Zhongguan and the others watched the ancient dragon blood being distributed with expressions that suggested they would not have minded being included. Their physiques, however, were not the right type for that particular upgrade, and they knew it. They had their own ambitions, and those ambitions ran more toward Spirit-Soul Pills — which were compatible with anyone, produced clean results, and didn’t involve turning into a being whose primary characteristic was excessive muscle.

The Wild Bull Brothers, once the ancient dragon blood finished integrating, became something even more emphatic than what they’d started as. Two enormous men became two even more enormous men, with a musculature that architectural terms seemed more suited to describing than biological ones.

Fortunately, the brothers had never been particularly invested in their appearance. Power was the point. Everything else was secondary. As for Spirit-Soul Pills — those were not things you received by standing around hoping. In Yue Yang’s organizational structure, rewards tracked directly to effort, and anyone expecting otherwise would find the expectation corrected, not gradually but immediately.

“This cluster is what I extracted from the Wild Bull Brothers,” Yue Yang said, back in the Grimoire World, holding up a concentrated mass of quiet energy that pulsed with an odd, soft luminescence.

The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady studied it with professional curiosity. “How does something like this end up inside two people like that?”

“The Freedom Queen,” Qianqian said immediately. She’d already worked it out.

Yue Yu nodded, examining it from a different angle. She had a natural attunement toward healing applications, and this energy read clearly to her: pure restorative function, no combat attributes, no remnant of the consciousness that had produced it. “She must have used this to keep them alive at some critical moment. Someone was badly hurt — possibly both of them — and she intervened with what she had.”

“That’s the most likely interpretation,” Yue Yang agreed. “It’s healing energy. Specifically the kind that leaves no divine consciousness trace — consistent with something given freely in an emergency rather than implanted with intent.”

“If it was doing good work,” the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady said, “why remove it?”

“Because it’s the wrong type for them.” Yue Yang set it down on a surface that materialized for the purpose. “This is yin-attribute energy. The brothers’ physiques are purely yang-dominant. In the right host, this would be extraordinary. In them, it’s like trying to run water through a fire — most of the potential is lost, and the remainder has been quietly doing things to their personalities that they’ve never noticed.” He paused. “The younger brother in particular. He’s the stronger of the two, physically, but the accumulated yin-attribute influence has been gradually pushing his nature in a direction entirely contrary to his actual character. He doesn’t know it’s happening. And whoever gave them this energy either didn’t realize the incompatibility or didn’t have better options at the time.”

Qianqian raised an eyebrow.

“I gave them ancient dragon blood in exchange,” Yue Yang added, with the reasonable tone of someone who has done a fair trade and is noting it for the record.

Three women looked at him with the specific expression reserved for situations where commenting feels redundant. They had all watched him operate long enough that this particular flavor of arrangement — theoretically fair, practically structured in a way that maximized Yue Yang’s return — no longer required commentary. If he weren’t like this, they agreed privately, something would feel wrong.

“You’re planning to give it to a war beast?” Yue Yu asked, already fairly certain of the answer.

“To Taotie specifically.” Yue Yang nodded. “We have the yin-attribute energy now, plus the Inferno Sovereign’s fire core, plus Chitian Divine Flame — and I’ve been working on a refined version of that.” He outlined the upgrade sequence briefly. The Chitian Divine Flame had gone through further processing — merged with trace law-fragment energy, primordial rune influence, and Calamity god-force — into something he’d internally designated Chitian Divine Blaze. Not a true divine fire, but close enough that the distinction was becoming theoretical. Its primary value, he’d found, was less in direct combat application and more in refining and elevating other things. The upgrade function was where it excelled.

The Ground-origin Yin Flame remained its own problem. That particular fire required absolute energetic stillness to handle — any perturbation during use triggered a release of destructive energy so disproportionate it made the fire nearly impossible to weaponize directly. Yue Yang was still working on the approach.

“What about Qianqian’s Water-Keen Golden Eye Beast?” Yue Yu suggested. “It’s close to Sacred rank.”

“After Taotie. That lazy creature needs a foundation upgrade first.” Qianqian’s expression shifted slightly toward exasperation. “Don’t get me started on what Gray Wolf’s influence has done to its work ethic.”

“It’s actually quite helpful at home,” the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady said, with the measured fairness of someone making an objective assessment. “Fetches things, carries things, tidies things without being asked. More than I can say for some.” She looked pointedly at no one in particular. “Niunu doesn’t do any of that.”

Yue Yu was suppressing a smile.

“Very strict management style,” she said neutrally.

Yue Yang used the Three Realms Compass to loop back to Longteng continent and collect Taotie, who had been left in Gray Wolf’s supervision keeping an eye on Sea Fatty’s training group. Gray Wolf, upon noticing departure preparations, did not need to be asked. It simply followed, with the confident air of something that has decided its interests align with being where interesting things are happening.

