Nine-Tailed Fox King City had descended into chaos. Apart from the host and the phoenix, the One Emperor and Eight Kings had all started fighting.
In the end, the Nine-Tailed Fox Tribe stepped in to clean up the mess. A Monster Emperor Painting was raised high, and the various Demon Kings ceased fighting, cursing and grumbling as they headed home.
When the dust settled, the Xiangliu Clan and Gu Diao Clan had fought the fiercest, while Elder Ao Hen had taken the worst beating.
The current Monster Emperor came from the Ao Hen Clan. None of the other clans accepted him, but keeping a low profile would have been fine. Instead, he had strutted out to preside over justice. He had asked for a beating and gotten one, suffering a concentrated assault that nearly kept him from leaving Nine-Tailed Fox King City alive.
The seven Demon Kings had already been harboring their own schemes. Because of this whole mess, their already-shaky alliance immediately fell apart. The Nine-Tailed Fox Tribe had made a huge windfall. Seeing their opportunity, they avoided mentioning the Monster Emperor Painting altogether and adopted a delaying tactic, preparing to drag things out for three to five hundred years.
The Xiangliu and Gu Diao Clans left in succession. The Shenlong, Lu Wu, and Chongming Clans followed suit, while the remaining Ao Hen and Kui Niu arranged to fight each other somewhere else and continued the battle there.
The Seven Demon Kings' perfectly good campaign against the Nine-Tailed Fox Tribe had somehow broken up without rhyme or reason, ending in complete anticlimax.
Meanwhile, Liu Yuan had secretly infiltrated Gaiyuan City on orders. Using a token, he changed his appearance. At the city gates, he first transformed into a Mixed Feather Bird Demon, intending to find an unoccupied corner after