BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The Blazing Tyrant and the Golden Parasite King launched assault after assault in rolling waves, hammering the Poison Wasp King mercilessly. She was barely holding on, and the edge of defeat was drawing closer with every exchange. On the other flank, Longma and the sickle weasel — tasked with holding the rear — were being driven back step by step by a giant bear and two golden apes, completely unable to mount any counterattack.

“Go!” The Human-Faced Tiger fought down the burning in its eyes and hurled itself at the toad.

“With me!” The Eagle King understood — if they didn’t act now, the Poison Wasp King, Longma, and the sickle weasel would have sacrificed themselves for nothing.

It launched into the sky.

In the instant the Human-Faced Tiger crashed against the Toad King, the Eagle King’s blazing talons swept up and down in a frenzy. Even the Toad King fighting as one with his toad had no choice but to give ground before the Eagle King’s all-out assault. The Human-Faced Tiger seized that opening, threw itself backward, smashed through the encirclement around it, and drove forward at full speed — leading the Bobtail Cat, the rhinoceros, and the rest of their makeshift group in a desperate sprint toward the distant pond.

If the Wave Slide and Vortex Return could be deployed in time, the Eagle King could be pulled out.

As for the Poison Wasp King, Longma, and the sickle weasel — caught between the Blazing Tyrant, the Golden Parasite King, and the Toad King — the odds were not in their favor.

“Move!” The Human-Faced Tiger battered aside several intercepting shadows by sheer force, covering the others’ retreat while simultaneously leaping high, dodging a Death Ray from the Black Sun overhead, and diving headlong toward the one pond that held all their lives in its water.

The will to survive had unlocked something in the Human-Faced Tiger — a speed and power it had never touched before.

CRASH.

It plunged into the pond.

Nobody had time to stop it. But what the Human-Faced Tiger found when it landed shattered something in its chest. The great pond — which had always been kept brimming full — was completely, utterly dry. The bed was cracked open like ancient desert clay, as if it had been baking under a relentless sun for months. The Human-Faced Tiger knew the Black Sun was powerful. It had never imagined it could evaporate an entire pond in an instant. Without water, the Wave Slide was useless. The Vortex Return was impossible. The fish that had lived in that pond were white bones scattered across the cracked mud.

Not a drop of moisture anywhere.

The Human-Faced Tiger, coated in dust and dirt and grief, could not stop itself from throwing its head back in a howl of anguish.

The pond was gone. Everything they had staked their survival on — gone. Without the Wave Slide and Vortex Return, they had no way to pull anyone back. Total annihilation was the only remaining outcome.

“Ha ha ha ha! Magnificent fool!” The Toad King’s laughter was nauseating as it savored the moment. “Now do you understand? Insects are destined to lose against the strong, no matter how clever they are, no matter how persistent. Power decides everything. Against the Black Sun and the two Hall Masters’ war beasts, every little trick you’ve managed is just… adorable. Weep. It’s the only thing left to you before you die.”

“I’ll kill you.” The Human-Faced Tiger wanted to tear the Toad King apart with its bare hands.

“You run — go, I’ll find Wasp, save whoever we can.” The Eagle King burst out of the dark cloud overhead and took in the situation at a glance.

“I’ll cover you—” The Human-Faced Tiger’s oldest and most loyal subordinate, the Electric Claw Squid, lunged past its master and threw itself at the Toad King. But the gap between them was far too wide — a single exchange sent the squid reeling back, badly broken. The Human-Faced Tiger’s eyes burned. It reached down, took hold of the old retainer, clenched its fist at the Toad King, and ground out the words through its teeth:

“I’m not running. I’m staying to kill this toad. If you won’t leave either — come on. We may be dying, but let’s at least take a chunk out of him before we go.”

“YES!” The Electric Claw Squid’s eight tentacles exploded outward in an instant, wrapping around the Human-Faced Tiger’s body and locking tight. Lightning crackled and seethed across every tendril.

The Human-Faced Tiger went rigid.

Brutal current surged through it, charring its skin black within seconds. The pain could not suppress its shock, or its grief.

“You,” the Human-Faced Tiger roared. “You’re the spy. All this time — you’re the traitor. Why? How many years have we been together? I treated you as a brother. I shared everything with you. And you repay me with this?”

