Toad King was outside enjoying a massage from several female magical beasts when the bad news arrived.

A lightning lizard came sprinting in.

“The new arrival’s war beast has come out of the Spirit Beast Hall.”

Toad King erupted. “Worthless — a dozen creatures who brag about being the finest killers in Beast Valley, with every advantage of terrain and preparation, and they couldn’t kill one tiny creature. Useless, every single one of them! I knew better than to trust that pack of boasting frauds, but I graciously gave them a chance anyway — and they repaid my generosity with complete failure! When those idiots finally drag themselves out of there, I’ll hang the lot of them and see how much they brag then!”

The lightning lizard was drenched in Toad King’s foul-smelling spittle but didn’t dare wipe its face. It reported weakly: “Your Majesty… I’m afraid those creatures won’t be coming out of the Spirit Beast Hall. They’re… all dead.”

“All dead?”

“It appears none survived. The small creature came out having claimed the Gold Token — only available on the third level — and advanced a rank in the process. She couldn’t have leveled up without killing the assassins who attacked her.”

Toad King’s fury became incoherent. “Those absolute failures — not only did they die trying to kill her, they became the fuel for her growth instead! Is there anything more catastrophically useless than this?!”

“Your Majesty…” The lightning lizard was terrified to continue.

“Is there something even worse? Just say it. Say everything at once. One dose of horrible news, then we’re done — is there anything worse than a dozen dead assassins, tell me now!”

Toad King was shaking with rage, exercising every last scrap of restraint not to simply swallow the messenger whole.

“Human-Faced Tiger and Eagle King have both sent subordinates to distance themselves from the operation and declare their innocence. The Poison Wasp King and Lion King’s people went further — they directly named you as the one who ordered it. And Your Majesty… in my assessment, both Lion King and Poison Wasp King appear to be moving toward cooperation with the new arrival.”

The lightning lizard finished its report and bolted.

It genuinely feared Toad King might eat it.

Toad King went quiet for an unexpectedly long moment.

Then produced a laugh more unpleasant than weeping: “Well of course they are. The new arrival is rising too fast — it would be strange if they weren’t maneuvering. But the road ahead won’t be so smooth. I’ll handle this personally. Pandora’s Box means nothing — that boy can’t possibly get through the Rolling Stone testing grounds. Divine force or not. And if they think they’re dealing with me alone — they’re wrong. After all these years, it’s time the Five Beast Kings reshuffled positions. Ha ha ha ha!”

The female beasts giving the massage began trembling at the sound of that laugh. When Toad King laughed like that, someone always suffered for it — and sometimes all of Beast Valley ran red.

Yueyang was turning the Gold Token over in his hands, examining it from every angle.

The Death Reaper Mantis had spent a full day in the Spirit Beast Hall’s most dangerous lower level to claim it. She had come close to disaster several times — but her exceptional intelligence and Yueyang’s teaching had carried her through.

With the Gold Token secured, the Death Reaper Mantis shed her newborn status for good, ascending to the rank of elite war beast challenger.

Claiming the token was only the first task.

The second was a test of the war beast’s in-battle responsiveness. It came in three difficulty tiers: Easy, Normal, and Hard.

The Easy test was archery — three consecutive arrows, from within a hundred meters, hitting an apple balanced on a small pig’s head without injuring the pig. Clear enough.

The Normal test was rapid javelin throwing — ten high-powered bouncing mushroom spheres launched simultaneously into the sky, five rounds in total, and every single one had to be hit without a mushroom or javelin going astray. The bouncing spheres collided in midair and could wildly redirect each other, which meant the Normal test had very few successes to its name.

The Hard test was, by any measure, one of the most absurd trials in Beast Valley.

In recorded history, no one had ever cleared the Hard test completely.

Not once.

Even knowing a Wisdom Fruit waited as the reward for completion, almost no one attempted it. The challenge was simply too extreme — it stripped challengers of the courage to even try.

The test worked like this: the master had to fire their war beast from a slingshot-style launcher — the war beast flying as a living cannonball. Under the trial Laws, the war beast could use no abilities and no strength during flight, unless it successfully passed a previous round, at which point the Laws would temporarily grant a single technique for navigating the next round. One miscalculation, one wrong landing zone — the war beast died badly.

Ten rounds, all succeeding, with no margin for failure — that was what cleared the Hard test and earned the Wisdom Fruit.

The Prison Emperor had once attempted it. After three successful rounds he had broken into a cold sweat and refused to continue. Vivienne had done better — six successful rounds. At that point even her enemies advised her to stop, lest she ruin the most remarkable record in tens of thousands of years. She remained Beast Valley’s modern record holder.

