The leather map spread across the flat stone showed two charcoal trails creeping toward the same summit. The warden tapped his bamboo staff where the lines crossed, then followed a set of heavy paw prints leading straight into the narrow pass. Frost clung to the dirt, but the tracks were unmistakable.
The dry season hit hard that year. Streams turned to dust, and the mountain deer vanished into the high ridges. Without food, two tigers began bumping into each other along the boundary stakes. Claws tore through wood, and blood soaked the cracked soil. If they kept fighting over the same shrinking hunting ground, both would waste away before winter arrived.
He needed to figure out exactly how much prey one ridge could actually support, so he gathered ten smooth river stones and lined them up on the parchment. The numbers one and two mapped the mountain's true carrying capacity against the dual demand of two apex predators. Splitting the stones between two territories left both tigers with scraps, but pushing all ten into a single valley zone kept one strong. This quiet math illustrated the competitive exclusion principle long before anyone gave it a name. You pour the same water into two cracked bowls, and both stay dry.
The calculation gave him a clear path, but he still had to guide a living predator. He walked to the scarred boundary line where the old wooden stakes lay splintered. Instead of rebuilding the fence, he carved a deep channel pointing down the eastern slope. He scattered crushed pine needles and damp moss along that route, knowing tigers follow scent and easy ground toward untouched springs.
The heavier male caught the trail first and padded down the eastern ridge without a backward glance. The original peak settled into quiet, and the warden chiseled the old saying into the pass marker: one mountain cannot hold two kings. Local scribes would later file the phrase in gazetteers as folk ecology, but up on the ridge it just meant the land finally breathed easy again. The forest didn't need a wall to stay balanced. It just needed the right line drawn in the dirt.