Some people died, but not completely...
After an endless period of unconsciousness, Shi Yu suddenly sat up in bed.
He gulped down fresh air, his chest heaving.
Confusion, bewilderment, and all sorts of other emotions welled up inside him.
Where am I?
Shi Yu then instinctively looked around, only to grow even more bewildered.
A single dorm room?
Even if he had been rescued, he should have been in a hospital ward.
And his body... how could he be completely uninjured?
Full of questions, Shi Yu quickly scanned the room, his gaze finally settling on a mirror at the head of the bed.
The mirror reflected his current appearance: he was about seventeen or eighteen and very handsome.
But the problem was, that wasn't him!
His former self had been a handsome young man in his twenties with an extraordinary bearing, and he had been working for some time.
But now, no matter how he looked at this face, it belonged to someone only high-school age...
The change left Shi Yu stunned for a long time.
Don't tell me the surgery was a success...
His body and face had both changed. This wasn't a question of surgery or no surgery; it was immortal magic.
He had completely transformed into another person!
Could it be... that I transmigrated?
Besides the mirror at the head of the bed, whose position was clearly bad feng shui, Shi Yu also found three books beside it.
Shi Yu picked them up, and their titles instantly left him speechless.
"An Essential Beast-Raising Handbook for Novice Caretakers"
"Postpartum Care for Pet Beasts"
"A Guide to Evaluating Beast-Eared Girls of Other Races"
Shi Yu: ???
The first two titles were fairly normal, but what was going on with the last one?
"Ahem."
Shi Yu's expression turned serious, and he reached out, but his arm soon froze.
Just as he was about to open the third book and see what on earth it was, a sharp pain shot through his brain, and a flood of memories surged forth.
Icefield City.
Pet Beast Breeding Base.
Trainee pet beast caretaker.
Beast Tamer?
What a mess...
It took Shi Yu more than ten minutes to digest those sudden memories.
After a long while, Shi Yu raised his head, his expression complicated.
He had guessed right. It seemed he really had transmigrated.
Not only because of those memories, but also because good looks alone would never lie to him.
As everyone knew, ugly people weren't qualified to transmigrate, nor were they qualified to have someone transmigrate into their bodies. It had already become a law.
He was so handsome that he must have transmigrated, no doubt about it...
After dying in an accident, he had transmigrated to another world where beast taming was the norm.
Although this room looked like a modern single dorm room, he was no longer on Earth. He had come to a place called Blue Planet.
This world was very peculiar, with a culture completely different from Earth's.
Extraordinary powers had existed here since ancient times.
These extraordinary powers weren't the battle Qi, magic, or immortal cultivation Shi Yu had seen in various films and shows...
Rather, every living being had the potential to undergo extraordinary evolution.
Through continuous evolution, most animals and plants could awaken greater intelligence and powerful special abilities.
It wasn't even limited to animals and plants. Mountains, rivers, lakes, wind, and snow could all evolve into living beings.
Every one of these extraordinary beings wielded formidable powers, such as lightning, fire, and hurricanes, just like the divine beasts of Earth's myths.
Against this backdrop, in this world's ancient times, weak humans could only depend on powerful beings as guardian gods and scrape by in tribes.
But after a long period of development, humanity gradually developed an extraordinary power of its own: the ability to tame beasts.
Through meditation, some people could open up an alternate space in their minds and use this cage-like space to capture extraordinary beings.
At first, humans simply captured weak extraordinary beings by force and used them as servants, commanding them to work and fight. Against powerful extraordinary beings, humans were still unable to resist.
But later, someone discovered that extraordinary beings grew almost several times faster in a Beast Taming Space than they did outside, and that it was easier for them to break through their racial limits and evolve.
This discovery gave humanity hope of rising to power, and people began to study Beast Taming Spaces.
Thereafter, focusing on capture, training, breeding, and control, humanity continued to develop its beast taming abilities and gradually refined the beast taming system. People bred a wide variety of powerful battle pets, and the profession known as Beast Tamer stepped onto the world stage.
With the rise of Beast Tamers, many extraordinary beings also began to willingly form contracts with humans, hoping to use humanity's extraordinary power to grow rapidly and attempt to break through their racial limits.
By the present day, several thousand years later, humanity had established a glorious beast taming civilization and controlled the most resource-rich regions of the planet.
In this beast taming era, Beast Tamers had naturally become a symbol of status and class.
Every profession was tied to Beast Tamers, and only by becoming one could a person become an elite in any field.
A famous Beast Tamer's appearance fee for a single match could break through the sky.
Having a powerful Beast Tamer stationed in a city could directly boost its economy.
Beast Tamers occupied key positions in the vast majority of industries, and the highest seats of power were also controlled by Beast Tamers...
However... although humanity had risen to power, many vicious beasts still roamed the world, untamable and often bringing disaster to human cities.
That was also why some cities hoped to recruit powerful Beast Tamers to stand guard.
And according to his memories... his predecessor's family had perished in a beast tide.
"A world of beast taming... I more or less understand it."
"But why is it still so miserable after transmigrating?"
Shi Yu took a deep breath. Transmigration was one thing, but in such a dangerous world, it would clearly have been more comfortable to transmigrate as a second-generation Beast Tamer.
Ideally, he would have been protected by a dragon girl and accompanied by an elf from childhood. Only then would his transmigration have been worthwhile.
But unfortunately, transmigration seemed to be a technical skill, just like reincarnation.
