I'm Just a Beast Tamer

Donning the Ten Thousand Beasts Armor, Jiang Zuo’s whole body felt at ease.

He flew into the air with the Seated Mountain Eagle, looking down upon the boundless Ancient Beast Forest.

Great Black couldn’t be bothered to run anymore, so he sat atop one of the Seated Mountain Eagles.

’Based on the energy level of the Ten Thousand Beasts Atlas, the Ten Thousand Beasts Armor can last for about three days as long as I’m not attacked.’

’That means I can fly for a day and a half at most before I have to turn back. I hope I can find something in that time.’

Jiang Zuo thought to himself.

The closer he got to the central region of the Ancient Beast Forest, the more the pervasive negative human emotions in the air affected him.

He couldn’t afford to stay in the deeper regions and slowly restore the energy of the Ten Thousand Beasts Atlas.

「Half a day later.」

Jiang Zuo and his flock of Seated Mountain Eagles had already flown a great distance over the Ancient Beast Forest.

The lush trees of the Ancient Beast Forest had given way to a changed landscape. Along their path, it seemed countless trees had been unable to withstand the pervasive power and had died off en masse.

The trees on the ground grew sparse, most of them withered husks that had been dead for countless years.

On the desolate, blighted land, Jiang Zuo saw what he had been looking for: vast numbers of Fierce Beast skeletons.

However, as Jiang Zuo surveyed the scene from above, though countless Fierce Beast remains came into view, he couldn’t spot anything out of the ordinary.

Jiang Zuo had a good idea why.

The Fierce Beasts in the Ancient Beast Forest were so affected by the pervasive negative human emotions that it was a wonder they could maintain any sanity at all. Even if they developed obsessions, they were likely just obsessions with slaughter.

Finding an obsession with a semblance of humanity, like the one he’d encountered before, was next to impossible here.

As the sky gradually darkened, Jiang Zuo decided against resting for the night.

However, he suddenly noticed a patch of greenery on the blighted ground ahead, like an oasis.

It was a pond, and floating on its surface were black lotus leaves.

The pond was surrounded by short trees; there were no larger ones, as if they were unable to grow here.

And lingering around the pond were a fair number of Fierce Beasts.

Among them were two giant bears, two or three meters tall, at the Innate Martial Artist level.

If this were a desert, the pond would truly be an oasis.

With a thought, Jiang Zuo led his flock of Seated Mountain Eagles to land beside the pond.

As the flock of Seated Mountain Eagles with Innate Cultivation landed, the surrounding Fierce Beasts instantly scattered in a panic.

But the two giant bears that had claimed the pond let out a Roar and charged the Seated Mountain Eagles, trying to drive them away.

They might have fought avian beasts with Innate Cultivation before. With their thick hides and tough flesh, they weren’t afraid of Innate Level birds.

Or perhaps they were simply unwilling to give up the pond.

But Jiang Zuo didn’t care what they were thinking. With his twelve Seated Mountain Eagles fighting alongside him, they made short work of the two giant bears.

Seeing this, the other Fierce Beasts that had been watching from a distance fled until not a single one remained.

Jiang Zuo surveyed his surroundings, and his gaze finally fell upon the black lotus leaves floating in the pond.

’Are these black lotus leaves absorbing the negative human emotions that permeate the air?’

Jiang Zuo was surprised.

This oasis was only able to exist because of these black water lotuses.

After a moment’s thought, Jiang Zuo dismissed the Ten Thousand Beasts Armor.

Sure enough, while the negative human emotions in the surrounding air were still strong, they were no longer at an unbearable level.

By continuously focusing on the Divine Body Freedom Technique, Jiang Zuo could even keep his mind relatively calm.

’If I can find more of these water lotuses along the way, I might be able to venture much deeper.’

Jiang Zuo thought as he gazed at the black water lotuses.

Life, after all, finds a way. Jiang Zuo was a little surprised that water lotuses with such an ability would appear in the Ancient Beast Forest, but at the same time, it felt perfectly natural.

