“Are you two here to kill the newborn beast as well?” Yueyang closed the gold box again.

The lead Sky-rank warrior on the Raging Fire Griffin smiled without answering.

The one on the unicorn horse made a private vow — no matter what the leader ordered, he was absolutely never going to be the one to smash that accursed gold box. Even if it really did contain a newborn beast, he wasn’t taking that risk. He had just watched his companion White Deer commit an irreversible error with his own eyes. A mistake you couldn’t come back from.

He looked at White Deer with the eyes of someone looking at a dead man.

Above them, Law energy was coalescing in the sky.

The sign of punishment for a failed challenger. If he remembered correctly, White Deer’s war beast Giant-Horned Deer had already died twice. One more death — and White Deer would be transformed into a magical beast.

“Leader, save me!” White Deer called out in panic.

“You’re beyond saving.” The leader on the Raging Fire Griffin turned away without expression and urged his mount skyward. Before vanishing into the sky, he tossed one last line back at Yueyang: “I appreciate interesting new arrivals. This is only the beginning — I look forward to seeing more from you. Oh, and I forgot to mention: before you, a dozen or so other challengers arrived in Beast Valley. Three have already cleared the stage. The rest are further ahead, still searching for a way through. They might be glad to see you. Would you like me to pass on a message?”

“That’s kind of you, but I think I’ll go find them myself — give them a surprise,” Yueyang said pleasantly. He understood perfectly what the man was fishing for — whether he knew any of the other challengers ahead.

“They weren’t particularly friendly to me — very guarded, not welcoming of new acquaintances. But if you see them, tell them I’m genuinely well-intentioned. And quite personable. At least the most personable of Beast Valley’s three residential faction leaders.” The self-described personable leader rose on his griffin and vanished, paying White Deer’s desperate cries no mind whatsoever.

“Longma — we fought side by side, help me—” White Deer turned to the unicorn-rider.

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” The warrior on the unicorn retreated a full hundred meters.

White Deer, who had been so arrogant moments before, was now trembling uncontrollably.

Black mist gathered around him without warning. The Law’s protection kept it from touching White Deer’s own body — but his Sky-rank Giant-Horned Deer war beast let out an agonized wail. Enveloped in the black mist, the beast’s body began to inflate like a balloon being overfilled. Its belly swelled rounder and tighter, eyes and tongue bulging outward from the pressure.

White Deer sensed the catastrophe unfolding and leaped off his mount in sheer panic.

Bang.

One second later, the Giant-Horned Deer that White Deer had labored to raise detonated completely — flesh and bone scattered in every direction. From the moment the curse activated to the moment of explosion: less than ten seconds.

And what terrified White Deer even more was the response from the Law energy that had been quietly gathering overhead. His own body was no longer protected.

The Law’s punishment arrived exactly on schedule, completely unavoidable.

A bolt of heavenly lightning struck White Deer directly on the crown of his head, charring him black and dropping him to the ground.

“Help me!” White Deer reached toward his companions one last time — and watched his own hand slowly transforming, in a black radiance, into a hoof.

“No — no — gods, this is horrifying!” The warrior on the unicorn bolted several hundred meters further back, terrified that the transforming black light might somehow contaminate him. Once a challenger’s war beast had died three times, the Law’s protection ended, and the challenger was transformed directly into whatever beast they had been raising.

In front of Yueyang, the previously insufferable White Deer writhed against the ground.

His mouth let out sounds that were half-human, half-animal while his body changed shape — a great rack of antlers pushed through the crown of his head, hands and feet became four hooves, his head and body reshaped themselves rapidly into the form of his former mount. Except for the memories that remained in his mind, the being now called White Deer was indistinguishable from the war beast he had raised — down to and including the exact same strength level.

If he had retained his original power, the leader wouldn’t have turned away so indifferently.

But a failed White Deer, reduced to the same level as his former mount, was no longer worth treating as a person. In Beast Valley, these things happened all the time.

“If you don’t kill me, I’ll be your mount — I’ll serve you completely,” White Deer said, scrambling upright and adopting the most submissive posture he could manage, desperately hoping Yueyang wouldn’t refuse.

Yueyang appeared to be genuinely considering the idea. Having a Giant-Horned Deer magical beast as a mount actually wasn’t a bad option in here.

White Deer, terrified of a refusal, proceeded to lay on the flattery in thick layers — declaring Yueyang to be the finest master in the entire world, that the privilege of bearing him as a rider was fortune beyond what three lifetimes deserved, and that he would spend a lifetime making amends for his earlier transgression by serving faithfully. He said every sycophantic, stomach-turning thing he could think of — while his eyes quietly tracked the gold box the entire time.

Yueyang opened the gold box lightly, letting the Thumbelina-sized Death Reaper Mantis pop out for some air. He addressed her conversationally: “What do you think about having a mount? This fellow isn’t the most attractive specimen, but he’d be functional for getting around Beast Valley — saves us the trouble of finding one. And you’d have a helper in the early stages.”

The Death Reaper Mantis nodded agreeably.

The moment she did, White Deer exploded with energy.