The all-time record, supposedly, belonged to someone from a hundred thousand years ago — nine successful rounds. His companions had begged him to stop. After a day of consideration, he had taken the risk on the tenth — and failed. No Wisdom Fruit, and the war beast died.

“He wants to attempt the War Beast Cannonball?!” Toad King was stunned into disbelief.

“Is this real?” Lion King, Eagle King, and Human-Faced Tiger were equally incredulous.

“You really have to do this? It’s genuinely impossible.” The Poison Wasp King had come ostensibly to congratulate, but was quietly and continuously trying to talk him out of it. The sickle weasel and Longma, who had been lurking nearby, abandoned any pretense of concealment and rushed forward to plead with Yueyang directly. They had never seen anyone succeed. Even Ji Wuri, godlike in reputation, had tried twice and walked away with a sigh.

The test grounds were merciless — ice pools on one side, fire pools on the other, blade-lined walls beyond that, with poison wells and quicksand vortexes in the outer areas. Any misfired cannonball that landed outside the valid zone meant a death the war beast couldn’t escape. Beast Valley’s Laws stripped all ability the moment a war beast entered the testing field. Failure meant watching helplessly while your war beast died.

The first shot alone, in the Hard test, was nearly impossible on its own merits. From behind an intermediate tower, the war beast had to be launched over it and precisely into a second tower assembled from wood, stone, and spears — with one shot, no retries, and a small pig inside the tower that had to be killed. If the tower didn’t collapse or the pig survived, it was a failure regardless. One chance. That was the rule.

“All of you, be quiet. This looks simple to me. Get out of the way.” Yueyang kicked the sickle weasel and Longma aside without ceremony.

“Are you really going to be a cannonball?” the Poison Wasp King whispered to the Death Reaper Mantis.

The Death Reaper Mantis gave an eager nod.

She had absolute faith in her master. Not even death would shake it by a fraction.

Yueyang didn’t give the Death Reaper Mantis any encouraging speech or reassurances — he simply picked her up and placed her in the launcher. The Law energy immediately encased her in a glowing spherical shell, giving her the appearance of a small, radiant cannonball. Regardless of the war beast’s size, the launch force was always equal — and during the flight, no innate ability or strength could be used at all. The war beast’s only contribution was the trust it held for its master — and the silent coordination that trust made possible.

Toad King and Lion King were still too far away to have arrived.

Eagle King and Poison Wasp King were both present, however. So were other magical beasts, and a dozen or more residents — every one of them watching Yueyang the way people watch someone who has clearly lost their mind.

A hundred years might pass in Beast Valley without a single challenger attempting the War Beast Cannonball. This young man was genuinely deranged. The polite hope was that he wouldn’t fail on the very first shot — because a first-shot failure would make the whole spectacle very short.

Aside from the Poison Wasp King, the sickle weasel, and Longma, the general consensus among both magical beasts and residents was that Yueyang would fail immediately. History had no shortage of overconfident fools who chose the hardest test, fired once, and discovered they had killed their own war beast in spectacular fashion.

“At least calculate it first?” The sickle weasel had stopped caring about concealment, wiping a cold sweat from its face. “There’s no time limit — you can take as long as you need!”

“That’s right — force, angle, trajectory, wind — everything needs to be worked out carefully first!” Longma was equally urgent.

“Something this simple needs calculations?” Yueyang’s expression was one of pure disdain.

“He’s out of his mind.”

“That war beast is done for…”

The moment they saw that attitude, everyone knew what they were getting. Overconfident types who skipped the math were historically the worst performers. A famous intellectual from three thousand years ago had spent three days calculating and one day running preliminary trials before firing — and still failed.

No one had ever succeeded without calculation. It was simply impossible.

Even the easiest apple-shooting test required careful attention to angle, force, and wind direction.

The sickle weasel and Longma were still preparing to argue.

Yueyang moved before they finished a sentence. He pulled the launcher back in one smooth motion — and with a whoosh, the Death Reaper Mantis was airborne.

Wrapped in the glow of Law energy, she arced through the air in a long parabola, cleared the first tower completely, and slammed into the second tower squarely at mid-height.

The tower shuddered once — and collapsed with a thunderous crash.

The small pig inside was not merely dead. It was atomized.

The Death Reaper Mantis, still wrapped in her glowing Law shell, teleported back instantaneously and landed in Yueyang’s palm.

Was that… success?

That simple?

Every jaw in the vicinity hit the floor simultaneously.