The gate tower on the other side of the imperial gardens.

Yue Yu, Hong, Aman, the Chaos Phantom, and the Death Reaper Mantis had also found an enemy waiting for them.

If Princess Qianqian had been there, she would have stopped dead in surprise — because the woman facing Yue Yu looked exactly like Wulan from the western gate tower. Identical face, identical bearing, not a feature out of place.

The only difference was her clan.

Not Three-Legged Golden Crow. Three-Legged Golden Toad.

Both were Eastern Demon Clan. Both had entirely different talents and fought in entirely different ways.

“I don’t have Wulan’s patience,” the Golden Toad beauty announced, with the unhurried contempt of someone accustomed to getting what she wanted without effort. “All of you come at once. This cat-and-mouse routine is the most tedious thing imaginable.” One long sleeve swept out, and a single finger extended toward Yue Yu. “You. You’ll be the first to die.”

“For Xiao San.” Yue Yu’s voice was very quiet. She was, by nature, the kind of person who stepped around ants rather than on them. But not today. “I will kill you at the foot of this gate tower.”

Her eyes held something that had never been there before.

Her teeth found her lower lip for a moment — a small, unconscious gesture to press the nervousness down.

Yue Yang’s custom-fitted Angel’s Blade extended from her, silver wings spreading. Her Grimoire rose and opened in the same motion. The Tsunami Demoness emerged from its golden light, spread her arms wide, and dissolved into energy form that flowed into Yue Yu’s body — prepared to fight as one with her master. The Qiluo Umbrella — the sub-divine artifact gifted by the Qiluo Immortal — spun out and descended into Yue Yu’s hand without being called. Yue Yu had originally intended to pass it to Inan, but Inan had her spirit mirror and no interest in a second artifact. Fengxian, the intended next recipient, had been on the Sky Stairway training. The umbrella had been waiting, and it seemed to have made up its own mind about its master.

“The nerve of her,” Hong said, her fury a palpable thing. Being told she and Aman combined weren’t worth a second glance — who did this creature think she was dealing with?

“ROAR.” Aman had no interest in words. She liked to establish her opinion through direct physical contact.

The Death Reaper Mantis, reborn through the Rebirth Gate and given human form, enlightened by both the Wisdom Fruit and the Divine Radiance — she had developed a quality of intelligence and awareness that was something to behold. She watched Hong and Aman take position on either side of Yue Yu, felt the intent of the coming charge, and made a quiet decision. She slipped back, intercepted the Chaos Phantom who had been preparing to rush forward with everyone else, and redirected her toward one of the small side gates — aiming to slip past the enemy’s line entirely and get inside.

The Chaos Phantom was not happy about this. She preferred problems she could hit. But Yue Yang had lectured her enough times that the habit had taken root: whenever Hong, Jiang Ying, or another senior companion was present, defer to them. She followed, grudgingly.

The Golden Toad beauty apparently noticed the flanking attempt.

“Two little mice,” she said, with cold amusement. “You think you can slip past me?”

One sleeve moved.

Three golden toads appeared at the three gates below the tower. The center toad was a hundred meters tall, mouth open wide enough to swallow the sky. The two at the side gates were somewhat smaller — fifty to sixty meters — and still large enough to make the Death Reaper Mantis stare with honest amazement.

“That is an enormous toad,” she said.

The Chaos Phantom, for her part, was puzzled. The clan was called Three-Legged Golden Toad — but the toads in front of her clearly had four legs. With her level of intelligence, arriving at the question was already an achievement. Answering it was probably beyond her current reach.

“Die!” Hong had run out of patience. The enemy was actively splitting attention while simultaneously facing Hong and Aman together — and apparently found that entirely manageable. That was intolerable.

She closed the distance in an instant and drove one palm flat into the Golden Toad beauty’s chest.

Divine force discharged.

The Golden Toad beauty’s face went through several rapid changes. She had not known — had not identified — that this attacker was a Divine Envoy. The sternum shrieked with pain. But the Golden Toad Clan’s defense was extraordinary, and a talent for absorbing and dispersing impact bled away the bulk of Hong’s strike before it could do real damage.

Hong’s second palm was already coming.

The Golden Toad beauty’s leap was frankly startling — she was airborne, inverted, sailing backward before the palm arrived.

Aman hit her anyway.

Like a freight train. The impact was so total that when the Golden Toad beauty’s skull met Aman’s forehead, what gave was the enemy’s nose — crushed flat. She went into the wall at the speed of a fired projectile, and the wall — which had taken everything the battle had thrown at it — cracked.

In terms of raw physical force: Aman wielded the Earth Heart and Five-Element Divine General power combined. No one in this group, or arguably most groups, outclassed her in brute strength. Technique was a different question, but pure violence? If Aman was second, no one dared claim first.

While the Golden Toad beauty was still embedded in the wall, still too stunned to move —

Aman turned and charged again.

This time she let everything out. Five-Element Divine General force at full emergence, cutting through everything in her path. She collected the largest golden toad and one of the fifty-meter toads mid-charge, tossed them both into the air, and slammed them directly into the Golden Toad beauty still trying to peel herself off the wall.

BOOM.

The Golden Toad beauty’s tongue lolled out half a foot. Her eyes nearly left their sockets.

Her sternum had collapsed. Any other race, hit like this, would simply be dead. The Golden Toad Clan’s constitution was what kept her in the fight at all.

