Chapter 196: The Tribe Workshop

"Lord Mu Qing."

"Are you heading to the workshop again today, Lord Mu Qing?"

Facing the others on the road who skillfully greeted him, Mu Qing merely gave a light "Mm" in response.

"Lord Mu Qing, the snakelet on your hand is really beautiful—is it your and Lord Yun Li's cub? It looks like it will definitely grow up to become a formidable beastman like Lord Mu Qing and Lord Yun Li."

Hearing this beastman's praise, Mu Qing couldn't just give an "Mm" and leave it at that this time.

He glanced at the grey snake coiled around his wrist, flicking its tongue, and replied to that person, "It's A Li's cub, that's right. As for whether he'll grow up to be a clever and formidable beastman like A Li, that'll depend on his own ability."

After hearing this, the beastman's face, originally piled full of smiles, could no longer conceal his confusion and bewilderment—why did those words sound so strange? And he remembered that Lord Mu Qing's beast form was a dark green giant python, wasn't it? Why did his and Lord Yun Li's cub look like a venomous snake beastman?

Could it be that he remembered wrong—that Lord Mu Qing wasn't a python beastman, but a venomous snake beastman?

With a head full of questions, the beastman watched Mu Qing walk further and further away until the man entered the Tribe's workshop, and only then did he leave the spot, completely baffled.

"Hiss hiss~"

Mu Qing had his own private workroom in the workshop. The moment he entered the room, Old Seven, who had been forced to coil around his wrist, impatiently dropped to the ground and began exploring everywhere.

But as soon as Mu Qing entered and saw clearly the earth-shattering changes in the room, he couldn't help furrowing his brow.

It hadn't looked like this when he left. Who had entered his workroom while he was away?

Walking over to the furnace, Mu Qing discovered that the furnace, which should have been cold, had long since been heated—this meant that before he arrived, someone had specifically come in to light the fire in his room's furnace.

Yet he felt no sense of comfort or warmth in his heart; instead, his brow furrowed even tighter.

"Lord Mu Qing, you were looking for me?"

Mu Qing had called over Lai, who managed the workshop's miscellaneous affairs, and asked him, "Has someone been in my room?"

Lai nodded. "Yes, I brought people in to tidy up. Lord Yun Li said that the craftsmen in the workshop coming in early every morning and still having to tidy their own rooms was a bit of a waste of time, so she told me to keep an eye on this sort of thing.

Did Lord Mu Qing call me over because something is missing from the room? Or do you not like people entering your workroom? If that's the case, then I won't bring people to tidy up tomorrow."

"Nothing's missing."

Mu Qing hadn't expected that someone tidying his workroom was because of A Li's instructions. Seeing Lai's sincere attitude, the slight displeasure in his heart dissipated at once. "But don't do this kind of thing anymore in the future. I don't like people coming into my room when I'm not here."

"Alright!"

Lai replied readily, but as if he'd thought of something, a trace of embarrassment appeared on his face. "It's like this—besides the matter of tidying the workroom, Lord Yun Li also instructed me to manage everyone's material expenditure costs from now on.

After all, the things the Tribe gives the workroom are all limited, so..."

He hesitated for a long while but still didn't say what came after "so."

Mu Qing's brow, which had just relaxed, furrowed again at once. "So what? Just say what you have to say."

Lai rubbed his nose and then gave a sheepish laugh. "So from now on, Lord Mu Qing, just like the other craftsmen, whatever materials you want, you must register with me. Then I'll consolidate everyone's needs and report them to the Tribe's Hunting Squad.

And another thing is that everyone's daily materials will have a fixed quota—you can't just use whatever you want like before anymore."

When he said those last words, he even deliberately glanced toward the door a couple of times, as if afraid a third person might overhear.

After all, limiting the craftsmen's material usage was no small matter. Even though Lai had already followed Lord Yun Li's instructions and started doing this behind the scenes, for certain reasons, he didn't dare bring this matter out into the open.

If the beastman before him weren't Lord Mu Qing—Lord Yun Li's Beast Husband—he knew he would definitely be able to understand Lord Yun Li's intentions in doing this; otherwise, Lai wouldn't have told him about this kind of thing at all.

"The other craftsmen still don't know about this matter. Lord Mu Qing, please don't tell the other craftsmen. Lord Yun Li said that after a while she'll come and take another look, and only then will she announce this matter publicly."

And before that, Lai needed to help Yun Li confirm who in the workshop had been abusing the materials delivered by the Tribe to profit for themselves.

As early as when Lai mentioned registering materials, Mu Qing had already recalled something his female had mentioned in front of him—that among the craftsmen in the Tribe, someone was privately selling large quantities of items from the Tribe's workshop at the Market, which not only caused a drop in sales of the Tribe workshop's handcrafted goods but also created a certain amount of chaos in the current market.

So A Li was already investigating the beastmen who were privately selling the workshop's handcrafted goods?

Truly swift—as expected of A Li!

A wondrous sense of pride welled up in Mu Qing's heart. He assured Lai, "Don't worry, I'm not that loose-tongued."

Let alone the fact that this was his own female's idea.

Hearing this, Lai's face instantly broke into an "I knew it" smile. "Then if there's nothing else, I'll head out. Call me if you need anything."

"Mm."

Mu Qing gave a light response, and after Lai left, he turned around and picked up the cub that had been slithering toward a gap in the corner.

"Play here. Don't go running off to other places."

Mu Qing placed the snakelet into a model wooden house—this kind of wooden house was a toy made specifically for young snakes.

Though it looked like just an ordinary hollowed-out square box on the outside, inside it was an intricate maze. Once a young snake went in, it often couldn't find its way out even after playing all day. So for some beastmen who were always losing their own snakelets even at home, it was undoubtedly a treasure.

After all, nobody wanted to turn around only to find their cub gone without a trace. If the cub could find its own food, that would be fine—as long as it didn't starve to death, the family would eventually find it sooner or later if they searched hard enough.

What was terrifying was when a snakelet hid itself in a corner, stayed hidden so long that it realized no one had found it, then became depressed, and finally starved to death in that corner.

To a beastman family that cared about its cubs, that would simply be a bolt from the blue.

After settling the cub, Mu Qing picked up a water-filled funnel and turned it over to use as a timer. If he were the only one working in the workroom, of course he wouldn't need this timer, but there was no helping it—he had brought the cub along today.

So to prevent the cub from going hungry, this timer was quite necessary.

……

On the other side, Yun Li arrived at the Market accompanied by Leng Xiao.

She was going to investigate the handcrafted goods that had leaked out of the workshop, so of course she couldn't only act on the workshop's end. Only by figuring out both the source and the destination could she understand their purpose in privately selling the handcrafted goods.

Was it purely for Crystal Cores, or had they developed other, different motives?