“You?” The Toad King looked at Yueyang, paused for just a moment, then broke into a roar of laughter. “Forgotten you? Not for a second. In fact, I designed a special arrangement just for you. If I didn’t want the first-kill bonus from your war beast, why would I have handed over the solar gemstone so freely? If not for you, why would I have needed outside help at all? Yes, your arrival did disrupt plans I had been cultivating for the better part of a thousand years — but it also made Hall Masters Ranfeng and Wanmo nervous enough about destabilizing factors that they chose to stay and clean house themselves. You could say I have you to thank for making my entry into the Central Temple go so smoothly.”

“Should I congratulate you?” Yueyang said mildly — as if he couldn’t see Vice Hall Master Weishu merged with a giant bear, and the two Temple Elders merged with golden apes, closing in from all sides.

“I know your war beast is an elemental body — and a Sacred Beast with high intelligence. Hard to kill. I know that.” The Toad King gave a cold, satisfied smile and raised one hand. Dozens of his loyal subordinates immediately formed a tight encirclement, while his innermost circle of followers drew out black ceremonial rods and drove them into the ground, constructing a dark, eerie energy formation around the entire area.

Inside the formation, everything seemed to slow.

Even sound became fractured, stuttering.

Yueyang didn’t need to look closely to identify it. This was the Wind-Stilling Rune Formation — one of the ten great rune formations of the celestial realm, and one of the Central Temple’s signature weapons for siege and capture. Its purpose was simple: surround the enemy and take them apart at leisure.

Unless the hidden energy core at its heart was destroyed, no one trapped inside could leave. That meant the person carrying the core crystal had to die before the formation could be broken. Yueyang’s Heavenly Eye swept to the Toad King — the only one in the field moving completely unaffected. Sure enough, inside the Toad King’s belly, a faintly gleaming gem pulsed in connection with the entire formation.

To break the formation, the Toad King had to die.

Inside a Wind-Stilling Rune Formation that slowed movement by nearly tenfold — killing a Toad King who suffered no such restriction himself was a genuinely difficult problem.

Weishu’s giant bear and the two Elders’ golden apes were affected, but only marginally — each carried black ceremonial rods or wind-stilling crystals on their person, reducing the formation’s effect on them to ten or twenty percent. The outer ring of loyal followers carried crystals as well and were slowed by perhaps thirty percent. Yueyang and the Death Reaper Mantis, by contrast, were operating at barely a tenth of their normal speed.

“Ice Frost Demon Blade combined with the Wind-Stilling Rune Formation — and if that still somehow fails to kill her, I have one more item I’ve never shown anyone.” The Toad King’s laughter crested as he slid a bracelet — blazing with multicolored light — onto the wrist of his human-form arm. “The Energy-Draining Bracelet.”

Also called the Conversion Bracelet.

It drained an enemy’s elemental energy and slowly converted it into an opposing element. During the conversion, the target could not use their elemental power. For elemental-type war beasts whose natural element was inverted, the result was instant death — no combat required.

A fire guardian whose fire energy was drained and converted to water or ice would simply explode. An ice puppet whose ice energy was converted to fire would perish just as quickly. For beasts and war beasts that didn’t rely heavily on elemental power, the bracelet’s effect was limited — the conversion was too slow to be decisive. But for a pure elemental-type war beast or beast-person, this Sacred-rank bracelet was the most terrifying object in existence. In the celestial realm, the Energy-Draining Bracelet was spoken of with genuine dread — most warriors there called it the Elemental Calamity Bracelet.

The Death Reaper Mantis, who had been reborn into an elemental body after passing through the Rebirth Gate, was in a deeply uncomfortable position facing something like this. Without the formation’s restrictions, she could have kited, retreated, kept her distance. Trapped inside the Wind-Stilling Rune Formation, facing the bracelet, the Ice Frost Demon Blade — it had to be admitted that through the Toad King’s planning, Yueyang had been placed in a genuinely difficult position.

“Do you know why I didn’t come to the Boulder Field to interfere with your Law rewards?” The Toad King’s satisfaction was boundless. “Because the more rewards your Sacred Beast accumulated, the more energy I’d receive when I claimed the first-kill bonus. It’s the most efficient cultivation method available. After a certain point, raw numbers stop mattering — I could kill a hundred beasts, a thousand, and the combined yield still wouldn’t equal killing one Sacred Beast of her caliber. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment? Do you know how much thought and effort went into constructing this perfect arrangement? If heaven won’t reward me for everything I’ve invested today, then there is no justice in this world.” The Toad King slapped his belly and let out a laugh that sent chills down every spine in earshot.

Yueyang’s brow furrowed.

His eyes swept the surroundings.

He appeared to be searching for an escape route.

The Toad King was utterly relaxed about it. He wagged his ugly fingers with a condescending tsk. “Stop dreaming. Unless you kill me, no one leaves this formation — and I can intercept anything moving slower than a snail at my leisure. Open your eyes and look around you. Do you see a single friendly face? The Human-Faced Tiger and Poison Wasp King — both dead. The Eagle King — fled, whereabouts unknown. The three factions’ subordinates are now mine. Those who wouldn’t fall in line became practice for my blade. You’re a clever young man — everyone says so. But what does that cleverness buy you here? What exactly do you plan to fight me with?”

“What if I said I had something?” Yueyang replied coldly.

The Toad King erupted.

He laughed as if he had just heard the finest joke ever told, spitting as he howled, nearly choking on his own delight. “HAHAHAHA! Kill me, please, I’m dying! Go on then — show me what you’ve got! I know, I know — you want to use Pandora’s Box. Yes, I’m aware you have it. But that won’t work either. Before Ranfeng and Wanmo left, they scattered Spirit-Sealing Sand Dust through the air. It’s a timed artifact — only ten minutes — but for the next ten minutes, neither you nor your war beast can activate any artifact whatsoever. Young man, don’t assume you’re the only intelligent person in this world. I am not stupid. There was no chance I was going to let you open that Box, and absolutely no chance I would be foolish enough to break it myself.”

