With Yueyang, Wuxia, and Qianqian providing support, the Storm Valkyrie spent a full day hammering the Volcanic Whale into submission.

The whale had started out intending to die rather than surrender. But it kept being subjected to things that made dying sound considerably more appealing than they were making it. The Storm Valkyrie alone would have simply turned it into a very large piece of salted fish eventually — but the real breaking point was the combination of Yueyang’s law-force and Pandora’s Box working in tandem. Law-force and Calamity god-force together put the whale in a state where it couldn’t die even when it wanted to, while Yueyang ran it through what appeared to be a series of creative experiments. The final nudge came when the whale noticed Gray Wolf eyeing it with the look of an animal that has just finished one meal and is already thinking about the next. A Sky-rank magical beast has its pride, but a Sky-rank magical beast would also rather live. It lowered its head and conceded to the Storm Valkyrie.

Xiao Wenli’s pursuit of the Blazing Divine Eagle concluded faster. The Eagle possessed genuine intelligence, and intelligent beings tend to accurately assess situations in which they have no options. Caught repeatedly by Xiao Wenli’s binding abilities, unable to land a clean counterattack, it surrendered early and relatively gracefully.

The Chaos Phantom, meanwhile, had no interest in prisoners. She had set her sights on the fire sea and was having the time of her existence — consuming fire energy at a rate that suggested ten thousand years of catching up to do — and when the two Ghost-Fire Crows tried to surrender rather than be eaten, she simply ignored them and kept hunting. The fire-sea pursuit turned into something that barely qualified as a fight. If the Crows hadn’t been slowed slightly by all the volcanic elementals she stopped to devour along the way, they would not have made it back.

In a state of undisguised terror, both Crows made a long arc around the Chaos Phantom and came to find Yueyang directly, presenting themselves as his problem now.

Faced with the Chaos Phantom as an alternative, they were fully prepared to be the most cooperative war beasts in recorded history.

“The one thing I regret is not learning more.” The war beasts were useful, but what Yueyang had actually wanted from this place was information — ancient secrets, specifically those relating to the six divine artifacts and the ancient rune inscriptions. There was never enough of those.

“Gradually,” Wuxia said softly. “The Ruins of the Gods may be where we finally open that door properly.”

“These war beasts — what do we do with them?” Qianqian raised the practical question. Taking them out was obviously necessary; leaving them here was releasing threats back into the wild, and Yueyang didn’t do that. The problem was that war beasts like the Volcanic Whale, the Fire Dragon Eel, the Blazing Divine Eagle, and the Ghost-Fire Crows were all mature specimens at high ranks. Their development ceiling was limited — not every war beast had the fortune of passing through something like the Beast Valley Rebirth Gate. They would serve for now, but in time the gap between them and Gray Wolf and the Chaos Phantom would become impossible to ignore.

The sheer size of the Volcanic Whale and Fire Dragon Eel was itself a disqualifying factor as far as Yueyang was concerned. A war beast that was measured in kilometers created problems that outweighed its usefulness. If either of them decided to roll over in its sleep on the Longteng continent, the resulting tremors would affect a substantial portion of the geography. They simply couldn’t be placed there.

The heavenly realm had its own obvious risk — anything left unsupervised up there might eventually walk away.

Yueyang’s solution was to relocate all the unexpectedly acquired war beasts to Thunder Fortress on the Sky Stairway’s sixth floor, where the lava lakes would serve as adequate habitat.

The old fox, Jun Wuyou, and several others arrived at Thunder Fortress once word spread. They were all enthusiastic enough that Yueyang had to actively prevent them from attempting to relocate the Volcanic Whale to the Longteng continent as some kind of attraction.

“The master is truly beyond compare,” Jude the toad-fatty said, trembling with something indistinguishable from religious awe. His social position had risen considerably in proportion to Yueyang’s reputation, to the point where Innate-realm warriors now nodded to him politely when they passed.

Elder Nangong, Heavenly Execution, the Dragon Emperor, the Underworld Emperor, and others came to look. When they saw the full inventory — a Volcanic Whale several kilometers in length, a Fire Dragon Eel, a Blazing Divine Eagle, and two Ghost-Fire Crows — the responses varied.

Heavenly Execution offered the Celestial Demon Hall’s treasured Grand Celestial Demon Pearl in exchange for the two Ghost-Fire Crows, which had recently ascended to Sky-rank tier two. The trade was agreed, and the Crows — who had already mentally accepted that any outcome not involving the Chaos Phantom was acceptable — were contracted to Heavenly Execution, the Celestial Demon people’s number two figure.

The Underworld Emperor watched with barely concealed longing. He also wanted to trade. His artifact, the Eye of the Underworld, was Sacred rank rather than sub-divine artifact rank, so he couldn’t match the offer that had just gone through. He watched Heavenly Execution contract the Crows and quietly accepted his defeat. The Fire Dragon Eel and Blazing Divine Eagle were out of the question anyway — both had significant intelligence, and a sufficiently intelligent mature war beast was simply too much of a defection risk.

Yueyang noted that he was interested in the Eye of the Underworld, and promised the Underworld Emperor he’d find him a strong war beast with genuine development potential. The Emperor seemed satisfied with this.

