While the Death Reaper Mantis basked in the radiance of the Laws’ reward, the crowd was in an uproar.

The Eagle King had completely lost control of its voice, peppering Yueyang with rapid-fire questions: “How — how — how did you do that?”

Yueyang only smiled and said nothing.

What was he supposed to tell it? That he had seen problems like these in recreational mathematics books and puzzle collections before his crossing? And beyond that — with the knowledge inheritance he carried and the wisdom gleaned from his brush against the divine, cracking problems of this level was no more strenuous than reaching for a glass of water.

The beast-people and residents had worked themselves into such a frenzy that Yueyang, frankly unable to deal with the crowd, retreated into his Grimoire World to let them burn off their excitement in peace. If he stayed, they were going to lose what remained of their minds entirely.

More importantly, the Death Reaper Mantis herself needed the time. Having been bathed in the Boulder Field’s Laws and the awakening light of the Celestial Divine Brilliance, she was on the verge of another evolution — she needed space to absorb and integrate the newly unlocked dimensions of her intelligence, to let the freshly awakened capacities settle into place. Between Beast Valley’s Rebirth Gate, her ascension to Sacred Beast rank, and now this divine illumination, she was unquestionably the luckiest creature in the valley’s history. In truth, she had always been lucky — from the very beginning. Every egg around her had shattered; she alone had hatched.

By rights, her natural gifts should never have carried her to Sacred rank. Even with Yueyang’s most dedicated cultivation, it would have remained beyond her reach.

But at the most difficult moment of her life, the greatest fortune had arrived: Beast Valley, the Rebirth Gate, a second beginning. Every ounce of effort she had poured into herself before that moment had been preserved as latent potential, and with her master’s continued guidance layered on top, ascending to Sacred Beast had become the most natural thing in the world — effortless, inevitable.

Luckier still: she hadn’t even been Yueyang’s first choice to bring through Beast Valley. That had been the Sky Fire Ghost Flame. Because of what had happened in the Valley of Desire, the Sky Fire Ghost Flame had for unknown reasons absorbed Calamity god-force and the World’s source energy and fallen into deep slumber — and from that accident, the entirely new Death Reaper Mantis had been born.

If that wasn’t destiny, what was it?

The Death Reaper Mantis drifted into her brief slumber with tear-tracks still gleaming on her small face, radiant and exhausted at once — like a white pear blossom after rain.

Boulder Field, Beast Valley.

Some of the beasts and residents had already dispersed, heading off to report back to their respective leaders. The larger portion remained, talking over everything they had witnessed, still buzzing with the afternoon’s accumulated astonishments.

The thing that had surprised them most was that Yueyang had simply announced the answers publicly. The top prizes — the Wisdom Light and Celestial Divine Brilliance — could only be claimed once, and the Death Reaper Mantis had claimed them both. Future challengers would never receive those particular rewards. But the answers themselves… the release of those answers allowed many creatures who had spent thousands of years tormented by the unsolved problems to finally, in their last years, put those regrets to rest. At minimum, they knew now. And if future challengers came along, those answers could be sold at significant prices, bartered for whatever they needed. Even without the rewards attached, passing the tests still mattered. With answers in hand, buyers would never be in short supply.

The beasts and residents were deep in this lively discussion — poring over the answers Yueyang had made public — when a mass of dark cloud rolled across the sky, swallowing the light.

“…Hmm?”

The Eagle King and the Poison Wasp King stopped what they were doing simultaneously. The Human-Faced Tiger, just arriving, went rigid the moment it saw the sky.

Even the slowest minds in the crowd felt it — something was very wrong.

Heads tilted back. Every gaze turned upward.

The Poison Wasp King swept the surrounding area, searching for any sign of what was coming.

The Human-Faced Tiger’s fists clenched, its eyes going sharp and cold. “This looks just like Ji Wuri’s Black Sun descending. That’s the Central Temple’s work.”

The Eagle King blinked. “But Ji Wuri already left. Both Ji Wuri and Zhonghua are gone.”

“They are,” the Human-Faced Tiger said, voice dropping into something hard and precise. “But Hall Masters Ranfeng and Wanmo are still here. Eagle, Wasp — have you still not seen it? What a beautiful piece of planning.”

“You’re saying — someone is moving against us?” The Poison Wasp King’s brow furrowed.

“Who?” The Eagle King went still.

“Who isn’t here?” The Human-Faced Tiger ground the words out through clenched teeth. “Today, of all days — the day miracles were made in the Boulder Field — not one of the three great resident commanders thought to come and watch. And of the Five Beast Kings, only the three of us are present. I’ll be honest — I had a feeling from the start, a nagging sense that something was off. But everything went smoothly, no interference of any kind, and I kept telling myself I was imagining it. Which only made me more uneasy. And now — here we are. The moment Yueyang and his war beast stepped away, those of us who aligned with him are immediately targeted…”

“You’re talking about the Lion King?” The Eagle King couldn’t bring itself to believe it. “Surely not. He’s a conservative — he’s never had any appetite for expansion.”

“The Lion King is conservative, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’ll sit quietly and watch us rise. Even if today’s move has nothing to do with it directly — it gave this its blessing by doing nothing to stop it. We are in serious trouble. If we don’t coordinate and hold together, the Central Temple people will pick us off one by one and harvest us for energy.” The Human-Faced Tiger’s expression left no room for doubt.

“Tell us what to do,” the Poison Wasp King said flatly. It had decided to hear the Human-Faced Tiger out.

“Can we just pull back immediately?” the Eagle King asked, alarmed.