A sword of biting frost came screaming in from directly ahead.

Front to back — clean through the heart.

The Toad King, manifesting human arms through his fusion with the toad and wielding the blade with practiced ease, laughed without stopping: “Fool. I genuinely wonder how you’ve survived in Beast Valley this long with a mind like yours. Think about it: no matter how well you treated that squid, it was still only ever your subordinate. Everything you gave it — you picked the best for yourself first and gave it the remainder. You are one of the Five Beast Kings. It was your assistant. A lackey, to put it plainly. Did you really think it was content being a lackey? Especially one who has quietly accumulated power for thousands of years — you believed it was satisfied with that? Let me tell you something, Tiger: you never understood why your own people would betray you, because you underestimated the ambition that lives inside even the smallest figure. The moment an opportunity to rise appears, they will betray you without hesitation — because abandoning the past is the only way they can claim a future. And here’s a truth you probably won’t believe: the squid came to me. The plan was its idea. How else would I have known about your Wave Slide and Vortex Return? How else would we have known to dry out the pond in advance?”

The Human-Faced Tiger wrenched its head around to stare at the Electric Claw Squid one last time.

The frost from the sword spread outward from its heart. Within seconds, the Human-Faced Tiger had become an ice sculpture.

The Electric Claw Squid fired all eight bolts of lightning into the frozen statue. The Human-Faced Tiger’s ice-bound body shattered under the current — reduced to fragments, all except for a single severed head, eyes still wide open, still furious, refusing to accept what had happened.

The head rolled.

It came to rest at the Eagle King’s feet.

“Tiger—!” The Eagle King stared at what had been the Human-Faced Tiger, and a sound of pure grief tore out of its throat. “I will kill the toad and that squid. I swear it. I will avenge you.”

“Brave words from someone who can’t even save themselves.” The Toad King swung the terrifying frost blade, and he and the Electric Claw Squid attacked the Eagle King together.

The Eagle King exploded upward through dozens of simultaneous attacks, taking a Death Ray from the Black Sun squarely — feathers blasting in every direction. Grievously wounded, shrieking, it vanished from the Boulder Field at maximum speed.

With its Sky Soar ability, it was nearly impossible to finish off if you couldn’t one-shot it. In any case, the Eagle King had never been the primary target of the Toad King’s plan. That honor belonged to the Poison Wasp King. The Eagle King was the weakest of the Five Beast Kings in raw power, and its escape ability was second to none — spending killing effort on it was wasteful.

After taking this kind of damage, the Eagle King would be out of action for a long time. The Toad King saw no path back for it.

The real threat — the quiet, precise, lethal one — had always been the Poison Wasp King.

“Get out of here!” Longma drove a thunderous blow into the sickle weasel’s back, launching it a full kilometer away.

“We leave together—!” The sickle weasel, drenched in blood, tried to claw its way back. But Longma blazed with a sudden surge of light, his speed multiplying tenfold in an instant, and sent the sickle weasel flying a second time. Beneath him, his Unicorn Flying Horse had forced its way through the Black Death Tide and paid for it — one leg snapped clean, its body a ruin of wounds without a single unbroken patch of skin. Several shadows closed in together and brought the crippled Unicorn Horse down in a coordinated barrage.

Through tear-blurred eyes, the tumbling sickle weasel watched.

The dying Unicorn Flying Horse let out one long, resonant cry. The Black Sun’s Death Ray struck from above at the same moment — and the horse detonated.

“I’m still a resident. I’ve got one transformation left. You want to die with me? Let’s go together!“

Longma’s roar was primal.

The Unicorn Flying Horse, its body punched through by the Death Ray, exploded. A wall of destructive force erupted skyward, blooming into a massive mushroom cloud. Lightning crackled and seethed within the compressed shockwave — and in the instant the surrounding shadows scrambled to flee, it expanded.

The shockwave opened its mouth like a primordial beast and swallowed every last one of them.

KRUMBLE.

Outside the Boulder Field, the open ground caved in — a scorched crater of blackened earth, deep and wide, sunk into the land.

Everything within a kilometer: dead.

