The chameleon Biyi, who had been eavesdropping on all of this, stumbled back three full steps the moment Yueyang finished speaking.

She had no idea what multiple of probability her bronze box carried for triggering misfortune — but the odds were certainly not low. Most likely nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine times out of a thousand. But gold, silver, or bronze — opening any of them was a death sentence.

Even nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine in a thousand — who could escape those odds?

Biyi noticed her body had begun to change. The permanently damp and slick green skin that was her greatest natural asset had, at some point without her noticing, started to dry out.

It was turning grey-white.

The scales itched unbearably, as though her entire body had been left to dessicate in a scorching desert.

This couldn’t be — the wet, slick green skin was the evolutionary direction she had chosen when raising her war beast. It was her most important trait: color-changing camouflage, the ability to adhere to enemies, and impact resistance — the most critical survival tool her entire body possessed besides her tongue. It was supposed to be perpetually moist. How could this be happening?

She began scratching frantically. Countless tiny scales detached and drifted away in the air.

The surrounding magical beasts panicked and scattered, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and both Biyi and the ape Samson, terrified of somehow catching the calamity.

“Dehydration,” the elephant announced with authoritative certainty. “Biyi has been struck by calamity force. There’s a curse on her body that’s making it lose water continuously. At this rate, she’ll be a mummified corpse in under ten minutes.”

Biyi let out a shriek. “No — no! I won’t become a mummy! I’m a dual water-poison attribute chameleon — no curse is going to dry me out! My abilities include color-changing camouflage, tongue hunting, toxin secretion, and shed-skin escape! At most the curse peels a few layers of skin — I absolutely will not become a mummy!”

With her Sky-rank Level 4 cultivation and those abilities, nobody would have believed she could die this way. Least of all from dehydration.

But seeing was believing.

Layer after layer of scales fell away. Skin after skin peeled off.

Not only did her body grow progressively drier, her combat power dropped in a straight line — by the time roughly ten layers of skin had stripped away, she had fallen below Sky-rank entirely, reduced to a pitiable ground-level magical beast.

Three more minutes, and the chameleon couldn’t hold even that. She dropped below ground level entirely.

Even if she didn’t die outright, she had no realistic means of surviving. Any single magical beast could end her with a breath. Biyi collapsed to the ground, dying, reaching one dry, crumbling hand toward the surrounding beasts. Her parched mouth couldn’t produce any sound at all. The leopard brothers trembled where they stood. The elephant, to its credit, sprayed a torrent of water from its trunk and stomped a water pit into the ground, lowering Biyi into it — hoping to ease her suffering in her final moments even if nothing could save her.

The assembled beasts watched in stunned horror as the chameleon, submerged in water, drowned of thirst.

Right there. In the pool. In front of everyone.

Her body dried and cracked rapidly, shrinking and shriveling until it floated on the surface like dry driftwood — a blackened husk barely half a meter long where there had once been a three-meter chameleon with a six-meter tail.

Every beast present felt their skin crawl. But none was more terrified than the ape Samson, who had opened the silver box with such pride. His legs could barely hold him.

“Help me — please, someone help me!” Samson reached out to former companions.

They recoiled from him as though he were a specter.

And even those who might have wanted to help had no idea where to begin. Biyi had been submerged in water and still died of thirst, her skin splitting and drying in the pool itself. What could possibly be done for Samson if the same curse was working inside him? One of his closer companions, a baboon, managed in a shaking voice: “Samson — if it becomes too much, I can help you go quickly. But that’s all I can do. I’m sorry. I’m truly helpless here.”

The elephant and rhinoceros shook their heads in shared sorrow.

Calamity force curses were beyond anyone’s ability to undo.

With Samson’s peak Sky-rank Level 4 cultivation, even spending two or three months submerged at the ocean floor shouldn’t have been enough to drown him. And yet, in under ten minutes, right before their eyes, he drowned — his body bloating and waterlogging as he went.

What kind of curse was this?

Drowning — the exact opposite fate from Biyi, who had died of dehydration. One perished from losing all water; the other from drowning on dry land.

“Attention please, everyone,” Yueyang said pleasantly, holding the gold box up for the group to see. “There’s still one gold box remaining here. Who’d like to open it? My newborn war beast is inside — a newborn beast as a starter, followed by chaotic force as the main course. What are you all waiting for? Come on — any takers? The odds of winning a prize are remarkably high. Far better than those lottery tickets that never pay out. This is a guaranteed prize every time — succeed and you get the chaotic force grand prize, fail and you still receive the calamity force consolation gift!”

Yueyang gave the gold box a casual wave in front of the assembled beasts — and sent every single one of them fleeing in absolute terror, shrieking and stumbling over each other.