Yueyang’s expression shifted to fury. He roared: “What?! I’ll kill you for this!”

“Anger!” The Toad King was transcendent with glee. “Anger is just a weak person’s verbal thrashing. Come kill me then. I’m waiting. Go ahead. I’m right here. Come on! Do you need a knife? Should I stretch out my neck for you? HAHAHAHA!”

At the precise peak of the Toad King’s satisfaction, the one person no one expected to move — moved.

A shadow like a falling mountain.

A force that could have pulverized a real mountain drove downward onto the top of the Toad King’s skull with everything it had.

A single blow. The Toad King’s head detonated into pulp. Both enormous toad eyes rocketed a full kilometer outward, all the way to the edge of the Wind-Stilling Rune Formation.

Even the Toad King’s legendarily resilient tongue — that endlessly extensible, endlessly durable tongue — was severed into several pieces.

The headless toad slowly toppled. With a thunderous crash, it hit the ground.

“…You?”

The two Temple Elders merged with golden apes stared in disbelief. The one who had just destroyed the Toad King’s head was Vice Hall Master Weishu himself, merged with his giant bear.

Why would Weishu kill the Toad King?

How was this possible?

The giant bear that was Weishu said nothing. He simply launched himself upward, both enormous palms raised.

And brought them down toward his two golden-ape companions.

“Have you lost your mind?!” The two Temple Elders scrambled to leap back — and found, with a jolt of pure horror, that something had attached itself to each of them from behind. Some unseen technique had clamped them in place, locking every muscle. The two men trapped inside golden ape bodies could only watch, completely paralyzed, as those giant palms descended.

BOOM. BOOM.

Two golden-ape heads burst like overripe fruit beneath the giant bear’s palms.

Three kills in rapid succession. Weishu — still merged with his giant bear, covered in his former companions’ blood — walked to Yueyang and dropped to his knees in the most sincere and reverent bow imaginable, pressing his forehead to the ground three times.

When he stood, his face carried nothing but pure contempt. He turned toward the Toad King’s ruined corpse and spat.

“Idiot. Did you really think I’d just casually tell you I was a spy?”

The entire field went silent.

Everyone was stunned.

Above, the clouds gathered again — not the arrival of the Black Sun this time, but the Laws of Beast Valley manifesting the beast-transformation punishment triggered by three war beast deaths in succession.

While Yueyang unhurriedly picked up the Energy-Draining Bracelet and the Ice Frost Demon Blade from the ground, a bolt of violet Law-lightning descended and struck the Toad King’s corpse squarely. The evil man who had been merged with the toad had been knocked senseless by Weishu’s first blow and hadn’t managed to separate himself in time — the lightning found him exactly where he lay.

Not that escaping would have helped him. The Laws’ punishment would have found him regardless.

From this moment forward, the Toad King would be, truly and permanently, just a toad. The next death would be his last — no revival, no resurrection, no second chance remaining.

“Crimson Blood Roses.”

The Death Reaper Mantis caught the Ice Frost Demon Blade that Yueyang tossed to her, flash-froze the Toad King — who was still in the vulnerability window following the Law-lightning — and then carved a cross-and-rose pattern of hollow wounds directly into its belly.

The Toad King’s soul nearly left its body on the spot. Regardless of the ice slowing it to a crawl, it turned and ran with every scrap of survival instinct it possessed.

A fist drove into the Toad King’s face with tremendous force, caving in half its skull.

Reeling in its daze, the Toad King found itself looking up at the Human-Faced Tiger — soaking wet from head to toe, fur bristling with fury, staring down at it from point-blank range.

The Human-Faced Tiger. Wasn’t it dead?

Was this a dying hallucination? Some side effect of the Law punishment?

Before the Toad King could reason through it, something pierced the vertebrae of its back. Its bulging toad-eyes strained open — and it saw, with genuine disbelief and terror, the Poison Wasp King, who it had watched die with its own eyes, driving a stinger into its spine.

This was impossible. The Wasp and the Tiger were both dead. Beast-people couldn’t come back to life. Nobody could.

“I’m the same as you — a resident. I haven’t actually died even once. Every death you’ve ever seen from me was a performance.” The Poison Wasp King’s smile was cold and entirely without warmth.

“I, on the other hand, am genuinely a beast-person,” the Human-Faced Tiger said, keeping its fury tightly leashed. “But as long as there is water — I cannot truly die. So thank you for killing me with an ice blade. If you’d used anything else, I might actually have been finished.” It paused, then added: “That particular secret is one the Electric Claw Squid definitely never told you. Because it never knew I had one last survival measure in reserve.”

“Clever Toad King.” Yueyang smiled. Under the dumbfounded stares of the surrounding beasts, that smile looked exactly like sunshine. Except that for reasons no one could entirely articulate, it somehow felt more unsettling than the smile of a demon. Yueyang paid no attention to any of their expressions, and explained to the Toad King with unhurried calm: “I didn’t know about the Human-Faced Tiger’s Water Body Restoration — its ability and its survival instinct were both outside my calculations. It didn’t matter. That didn’t prevent me from using the Boulder Field to set a counter-arrangement of my own. And one final piece of good news: there are many ways to open Pandora’s Box. The structure of your Wind-Stilling Rune Formation, as it happens, qualifies as one of them. Enjoy the Calamity god-force’s blessing at your leisure. I think you’ll find it very much to your taste.”

The Toad King had nothing left to say. In its eyes there was nothing — only the flat, lightless grey of complete despair.