His name was still Shi Yu, but he was no longer Shi Yu, the mythology scholar from Earth. He was an utterly ordinary trainee pet beast caretaker at Icefield City's Pet Beast Breeding Base.
Not a Beast Tamer... more like someone who did odd jobs for Beast Tamers.
This was a place dedicated to raising pet beasts... and he was currently learning how to care for them here.
His daily tasks were feeding pet beast cubs, shoveling their poop, and cleaning up.
He was a wage worker through and through, at the very bottom of society.
But that explained the contents of those books. So he had been studying...
His predecessor had worked so hard because he hoped to become a Beast Tamer, but the reality was... he was an orphan who couldn't even support himself, so how could he talk about raising pet beasts?
Given Shi Yu's family circumstances, becoming a Beast Tamer was far too difficult.
But Shi Yu was also fortunate. A little talent and a little hard work had at least given him a job connected to Beast Tamers, so it wasn't impossible for him to become one in the future.
He had even made plenty of preparations and decided to take out a loan to buy a high-quality pet beast cub and become a Beast Tamer.
At such a young age, he had already decided to take on a pet beast loan.
Shi Yu broke down. It really was miserable.
With a hefty mortgage and car loan of his own, he could relate a billion percent. He hadn't expected to be saddled with a loan after transmigrating, too.
That was getting off track. For now, Shi Yu was still just a lowly wage worker.
And he had tasks waiting for him in a little while. The workplace ran on a six-six-six schedule, and the hours were strict.
To be honest, apart from when he was in high school, it had been a long time since he had gotten up at six in the morning...
Shi Yu rubbed his head, feeling a headache coming on, then walked over to a wall with a work schedule posted on it.
It was the weekly task list handed out just yesterday. As a trainee at the breeding base, his tasks were assigned to him every day.
Today's tasks were... Shi Yu looked at the entries under Monday.
Morning: Feed the Snow Wolf pack (solo task)... carry feed (group task)...
Afternoon: Record Green Silkworm growth data (group task)...
Hmm...
If his memory served him right... Snow Wolves were pack-dwelling carnivorous pet beasts that were extremely fierce and brutal, weren't they?
A task that looked so dangerous... were they serious about assigning it to one person?
Shi Yu fell into thought.
He had been bitten by a dog as a child and was naturally rather scared of canines, so this task was a bit nasty for him.
"But it should probably be fine..."
Shi Yu suddenly remembered that he had the Telepathy talent and could communicate normally with any living being. It felt like nothing would go wrong after all...
The reason he had been able to come here as a trainee was not only that he had excellent grades in his school's theory classes, but also that he possessed a special Beast Taming Talent called Telepathy.
When humans successfully opened a Beast Taming Space through meditation, they also awakened a Beast Taming Talent.
Apart from the fact that he had yet to contract his first pet beast, Shi Yu had already successfully opened his Beast Taming Space and awakened his talent.
This was thanks to the state incorporating the meditation method for opening a Beast Taming Space into compulsory education in modern times to cultivate talented beast tamers. Shi Yu had been found to have a Beast Taming Talent at that stage.
There were many kinds of Beast Taming Talents, but they fell mainly into two categories: enhancement-type and special-type, with an awakening ratio of roughly nine to one.
Flame Enhancement was an example of an enhancement-type talent. A Beast Tamer with such a talent would do best to find and raise a pet beast with fire abilities.
That was because, in battle, the Beast Tamer could use his Beast Taming Talent to enhance the power of his pet beast's fire-type skills.
Compared with enhancement-type talents, special-type talents were extremely complicated and followed no pattern. The ways in which different talents manifested varied enormously.
For example, the special-type talent Sharing allowed a Beast Tamer to share one skill with a contracted pet beast, granting the Beast Tamer an extraordinary ability.
Beast Tamers with talents like Sharing generally had much stronger self-defense and combat capabilities than ordinary Beast Tamers.
There was also the special talent Fusion, which allowed a Beast Tamer to briefly fuse with a pet beast and assume a new form. Maybe beast-eared girls really did exist?
As for Shi Yu's Telepathy talent, although it was also a special type, it was relatively common and currently one of the most widespread special-type talents.
Once they had mastered their ability, Beast Tamers with the Telepathy talent could communicate with any intelligent being without a language barrier.
Normally, Beast Tamers could only understand the thoughts of pet beasts they had contracted with, but Beast Tamers with the Telepathy talent could communicate to some extent even with other people's pet beasts or wild creatures.
In the history of the Beast Tamer profession, although the Telepathy talent could not directly provide combat power, its status was unshakable, and it was indispensable.
After all, if humans could communicate with other species, it was quite possible that an unnecessary war could be avoided altogether.
Key positions in professions within the Beast Tamer field, such as medical workers, teachers, researchers, and caretakers, were generally held by Beast Tamers with the Telepathy talent. It was an all-purpose talent.
Since he had such a practical Beast Taming Talent, he should, in theory, find it fairly easy to get along with wild creatures...
At that thought, Shi Yu breathed a sigh of relief.
As for using Telepathy, Shi Yu wasn't exactly proficient, but he shouldn't be bad at it either.
He instinctively tried using his Beast Taming Talent to listen in all directions, intending to practice the steps beforehand so he wouldn't mess up later.
But just then, something unexpected happened...
As the Beast Taming Space Shi Yu had opened in his mind trembled, his vision suddenly blurred. Immediately afterward, a black stone compendium appeared in his mind.
It seemed... he had awakened a second Beast Taming Talent!