The first thing Lin Tai had them do was divide themselves into groups based on their species. Then she had every group send a few beasts as their representatives. The number of representatives each group would have was based on the total number of that species. For every one hundred members of that species, they would get one representative. The lions numbered 1,000, and so they got ten representatives. The baboons numbered 1,500, so they had fifteen representatives. After grouping up a couple of species herself, the rest of the beasts followed suit and did as she organized. This would be a way for the beasts to make decisions based on population size and Lin Tai called this, The House of Many.

The pack animals did the best of course, the wolves had twenty-three members and the buffalo had thirty. The birds had decided to group all together and their total numbers engulfed nearly every other faction. A murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens, a bevy of doves, and even a few stray parrots, they had all come together to form one big fowl group under the phoenix’s flock. But the largest of them all came from the groundhogs. Their total number of representatives was fifty-three, which meant that the groundhogs numbered over 5,300 in total.

Surprisingly, the arrogant dragon hadn’t joined a group. All he wanted was his pond and nothing more. No subordinates, no land, just his pond.

Another house was made to represent the animals by their strength. This didn’t appeal to me but Lin Tai believed that there would need to be something to appease the strong individuals in the group. And since it was just a method of representation, it didn’t directly oppose the first rule I had set out. It was composed of all the rank twelve beings in the forest, regardless of their species, and it had sixty-six members. It was far smaller than the House of Many, and because of that, each individual member’s vote would be far more powerful than those of the House of Many. Lin Tai called this one, The House of Strength.

And the last house was actually the simplest of the bunch. Lin Tai asked me to pick a few beasts that I liked and added a few more to my choices. This would compose the last house, The House of Wisdom.

It was a strange form of government, but it had taken Lin Tai less than an hour to build. The idea was a sort of congress-like group where the beasts could handle making decisions on their own. Lin Tai would still enforce some laws herself of course, but the governmental houses would allow the beasts to guide and grow their little society as they saw fit.

There was a cooperative system of checks and balances that allowed each house to have some control over the other. It went something like this, The House of Many would make the rules, The House of Strength would enforce them, and The House of Wisdom would inspect the rules and reject any rules they thought were unjust. It echoed back to ye old American democracy in a way, with its three branches of government, but it also differed in many ways.

"Wow," I said by the end of all of it. "That was very well done."

"Thank you honored master. Back in the Divine Beast Emporium, management, and establishment of governance for the pet planets was a task given to the servants. I had hoped to be one of those servants one day and had studied for the task," she responded.

"I didn’t know the beasts of the Emporium had governments on their planets. I thought they simulated the natural wild environments."

"Ah… they don’t. But the Emporium also raises slave planets, and I had hoped to help govern them one day."

I looked at her a little curiously.

"You wanted to own slaves?" I asked.

"No, no, far from it honored master. I was brought up on one of these planets as were all of my sisters. The servants in charge of our world were… cruel at times. I had hoped that I would be assigned to one of these planets and could raise them right in some way. I had studied many different governments and societies, hoping to help construct something fair for one of these planets. It had been my life’s dream."

Lin Tai sighed in sadness and raised her head up to the sky, and I saw the other maidens’ smiles tighten in fear at the action.

"They had told us that we would be the servants of gods and the honor we would gain from doing so would be beyond our worth, and so we trained. I used to think that the reward would be worth all the pain and effort that I had gone through and that the end would be magnificent. I would serve gods, beings who were far above my own existence, surely the greater they were, the greater their kindness," she said with a sad chuckle.

"I suppose I was being foolish," she mumbled.

Then suddenly she turned and looked towards me, realizing what she had done. Fear overran her face and she stood up nearly trembling.

"Not that they weren’t my greater honored master. It was simply foolish of me to assume that they would even care about the existence of a small thing such as me-"

"No," I interrupted.

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"You’re right. The Divine Beast Emporium is filled with selfish cultivators," I said leaning back into the soft ground of the clearing.

"It’s why they raise beasts. Most of their practitioners have the Dao of Beasts, might makes right and all. There are better sects, but that philosophy is common anywhere in the multiverse," I said motioning over to the beasts that now packed the little coliseum.

"It sucks, but I guess it becomes harder to be good when you don’t have to be, power corrupts and all that," I said.

Lin Tai just stood there. I didn’t know what she was thinking. Her face had a stiff and somewhat surprised smile, but all the other maidens had similar expressions on their faces.