“If you had set a trap to destroy your enemies, would you leave them an easy way out?” The Human-Faced Tiger’s mind was moving fast now, assembling the picture. “The sky going dark — that’s Ji Wuri’s Black Sun war beast. He didn’t take it with him when he cleared the valley. He left it behind for Ranfeng and Wanmo. Think about it — would the Lion King have kept its distance unless it knew something like this was coming? Would that toad have been so brazenly arrogant unless it knew it had backup?”

“Well said.”

From behind a distant rock formation, a large and ugly head appeared.

The Toad King.

Despite having lost a life in the War Beast Cannonball test, he remained a resident with one death still in reserve — and exactly as the Human-Faced Tiger had predicted, his attitude was extravagantly, offensively smug. He stood atop his toad’s head, clapping his hands with great satisfaction. “The Human-Faced Tiger lives up to its reputation. One pass and you’ve hit the heart of it.”

The sight of him sent the color draining from many faces in the crowd.

The Toad King himself was frightening enough. But it was Ji Wuri’s war beast — the Black Sun — that inspired genuine terror. To cultivate it, Ji Wuri had consumed an unknown number of beast-people and killed an untold number of residents.

If the Central Temple’s forces had truly allied with the Toad King, with the Toad King leading the way from the front… Beast Valley was about to be drenched in blood.

The Toad King waved one arm dismissively. “All of you — get out of my sight. I have no interest in squabbling with small fry.”

A wave of relief crashed through the crowd.

Pardoned. They scattered instantly in every direction, a mass exodus, every creature wishing it had twice as many legs.

Longma and the sickle weasel were sharper than most. From the moment they had heard the exchange between the Human-Faced Tiger and the Eagle King, they had understood the situation was dire. Watching the crowd dissolve into panicked flight, they raised their voices above the noise:

“Everyone — don’t scatter! This is exactly what the enemy wants — to divide and destroy us one by one! If you want to survive, stay close to the three faction leaders, stand together, fight this off together. On our own, none of us can stand against the Black Sun. And with the Toad King cutting off the escape routes — where do you think you’re running to?”

Some of the steadier beasts and residents heard the logic in those words and turned back, gathering around Longma and the sickle weasel. Others hesitated. But the majority had already committed to flight, trusting the Toad King’s dismissal and gambling on the chaos to carry them clear.

The dark clouds parted.

An enormous black sun emerged — pulsing with a deeply wrong, deeply terrifying black radiance. This was no natural sun. This was Ji Wuri’s war beast, the Black Sun.

Black Sun: Sky-rank tier eight, special type ultra-giant war beast, spherical, five thousand meters in circumference. Capable of self-sustained rotation and absorption of all energy and light. Combat altitude: ten thousand meters. Bonded internally with a Sky-rank tier five “Dark Cloud” special auxiliary war beast. Special abilities: Petrification, Desiccation, Scorched Earth, Death Ray, Sun-Blotting Cloud Cover, Energy-Devouring Wave, Black Death Tide, Weeping Blood Rain of Falling Petals.

A war beast of this magnitude could not possibly have been cultivated during a few months in Beast Valley. Not even Ji Wuri could have managed that. In truth, this was not Ji Wuri’s first time in the trial grounds — he had entered many times over the long years, hunting down Captain Cook on behalf of the Central Temple. The Black Sun had been cultivated during his very first visit, and over the thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of years since, it had grown to reach the terrifying threshold of Sky-rank tier eight.

It was not an intelligence-type cultivator and had never become a Sacred Beast. But the sheer accumulated power it carried made it effectively unstoppable within Beast Valley.

Among all of Ji Wuri’s war beasts, of course, it was the weakest.

He had left it behind specifically to shield his subordinates — to let Ranfeng and Wanmo complete their trials without interference.

Crackling.

The Black Sun detonated.

Blinding black radiance erupted outward, flooding the world from horizon to horizon. No one could keep their eyes open. And those who managed to — found themselves staring into an ocean of black that rendered sight meaningless.

Ten thousand beams of light shot from the Black Sun’s surface.

The beasts fleeing in every direction — the ones who had chosen to run — died in the hundreds beneath that curtain of densely packed black columns. The war beasts of fleeing residents perished with them. Fewer than half managed to avoid the Black Death Tide.

Longma and the sickle weasel dodged beam after beam with barely a breath to spare. A rhinoceros moving a fraction too slowly took a grazing hit across its tail — which simply ceased to exist, vaporized without resistance. If the Bobtail Cat hadn’t shoved it clear at the critical instant, with the sickle weasel catching it from the other side, the rhinoceros would have been annihilated on the spot. The Black Death Tide the Black Sun was unleashing could not be stopped by any physical defense.

A Sky-rank tier eight war beast — never mind one of the Black Sun’s special ultra-giant category — could casually one-shot virtually anything Beast Valley contained.

A war beast capable of filling an entire battlefield with instant death in a single eruption was genuinely rare, even by celestial realm standards.

This one had been raised by Ji Wuri’s own hand.

It was anything but ordinary.

“If you think this is enough to kill us, that’s almost funny.” The Eagle King was furious now — even a Beast King kept a trump card for exactly this kind of moment.

“Is it?” The Toad King’s tone was almost pitying. “Eagle King — I know you have real strength. But if you think this is all I’ve prepared, then you are very, very wrong. Please — come out now. The trap has been set. The prey has taken the bait. Come and enjoy this feast of death at your leisure.” The Toad King bowed with elaborate courtesy toward the shadows.

In front of him, having appeared at some point without anyone noticing, stood more than a dozen terrifying silhouettes.