The sickle weasel couldn’t work it out.

A person operating under the Laws’ restrictions couldn’t attack anyone. So how had he killed over twenty beasts and residents? Even with Pandora’s Boxes, someone had to physically open one to trigger the curse. Without opening a box, no curse could activate. The boxes weren’t invincible on their own — so what was the actual mechanism?

Longma regarded the sickle weasel with unusual seriousness, as though assessing whether it could be trusted.

The gravity of his expression made the sickle weasel’s fur prickle.

At last, Longma seemed to reach a difficult decision. “Listen — if you don’t want to become his enemy and only want to observe, then remember what I’m about to tell you.”

The sickle weasel nodded, swallowing quietly. Whatever this was, it sounded important.

Longma thought a moment longer, glanced once more at the bat demon approaching from above, and then passed a thread of sound so faint only the sickle weasel could hear it: “One thing you must remember absolutely — don’t let it matter whether a box appears in his hand or whether it’s open. The moment that person says ‘don’t say you weren’t warned’ — you must not laugh. Must not feel contempt, mockery, or any other negative reaction in your heart. Even so much as a dismissive twitch of the lips, and you’re dead. After those words are spoken, unless someone dies, don’t let yourself react at all. I believe it’s a trigger signal — the words that open the divine curse. Anyone who responds to them, even the Laws of Beast Valley cannot save their life.”

The sickle weasel felt its scalp crawl.

One sentence. People died from one sentence. What kind of attack was that?

But it didn’t doubt what Longma was saying. Divine force curses operated beyond normal parameters by definition. Something that worked like an ordinary strike wouldn’t deserve to be called a divine curse.

Now — they watched to see how the bat demon would die.

The sky darkened as a vast colony of bats descended, covering the ground around the lake in a dense carpet. Each one had Sky-rank cultivation. Individually Sky-rank Level 1 or 2 — but nearly a thousand of them together compensated for everything. The bat demon Crimson-Eye itself was Sky-rank Level 4, considerably stronger than ordinary magical beasts and only a notch below the stronger residents and exceptional beasts like the sickle weasel. At its own Sky-rank Level 5 early stage, the sickle weasel had no particular desire to provoke the bat demon — mostly because its enormous brood of children was simply too annoying to deal with.

In Beast Valley, only a few failed challengers like Crimson-Eye had chosen to mate with wild magical beasts and breed offspring, settling comfortably into the valley as a permanent home.

Creatures like the sickle weasel still had a human heart despite the beast form. That mindset couldn’t be reversed. The idea of breeding with a wild magical beast was repugnant — it despised its own beast form and would have traded its remaining existence for a single year as a normal human being without hesitation.

Of course, that was impossible. The consequences of failure in Beast Valley were irreversible. Success or failure. No third path, no third choice.

“You’re the arrogant new arrival, aren’t you? You look like someone who needs a lesson.” The bat demon Crimson-Eye spotted Yueyang and held up a claw before he could speak. “Don’t bother with the speech. I know exactly what you’re going to say — show off a little, then produce some pathetic box to try to frighten me, right? How many boxes do you have? I have hundreds of children, every single one ready to die for me. Bring them all out — I’ll open every last one myself. And how many boxes can you possibly have? You killed a few idiots and now you think you own this valley? Let me tell you — that’s because you hadn’t met me yet. That ends now.”

“I promise — no boxes.” Yueyang smiled and shook his head.

“Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to pull? That whole Pandora’s Box situation — those were probably planted by whoever came before you, you’re just using their leftovers. Stop pretending. Where would a scrawny little thing like you get boxes with divine force? Either Ji Wuri gave them to you, or that Zhonghua gave them to you, or old ghost Kuke sent you — those three are the only ones powerful enough to back something like you. You think I came here without doing any research? I’m not that stupid.”

“Impressive. Genuinely — I have nothing to add but admiration.” Yueyang applauded sincerely.

The sickle weasel and Longma exchanged a glance. Neither had expected the bat demon to have been this careful — it had actually investigated before coming. Though the attitude was still unbearably arrogant. It had drawn firm conclusions without complete information, charging ahead.

Both of them looked at Crimson-Eye with the eyes of people looking at a corpse.

One figure was loud and self-important. The other was relaxed and unhurried. Anyone blind could have predicted the outcome.

Despite its swagger, the bat demon didn’t rush in carelessly — it still had some lingering caution. The boxes had genuinely killed Biyi, Samson, and White Deer. Crimson-Eye’s eyes rolled as it raised its voice with a cold laugh: “I spotted you two ages ago — come out.”

The sickle weasel and Longma looked at each other again.

Surely not.

Their concealment techniques were among the skills each was most proud of. The sickle weasel’s Windtreading was exceptional, and Longma’s Light-Stopping Step was equally renowned. Both were first-rate concealment methods. How had the bat demon, having just arrived, detected them when they’d been hiding here for so long?

Both were just preparing to emerge when laughter reached them from across the lake. Two figures of different sizes appeared at the water’s edge — one was the bat demon’s sworn enemy, the Sky-Soaring Draco Lizard, and the other was Crimson-Eye’s regular ally, the Large-Eared Rat. And following the Draco Lizard’s appearance, a ripple at the lake’s edge suggested a third shape had slipped into the water — by its silhouette, almost certainly the Draco Lizard’s companion, the Patterned-Belly Python.

