Two leopard-form magical beasts shot forward at lightning speed.

Their claws swiped toward the small box Yueyang was holding. But from several dozen meters back, a magical beast with slick green-oiled skin shaped like a chameleon snapped its tongue out with a wet crack.

That blood-red tongue extended at extraordinary speed.

In the very instant the two leopards were fighting over the box, the long sticky tongue struck it, adhered — and retracted at ten times the speed it had extended.

Before any of the surrounding beasts could react, the chameleon beast had already stuffed the entire box into its mouth, chomped it to splinters, and was chewing with obnoxious satisfaction. Without even pausing to swallow, it spoke around its mouthful: “Heh heh heh — a little speed advantage goes a long way. First kill is mine. You two can fight over the second and third.”

The expressions of the surrounding magical beasts ranged from fury to disgust to cold contempt.

The two leopards who had charged fastest were incandescent. “Biyi — you forked-tongue witch!”

The chameleon beast female gulped the box fragments down with a loud glug, picked at her teeth with one slender claw, extracted a small shard, spat it out, and made a deeply dissatisfied clicking sound. “This new arrival’s newborn beast is pathetically weak — barely even registered going down. Pure potential, no actual energy to absorb. You two don’t need to be jealous. Tell you what — I’ll magnanimously accompany you both over to those bushes for a little chat. One of me against two of you, completely manageable~”

“Get out of here — who wants anything to do with a slimy reptile like you?” Both leopards looked like they might be physically sick.

“And I don’t want anything to do with your mangy fur either. Go play with yourselves.” The chameleon female cold-laughed, then spat a glob of green phlegm on the ground.

While they were bickering, the onlooking beasts noticed something was off.

This new arrival’s newborn beast had just been killed. Why was he still smiling?

Was he simple-minded?

Yueyang was indeed smiling — bright white teeth, a sunlit expression, the sort that made those around him feel genuinely warmed in spite of everything.

His right hand, which had been holding the box, slowly withdrew — and reached into his pocket, producing another box. Identical in every visible respect to the one just devoured, except for the material. The first had been bronze. This one was silver.

Why does this person have another box?

If the newborn beast wasn’t in the bronze box — was it in this one?

The chameleon female went to shoot out her tongue again, but this time the left-hand leopard grabbed it and yanked.

The right-hand leopard made a lunge for the silver box instead. Under Beast Valley’s Laws, Yueyang couldn’t use his power to protect the newborn beast — but nothing could harm him either. No beast could use him as leverage; they had to target the beast directly, or they were wasting their time. Just as the right-hand leopard’s claws closed on the silver box, a giant bear plowed into it from behind and sent it flying. Just as the bear opened its mouth to bite the silver box, a thick elephant trunk swung around and sent the bear stumbling backward. An eagle plummeted from above — but before it could snatch the box, a horned rhinoceros got there first, flipping the box out of Yueyang’s hand with its horn. From somewhere underground, an ugly swamp crocodile burst up, mud-caked jaws opening wide for the falling box.

A shadow darted.

A long-armed ape seized the elephant’s swinging trunk for momentum, sprang and caught the rhinoceros’s stubby tail, used that to leap higher, and dodged the eagle’s beak. Mid-air, it tumbled, lightly tapped off the rhinoceros’s neck, ignored its furious follow-up thrust, dove straight through the swamp crocodile’s gaping jaws, hooked a fang with one hand, used it to redirect itself — and caught the falling silver box with its free arm. Before any of the other beasts could process what had happened, it had the box open, scooped out the contents, swallowed them whole without chewing, and was gone.

“Ha ha ha ha! When it comes to agility, the ape clan has everyone beat!”

The ape dangled from somewhere high up, laughing with supreme self-satisfaction — and casually sidestepped the elephant’s furious stomping without breaking a sweat.

“Again, Samson — I’m starting to think you knew all along you couldn’t clear the stage, and deliberately raised your newborn beast as a monkey just for this.”

“Someone put this insufferable ape down already.”

“Whose fur is itching for a trimming?”

“That foul monkey is just as infuriating as Biyi.”

The second theft had also failed, and the surrounding beasts were furious, voicing their displeasure at volume.

Though they were magical beasts now, they hadn’t always been. Every single one of them had once been a powerful, keen-minded Sky-rank cultivator. Without that, they would never have made it to the Fifth Stage in the first place. Here in Beast Valley, many of the fallen residents who had become magical beasts were familiar faces — old acquaintances, sometimes family members from the same clan. To survive, to grow stronger, they had no choice but to use every means available. Eating newborn beasts was one method. Fighting each other and consuming the magical cores of the defeated was another.

Of course, beast-on-beast battles were generally a case of the third party gaining while two combatants bled each other dry. Unless they had absolute confidence, those who valued their lives didn’t throw themselves into existential confrontations. A life lost was gone — there were no second chances.

“Impressive moves,” Yueyang said, applauding with genuine appreciation.