Behind Gray Wolf came the Star-Weave Scorpion. Behind the Star-Weave Scorpion came the Metal Beast, which had apparently decided that where the other two went was where it should be.

All three radiated the energy of beings who had come with expectations.

Yue Yang looked at them. They looked back. Gray Wolf’s tail moved in a way that was trying to appear casual and not quite managing it. The Star-Weave Scorpion did something with its legs that might have been interpreted as eagerness. The Metal Beast simply looked comfortable, which on it served as an expression of confident anticipation.

The situation was clear to everyone involved.

Yue Yang told them, in comprehensive terms, exactly how unimpressed he was with creatures that ate well, trained minimally, contributed selectively, and then appeared at precisely the moment when valuable things were being distributed, wearing expressions of innocent coincidence.

Gray Wolf lowered its head. Its ears went approximately flat. Its entire posture assembled itself into a portrait of I hear you and you are correct and I intend to do better. The Star-Weave Scorpion copied this with the slight delay of something that had learned the gesture by observation rather than instinct.

They received, eventually, a single drop of divine blood each. They left immediately, moving with the focused energy of beings who had somewhere important to be, and found a quiet corner to absorb their reward with the careful attention it deserved. Neither looked back.

The Metal Beast curled into a comfortable position and went back to sleep, having correctly assessed that blood-type resources were not relevant to its particular upgrade path. It would reassess when something involving crystalline or gem-type energy appeared.

Taotie, meanwhile, had been waiting this entire time with the patient steadiness that was its defining characteristic. It did not perform eagerness. It did not campaign. It simply remained where it was, available and ready, which was what it always did.

Yue Yang embedded the Inferno Sovereign’s fire core in Taotie’s forehead, integrated the yin divine energy, the Chitian Divine Blaze, and a careful measure of chaotic energy into a supporting structure around it, and then applied Nirvana Flames to complete the process.

The transformation was quiet at first, then wasn’t.

Taotie emerged from the process in weapon form first — the Taotie Blade, which had been a powerful artifact before and was now something the word artifact seemed inadequate for. A single casual sweep of it opened a spatial fissure in the air above, which healed slowly, taking its time about it.

Then Taotie returned to its natural form.

The change in scale wasn’t enormous but the change in presence was. The horn structure above its head had developed into something more elaborate. When it raised its head and released what would have been called a roar except that the sound seemed to go through things rather than bounce off them, the Grimoire World registered the reverberations. Outside, Gray Wolf’s eyes snapped open, pupils contracting, and it sat up.

Taotie looked at Yue Yang with an expression that communicated several things without using a single word, the primary one being thank you, rendered with complete sincerity and no performance.

Yue Yang gave it a moment, then moved on to the next set of beneficiaries. The Golden Tiger Shark King, the Blood Python King, the Flame Bee Queen — the ones who did the unglamorous work without complaint. Their reward was not ordinary flesh. It was divine flesh, taken from Chitian River’s former divine body.

From a distance, Gray Wolf observed this with an expression of sustained suffering. The Star-Weave Scorpion paced. Neither received any.

The Metal Beast remained asleep, correctly prioritizing.

“Do you want some?” Yue Yang asked, looking at Gray Wolf.

Gray Wolf’s head went up and down with the frequency of something that really meant it.

“Then stop sitting there and go do something useful. I don’t keep animals that just eat.”

What followed was, by any reasonable measure, domestic. Gray Wolf and the Star-Weave Scorpion, now wearing headbands with the character for diligent written on them in someone’s handwriting, could be found some minutes later moving through the Grimoire World with cleaning implements, working on the residual frost deposits that had accumulated from the ice mountain operations and not yet been fully cleared. Gray Wolf handled a bucket. The Star-Weave Scorpion managed a broom, which required more legs than the task strictly warranted but made up for it in commitment.

The Metal Beast, woken by the general industriousness around it, calculated that continued sleep was socially untenable, extracted itself from its resting position, and made its way to the kitchen, where it applied its claws to vegetable preparation with the focused expression of an entity doing something slightly outside its skill set but taking it seriously anyway. Xiao Nu watched this development from the doorway with an expression that balanced amusement and mild concern in roughly equal proportions.

Yue Yu watched all of it and smiled.

“This is nice,” she said. “This is what a home looks like.”

Qianqian looked at her for a moment. Something in her expression shifted — still smiling, but with more weight in it.

“Yes,” she said. “The more people, the more alive it feels. That’s what a home is.”

She wasn’t only talking about the war beasts, and Yue Yu knew it, and neither of them said the rest of it, because they didn’t need to.