A severed limb — no one could tell whose — fell wetly at the Toad King’s feet with a heavy smack, startling even that seasoned schemer.

Whether from fear of the Bobtail Cat and rhinoceros pulling the same desperate maneuver, or simply because the Unicorn Horse’s explosion had blown a gap in the encirclement, the Bobtail Cat and rhinoceros found a way through and ran. As the Black Sun fired Death Rays in pursuit, a raven appeared from nowhere — its black feathers scattering across the sky in a dark curtain, taking the killing blow.

“Let them run. They can’t run forever. Today, we finish the Wasp.” The Toad King bounded toward the Poison Wasp King, who was being suppressed from all sides by the Black Sun, the Blazing Tyrant, and the Golden Parasite King — not a shred of fighting capacity left in her. He raised the frost sword and closed in.

“I will not surrender. Not to you.”

The Poison Wasp King drove herself straight at the Golden Parasite King — the one her elemental nature could most damage — and plunged her stinger into its body with everything she had.

This was her killing venom. No antidote existed.

But a strike like this came at total cost. After driving in that final stinger, regardless of her wounds, every last drop of her life force would be converted into poison. The stinger itself would never be retractable — it would remain in the enemy’s body permanently, a piece of her left behind forever.

The Golden Parasite King screamed.

The Toad King moved without hesitation — one stroke of the frost blade, severing the half of the Parasite King’s body where the stinger had buried itself.

The severed, frozen half continued to blacken — turning ink-dark as the poison spread even through separated flesh. If the Toad King hadn’t possessed such a weapon, or hadn’t acted with such ruthless decisiveness, the Golden Parasite King would have been dragged down with the Poison Wasp King in mutual destruction. The Parasite King, badly broken, wailed and retreated to its master Wanmo’s side. The Blazing Tyrant accepted a gemstone — blazing like a small sun — from the Toad King’s offered hand, and returned to wherever it had come from without so much as glancing back at the Poison Wasp King dying on the ground below.

Even the blind could see there was nothing left to be done for her.

Her stinger was gone. Her tail had been torn away with it. And what mattered more than the physical damage was this: every measure of power she possessed had flowed out through that final strike, converted entirely into poison. She had given everything. The Toad King’s blade had denied her the kill she had earned with her life.

From somewhere in the darkness, Hall Master Ranfeng emerged, accepted the solar gemstone, exchanged a nod with the Black Sun above, and left with Wanmo, the Blazing Tyrant, and the wounded Golden Parasite King, disappearing from the Boulder Field without fanfare.

“You — are you with the Central Temple?” the Poison Wasp King asked, barely above a whisper, in her final moments.

“Not originally. But I’m smart. I know which way the wind blows. I earned the recognition of Lord Ji Wuri, and from now on I am the Central Temple’s resident Vice Hall Master in Beast Valley. Jealous? Ha! With the Temple’s backing — and still a resident, not a beast-person — once my war beast develops true intelligence, I’ll walk right out of this valley. As for all the fools and idiots who’ll stay buried here forever — I’ll miss you. Truly.”

The Poison Wasp King’s pupils slowly expanded.

She was gone.

She could no longer hear the Toad King’s triumphant, unhinged laughter echoing across the Boulder Field.

That laughter rang out above the scattered bodies littering the ground, and it was the most grating sound imaginable.

The plan had executed perfectly. Ranfeng and Wanmo had their solar gemstone and were departing — heading for the next trial zone with the Black Sun in tow, to join Ji Wuri in hunting down the elusive Captain Cook. On the beast factions side: the Human-Faced Tiger and Poison Wasp King were dead, the Eagle King was broken and fleeing. Only the cowardly, self-preserving Lion King remained. Among the residents: Darius had used the Black Sun’s cover to successfully eliminate two rival commanders. With Vice Hall Master Weishu and two Temple Elders now in position, backed by thousands of beast-people and residents — what obstacle remained to dominating Beast Valley and making it a Central Temple outpost?

The Toad King couldn’t think of a single reason not to be laughing.

“You seem to have forgotten someone, haven’t you?”

Yueyang had waited as long as he possibly could before he simply couldn’t stop himself from pointing this out.