat—the winner got it.

It was the only food he and the dog would receive that day.

Any sign of weakness meant cruel beatings.

Through daily fights, the couple amassed savings, then sold him and the dog to the arena for a new life.

No one would be kind to him—he had long accepted that.

The pressure at his throat reminded him: this girl was no different from the others.

He instinctively struggled, but her soft fingers held him.

They brushed lightly across his ear tips.

In that instant, Qi Ye heard a voice unlike any other—infinitely gentle.

“Don’t move, I can’t clean you properly if you do.”

Author’s note:

The little beastman who got scratched on the hand is not the same one who cared for Qi Ye in the arena.

With Linlang present, the story’s original little beastman no longer had a chance to care for him.