Heavenly Fox

Biodata

Power Progression

Appearance

Heavenly Foxes are upright, humanoid-sized fox Mutated Beasts. Zhang Ping first sees one as a two-meter-tall fox with a girl’s human skin pasted across its forehead, while everyone around him perceives an ordinary student instead 1.

• Their sizes vary considerably; two foxes targeting Iron Soul are approximately 2.5 and 3 meters tall 18.
• They commonly wear the flayed skin of a victim over their foreheads, often retaining a recognizable human face and bloodstains 2 5.
• Their eyes emit rank-indicating light at night: white for low-level beasts, green for intermediate, blue for high-level, and red for top-level beasts 4.
• Retaining a human skin is a condition for maintaining their perception-based powers, but also restrains their combat capability; tearing it off makes them considerably harder to confront 20.
• Removing the forehead skin forcibly exposes a fox’s true form, while the skin itself can be retained and used to assume a different victim’s identity 362 363.
• A dead Heavenly Fox can retain a human appearance while inside Mingzhu City, only reverting to a fox corpse after being removed from the city 12.
• Prince Yue’s true form can use its tails as armor and weapons, while elite variants such as Moon Shadow may differ substantially from ordinary clan members in appearance and abilities 70 196.

Abilities & Skills

Cognitive Distortion

Heavenly Foxes possess a field that distorts a living creature’s cognition and can alter how targets perceive them 2.

• Allows them to walk openly through human society while appearing to be ordinary people or known acquaintances 1 2.
• Lets them conceal their true fox forms even from residents and many powerful Awakened 4 13.
• Causes people to accept substituted identities, including a fox impersonating Su Jingyao at Patrol Unit Headquarters 2.
• Can isolate a target from outside assistance, allowing a fox to expose its true form and terrorize a victim without nearby people noticing suspicious sounds 67.
• Is less reliable against nonhuman creatures, whose instincts may still identify a Heavenly Fox as dangerous despite its disguise 42.

Conventionality Reversal

Also translated as Subversion of Common Sense, this talent forces targets to overlook or rationalize acts that should be obviously abnormal 2 5.

• Victims can interpret an abduction and consumption as an ordinary invitation to share a meal 3.
• Even direct requests for help may be mentally altered or ignored by observers during a Heavenly Fox attack 14.
• The talent is especially effective in human society, where people are less likely than beasts to trust their instincts 42.
• The ability has also been identified as the innate talent of Peril-Bearing Foxes, prompting suspicion that Heavenly Foxes may be connected to artificially introduced fox species or crossbreeding experiments; this remains unconfirmed 12 128.

Uncanny Trust

Some individuals possess additional talents beyond their racial abilities. Uncanny Trust makes most living creatures instinctively trust the fox’s speech and presence 2.

• It was implicated in an extermination operation in which a target gained trust through conversation and injured a human operative 16.
• Not every Heavenly Fox has this talent; Zhang Ping had initially identified several without additional abilities 16.

Individual Combat Traits

Heavenly Foxes vary widely in physical strength and level despite sharing a psychic specialty.

• A Level 15 intermediate fox was confirmed to possess Cognitive Distortion and Subversion of Common Sense 5.
• Two intermediate foxes at Levels 12 and 17 could overwhelm Zhang Ping and Wang Jieming in direct combat 18.
• One Level 37 top-tier fox possessed Cognitive Distortion, Conventionality Reversal, and Supernatural Strength, increasing its physical power twentyfold 38.
• Though their close combat is not their primary specialty, foxes that discard restraint or exploit their perception abilities can turn a battle into an extremely dangerous contest of illusions 20.
• Prince Yue possesses Kin Sense, allowing him to detect the location where a nearby clan member dies; Transforming Tail, which grants his tails extraordinary vitality and countless forms; and Supernatural Charm, which causes most living creatures to instinctively like him 68.
• Prince Yue later demonstrates powerful viscosity-aspected Psychokinesis and can use his tails as defensive armor during close combat 196.
• Moon Shadow possesses Shadow Roost, Shadow Strike, Shadow Guard, Super Agility, and sharpness-aspected Psychokinesis. Its Shadow Strike can transfer attacks against a target’s shadow to the target’s actual body 70 71.
• Moon King possesses Kin Sense, Apex Strength, powerful regeneration, and a King Beast Aura. It can also deploy the illusionary Evermoon Dreamscape to substitute false realities for the real world 200 267.