“Crimson-Eye brother, there’s no scent of outsiders anywhere. His backup doesn’t seem to be here,” the Large-Eared Rat reported quietly, moving close.

“You want to steal the first kill and you’re scared at the same time — why don’t you just crawl into your mother’s shirt and wait there until she dies before coming out,” the Draco Lizard said coldly. It had old scores to settle with Crimson-Eye and the restraint it showed by not attacking immediately was itself a concession.

“You rotten lizard — the first kill is already ours. Toad King’s orders: anyone who tries to take it will have him to answer to. Come on then — if you think you’re brave enough, try to take it. Don’t think because you’ve linked up with that belly-coward Python you scare anyone.”

Crimson-Eye swept a claw through the air, and the sky filled with bats — hundreds of them rising in a shrieking, wing-beating cloud that filled the whole lakeshore with sound.

“All you ever do is invoke Toad King’s name. Have a real fight with me yourself if you’ve got the spine,” the Draco Lizard shot back. It wasn’t entirely unafraid of Toad King, which tempered its boldness.

“Fine. I’ll put you down first and take the kill after. Large-Ear — keep watch. Don’t let anyone steal the prize.”

“On it, Crimson-Eye brother — trust me.”

Both sides were moments from coming to blows.

Yueyang, sitting against a tree and rapidly approaching sleep out of sheer boredom, let out a long yawn.

“You can fight if you want,” he said, with the disinterest of a man whose nap was being disturbed. “Just don’t wake me up. Otherwise — don’t say you weren’t warned.“

The sickle weasel had not anticipated this.

The young man had said those words in the most completely offhand tone imaginable, at the most casually timed possible moment, apparently thinking about nothing more than his own comfort.

Its heart seized. It immediately looked at Longma.

Longma was pale as bone and trembling.

The cold dread that rose in the sickle weasel’s chest was immediate. Did the divine force curse not require any ritual or incantation, any formal condition? Even said in a tone of complete indifference — it still worked?

If so, the death count was about to climb significantly.

The sickle weasel forced its attention away from what was about to happen to Crimson-Eye and the others, and pressed itself into a state of absolute stillness. Every negative emotion suppressed. Nothing but calm.

From across the lake came the sound of laughter.

Crimson-Eye’s laughter. The Draco Lizard’s. The Large-Eared Rat. Even bubbles from the Patterned-Belly Python beneath the surface.

“Ha ha ha ha — that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard! What did you just say? Don’t say what?”

“Don’t say you weren’t warned,” Yueyang explained patiently.

“What? Say it clearer?” The Draco Lizard had heard perfectly and was now playing deliberately obtuse.

“Don’t say you weren’t warned.” Yueyang repeated.

“Still can’t make it out. Speak up.” Crimson-Eye joined in the mockery, not about to let the Draco Lizard have all the fun. Remarkably, Yueyang showed not the faintest irritation. He smiled, and said it once more: “Final warning.”

“You’re trying to make me laugh myself to death? Don’t say you weren’t warned — who do you think you are? Keep frightening me, please. Keep it coming.” Crimson-Eye’s laughter shook its whole body.

Hearing those words a fourth time, the sickle weasel and Longma opened their eyes simultaneously.

Wiped cold sweat simultaneously.

Both pressed down on their pounding hearts and watched the lakeshore in rigid silence.

The divine curse had certainly been activated. The phrase was the signal to open Pandora’s Box; the mocking laughter was the key that turned it. These creatures thought they were putting on a display of dominance, enjoying the game — not understanding that every laugh was sealing their own fate.

How would they die, the sickle weasel wondered. Dehydration? Drowning? Explosion?

It and Longma stared without blinking, afraid to miss what would surely be the most remarkable sight of their entire lives.

Crimson-Eye and the others were still laughing.

Nothing happened.

A breeze drifted through.

Strands of fur scattered in the air — and then both the sickle weasel and Longma locked onto the Large-Eared Rat. This creature, blissfully unaware of what was coming, was still laughing with complete abandon — while visibly aging at a rate the eye could follow. Its fur was turning white in real time. Its skin was wrinkling and shriveling. Its whole body was collapsing in on itself. Most dramatically, at the peak of its laughter, the Large-Eared Rat’s teeth began to fall out.

“Ha ha, my tooth fell out from laughing too hard, Crimson-Eye look — I actually laughed a tooth out, ha ha, cough, this is too funny, cough cough, I’m dying of laughter!” The Large-Eared Rat, finding that a tooth had genuinely come loose, thought it hilarious and held the tooth up toward Crimson-Eye to show off.

In the lake, the Patterned-Belly Python had petrified at some point — no one noticed exactly when. It sank silently to the bottom.

Crimson-Eye and the Draco Lizard, still oblivious, kept laughing.

Their laughter carried from the lakeshore out through the forest and into the sky above, ringing across the entire area.

It was, in its way, extraordinarily fitting.