“Total fluke, right?”

“Impossible — I must have blinked at the wrong moment.”

“He just happened to hit it. That wasn’t skill. I’m telling you, if he tries again he’ll definitely fail.”

“I can’t process this. I genuinely cannot process this.”

“How—”

“Are my eyes working properly? You saw that too? That actually happened? My brain isn’t keeping up — this is too sudden. Did he actually succeed? Really? I think something is wrong with me.”

“I was so ready to shout failure — it was right there in my throat — and then the gods-damned thing actually worked.”

The assembled residents and magical beasts erupted the moment they recovered from the shock, leaping and babbling and colliding with each other, every face wearing some variant of complete disbelief.

Only Eagle King and Poison Wasp King were still. They looked at Yueyang with something close to fear.

These were king-level leaders with king-level eyes. They could see clearly: this wasn’t a fluke. It was precision. The young man’s confidence was the only explanation — you don’t casually launch a Sacred Beast war beast you spent everything raising without absolute certainty behind the throw. He had known. Though where that certainty came from was still a mystery.

Could this young man’s intelligence really be enough to handle even the second Hard challenge — the one universally regarded as impossible?

The sickle weasel and Longma stared at Yueyang for a long moment, unable to bring themselves to believe it. Then — when the success was undeniably confirmed — both of them grabbed each other and let the tears come freely. They had made their decision completely now. Whatever it took, they would follow this young man. He was someone who could create miracles. Someone who could give them freedom.

The Poison Wasp King had chosen correctly. A young man of this caliber was worth trusting above all others.

Everyone had expected failure. He had made it look trivial.

In the space of one blink — a resounding slap across every face in attendance.

Boom.

The testing ground had already reset. Three towers rose from the floor — the small pig was inside the middle one — and four massive boulders were placed in pairs, fore and aft, left and right, ensuring no straight-line shot could ever reach the target. Worse, the three towers were braced by wooden support beams, meaning even a direct hit might not topple them. An unbroken tower meant a living pig. A living pig meant failure.

Yueyang glanced at the setup for one moment — then placed the Death Reaper Mantis back on the launcher.

“Wait — this is completely different from before. Think it through first.” The sickle weasel rushed forward, blocking him. Any eyes could see this setup was several magnitudes harder.

“There’s no time limit — you can take as long as you need. If it helps, we could model it for you — use us as practice targets to get a sense of the trajectory.” Longma was willing to serve as a simulated war beast cannonball if it would help Yueyang calibrate.

“Something this simple doesn’t need all that.” Yueyang drew back the launcher — and released.

Whoosh.

The Law-wrapped Death Reaper Mantis fired out like a shot.

The watching crowd went blank again. Was he genuinely stupid or performing stupidity? Fire without thinking? Did he think he was a god?

If this worked too, then who could ever fail? If it were this easy, would Beast Valley have so many permanent residents? Would the unbroken historical record still stand?

By every reasonable assessment, this young man was either born incompetent or missing a critical piece of his thinking apparatus.

Before anyone’s thoughts had progressed further, the glowing sphere carrying the Death Reaper Mantis had already traced a beautiful arc through the air — and landed at the base of the third tower, far back. Those with sharp eyes, like Eagle King, Poison Wasp King, and a few residents with special sensory abilities, could detect that the sphere had fractionally accelerated in the final moment before impact.

Anyone with enough experience here would know of the second trial’s mechanics: on the second round, the Laws granted the war beast a temporary Flight-Crash skill — accelerated movement combined with increased impact force.

No one had ever figured out why this skill was the reward for the second round. If that mystery were cracked, clever minds might have calculated the optimal success angle long ago.

BOOM.

The Death Reaper Mantis struck like a true cannonball — first snapping one of the support beams, then driving into the base of the third tower, leaving a deep impact crater. The third tower began to sway.

“That’s not enough — the angle of tilt is too shallow — the impact force was too low — that’s exactly how Lord Hongli failed,” cried the oldest magical beast in the crowd.

“First time was a fluke after all!” Toad King’s subordinates crowed immediately.

“Keep going — keep going!” The sickle weasel and Longma barely breathed, the sickle weasel rubbing its hands together furiously as though the friction could somehow help tip the tower. Poison Wasp King, however, had stopped watching the tower entirely. She was watching Yueyang — and found him smiling, expression entirely settled, untroubled. That serene confidence made her exhale. Of course. He wouldn’t have fired like that unless he was certain. I was worrying for nothing.

