“…” The Poison Wasp King suddenly switched to cipher speech.

“…” Yueyang supplemented even that with Heavenly Realm rune formations as visual aids.

The distant Longma and sickle weasel were completely shut out. Cipher speech was obviously beyond their hearing, but even the rune formations they could see meant nothing to them. They weren’t entirely ignorant of Heavenly Realm runes — individual characters here and there were recognizable. But assembled into formations, they could only stare blankly.

What were these two negotiating?

Obviously the terms of cooperation. The question was how — and what the plan between them looked like.

The conversation lasted roughly ten minutes.

The Poison Wasp King lifted off from the waterfall area with obvious satisfaction, wings spread — and on the way past, let its gaze drift briefly toward the forest where Longma and the sickle weasel were hiding. Both of them nearly stopped breathing entirely. The Poison Wasp King was Sky-rank Level 6 — not something either of them could contest. It could easily have grabbed them both as a supplementary gift the way it had brought the vulture.

Fortunately, it merely swept a casual glance across the treeline and flew off at speed.

The Death Reaper Mantis dispatched the immobilized vulture — it was an energy source the Poison Wasp King had delivered as a gift, and waste was waste. Working toward the strength her master envisioned required relentless effort. She understood clearly the gulf between Sacred Beast and Divine Beast. That threshold was close to an uncrossable divide — beyond effort, it required fortune. Even naturally gifted creatures like Duoduo, Jiang Ying, Hong, and A’Man had given everything they had before reaching their heights.

The gap between her and those examples was still substantial.

To say nothing of Xiao Wenli, who had been born with a Diamond Grimoire.

“Let’s proceed with the plan.” Yueyang gave the Death Reaper Mantis a day off from formal training and led her through the waterfall into the middle sector of Beast Valley.

Longma and the sickle weasel looked at each other.

Follow — or stop here?

Stopping meant safety. Without accidents, they could continue surviving in Beast Valley indefinitely.

But safety wasn’t what either of them wanted anymore. What they wanted was the thing that felt impossible to name — freedom. Whether following this young man could lead to that, they genuinely didn’t know. They weren’t the Poison Wasp King, and weren’t the beneficiaries of any promise made by the young man’s predecessor. Follow too long and they might end up like the vulture.

But without following, freedom would slip away forever.

For that impossible dream, both of them clenched their teeth, exchanged one nod, and pressed on.

Beast Valley was not a single valley — it was a vast independent world, larger than Rain Valley, Wind Valley, Sand Valley, and Desire Valley combined. It could be divided into five major zones.

Three zones were so hostile that almost no one entered them. The other two were where the two opposing power structures held their ground: the three Residential Faction leaders with their resident challengers, and the Five Beast Kings commanding their beast-transformed failures. Lion King, Eagle King, Human-Faced Tiger, Toad King, and Poison Wasp King — each commanding variable numbers of followers, loosely held together by shared interest.

Lion King was the strongest faction leader. Eagle King the weakest.

Because each faction leader had different strengths, fallen challengers tended to choose their patron based on form and temperament. Powerful carnivores gravitated toward Lion King. Avian types preferred Eagle King. Reptiles clustered under Toad King. Aquatic forms followed Human-Faced Tiger. And insect-types were the Poison Wasp King’s domain. Outside the five factions, a number of independents roamed — either too weak to earn recognition, or strong enough to feel confident surviving alone. The five factions combined had over three thousand magical beasts in total, though less than half could actually be directly commanded at any moment. Most were members in name only.

The residents numbered under a thousand, split between three faction leaders — but their individual strength was generally higher than the beast-transformed failures, giving them greater influence when decisions had to be made.

The valley’s entry zone — home to the Fortress and scattered independent stragglers — offered the easiest living conditions but the fewest cultivation resources. The middle sector was where things truly began. The back sector, where the stage-clearing teleportation gate waited inside Bloody-Flower Forest, was a lethal zone that no one entered casually. It was also rumored to contain Wisdom Fruits — items that could unlock a war beast’s intelligence and enable stage completion. But the twin-headed black dragon that guarded them had kept every challenger and resident too terrified to try.

“Hmm?”

Trailing from a safe distance, Longma and the sickle weasel had followed Yueyang into the middle sector they rarely ventured into.

At dusk, Yueyang seemed entirely unbothered by anything around him, strolling along at leisure. A wild poison boa that had been coiled in the undergrowth for who knew how long launched its ambush — mouth wide, fangs descending toward the Death Reaper Mantis.