Only when he spoke did the surrounding beasts notice something was wrong. His newborn beast had supposedly been devoured twice now, and he was still standing there smiling?

The elephant squinted at him. “What are you playing at, kid? Sky-rank Level 3 and you’ve got this much attitude?”

Yueyang conjured a small bottle of soy sauce from somewhere, smiled pleasantly, and said: “What if I told you I was just passing through to get some groceries?”

“Do you think I was born yesterday?!” the rhinoceros bellowed.

“Believe me or don’t — I’m choosing to believe it myself…” Yueyang swayed his head with all the easy arrogance of a government official dodging questions at a press conference.

“My stomach feels strange,” the ape muttered, after a moment of internal consultation. “I don’t feel any energy being absorbed.” It steeled itself, jammed a claw down its own throat, and produced a splashing pool of pungent stomach acid onto the ground. Staring at the puddle, it found no trace of a newborn beast’s remains — only a small, unremarkable black stone. The kind you could pick up in dozens off any road anywhere.

“So this is the great treasure — it was just a rock,” the lead leopard crowed.

“Congratulations, Samson. You’ve been played again.” The second leopard was thoroughly delighted by this turn of events. And it wasn’t just those two — nearly every magical beast present was quietly thanking its luck that the humiliating role of being taunted by a new arrival had landed on someone else.

“Hand over the newborn beast,” the ape said, glowering.

“I’m really a very cooperative person,” Yueyang said — and produced yet another identical-looking box from his pocket. This one was gold.

Now, despite being surrounded by dozens of magical beasts, not one of them moved. Even a fool could tell something was off. Bronze box first, then silver, now gold — why was this person so calm about casually producing box after box? Something was definitely wrong. And none of them, however much they wanted to, was willing to be the next one played for a fool — especially if the laughing young human had arranged some kind of trap around it.

The beasts looked at one another in silence.

It was the elephant that finally asked: “What’s the meaning of these boxes, kid?”

Yueyang’s smile, when it came, had all the warm familiarity of a political official on a goodwill visit to a struggling farming community — which alarmed the surrounding magical beasts thoroughly. Every single one instinctively shuffled back half a step, braced to bolt at the first sign of anything unpleasant.

New arrivals were usually easy pickings. But not always.

Some new arrivals were genuinely unhinged, and trying to prey on them could end with the predator becoming the prey instead. Was this young man one of those?

Yueyang reached out and gave the elephant’s foreleg a friendly pat — the elephant flinched hard. He then proceeded to introduce the gold box in his hand with the warmth of a reunion with an old friend: “This box is nothing special, really. It’s just called Pandora’s Box.”

Pandora’s Box.

The name alone sounded like something not to be trifled with.

Though — if they thought about it — Beast Valley’s Laws prevented not just the challenger from using their power. Artifacts also couldn’t function here.

Yueyang seemed to read their confusion and nodded helpfully: “You’re misunderstanding — this isn’t one of my innate abilities or an artifact. It’s a form of divine compensation. The full story would take three days and nights, so I’ll keep it brief. There was a Calamity Goddess named Pandora who killed a great many divine beings. After she found enlightenment, her divine nature produced a form of compensation — a hope for any being that might otherwise be harmed by her.”

The magical beasts stared blankly.

Yueyang nodded with the patience of someone used to this. “It’s fine that you don’t understand. Your intellectual capacity makes a clean explanation somewhat challenging. But none of that matters — all you need to know is this: this box carries the hope born from the Calamity Goddess’s enlightenment. Inside it is a chaotic force that can substantially enhance whoever opens it with their own hands. The form the enhancement takes varies. It might increase potential, it might increase rank, it might increase combat power — anything is possible.”

A ripple of open interest passed through the beasts.

The ape who had opened the silver box and the chameleon female who had chomped the bronze one both perked up immediately, internally preening.

The leopard brothers posed a question: “What’s the difference between the gold, silver, and bronze boxes?”

“Excellent question,” Yueyang said, with every appearance of being genuinely pleased someone had asked. “The three types are quite different indeed. The amount of chaotic force stored in each is different — the gold box holds the most, the bronze the least, with the silver in between. And of course, beyond the chaotic force of hope, all three also contain some of the calamity god-force of misfortune — it was made unconsciously by the Calamity Goddess while she slept, so the absence of calamity force simply wasn’t possible.”

If Yueyang had stopped before that last sentence, the assembled beasts would have erupted in excited clamor.

Instead, everyone went completely still.

The ape known as Samson in particular began trembling as though dunked in ice water, voice cracking: “Cala— calamity force?!”

Yueyang gave its shoulder a light consoling pat. “Don’t worry. While Pandora’s Box does contain calamity force, whether it activates is a matter of probability. The silver box you opened — the trigger probability isn’t actually that high. There’s a nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine in ten-thousand chance of receiving misfortune, and only a one-in-ten-thousand chance of receiving the chaotic force of hope. But compared to the gold box, which gives a ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine in a hundred thousand chance of misfortune — the silver box is practically favorable odds.”