King Beast Traits

Moon King’s King-tier status substantially changes the danger posed by the entire clan.

• Its influence is believed to strengthen nearby Heavenly Foxes’ psychic abilities, allowing even weaker foxes to deceive powerful Awakened who should ordinarily resist them through Level Suppression 13 18.
• Its Junior King Beast Aura causes Mutated Beasts within three hundred kilometers to feel awe and avoid invading its territory 200.
• The apparent failure of Mingzhu City’s Sun-Moon Pearl to suppress Moon King indicates assistance from human traitors, likely connected to the Beast-Taming Zhu Family remnants 30.
• Moon King is fiercely protective of Prince Yue, burning its blood, vitality, and Mental Strength in an unsuccessful attempt to save him during a parallel-world confrontation 267.

Infiltration of Mingzhu City

Heavenly Foxes covertly replaced residents and seized institutions long before their presence was publicly confirmed. Zhang Ping identifies numerous foxes in civilian roles and determines that the entire Patrol Team has been replaced; anyone joining it is effectively delivered to the foxes as food 2.

They prioritize talented students and people entering crucial departments, while initially leaving many ordinary students alone because they pose little threat 3. At least sixteen streets around Pearl Ability Academy contain more than fifty infiltrators, including foxes ranging from approximately Level 5 to above Level 29 4.

The species treats humans as livestock and food. Their successful invasion depends on humans being unable to recognize atrocities happening in plain sight, rather than on conventional disguises or stealth alone 2 3 11.

Prince Yue later plans to eliminate Awakened within the Patrol Team gradually, replacing potential threats in batches rather than provoking human powerhouses through a sudden mass disappearance 66. This method allows the clan to preserve Mingzhu City as both a hunting ground and a long-term food supply.

Organization and Notable Members

History

Discovery and Exposure

Zhang Ping first notices the discrepancy between a Heavenly Fox’s true appearance and the human form perceived by everyone else when “Luo Shiyu” greets him at school 1. After gaining Appraisal, he identifies the species and learns the names of its two central racial talents 2.

His independent surveillance reveals the scale of the invasion: Heavenly Foxes occupy streets, businesses, the academy, and the Patrol Team 2 4. He eventually provides the Cleanup Team with specific identities and locations for verification, allowing Jin Bo’s team to kill two disguised foxes and recover their bodies as proof 12.

The Cleanup Team initially knows no Mutated Beast formally called a Heavenly Fox, though its members recognize Cognitive Distortion and Conventionality Reversal from the Mind-Eating Illusion Fox and Peril-Bearing Fox respectively 12. This later fuels suspicion that the Heavenly Fox Clan’s origin may be tied to the Beast-Taming Zhu Family’s covert transport of those fox species into Mingzhu City 128.

Conflict with the Cleanup Team

The confirmed killings force the Heavenly Foxes to recognize that humans have found a countermeasure. Moon King responds by entering false hibernation and suppressing its aura, while Prince Yue takes command of efforts to draw out hidden human defenders 18.

The Cleanup Team reverses the foxes’ surveillance advantage with the Illusory Light Curtain, an illusion that makes targets perceive an ordinary empty city while human fighters pursue them unseen 19. This strategy enables the rapid elimination of Moon One, Moon Two, and Moon Three, though Prince Yue arrives after the battle and learns misleading information about the attackers 20.

Escalation

The clan continues hunting during the conflict, with Prince Yue’s forces killing more than two hundred people during attempts to obtain food 28. Individual Heavenly Foxes also cooperate with human conspirators when offered materials that improve a Mutated Beast’s presence 35.

A top-tier Heavenly Fox later tortures Liu Tiefeng to locate Zhang Ping. After Liu Sishan drives it away, Zhang ambushes and kills it with the Fear War Scythe while Situ Shibai disrupts Prince Yue’s attacks 38. By this point, the clan has lost dozens of members, prompting Prince Yue to question the invasion’s course and develop an aversion to eating humans 42.

