1416 The 7 Colonies

Alex decided to take his time going through the valley. He was in no hurry at all, so he would rather take a gander at the scenic mountains and valleys that were completely filled with plant life.

A couple of hours into the journey, Alex saw an open space with beasts flying in the sky and enjoying the sunlight on the ground. 

There was a massive open space with a river flowing through the middle, and the beasts on either side. They were enjoying their time along with their younger ones.

Some of the beasts saw them and many started looking up as a result to gaze at them. It had been a while since they had seen humans.

Alex looked at the trees surrounding the small grassland and showed a little surprised expression.

“Do these beasts below us not have houses?” he asked.

In the Beast Realm back in the Southern Continent, many of the beasts had houses. They weren’t as detailed as human houses almost always, but they were houses. They were built with wood and planks, with rooms in them.

There were so many of them there that seeing not a single one here made him feel a little awkward. 

He knew not every beast had these. The Demonic Beasts Forest in the Northern Continent certainly didn’t have that as those beasts were less intelligent overall.

However, he at least thought that this, a forest that was closely related to the Azure Dragon would have that at the very least. The one controlled by White Tiger did after all.

“These are wild beasts, left to their own devices. What they do or do not do is of no concern to us,” the Swan said. “There are ones that decide to build houses, but it seems intelligence is lacking amongst these ones.”

Alex looked at the Swan after he heard the answer. He thought for a bit and asked, “May I ask what you mean by Wild? As far as I can tell, they are beasts that can cultivate, and there were even 3 Saints down there. Do you still call them wild?”

“Wild here doesn’t necessarily mean wild in the normal term, your Majesty,” the Crown Prince spoke up. “It also means lawless, left to their own means.”

“Ah,” Alex finally understood. “Wild, I see.”

But that only made him more curious about other things. “Does this land have no rules then?” he asked. “No law?”

“These ones don’t,” the Swan mentioned. “But our seven colonies most definitely do.”

“I’m not sure you know this or not, your Majesty, but when the first Azure Dragon came from the sky, he brought with him 7 main subordinates.”

“While they were here, those beasts procreated and left descendants behind that each rule a single colony,” the Crown Prince answered. “Outside of those 7 colonies, the land is lawless.”

“I see,” Alex said. “May I ask why you decided not to put a law in this place? As far as I am aware, you guys hold the sovereignty to this land.”

“We do, and all of this falls under the jurisdiction of the 7 Leaders. But even after that, we let almost everything remain lawless,” the girl said. “After all, that is the natural order of this land. We cannot hope to maintain it if we start putting restrictions on what a beast can and cannot do.”

“To begin with, how do we make laws for the rest of the beasts to follow when many don’t even have a concept of law?” the Swan said. “A beast needs to have an incredible bloodline to be intelligent enough to understand the laws.”

“Most beasts need to enter Saint realm to gain intelligence. Even then, they can’t control their primal instincts. Given that most beasts have a really low cultivation base or no cultivation base, it is an impossibility to make rules that everyone will follow.”

“You are correct,” Alex said, agreeing with the swan. Unlike humans that only took a few years and no cultivation base to be intelligent, the beasts took forever to do that.

It wasn’t just either. Bloodline was a huge factor in intelligence as well.

That was why most aquatic beasts were so quick to attack someone as they only followed their instincts and never their intellect. 

“And of course, there is the problem of diversity too,” the swan said. “Unlike humans, who are all basically the same species, how do you make laws for something so diverse as a forest full of animals?”

“Do you make hunting not allowed, thereby starving an entire chunk of the population?”

“Do you make flying illegal, thereby making it impossible for birds to go anywhere?”

“Do you make destroying herbs illegal, starving the herbivores?”

“Do you make killing not allowed, and effectively stop the only method of cultivation for nearly 99% of all beasts that are in this forest?” 

The Swan’s question stumped both the humans at once. The Crown Prince hadn’t properly heard the reasoning for the lawless nature of the land, and had chalked it up to just beasts being beasts.

However, after hearing this, he realized that the lawlessness was actually created out of necessity. Or else, the entire ecosystem of the beasts would disappear.

Alex nodded as well, understanding more about the intent of the beasts. “Then I expect the 7 colonies to be lawful? Are they as strict as human lands, or a little less?” he asked.

“To be honest, I do not know how lawful or strict the human land is myself, but from what I’ve heard, its about the same,” the swan saying. “No killing, no stealing, no making it hard to live, etc, etc.”

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“Everyone is free to go out and get what they want to, so there is no need for a single currency that controls all.”

“Do you guys not use spirit stones?” Alex asked.

“We do, but it is not different from the plants we find or the material we discover. It is considered no different,” the Swan said.

“And where exactly are we going right now?” Alex asked. “One of the 7 colonies?”

The Swan nodded. “With the Emperor’s son coming and with another King’s arrival, our 7 Leaders have gathered in the Lizard Colony, and that is where I am taking you.”

Alex was happy to hear that. ‘The Lizard colony, huh?’ he thought. He wished it was a different one, but there wasn’t much he could argue here. 

He talked with the Swan for a bit longer, trying to understand a bit more about the world that he had entered. As they talked, the topic slowly went toward one that Alex wasn’t certain if he could ask or not.

After thinking for a while, he didn’t see anything wrong with questioning that.

“I heard that your leaders closed the border of this land half a century ago. May I ask why they did that?” he asked.

The Swan thought for a moment and shook his head. “We had a large amount of humans come hunt the beasts in these lands and it was causing problems. So, we decided to close this land for the beasts to reproduce and recover.”