Both Longma and the sickle weasel saw it. They nearly called out a warning, then stopped — that would do nothing useful and expose their position entirely.

Whoosh.

The Death Reaper Mantis swept her scythe-arms — now clearly evolving toward the form of blood-red curved blades — and traced two diagonal intersecting patterns in the air, like a pair of roses.

The wild poison boa went rigid. That long neck seemed suspended by time itself for an instant — and then the two roses passed through it.

In the next instant, head and body separated.

The severed neck had a perfect clean cut. A torrent of dark red blood began to spray.

The Sky-rank Level 2 creature — killed instantly.

The enormous body hit the ground.

“Crimson Roses. She really did transform my Lightning Cross-Kill into a rose shape.” The sickle weasel couldn’t help murmuring. It was the technique’s creator. It had spent years refining it from cross-kill to instant-kill perfection and believed that was the technical ceiling — then this creature had, in five days under that young man’s guidance, reached the level of Crimson Blood Rose.

If it hadn’t been afraid of making noise, it would genuinely have considered ending itself by headbutting a tree.

There being differences between individuals was understandable.

But did the differences have to be this large?

Yueyang gave a faintly dissatisfied shake of his head. The Crimson Roses had succeeded, but it was still a long way from his specified target of nine distinct spatial fractures per petal with a cross-rune formation binding the whole. Since today was technically a rest day and the strike had been a spontaneous response rather than formal training, he said nothing critical.

Instead he reached out and lightly patted the Death Reaper Mantis on her small head.

After reaching Sacred Beast level, the Death Reaper Mantis had fully taken human form — no insect limbs remained. She looked entirely like a compact, delicate little person, distinguishable from an ordinary human only by the wings on her back, which had evolved from gold into iridescent rainbow-colored light-wings.

She had been bracing for a thorough scolding. The gentle pat undid her completely.

She couldn’t resist sticking her little pink tongue out playfully, then flew up happily onto his shoulder and began working his shoulder with tiny fists. She had been thoroughly corrupted by a certain shameless sycophant’s example — there was no one else quite like her for trying to get into Yueyang’s good graces.

Encouraged, the Death Reaper Mantis proactively hunted as they walked, polishing her combat techniques as she went.

Beyond the Crimson Blood Roses — there was the Stag-Slash Sweep stolen from White Deer and refined by Yueyang, the Eighteen Berserk Scythe-Cuts adapted from the sickle weasel’s Berserk Wind, the Sonic Burst and Reverse-Spin Strike lifted from Crimson-Eye and improved, and even the Grand Berserker Flame Blaze reimagined from Toad King’s ice sword storm. Every technique she had absorbed was refined past its original, its attributes sometimes reversed but always elevated.

Longma and the sickle weasel also noticed one thing: the small creature had been quietly practicing a mysterious technique that appeared to have come directly from the young man. She had never used it in actual combat — whether she was deliberately holding it in reserve, or hadn’t yet met the prerequisite for deployment, they couldn’t tell.

Three days later.

Complete calm settled over everything. It was as though everyone had simply forgotten Yueyang existed. Even the Poison Wasp King, who had boldly come to negotiate, was nowhere to be seen.

Something felt off to both Longma and the sickle weasel. This wasn’t the calm of genuine peace — it felt like the silence before a storm. Should they pull back and avoid getting caught in whatever was coming? They went through the familiar mental battle and, once again, held firm.

Freedom — like a ray of dawn — pulled at them, unwilling to let them turn away.

And there was this: having each other made the uncertainty more bearable. They weren’t close friends. But standing on the same side of the same impossible hope — that was enough to keep the fear from becoming overwhelming. Alone, either of them would already have turned back.

Yueyang arrived at the middle sector and brought the Death Reaper Mantis to the location of Beast Valley’s first true trial — the Spirit Beast Hall. This was where war beasts were first tested. No one knew how many war beasts had been eliminated here over the years.

The first trial was, technically, very simple. Three things to do. Every challenger and war beast knew what they were. And yet, laid out plainly and clearly, the vast majority still couldn’t complete them.

The first thing the war beast had to do was enter the Spirit Beast Hall and retrieve the identification token bearing its own beast designation.

This had to be done by the war beast alone.

No matter how powerful the master, no assistance was permitted. That restriction was precisely what made it the hardest part.