“That hurts. How dare you—” She pulled herself out of the wall slowly, and then she began to change. Her abdomen inflated with visible speed — swelling outward like something building pressure inside. Her face twisted, ugliness overtaking the beauty that had been identical to Wulan’s — a hundred times worse than the nose Aman had crushed — dozens of blood-red warts erupting across her skin, her arms and legs thickening and roughening, old skin layering on old skin while something muscular and violent moved beneath it, gathering.

Her abdomen was the most extreme change. In under half a minute she had become a Golden Toad person — belly distended enormously, limbs too thick and too short to support upright standing. She dropped to all fours.

As she breathed — as her jaw worked with that gulping, rhythmic motion — the sternum Aman had collapsed knitted itself back together.

Hong saw the transformation and immediately moved back to cover Yue Yu, who had been steadily building her power throughout.

Aman did not cover anything. She turned around, walked a few steps to get her momentum, and charged again.

The largest toad puffed itself out and took the impact. A second toad opened its mouth and expelled a disorienting blue-grey smoke.

Aman kept punching. Her fists landing on the Golden Toad person’s head produced sound and fury but increasingly little effect — it was like striking something that simply redistributed the impact rather than suffering it.

“Aman — let me.” Yue Yu had understood. Force alone wouldn’t end this. She would have to give the most of herself here. Whatever her nature normally — she would not hold back. Not now. Not for Xiao San.

“I’ll eat you!“

The Golden Toad person had been watching, and she’d done the assessment: the human woman was the weakest of the group. Better to consume the most vulnerable target quickly than grind away at the divine general who felt like hitting a mountain.

Her body swelled larger still. Her mouth split wide. The long tongue — pale and glistening, the color and texture of cream-colored ribbon — shot toward Yue Yu, coiling to wrap around her and drag her in. Anything that entered a Golden Toad Clan’s belly had never left one. That was simply the biology.

Yue Yu’s Angel’s Blade came down.

The space around it cracked.

The tongue fell in two pieces.

In the instant the Golden Toad person stared at her own severed tongue in disbelief, Yue Yu was already there — spinning the Qiluo Umbrella to catch and deflect the torrent of poison smoke, then driving the umbrella’s tip into the enemy’s head, then sweeping the closed umbrella through and sending the Golden Toad person screaming through the air.

Hong had been waiting in the sky for this.

She screamed.

The sound shook the world.

Inside the Golden Toad person’s skin, hidden tympanic membranes exploded — two gouts of blood and white poison fluid scattered from the impact sites. Not enough to kill, but enough to make her eyes roll back, enough to drop her tongue limp from her open mouth.

Aman kicked the large toad off her and leapt. Both hands seized the slowly falling Golden Toad person and drove her into the ground.

The remaining smaller toad opened its mouth to bite — Yue Yu opened the Qiluo Umbrella and turned it, and the toad sailed backward one hundred meters and landed hard.

“Return to earth.” Aman summoned every thread of her Five-Element divine force into both fists and drove them into the point where Yue Yu’s umbrella had already opened a hole in the enemy’s skull.

The sound that followed was not one worth describing.

Brain matter left through the small opening at considerable velocity.

The head, in its entirety, was flattened by Aman’s fist.

The large toad threw itself upward in a desperate rescue attempt — airborne, mouth open, long tongue swinging toward Aman.

Aman turned and looked at it.

Her eyes went blood-red.

A flame erupted across her body.

The toad simply stopped. In mid-air, its eyes lost their color. Its enormous body went limp and fell directly in front of her feet. The tongue, extended to its full enormous length, dropped against the ground without the strength to retract — landing less than half a meter from where Aman stood.

The already-devastated Golden Toad person produced one final scream.

Her skull finished splitting. Every orifice bled at once. The pupils of her bulging eyes spread and spread and stopped.

Death Gaze had rarely triggered for Aman. Today it had — and the double activation of Blood-Pupils Twin Kill had activated alongside it. If the Golden Toad person had been unlucky today, that was perhaps an understatement.

The two smaller toads — one that the Death Reaper Mantis and Chaos Phantom had been driving to confusion, one that Yue Yu had sent flying with the Qiluo Umbrella — both cried out simultaneously and collapsed.

A golden Grimoire blasted free of the Golden Toad person’s body and immediately began to dim.

In the Purple-Gold Divine Hall, where the Solar King had been pressing Yue Yang hard —

He stopped.

He suppressed an anger that was immediate and visible, and his voice came out sharp: “You scheming — the Supreme has been with you this entire time. She just killed my Queen. What is that power? Is that the Supreme’s force? Something so serene, so quiet — a divine tranquility—”

Yue Yang wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and smiled. “If the Supreme were actually here, you would have already lost. Did you think intelligence from a year ago was still current? We’re not the same as we were a year ago.”

The Solar King moved to press the offensive again —

And stopped.

At Yue Yang’s feet, a vast rune formation had appeared and was slowly resolving into shape.

“Is that — the Eternal Wheel?”

“You kept your secret techniques hidden too,” Yue Yang said. “You’ve been hitting me fairly hard this whole time. Courtesy demands I return the favor.” He spread both arms wide. The Eternal Wheel expanded outward to fifty meters. The Solar King felt the Law-force bite and struggled against it — found he couldn’t move. Found he couldn’t move anything at all. His thoughts ran free, but his body was pinned.