Balurt the Grand Demon King arrived slightly late and also wanted a trade. Specifically, a black dragon. He cited an ancient tradition of demon lords riding black dragons that apparently stretched back to the primordial era. Yueyang, who had just accepted the Demon Bottle Balurt brought as an opening gesture, declined to point out that black dragons were not generally easier to tame than alternatives. He accepted the Bottle and made a note.

“I won’t be heading straight back to the trial grounds — I want to spend a few days in the heavenly realm first. If I come across appropriate war beasts, I’ll keep you in mind. Trust my judgment.” Yueyang kept his internal amusement private. These old figures, apparently, were sitting on considerably more treasures than they’d ever let on. They were going to require more thorough extraction.

“Cultivation is what matters,” Elder Nangong said, with the gentle firmness of someone making a priority statement. “The rest can wait.”

“Of course. But appropriate opportunities will come up, I’m sure of it.” The Underworld Emperor had complete faith in Yueyang. If he’d known the truth — that Yueyang had just defeated a Perfect Innate Sovereign tier eight opponent operating in its own amplified domain — his faith would probably have been accompanied by some degree of terrified re-evaluation.

“Anyone interested in the Fire Dragon Eel and the Blazing Divine Eagle?” One last round of promotion.

“The power is manageable,” the Dragon Emperor said. “The intelligence is the problem. Mature war beasts with real intelligence are genuinely difficult to keep loyal.” He quietly suggested that if Yueyang didn’t intend to contract them personally, eliminating them was the more prudent option.

He had a point. Neither the Fire Dragon Eel nor the Eagle would reach Sacred Beast rank. They had some development value, but not much.

The Chaos Phantom had been trying to eat them since the moment the battle ended, which was its own form of ongoing commentary.

Yueyang’s solution came to him while he was watching her. He had the Death Reaper Mantis — Future — contract both war beasts. Future, with two large powerful supporters complementing her own abilities, would eventually be able to operate completely independently once she crossed into Divine Beast rank. A small-form Quasi-Divine Beast leading two large fire-attribute Sky-rank war beasts — if the attribute matchup worked in their favor, whatever they encountered was going to have a difficult time.

Gray Wolf’s stomach was distended in a way that no one had yet commented on.

The digestion of a Sky-rank tier four face-anglerfish was apparently a process that took time. It had been walking around with the lower portion of its jaw slightly displaced since the battle ended, which gave it a permanent expression of mild surprise.

Everyone was too preoccupied with the captured war beasts to notice.

It was Yue Shuang who finally spotted the anomaly, back at the Tianra palace.

“Brother! There’s something wrong with the doggy!” She stretched up on her toes to pat Gray Wolf’s forehead, looking puzzled and slightly concerned. “Look at it — did it eat something bad? Why won’t its mouth close?”

“The consequences of being too greedy,” Yueyang said.

Yue Shuang went visibly pale.

This hit closer to home than he’d intended. Her own relationship with food was, in certain respects, comparable to Gray Wolf’s. The mental image of her jaw suffering a similar permanent dislocation was enough to make her clap both hands over her mouth, eyes wide, as though preemptive caution could retroactively protect her.

Gray Wolf, jaw askew, was privately smug. Not everyone could swallow a Sky-rank tier four creature. The jaw situation would resolve itself in a few days. The power increase once that anglerfish finished digesting would be substantial. Temporary inconvenience against long-term gain — a reasonable trade.

“Want some candy?” Yueyang produced some, going through the usual ritual.

Yue Shuang refused, for the first time in her recorded history, on the grounds that too much might produce a jaw condition similar to what she was currently observing. She was on the verge of actual tears.

Wuxia eventually took her to find Fourth Mother, and peace returned.

Qianqian, citing concern for Yueyang’s cultivation schedule and absolutely nothing else, picked up the Qiluo Umbrella with a bright expression and set off to find Yue Yu.

“Take your time with the research,” she called back, already moving quickly. “If you find anything, we can discuss it later.”

Her footsteps were noticeably light.

Yueyang spread his recent acquisitions out in front of him.

The Grand Celestial Demon Pearl was clearly exceptional. The Eye of the Underworld was also interesting. And the Demon Bottle Balurt had given him carried a strange energy that he was increasingly confident dated to the primordial era.

He had planned to study the ancient fire-rune formation the Inferno Sovereign had drawn, but the Sick Beauty and Yue Yu were both away, and he didn’t want to go through the analysis twice. He set that aside for when they returned.

When he placed the Eye of the Underworld next to the Twin Masks, something clicked.

He looked more carefully.

The hollow in the mask’s forehead — the one he’d always assumed was a fracture site, the remnant of a missing piece — had a perfectly curved edge. Not a break. A socket.

He had tried everything he could think of to fill it over the course of his travels. Nothing had ever fit.

But the Eye of the Underworld — the Underworld Emperor’s Sacred-rank artifact —

He placed them side by side.

The fit was exact.

The Twin Masks had originally been a Gold-rank artifact when he first acquired them, its true power sealed. Multiple rounds of reshaping with Nirvana Flames had brought the exterior close to complete restoration and pushed its power near sub-divine artifact tier. But one seal had always remained intact. He’d never been able to identify what was missing.

Now the forehead socket was no longer a mystery — and whatever it was designed to hold looked very much like an eye.

What would a mask with an eye in its forehead be able to do?

What was it waiting to show him?