The third tower continued swaying.

Toad King’s followers kept screaming stop, stop. Others were screaming keep going. The reasoning of the keep going faction was straightforward — better to watch this young man succeed once more and then suffer through the harder rounds than to watch him lose too early. Maximum entertainment required at least four or five successes before the satisfying failure. Several of the more spirited beasts were literally blowing in the direction of the tower, achieving nothing, but enjoying themselves regardless.

The tower gradually tilted further, finally tipping into the middle tower with a heavy crash.

But the force was insufficient. The middle tower only shook. It did not fall.

Failure?

The crowd began descending into collective despair. Toad King’s subordinates erupted in triumph — a standing middle tower meant a living pig, which meant failure.

Just as every onlooker had accepted the outcome, the collapsed third tower slid a fraction further down — not enough to topple the middle tower, but enough to clip its upper spire. The spire broke off and tumbled down, catching the side of the first tower, snapping several long spear-shafts that had been jutting from it clean in half.

The broken spear-shafts became projectiles.

One of them threaded through an opening in the middle tower’s wall with perfect precision — and pinned the small pig.

The pig exploded.

The Death Reaper Mantis, still hovering near the impact crater at the base of the third tower, teleported back to Yueyang’s hands.

The entire crowd went blank a second time.

He just got impossibly lucky. A certain failure had been rescued by one stray broken spear traveling through one small window. Without that single piece of fortune, defeat was certain. No argument.

This was luck. Pure luck. No intelligence in the world calculated to that precision.

Not a single observer disagreed with this conclusion. Even the nearly-dead-from-anxiety sickle weasel and Longma dared not suggest it was intentional.

Only Eagle King and Poison Wasp King shook their heads quietly.

To eyes at their level, if this wasn’t planned from the start, then nothing in the world had ever been planned. Not only planned — the acceleration point and the weighted impact point had been calculated down to the exact centimeter. Without hitting that support beam and snapping it first, the third tower wouldn’t have toppled toward the middle. Without landing fractionally above the base, the third tower’s angle would have been wrong. Without that specific angle, it couldn’t have struck the spire. Without striking the spire, the spire couldn’t have hit the spear-shafts. Without those shafts becoming projectiles—

None of it would have happened.

This was not coincidence. This was a young man who had looked at the setup for one second and completed — silently and without apparent effort — a calculation that others spent days and nights working through, and done it more precisely than any of them.

Eagle King and Poison Wasp King had nothing left to say.

Everyone had assumed those spear-shafts were obstacles blocking the war beast’s flight path. This young man had looked at them and seen tools.

Done it this easily — achieved what others couldn’t no matter how much they bled for it.

“You — you’re launching again?” The crowd discovered Yueyang already setting up the third shot. Expressions of collective horror swept the audience.

“I need to lie down.” Several magical beasts felt their impressive hearts struggling.

“Could you at least let us breathe?” Multiple residents felt their nerves approaching the breaking point.

“Please take a moment — there really is no rush,” even Eagle King weighed in.

The testing ground had reset to something that invited genuine despair: eight towers total, five at ground level and three smaller towers balanced on top of the larger ones, all supported by rock formations. This time there were not one but three small pigs to kill. One cannonball had to clear four stone walls, demolish five towers, topple three elevated turrets, and eliminate three pigs.

Was this possible?

The sanest madman alive would look at this and shake his head.

Yueyang touched the Death Reaper Mantis lightly on her small forehead, raised her to his lips, and through the glow of the Law sphere, gave her the softest kiss — then set her on the launcher. Everyone watching interpreted this as affectionate encouragement. Only the Poison Wasp King, paying close enough attention, noticed that he had actually said something to the small creature — clearly laying out some kind of tactical instruction. The second round had required coordinated execution. The third was harder. Of course communication was necessary.

She didn’t know what he had said.

But the Death Reaper Mantis’s small face was full of warm, unshakeable confidence — and as she was placed on the launcher, she raised one tiny fist inside the glow, pumping it once in quiet self-encouragement.

Whoosh.

Yueyang paid the crowd’s expressions zero attention and launched.

Unlike the first two rounds, this one he aimed for — exactly one second.

The Death Reaper Mantis in her Law shell traced another perfect arc toward the testing ground’s targets—

And every face in the watching crowd turned to Yueyang with exactly one shared expression.

Gods. This young man is actually insane.