A flicker of doubt flashed through the beautiful blue eyes of the tall and handsome man next to him. “He said he was half an hour away from Rock Mountain.”

“We didn’t come from the direction of the Lion-Wolf Tribe. Could we have gone in the wrong direction?” The slightly shorter man asked.

“Let’s go and have a look first.”

“Okay.”

The two figures, carrying huge hide backpacks on their backs, moved quickly towards the reddish-brown city walls, as if their heavy backpacks were as light as a feather and did not hinder their movements in the slightest.

“Who’s there?” Seeing beastmen approaching, Ale, who was guarding the front, quickly climbed down a rope on the city wall. Only the inner walls were equipped with wooden ladders, and a few straw ropes were tied to hang down from the outside to facilitate descending female guards.

“We are from Salt-Water Tribe. Is there a male named Chen Qi here?” Axu looked at the young guard who fell from the sky and asked politely.

Ale frowned slightly and examined the two unfamiliar beastmen. Before, when he was at the Lion-Wolf Tribe, he was busy courting the male over there and had not met with these two brothers. It was only later that he found out about the events of Chen Qi showing how to drill into wood to make fire.

Seeing that Ale was just staring at them wordlessly, Ashu impatiently stepped forward. “Chen Qi said that we could come here to exchange things with him. Does he live here?”

Ale saw that the two beastmen were indeed carrying huge backpacks behind them and nodded, “There is a male named Chen Qi here. Follow me to register first, then you can go into the tribe to find him.”

“Register?” The two brothers looked at each other in confusion. What was that?

Without explaining further, Ale walked over to a large wooden table inside the gate and took out a notebook sewn together with thread from a drawer. Then he sat down on a stool and took out a bamboo tube filled with black dye-fruit liquid. While stirring the liquid inside with a wooden stick, he asked, “What are your names?”

“My name is Ashu.” Ashu pointed to the man beside him. “This is my brother, Axu.”

Ale spread open the notebook, dipped a quill pen into the black dye-fruit liquid in the tube and wrote down ‘Ashu’ in the ‘visitor’ column. This method for registration was suggested by Chen Qi, so that no matter who came and who left, it would be clear at a glance. However, since the Rock-Mountain Tribe merged back together, no one would be visiting. This was the first time in recent years that people from other tribes had come to look for someone. Ale felt a bit excited to be doing this registration for the first time.

“What’s the matter? Is there a problem?” Ashu saw the other man holding a feather and drawing something on some strange thing suddenly frowned, as if having encountered some serious problem. He couldn’t help but ask aloud.

“How do you write the ‘Xu’ character?” Ale tapped his chin with the feather end of the quill pen. He couldn’t remember how to write the word, so he raised his head, wanting to ask someone, but remembered that the two men in front of him were from other tribes. Now in the entire beastmen world, it was likely that the only people of Qi Ze City had any idea how to read and write.

As soon as he said those words, Ale held the notebook in his arms and stood up, scurrying to the nearby city wall. Facing the wall with the Thousand Character Classics written on it, he started muttering, “The sky was black and the earth was yellow. The universe was vast…”

Ashu looked at the wall with white background and black drawings. He had never seen writing before, and felt that the characters were very strange. “What are you chanting?”

“That’s strange. Why isn’t there the character for ‘Xu’?” Ale frowned and read it again.