Zhang Ping later infiltrates Patrol Unit Headquarters through its water system while hunting Su Jingyao’s killer. He kills two Heavenly Foxes during the search, then locates and kills the fox wearing Su Jingyao’s skin after it attempts to murder Chen Weihua 66 67. Prince Yue’s order that the dead foxes not be “wasted” causes Moon Shadow to question its increasingly detached behavior 66.

Open Confrontation

After returning from extended training, Zhang Ping and the Cleanup Team prepare a direct operation against Prince Yue and the Moon King 195. Feng Laixian infiltrates the City Lord’s Manor and kills Yue Baba, but Prince Yue overwhelmingly defeats him before Zhang Ping rescues Feng and escapes with him 196.

Later Heavenly Fox assaults include foxes capable of invisibility and possessing physical toughness sufficient to resist ordinary Psychokinesis and arrows 242 248. These attacks demonstrate that the surviving clan remains dangerous even when its basic infiltration methods have been exposed.

Parallel-World Encounters

During a rescue operation in a parallel Mingzhu City, Zhang Ping, Su Jingyao, and Manny begin systematically eliminating the local Heavenly Fox population after learning that the city has lost nearly thirty percent of its inhabitants 266. Zhang kills the alternate Moon King after it uses Evermoon Dreamscape to protect Prince Yue, then pursues and overwhelms the fleeing prince 267.

Subsequent Rescue Team operations encounter further parallel-world Heavenly Fox infestations. In one such city, Zhang Ping removes the foxes’ human skins, extracts their abilities as gemstones, and leaves the remaining clan members for the Rescue Team’s wider purge while personally targeting Prince Yue and Moon King 362 363. A later operation against another Heavenly Fox-infiltrated Mingzhu City results in the disappearance of every Rescue Team member sent to conduct the purge 456.

Known Weaknesses and Counters

• Human-skin dependence — Their strongest perception-based abilities require human skin worn on the forehead; maintaining it limits their full combat output 20.
• Removal of the disguise — Forcibly stripping away the forehead skin exposes a Heavenly Fox’s true form and prevents it from maintaining its human impersonation 362.
• Nonhuman instincts — Other Mutated Beasts may attack them despite cognitive distortion and common-sense manipulation 42.
• Externalized evidence — Fox corpses reveal their true forms after removal from Mingzhu City, providing proof that bypasses their in-city deception 12.
• Counter-illusion tactics — The Illusory Light Curtain can falsify the foxes’ own perceptions, conceal human fighters, and lure targets into ambushes 19 20.
• Skepticism toward illusions — Evermoon Dreamscape can be escaped when its false reality is recognized and directly disrupted, as Zhang Ping does by destroying its illusory moon 267.
• Internal hierarchy — Lesser foxes can be severely intimidated by Prince Yue’s presence, losing confidence and much of their ability to fight 35 38.
• Limited ordinary combat ability — Medical Research Group assessments describe most ordinary Heavenly Foxes as physically weak and dependent on their supernatural talents; Moon King, Prince Yue, and elite variants are major exceptions 457.
• Limited intelligence outside hunting — Although cunning and coordinated when stalking prey, ordinary Heavenly Foxes are characterized as animal-like rather than exceptionally intelligent outside of hunting behavior 457.

Trivia

• The species is rendered under several names in the text: Heavenly Fox, Tianchang Fox, Heavenborn Fox, and Skyborn Fox 5 6 16.
• Heavenly Foxes adopted human-style names after entering Mingzhu City, using Moon as a clan designation and naming members according to their rank within the tribe 18.
• Zhang Ping’s ability to see through their deception makes him uniquely valuable to the human resistance; ordinary Appraisal users cannot reliably identify them 30.
• Su Jingyao of a parallel world similarly gains the ability to identify Heavenly Foxes after consuming a Contract Gem left behind by that world’s Zhang Ping 266.
• Most Heavenly Foxes have two or three abilities: the two racial talents are standard, while especially gifted members may possess a third or more 2 362.
• Heavenly Foxes should not be confused with other Mutated Fox species, including Mind-Eating Illusion Foxes, Peril-Bearing Foxes, and Ghost Foxes, though their overlapping cognition- and fear-based powers have prompted speculation about related origins 12 128 386.