Jiang Zuo tried to pick a lotus leaf, but it seemed to be as potent as a deadly poison. Neither Great Black nor the Seated Mountain Eagles would touch it, shaking their heads vehemently.

It seemed that after absorbing the negative emotions from the air, the black water lotuses concentrated them into a potent poison within their leaves.

Strangely, however, the water in the pond itself had not become toxic.

When he first landed, he had seen plenty of Fierce Beasts drinking from it.

After studying it for a while without any results, Jiang Zuo decided not to dwell on it.

He called his flock of Seated Mountain Eagles over to have the giant bears for dinner.

A Fierce Beast with Innate Martial Artist Cultivation was an incredibly nourishing meal.

The Fierce Beasts within the Ancient Beast Forest hunted one another precisely because they served as food for each other. Eating their own kind was a way to grow stronger.

Although the two giant bears were massive, they were just barely enough to fill the stomachs of Jiang Zuo and his gluttonous companions.

After resting by the pond for a night, Jiang Zuo set out again the next morning.

And just as he’d hoped, he began to successively encounter more of these oases with ponds of black water lotuses.

Jiang Zuo fell into a routine: every half a day of flight, he would stop at an oasis to rest, allowing the Ten Thousand Beasts Armor to automatically recover its energy.

In this way, Jiang Zuo ventured deeper and deeper into the Ancient Beast Forest, day by day.

’An Obsession Relic!’

One day, as Jiang Zuo was flying along as usual, he suddenly saw a Fierce Beast bone on the ground emitting a faint black glow.

After a moment of shock, Jiang Zuo’s heart leaped with joy.

It was an Obsession Relic!

And to be able to see its glow from so far away, its rank had to be high!

Jiang Zuo immediately flew down and discovered that the bone-like Obsession Relic was actually a massive beast’s tusk.

——Giant Elephant’s Tusk: A third-rank Obsession Relic, containing the lingering obsession of a giant elephant Fierce Beast.

It was once an ordinary giant elephant Fierce Beast, but one day, it felt its mind fill with countless unknown visions.

They were visions of corrupt human officials who had driven people to desperation, causing them to die tragically.

Upon seeing these corrupt officials, all the elephant wanted was to viciously tear them to shreds.

But it couldn’t. It had no idea where those corrupt officials were.

Slaying the corrupt officials will resolve its obsession and grant Beast Soul Power.

...

’This giant elephant Fierce Beast’s obsession is to kill corrupt human officials?’

’Human reincarnation?’

’No, that’s not right.’

’This must be the collective negative emotions of countless people who were harmed by corrupt officials, which was then absorbed by the giant elephant and became its obsession.’

’But rather than a Beast Soul Obsession, this is more like a human obsession.’

Jiang Zuo had wondered before what it would be like if he could resolve human obsessions. It would surely be much simpler.

Compared to beasts, humans have far, far more obsessions.

But he never imagined he would encounter a human obsession in such a manner.

A human obsession, transferred into his hands through the skeleton of a Fierce Beast.

It was strange, but for Jiang Zuo, this was undoubtedly a huge boon.

Slaying corrupt officials was hardly difficult, and Jiang Zuo felt no moral qualms about doing it.

On top of that, it was a third-rank Obsession Relic.

If it was like the gecko carcass, it would grant Jiang Zuo around three hundred points of Beast Soul Power.

’And this was after being filtered through the giant elephant. Who knows how powerful the original mass of human obsession was.’

Jiang Zuo mused with a sigh.

With this first find, Jiang Zuo felt like he had made a breakthrough, and that more discoveries would likely follow.

Sure enough, over the next three days, Jiang Zuo successively found similar human obsessions.

One required him to slay a gang leader, and the other to chop off the hands of a swindler.

Both were second-rank Obsession Relics.

Even if he found nothing else, this trip deep into the Ancient Beast Forest had already been a great success for Jiang Zuo.

Just as he was thinking this, another day passed, and Jiang Zuo suddenly discovered that in the oases he found, the black water lotuses were beginning to sprout black lotus flowers.