The further away, the better.

Not one of them wanted to lay eyes on this deranged new arrival for even another second. Standing near him was a direct threat to their continued existence.

Once the beasts that had been lurking at the Fortress entrance had scattered entirely, Yueyang shook his head with mild boredom and casually opened the gold box.

Inside, exactly as expected, sat the Thumbelina-sized Death Reaper Mantis, her newly awakened intelligent eyes blinking up at him with warm curiosity.

“This is your first lesson,” Yueyang said. “There is no problem in this world that intelligence cannot solve. Every challenge, no matter how difficult, has an answer — it depends on how you use your own strengths to find it. When you face a difficult situation, you must learn to think, to use wisdom to deal with your enemies. Even when you have more raw power than your opponent, you should still do this — because using wisdom to solve problems is infinitely more efficient than using brute force alone. It accomplishes twice as much with half the effort, rather than the reverse.”

The Death Reaper Mantis nodded with great enthusiasm.

“Strategy is one of the most important expressions of wisdom. If I hadn’t used two real boxes to frighten the wits out of them, how could I have deceived them with a fake gold box at the end? So you must learn to use strategy. And equally important — always keep your composure. Never panic because a situation looks unfavorable. Panic is always the wrong response.” Yueyang continued the lesson while walking, speaking to the Death Reaper Mantis still nestled in the gold box.

He walked without particularly paying attention to the surroundings.

Until he nearly walked directly into a concealed Sky-rank warrior.

Yueyang stopped. The concealed warrior on the deer-form war beast stepped into view — fierce and menacing. Yueyang’s immediate instinct was to close the gold box, cover the Death Reaper Mantis, and quietly attempt to slip her into his pocket.

The Sky-rank warrior on the deer burst out laughing, leveling a long halberd at him. “Don’t bother hiding it — I saw everything. Kid, you walk out the door, kill two of them, and then start lecturing your war beast like you’re the only one out here. Did you think everyone in Beast Valley was asleep? I’ll give you this — young as you are, you’ve got some nerve. Let’s see that wisdom of yours work its way out of this. Let’s see that composure now.”

Yueyang turned to run.

Too late.

The halberd on the deer-rider flashed at blinding speed. A terrifying cone-shaped shockwave erupted from the weapon’s tip.

In an instant, the gold box in Yueyang’s hand was reduced to powder.

If not for the Law’s protection over his physical body, that strike might well have finished him outright.

“…” Yueyang stared at his empty right hand for a very long moment. Not a single word came to him.

“Ha ha ha ha! Let’s hear that nerve now, kid! Go ahead and lecture your garbage war beast about composure! In Beast Valley, it’s always been — and will always be — the strong devouring the weak. Power is everything here. Coming in here talking about wisdom like it means anything without power — I’ve seen your type before, too clever by half, and every last one of them either became a magical beast or was wiped out entirely. You want to be impressive? Go ahead. Show me something impressive.” The warrior on the deer-form beast gave the entirety of what Yueyang had been saying to the Death Reaper Mantis his most contemptuous dismissal.

Yueyang, who had been looking down, slowly raised his head.

And showed that sun-bright smile.

“Actually, I can be considerably more insufferable than this. Did you really want to see?”

He reached into his pocket and produced another gold box.

He opened it gently.

Inside, the Thumbelina-sized Death Reaper Mantis sat with a warm, cheerful expression, looking back up at him.

Yueyang paid the thunderstruck opponent absolutely no attention and continued the lesson: “Second lesson. I want you to understand something important: never trust only your eyes. Eyes are easily deceived by illusions — they will lie to you. Learn to sense with your heart instead. The heart is much harder to fool. And another thing to remember going forward — never underestimate an opponent. In any situation, no matter how much the odds favor you, maintain the same fighting mindset you would in the most dangerous moment. Overconfidence is where defeat begins.”

The Death Reaper Mantis listened with great seriousness and nodded eagerly.

The Sky-rank warrior on the Raging Fire Griffin appeared at Yueyang’s back and exhaled a long breath. “What a terrifying new arrival. I haven’t seen someone like this in years. Interesting. Beast Valley has been dead quiet for so long — at last there’s a little something to look forward to.”

The warrior on the unicorn-horse appeared alongside, face soaked in cold sweat.

If not for his companion jumping to make the first move out of eagerness to claim the credit —

He might have been the one to destroy that gold box.

The consequences of destroying it…

He didn’t dare think about it further. He looked again at the young man with the easy, handsome smile, and felt with absolute certainty that this person was ten thousand times more frightening than any demon he had ever encountered. Go to war with him? Even with a hundred lives, it wouldn’t be enough.