Chapter 98: Turnhand Town Slays the Great Jiao King, Will the Two Sides Reach an Agreement?

On Mount Tai’s Yuhuang Summit, moonlight poured down in a bright wash, the stars scattered like silver dust across the sky.
The shadows of the Ten Beast Kings lay sprawled on the ground, their forms low and coiled, terrifying in their menace.
Lu Yuan stood before them, his expression unreadable, almost flat.

His voice fell slowly into the stillness.

As expected, it was all there was to it.

No preamble. No empty words. Barely a sentence, yet unmistakably forceful, as if there was no room for negotiation.

At his side, Elder Ji and Elder Yun stiffened as soon as they heard him.
They turned their heads blankly, eyes wide with shock and helplessness.
They had come to negotiate. Negotiation meant this: lower your pride as far as you can, grant concessions, satisfy the other side enough to keep talks alive.
Yet in Lu Yuan’s mouth, “talk” had become mere notification. It had no flavor of compromise.

Before them, almost all of the Ten Beast Kings were already at the Golden-Body Realm.
Each was immensely powerful.
If even one of them ran wild in a human city, it would be a catastrophe.

And what he had just said carried no hint of yielding, no softening at all.
Those two elders, who had understood too well the etiquette of talks, could already sense that these creatures would snap into fury.

Not far away, the Spirit Monkey, sensing the change in atmosphere, lifted his head from the spirit peach in his hand, which suddenly seemed to have lost its fragrance. He had warned before: these Beast Kings were all hot-blooded, unwilling to submit, and violence was likely.
The meaning was clear—if both sides wanted peace and wanted to prevent another beast tide, each had to retreat and concede where needed. But Lu Yuan had closed every door. How, then, could one continue talking?

As they had expected, it was headed for battle.

Sure enough.
At that moment, all ten Beast Kings fixed their eyes on Lu Yuan.
Their gazes were mean, some openly murderous.
The Black Ox King snorted, and thick white mist unfurled from his nostrils, while the black radiance twisting around his horn tips grew deeper and darker.
Beside him, the Nine-Tailed Fox King watched in human-like composure and did not speak, his gaze steady.

“Human, you truly have the nerve,” said the Giant Serpent King at last.
Though his body was only dozens of meters long, his silver scales shone with a clear, hard brilliance beneath the moonlight, seemingly harder than alloy. The aura he radiated was vast. He had already fully become a serpent form, stronger even than the White King and the Dragon-Blood Serpent.

He moved forward slowly, eyes locked on Lu Yuan, his voice harsh.
“But none of what you said—we will never accept.”

“For ages, humans have taken a few extra steps and in return have butchered our kind without a thought.
Now we have gained strength. We are finally backed by Heaven and Earth itself and can rise at last—and now you ask us not to unleash a beast tide? You expect us to accept that? Such a bargain is too cheap.”

When he had finished, the Giant Serpent King advanced again, and an immense force surged from his body.
Still staring straight at Lu Yuan, he continued:

“Those demands of yours—I will not agree. Every blood debt that beastkind has paid for thousands of years—I will collect it all.”

At those words, Elder Ji and Elder Yun both paled. They knew then there was no settlement left.

Lu Yuan, however, remained unchanged. His expression did not flicker as he replied:

“Hm. What you just said—I feel as though I have heard it somewhere. The White King of the Qinling range seems to have said almost the same.”

“No doubt.”
With a roar, the Giant Serpent King barked, “The White King of Qinling was my distant kin, and I know it was you who killed him.
I did not come today to bargain with you. I came to avenge him. Kill you first, then when I return, I will call forth the beast tide—lead my armies and sweep through the cities, laying waste and forcing your kind to pay with the fiercest blood.”

At the mention of the White King, his fury burst through every restraint. He spoke the purpose of his visit with no further words.
A dreadful murderous intent bled from him, as if it might solidify into a blade.

A roar of thunder rolled through the air.

The moment he finished speaking, Lu Yuan moved. He stepped forward. Golden life-force surged outward.

Thunder encircled him; his whole body became a streak of light. In an instant, he reappeared before the Giant Serpent King.

His face remained cold and distant, without hesitation. He lifted his right hand, gathered endless thunder force, and brought it down upon the other creature’s massive head.

Sizzling.

A crackling burst, then another.
In the blink of an eye, lightning speared outward, flooding the area with white fire.
The violent vibration of thunder covered the Giant Serpent King from head to tail.

The scales that had seemed firmer than steel cracked asunder. Blood gushed from within in a red spray.

Thunder was the emblem of fury, of slaughter; in sheer strike force, it was among the most brutal arts.
And Lu Yuan held nothing back.

The Giant Serpent King was powerful, yes.
But he had only just entered the Golden-Body Realm, and his bloodline was weaker than that of the Spirit Monkey. How could he withstand this?

In less than a breath, his life-force fled at full speed. He did not even have time to display his full might. He crashed to the ground lifeless, and his silver-white body turned char-black, giving off the iron scent of cooked flesh.

“This time, I did not come to bargain. You either agree, or you refuse. There is no need for extra words.”