I laid back as I listened to the sound of bickering beasts. They had taken to politics pretty well, almost too well. They started bickering about things immediately and now the leader of the groundhog faction was chewing out members of the Herd Union for using intimidation tactics to push out the weaker beasts into fringe territories.

"This is preposterous! For this much of the valley to be distributed to the Herd Union is a blatant theft from all Divine Beasts!" A small groundhog chirped, pointing at a small and poorly drawn map.

The map itself was drawn on a leaf, and the ink was a mixture of berries and tree sap.

"Well, we can’t redistribute the land based on population size. That would give your individual species more power than some of the species coalition," a small buffalo rebutted.

"And what about the Fowl Kingdom? I do not see our presence listed on this makeshift map of yours," the head of the phoenixes commented.

"The Hunter’s Alliance demands as much land as any other. We will not be treated like runts," a hyena giggled.

"And what of our Free Beast’s Republic? WE WILL NOT BE DISGRACED!" a small monkey chirped.

Surprisingly, the stronger ones stayed out of the debate. Most of them had stayed still after my little tantrum. I frowned. I shouldn’t care but I did. I had appealed to their beastly nature to get them to submit, but still, I hated it. I hated that strength was the only thing that could force them to stay in line, that even I needed fear to control them.

I’d seen it in the villager’s eyes to a lesser degree. Fear, compliance, silent hatred, it was disgusting. I’d be fine if they just cursed at me or called me a hypocrite. I could take that. There was some truth to that thought, after all. To keep peace by fighting for it was a strange self-defeating idea, but still. I knew that. I had come to terms with that.

Fear and respect were two different things after all.

So far the negotiations for land seemed to have gone the groundhog's way, with them claiming nearly ten percent of the valley as their own. But then again, this was just a very recently established government. We didn’t even know what owning the land meant, much less how they would enforce the rules or govern it.

"Lin, you got it from here?" I asked her.

"Ah yes," she answered, raising her head up as if snapping out of a daze.

"Good," I nodded, getting up and dusting my clothes off.

"I have dinner plans with Chin so I'll be leaving. And remember, the beasts can't hurt you."

"Of course," Lin Tai replied.

"Alright! See ya!" I said pushing the earth off my feet and soaring into the sky.

********

Lin Tai watched as the honored master flew, turning into a spec in the air in mere moments. She felt strange. She felt… well she wasn’t sure what she felt but she felt surprised at the very least, and she could tell that all her sisters carried a similar sentiment.

"What… what he said? Do you think he believes it?" Lin Tai asked.

"He is a strange man," Mei Shen replied. "You should not overthink his words. It will lead you nowhere."

Lin Tai sighed. This was true. The man was an anomaly. He spent his days treating mortals like his equals while making divine beasts bow down to him in fear. He was truly a strange man. But there were a fair amount of eccentrics in the cultivator’s world, and strangeness wasn’t too uncommon.

No the truly strange things about this man were what he said and the things he did. There was a sincerity about him, something that made you believe that he truly held firm to the things he said.

Lin Tai and her sisters had ignored it at first. They had met many of these god-like beings, and surface-level kindness was not an uncommon thing to see. He had seemed similar, kind, respectful, and honorable. But that would only last so long.

Powerful cultivators such as him were akin to people who take the spider outside of the house instead of killing it. And as much as they exuded kindness, the spider that bit the hand would be the one who got crushed. They all knew that the moment they stepped out of line would be the moment they would be squashed like insects.

And even if they didn’t, even if the cultivator didn’t care about face or respect, there was still the difference between that of a man and a spider. They were small compared to him, almost nothing. Their lives were reductive and tiny, undeserving of acknowledgment from those as strong as him.

It sounded cruel, but it was true. At the honored master’s rank, he would be able to destroy a universe with little effort. He understood the very nature of the things that bound reality and he could make them and destroy them at his very whims. The divine beasts, beings that were practically laws made manifest, were forced to bow down to him.

Truly, this man was above them. He might talk to them. He might eat with them. He might have put plans with mortals before the demands of the divine beasts. But none of that mattered, not truly. These were all eccentricities. Quirks. Nothing more.

Lin Tai sighed. She slowly pushed that thought aside, but even in the back of her head, the thought was still there.

Equals.

She chuckled, drawing some of the beast’s attention.

"Alright, first of all, we have to discuss the idea of merits, technically the fruits you find do not belong to you but rather to the owner of the land, the honored master."

There was an audible outcry at this statement, but this time the beasts did not push, and this time Lin Tai did not fear.