"All right, it's about time we got going. Let's not disturb them while they're getting frisky."
Luo Yu glanced at the time again and reckoned someone at the Beast Management Bureau should be at work by now. He tugged the little penguin along and wheeled a spare bicycle out of the research institute's storeroom.
Then he placed July, the little penguin, in the bicycle basket.
"I'll take you outside for some fresh air. Stay put in there."
"Mmm..."
Mirror Moon Island wasn't large. It had only one town and four villages.
The island had two landmark attractions: Moon Reflection Lake and Moon-Gazing Peak.
Moon Reflection Lake was a vast lake in the center of the island. Mirror Moon Town and two of the villages were built around it, and the villages made their living from fishing.
The town, meanwhile, was the center of the entire island and had its largest seaport.
As for the other two villages, they were built beside the mountain and relied mainly on agriculture.
To take the cultivation qualification assessment, Luo Yu needed to visit the Beast Tamer Administration Bureau. It was located on an island in the middle of Moon Reflection Lake, connected to Mirror Moon Town by a bridge.
It was the official agency responsible for managing matters related to beast tamers on Mirror Moon Island.
Whether someone wanted to certify their beast-taming level or conduct a business related to beast taming, they had to apply here.
"Woojee..."
July stood in the basket, his big, round eyes observing the world outside. He found it all especially novel, just as Luo Yu had at first.
As he watched, he suddenly looked up.
"Why is it raining..."
As Luo Yu rode up to the entrance of Mirror Moon Bridge, a light rain suddenly began to drizzle from the sky.
Luo Yu was initially worried that July might not be able to bear it. After all, the earth element was countered by the water element...
But he was overthinking it. Mutated beasts weren't so fragile that they could be "defeated" by a drizzle.
Seeing the little penguin enjoying the falling rain, Luo Yu relaxed.
If he couldn't even withstand this little bit of rain, how could he talk of conquering the ocean someday?
"Still, I hope it clears up soon."
Luo Yu himself really did have a bit of psychological trauma when it came to rain. After the torrential rain apocalypse, he doubted anyone who had lived through it had a good impression of rain.
He had even begun to dislike his own name. Luo Yu, falling rain-look, he had been killed by torrential rain falling from the sky...
There absolutely was something to considering feng shui when naming someone. Luo Yu was firmly convinced of it now. After all, this body's father was named Luo Shui, and hadn't he too fallen into the water when his boat was destroyed and he died?
"Good thing I picked up a good habit during the apocalypse."
To shield himself from the rain, Luo Yu pulled out an umbrella and rode with one hand while holding it with the other... The good habit in question was never going anywhere without an umbrella, even after transmigrating.
He pushed down on the pedals and continued on his way.
Before long, Luo Yu arrived at the Beast Management Bureau.
With the great tide approaching, the bureau was bustling. When Luo Yu arrived, there was only one receptionist at the front desk.
"Hello, I'd like to get my beast tamer status certified first, then make an appointment for the cultivation qualification assessment." He walked up to the reception desk in the lobby.
The receptionist looked up at the boy before her, who was of school age.
"What did you just say? An appointment... for the cultivation qualification assessment?" She wondered if she had heard him wrong.
"Yes."
"...Name."
"Luo Yu."
"Age."
"Fifteen."
"When did you awaken your Beast-Taming Space?"
"Two months ago."
"And your contracted pet beast is..." She craned her head. In fact, she had already spotted the Earth Penguin tucked into Luo Yu's hat, enjoying himself.
"A Low-Rank Ordinary Species, an Earth Penguin."
"An Earth Penguin... That penguin species that can neither fly nor swim?" The receptionist was taken aback again. Someone actually contracted that kind of mutated beast?
Was he planning to become a farmer and till the fields someday? Its burrowing ability could indeed loosen the soil, but for something as simple as that, there was no need to waste a precious contract slot...
"Yes, that's the Earth Penguin." Luo Yu chuckled.
July poked his head out too. The perceptive little penguin kept feeling that the two of them were laughing at him...
"Mm, all right... Certifying your beast tamer status won't be a problem. Are you sure you want to take the cultivation qualification assessment?"
"The registration fee is 100 Alliance Coins, and it won't be refunded if you fail."
She looked at Luo Yu, who appeared to be a student, and couldn't understand what he was thinking, whether it was his choice of contracted pet beast or the cultivation qualification assessment.
The latter was no easy matter, especially since Luo Yu didn't look like he knew much about cultivation. After all, anyone with a little knowledge probably wouldn't contract an Earth Penguin... not even as a temporary pet beast.
"No problem. Then is it refunded if I pass?"
Luo Yu handed her the Alliance Coins.
"It isn't refunded if you pass either."
After putting the money away, the receptionist continued booking Luo Yu's assessment.
"Go get your beast tamer status certified first."
"The cultivation qualification assessment is at eight tomorrow morning. Remember not to be late."
Luo Yu nodded, looking at his registration fee with a pained heart.
After that, he certified his beast tamer status without much trouble by summoning his level-one Earth Penguin.