Though freshly transformed and not yet fully comfortable in his new body, skewering a newborn beast with his enormous antlers was entirely within his capability.

The power behind those antlers was like a mammoth charge — the cone-shaped shockwave that preceded the blow would obliterate not just the Death Reaper Mantis but the fake gold box she was in as well, reducing it all to dust.

Yueyang stared at what appeared before him with mild surprise: a trench over eight hundred meters long had opened in the earth. Trees on both sides of the trench snapped and toppled. The ground was in absolute chaos.

This was the force behind White Deer’s ambush strike.

“Ha ha ha ha! Kid, you really are a new arrival — you don’t know the first thing about Beast Valley. Let me give you an education, you naive little fool. Never trust an enemy. Never lower your guard. In Beast Valley, no one can be trusted. Did you really think White Deer would bow down and serve you as a mount? Pathetic. I am the King of the Grasslands — a dominant force in my own right. Lower myself to carry a new arrival? You’re laughably naive. And let me give you one more free truth: in Beast Valley, when a war beast kills an opponent, it absorbs the enemy’s energy as growth. If you don’t kill your enemies, you’ll never advance. I hope you manage to stay alive for at least a few more days — though unfortunately I won’t be the one to claim your second, third, and final kills. Go chase down whatever random beast your newborn has been reassigned to. This is Beast Valley, not paradise. Ha ha ha!”

“I think he explained it clearly enough,” Yueyang said, producing yet another gold box from his pocket and opening it to let the Death Reaper Mantis poke her head out. “No need for me to repeat any of it.”

The Death Reaper Mantis nodded helpfully.

White Deer’s laughter cut off like a blade.

He stared blankly at the gold box in Yueyang’s hand.

His brain had seized up.

Rational thought was not currently available.

Far away in a small grove of trees several kilometers off, the warrior on the unicorn Longma was watching in breathless secrecy — and the cold sweat on his face was now very comprehensive indeed.

How many gold boxes does this person have? How does he keep switching them?

No. That wasn’t the important question.

The important question was: thank every god that exists that I didn’t take that swing. I didn’t reach for the newborn beast’s energy. If I had—

He decided not to finish that thought.

“Wait — you were tricking me. You knew I was going to ambush you, so you set the whole thing up on purpose. Didn’t you.” White Deer’s understanding arrived slowly but completely.

“Very perceptive,” Yueyang said, extending an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

“You — I — I’ll take you down with me!” White Deer understood everything now. This person had opened the box deliberately, baited him into attacking, calculated that he would strike — and one kill for the newborn beast meant absorbing energy and beginning to grow. The entire thing had been a setup from the first moment.

White Deer didn’t know exactly when death would come for him. But he knew it was coming.

The shadow of it pressed down on him already.

White Deer charged at Yueyang with blood-red eyes, antlers leveled again at the Death Reaper Mantis — if he was going to die, he was taking someone with him.

The Death Reaper Mantis leaped out of the gold box, her tiny form meeting White Deer’s full-force charge head-on. Her detached scythe-arms flew from behind her back and made the lightest, gentlest contact with White Deer’s body — the barest tap of a collision. For a magical beast of White Deer’s Sky-rank power, this caused zero damage. But Beast Valley’s Laws registered it as combat between two participants.

If one died, the other claimed the energy.

White Deer closed the gap, antlers poised to skewer the Death Reaper Mantis.

And then he stopped.

His entire body contracted in agony, curling inward like a pill bug.

Identical to the Giant-Horned Deer before him — belly swelling, all energy in his body converging automatically in his abdomen, entirely beyond his will to control.

“One last truth for you,” Yueyang said, already turning to leave. “Calamity force, when it fails to complete its curse on the first attempt, doesn’t vanish. It simply waits. It can lie dormant for an entire lifetime, patient as a predator, until an opportunity presents itself. Do not underestimate divine force — it is, in essence, Law energy governed by the will of its originator. Different divine forces have different power levels, but none of them dissipate easily. And finally — a piece of advice for you and for anyone else here who’s had their eyes on me: one stupid mistake is enough. Don’t do it twice, let alone three times.“

He walked away.

As he turned, White Deer’s body detonated behind him.

Blood and flesh scattered across the sky and the earth. His massive skull split from within the explosion, and a white magical core tumbled upward through the gore. The Death Reaper Mantis extended one small hand and caught it cleanly, wings carrying her in a graceful arc around the blood-soaked spray, before she drifted back down into the gold box.

Newborn as she was, she had claimed her first kill — under Yueyang’s strategy.

Whether she had technically struck the killing blow was entirely beside the point. What mattered was that Beast Valley’s Laws had acknowledged the victory as hers.

“Terrifying.” In the distant grove, Longma wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand.

He had seen plenty of new arrivals.

He had never seen one like this.

The powerful and arrogant White Deer had been played to his death — manipulated from start to finish, never once in control, right up to the last moment.

This person was a complete and total freak.

Forget it. Don’t touch this one. Let him go wreak havoc on the gatekeepers further ahead.

He found himself wondering — how would those people fare against something like this?

Actually, he thought, a new arrival this catastrophically dangerous might turn out to be good news for the rest of them.