These long-haired horned horses were wild animals native to the planet Yaochi.
They looked about eighty percent like the wildebeest of Africa's open plains on Earth, but had thick, shaggy coats like yaks. They were even larger than moose, mild-tempered, and easy to domesticate and raise. They mainly ate shrubs and moss, but also produced plenty of meat and milk. As long as their feed included some high-nutrient alfalfa and ground shellfish and fish bones, they visibly grew fatter by the day. They really were nearly perfect livestock.
Perhaps it was precisely because this planet was a bountiful, thriving "sanctuary world" that it had produced wild animals so perfectly suited to animal husbandry without any breeding.
...Of course, whether these creatures were truly wild was very much open to debate.
Considering that the entire absurdly flourishing "Devil's Labyrinth star region" might have been transformed by the ancient Enlighteners civilization using powers utterly beyond the comprehension of people today, this could be a religious question rather than a biological one.
Of course, none of that was the point.
In any case, when the soldiers of the 38th Division—many of whom came from Sandfolk herding families—discovered these livestock grazing on the plains on the other side of the mountains, the people of Marshal Li Ge not only solved their food shortage but also gained a plentiful source of protein.
One Sandfolk sergeant said he'd never seen livestock this fat, this docile, or this stupid in his entire life. They were much easier to look after than the giant lizards on New Jade Gate.
By the last week of December, one piece of good news after another had arrived.
The 38th Division's exploration team reported that after discovering abundant mineral deposits, they had also found large veins of kryptonite and adamantine in a