The number of Innate Fierce Beasts appearing beside these oases had also surged, reaching an unprecedented seven at once!

They seemed to be guarding the black lotus flowers in the pond. Seeing Jiang Zuo descend with his large flock of Seated Mountain Eagles, every one of them immediately radiated intense battlelust.

Jiang Zuo didn’t waste any pleasantries and attacked directly.

If he didn’t attack now, he’d have to fight them eventually, once he dismissed his Ten Thousand Beasts Armor.

The battle between nearly twenty Innate Fierce Beasts was cataclysmic.

After a few of his Seated Mountain Eagles sustained minor injuries, five of the seven Innate Fierce Beasts were killed, and the other two fled.

’Could these black lotus flowers be some kind of treasure?’

Jiang Zuo wondered as he looked over.

But when he asked his flock of Seated Mountain Eagles and Great Black, they all indicated they felt nothing special about them.

’If it’s not the flowers, then it must be for the lotus seeds that will grow later.’

A thought struck Jiang Zuo.

He felt this was highly likely.

However, he couldn’t possibly wait here for the flowers to produce seeds. After a grand feast of Fierce Beast meat, Jiang Zuo packed up the leftovers to take with him the next morning.

Jiang Zuo continued his journey deeper into the forest.

Along the way, he constantly came across more of these oases, each with several Innate Fierce Beasts gathered to guard a single black lotus flower in the pond.

Jiang Zuo basically just fought his way through them all.

Jiang Zuo gradually felt that he was no longer far from the very heart of the Ancient Beast Forest.

「Several more days passed.」

On this day, Jiang Zuo had been flying for nearly the entire day without seeing a single oasis pond.

Just as he was feeling frustrated and confused, he suddenly saw that far in the distance, the sky and the ground were teeming with a countless horde of Fierce Beasts.

Even from such a great distance, Jiang Zuo could sense that they were likely all Innate Level Fierce Beasts.

In the Mortal Territory, a human Innate was a rare sight, but in the Fierce Beast Forest, Innates were a dime a dozen.

If the Innate Fierce Beasts from the Fierce Beast Forest were to escape, mortal humans would be utterly powerless to resist them.

Jiang Zuo even began to wonder if the Heaven and Earth Sealing Spirit Array existed to protect humanity, or to contain these Fierce Beasts.

With so many Innate Fierce Beasts, Jiang Zuo felt that if he flew over with his flock of Seated Mountain Eagles, he would be the one getting surrounded.

So Jiang Zuo recalled all the Seated Mountain Eagles, as well as Great Black, into his Pet Beast Spirit Garden.

Jiang Zuo flew to the outer perimeter of the area where the countless Innate Fierce Beasts had gathered.

All sorts of Fierce Beasts were hunkered down on the surrounding ground.

But as long as they didn’t get too close to one another, the Fierce Beasts paid each other no mind.

They simply stared with looks of intense longing toward the very center of the area ahead.

Jiang Zuo followed their gazes.

On a large swath of land ahead, countless black lotus flowers were growing.

They weren’t growing in ponds, but directly out of the black earth.

The Fierce Beasts weren’t looking at the flowers, but at the seed pods nestled within them.

In the sky, the soaring Fierce Beasts would occasionally dive down, attempting to snatch the seed pods and their seeds.

But on the black earth below, there was a group of giant beasts over ten meters tall.

These giant beasts looked like Half-Beastmen, and they wielded massive bone clubs.

If any avian beast dared to dive, they would charge over and meet it with a powerful swing.

The lucky ones could fly back to the sky, dazed and disoriented.

The unlucky ones were instantly killed with a single blow.

Despite possessing an Innate body, they couldn’t even withstand a single blow from the giant Half-Beastmen.

However, Jiang Zuo’s gaze fell upon the very center of the field of lotuses.

There, at the true center, was what held an inexplicable attraction for all the Fierce Beasts.

A sparkling, translucent gem that looked like a red crystal!