Afterward, Lu Yuan returned to where he had stood, gave a soft tap of his hands, and spoke in a low, calm tone.
Then he turned toward the nine remaining Beast Kings and said,

“Where did we stop? Continue.”

The Giant Serpent King had crossed a line by threatening to unleash a beast tide, and Lu Yuan did not tolerate threats.
As his words fell, silence consumed all of Yuhuang Summit.

Elder Ji and Elder Yun watched the fallen Serpent and swallowed hard.
Such force, such directness—at the slightest provocation, he had already acted.

And he had done it in front of the others, openly killing.

Indeed.
Lu Wang was still Lu Wang.
Unbound, arrogant, direct.

But would this not make the matter more complicated?

Not far away, the other nine Beast Kings, led by the Peacock King, showed visible shock.
Everything had happened too quickly. Before they could react at all, the Giant Serpent King was gone.
He had been taken in a single instant, no chance to resist.

If before they had come to Yuhuang Summit out of a kind of courtesy to the Spirit Monkey, now they had faced Lu Yuan’s true power directly.
After all, he was only in the Shackled Realm, yet he could cut down a Golden-Body combatant and seemed not to have even used all of himself.

Still, seeing him strike so openly before their eyes, some of them could only read it as provocation once their minds caught up.
So Black Ox King and two or three others stepped forward.

“Human king—”

Then the Peacock King spoke and held them back from approaching.

“What you said can be discussed, yes. But if humans continue to hunt our beasts deliberately, what then? Are we to stand still and wait to be killed?”

His voice carried the weight of a mature man. He was the strongest among them, and when he spoke, the others fell back without obstruction.
That one statement was enough to show he now recognized Lu Yuan’s strength and was ready to negotiate seriously.
The dead Giant Serpent King had no further relevance to the matter.

Among beasts, the law of the jungle—strong over weak—was absolute.

Peacock King sensed that Lu Yuan was terribly hard to handle.
If battle truly broke out, the outcome might not end well for anyone. So he tried to calm them.

“Of course.”

Lu Yuan smiled slightly. “All I ask is that you agree: do not invade human lands, and do not stir a beast tide to raid the cities.”

My purpose was simple: to keep the cities and their people in peace.
Of course, if awakened humans provoke a confrontation themselves, I cannot be expected to police every such case. That would be too harsh. The law remains as it is—survival favors the strong.
As long as things do not spiral into something uncontrollable, everything else can be ignored.

“Is that all?” the Peacock King mused.

His wings flared with luminous scales that spoke of uncommon strength. Within him burned a force that, even among all the world’s present beasts, belonged to the very top ranks.

He glanced once at the Spirit Monkey nearby, then turned.

“Fine. We can accept.”

With that, the other Beast Kings shifted restlessly, but as Peacock King’s aura swelled, they all quieted.
Among beasts, too, there were figures all had to respect, and the Peacock King was one of them.

“Thank you,” Lu Yuan said, nodding as he bowed his head slightly.
He knew the concession was already substantial; naturally he could not ask for more.

Then he turned, met the Spirit Monkey’s gaze once in silent farewell, and said directly,
“Elder Ji, Elder Yun. Let us go.”

He strode straight down the mountain.

Is it over already?

Elder Ji and Elder Yun could only gape in confusion, each of them full of questions.
Still, they said nothing and followed behind.

“Peacock King—why did you accept this human?”
After Lu Yuan left, Black Ox King came forward in clear displeasure.

“The world is still changing. If there can be even temporary peace between beasts and humans, it is no bad thing. There is no need to charge toward death for all sides,” said the Nine-Tailed Fox King. His pure white fur glimmered like polished jade, and his voice was soft as a young woman’s.

“True enough. Greater crises will come later. In the end, we are all living beings of one world.”

The Spirit Monkey came over as well, carrying his iron staff, but now he was no longer reckless or carefree.
His tone was grave, as if he knew something too.

In truth, beasts with great bloodline inherit deep memories and secrets through their line.

“Still, I remain unconvinced,” rumbled the Black Ox King.

“Of course this won’t end so easily. At the very least, we should see what kind of strength this human king truly holds,” Peacock King said at last, his eyes fixed on the direction Lu Yuan had vanished into. In them, battle intent stirred like a tide.

The nearby Beast Kings looked on in stunned silence, exchanging uncertain glances, not quite understanding what that meant.
Peacock King gave no explanation, only ordered the lords to remain on Yuhuang Summit for several more days.

Elsewhere, Lu Yuan went down Mount Tai with the three of them.

Elder Ji and Elder Yun felt the negotiation had been far too rushed. In truth, nothing had been written down—only a Giant Serpent King had been killed.
At the very least, they thought, there should have been agreements and oaths, contracts of some kind.

But when they raised it, Lu Yuan only smiled and said nothing.

That left the two elders at a complete loss, uneasy to the core.
After all, this was no small matter. The safety and lives of millions in the cities hung in the balance; it could not be handled carelessly.

A few days passed.

Meanwhile, instruments at the Mount Tai Trial Academy suddenly detected a surge of intense energy at Yuhuang Summit—as if a great battle were in progress.

End of the chapter.