The certification was simple. All he had to do was summon his pet beast in front of a staff member.
By the time he finished, it was nearly noon.
He didn't choose to go straight home, because... there was a public library inside the Beast Management Bureau with a large collection of books. Luo Yu planned to study hard there and catch up on more information about this era.
At noon, in the Beast Management Bureau's staff cafeteria.
A group of people were discussing what had happened offshore over the past two days, and the atmosphere was grim.
"This great tide definitely won't be ordinary. The signs of zombie activity this year have been too strange."
"Yeah, and quite a few fleets have had their ships surrounded by zombies... Do you think..."
"Let's not talk about that. Let's change the subject." A slightly older person spoke up, interrupting the others.
"Right, right. Speaking of which, I attended to a boy today."
The receptionist who had attended to Luo Yu that morning spoke up and told them about him.
"Luo Yu, surname Luo... Is he the child of Scholar Luo Shui, who died in Waterway No. 203 a while back?" someone asked.
"He should be!" another person continued. "What's he taking the cultivation qualification assessment for?"
"I don't know, but isn't fifteen a little too young? If I remember right, the youngest person on record to pass the cultivation qualification assessment on Mirror Moon Island was seventeen."
"Records are made to be broken. Scholar Luo Shui was one of the few talented people from Mirror Moon Island to get into Canglan Ocean University, and he even brought a pretty female classmate back and married her. How could the son they raised be lacking? What a pity that he died so young."
Everyone shook their heads.
"But I heard Luo Yu's mother's family was strongly opposed to the two of them, so she eloped to Mirror Moon Island and hadn't been in contact with her family for over a decade," someone gossiped.
"She was a beast tamer from Azure Waves Island, after all. It's only natural she'd look down on Mirror Moon Island... Scholar Luo Shui was considered a genius on Mirror Moon Island, but when he went to Azure Waves Island, it seemed he immediately faded into the crowd... A big place really is different."
"I just feel sorry for the boy. He's an orphan now, without a single relative by his side. If he had any family around, would he have contracted an Earth Penguin?"
It was far too irrational. Even if he could replace his pet beast later, he would still waste a great deal of time. He had already lost at the starting line.
In the afternoon.
Luo Yu stayed immersed in the library.
There were many history books here, well suited to a transmigrator like him... Even when he remembered something, he chose to go over it again.
"The torrential rain apocalypse lasted a full ten years, from the first drop of rain to the end... and the rain grew heavier and heavier throughout."
"Over those ten years, sea levels rose wildly, flooding almost all the plains and lowlands. In the end, all that remained of China was one super-island connected around several major plateaus, along with a few isolated mountain islands..."
"That super-island has now been renamed Vast Blue. Some people like to call it Azure Waves Island, while others call it the Azure Billows Continent. It's currently the largest known human settlement, and its civilization has recovered to the greatest extent of all the settlements. Compulsory education and the social pension system have both been restarted."
As Luo Yu leafed through the books, he thought back. His mother was from the Azure Billows Continent, wasn't she? He wondered whether her relatives there knew she had died, and whether someone would come to take him away to live a good life in a big place.
Whatever the case, blood was thicker than water!
He shook his head and stopped indulging in fantasies. He had better rely on himself first; he couldn't pin his hopes on outsiders.
"And in the present world, apart from the Azure Billows Continent, there are four other major central settlements elsewhere in the world... Their survivors are all people who were formerly foreigners."
"The Sky Tower, towering into the clouds and reaching straight up to the sea of clouds..."
"The Deep Sea Kingdom, an underwater nation."
"The Turtle Shark Archipelago, a chain of moving islands, a settlement built on a group of giant turtles. Schools of mutated sharks serve as the giant turtles' dependents, guarding the islands."
And...
"Sea God City, a city-state built on a giant mutated blue whale."
"Every major human settlement has its own governing power. The stability of the Azure Billows Continent and the forces on its surrounding islands is currently maintained by the Sea Tamer Alliance."
"After the torrential rain apocalypse ended, the order of human civilization had actually collapsed beyond recognition. A long period of chaos followed, and the Sea Tamer Alliance was one of the forces that brought that chaotic age to an end."
"Some forces that had grown accustomed to barbarism ultimately had no choice but to become pirates, roaming from place to place as wanted criminals, while the forces that joined the alliance flourished under its management."
"Mirror Moon Island... is also one of the Sea Tamer Alliance's member islands."
"Even now, an armed alliance fleet is stationed on Mirror Moon Island. But the alliance's armed fleets are only responsible for eliminating beast tamers who cause trouble at sea and generally don't interfere with the normal development of each settlement."
Once Luo Yu plunged into the library, he lost track of time.
There was too much in the books, but they mostly recorded the history of the waters under the alliance's jurisdiction after its founding.
Yet the decades of history between the end of the torrential rain apocalypse and the alliance's founding were sparsely documented. There wasn't much about the development of the other major human settlements either, just a few brief mentions...
There are gaps in the history... It must have been an extremely dark and bloody time... Good thing I didn't transmigrate into that period.