Phong did not make any rash move.
That alone impressed the White Tigress more than she showed.
He hated her wearing his aunt's face with every part of him that still knew what ordinary anger felt like. He hated the white hair draped over familiar features, the tiger ears twitching above a face that had once meant kitchen light, family noise, and ordinary love. That much was true.
But hatred was not strategy.
And Phong had learned too much by now to throw away leverage just because something hurt.
So he stayed still, counting his cards, then he counted theirs. He was preparing to negotiate with 3 Pillars of the dungeon.
The White Tigress watched him with that cold, pleased interest of someone observing a test subject exceed expectations.
"You held the camp together," she said. "Despite the lockdown, the lack of manpower, and poor resources. That's quite impressive."
Her eyes shifted to Alex.
"And she defeated my level forty-seven child at level thirty-five."
Alex didn't answer, and she did need to.
The tigress continued anyway, amused enough to be honest.
"Level thirty-six now, yes? Nearly enough experience to climb again."
Dominic glance at Alex, finally putting the pieces together. Alex only lowered her guard after the duel because she had gained a level, and those EXP she had gained was to her the proof of Đăm Bhi's death. She did not expect a monster who had already fallen would come back to life stronger than before.
Phong noticed something else.
The White Tigress had not mentioned the Soerai, which fit the other oddity too: killing them had yielded no EXP.
He filed that away instantly.
Then the floor boss laid out her offer.
"So, I offer a ceasefire."
The word rang through Camp Orthrus with more weight than it should have.
The Tigress leaned back under the frozen lime-oak as if she had all the time in the world.
"The feline monsters under my hand will no longer attack Camp Orthrus until further notice. I will lift the locks I placed here myself."
She raised one claw slightly and ticked them off like simple favors.
"The lime-oak clone will thaw."
"The lake will open again."
The camp went quiet.
They knew this was an offer they would want to take even if they themselves hated how close it was to pity.
The team knew that if she wanted, the White Tigress could keep them locked here effectively forever. It wouldn't cost her much, if at all, depending on how she viewed the feline monsters and the Soerai. And then there were the Shoemri. No one at camp was foolish enough to assume that Đăm Bhi was the only one of its kind. If the White Tigress sent three to four more high level Shoemri, they would be dead. No amount of Timatoes could fend off from that kind of pressure, and no plants could mutate quickly enough.
Phong groaned.
The offer wasn't bad, but it was too clean... too convenient in a way that itch a certain part of his brain. Then, one thought hit him.
He looked at the Tigress and asked, "Wouldn't forcing all that feline pressure around Lake Baratok while freezing the lake over destabilize the ecosystem?"
That was not the question she expected.
For the first time since arriving, the White Tigress went still not on her own account, but because of something Phong said. It was short. Merely a fraction of a moment before the floor boss put the mask of confidence and composure back on. But it was enough for Phong to notice.
Dominic saw it too, judging by the tiny shift in his eyes.
Phong pressed immediately.
"You weren't just trapping us," he said. "You were putting pressure on the whole lake system."
His voice stayed flat without too much emotion injected into it, as if he was merely stating the obvious.
"And that means you were crossing your elder."
That landed squarely enough that the Horns of the Earth had lifted his face up from his nap to observe.
Because the Sky Emperor, for all his distance, cared about balance in ways the other Pillars did not, or at least claimed to. Nevertheless, his authority was not something to be challenged lightly. Even Bai Hu, war-mad and petty as she was, had gone out of her way before to pretend she stayed inside his lines.
Now, Phong had named the line she might have crossed.
The White Tigress froze for one visible heartbeat.
Then she played another one of her card.
The chubby boy stepped forward.
At once, the air around camp changed due to his presence alone.
The green-haired boy looked at Phong with open displeasure. None of the childish softness in him hid the scale beneath it. It was the same way the calf had felt before: immeasurable compacted into a smaller form factor. No matter which form he took, he was still Horns of the Earth.
His voice, when he spoke, was younger than the bull's true presence had any right to sound. Yet, that voice was still heavy and booming enough to demand courtesy. Each words dropped like a singularity, like it could bend the mood in camp around itself.
"I do not like that you used my children again as hostages."
The Timatoes flinched harder at that, some of them even reattached themselves to the tree just to hide from the anger of a Pillar. Even the lizardmen nearby lowered their heads instinctively.
Phong had expected this.
Not the exact scenario where White Tigress brought Horns of the Earth directly to camp and confront him, but he expected the angle the bull would take.
Since the day he planted the elf seeds to chase the Soerai away, he knew one day he would have to face the anger of the Pillar of Life. So, he answered with the bull's own words.
"You said those seeds were no longer your children."
The boy's eyes narrowed.
Phong did not stop.
"You said if they were grown by me, nursed by my plants, then they were no longer yours." He met the young form's gaze directly. "You placed restrictions on them yourself, effectively disowned them."
The memory of that day sat sharp and clear in his voice now.
"So what stand do you have here. I didn't harm the elves. I didn't even touch them." His jaw tightened slightly. "All I did was use their scent. And don't take me for a fool just because I'm vastly dwarfed by your power. Those leopards, lions and jaguars would not dare to attack camp if they weren't told that the elves here had nothing to do with you."
Silence followed.
The White Tigress stayed silent.
Mister Zero pushed his sunglasses up again, smiling faintly like this had become much more entertaining.
Little Yama stared at Phong, clearly annoyed.
Because the human farmer had done the rude thing of remembering exactly what a Titan said, then used his own laziness against him without softening the edges.
Camp Orthrus held its breath.
They knew Phong's gamble. He had placed a bet with his and everyone life on the chance that Horns of the Earth, being the Pillar of Life, would not take someone's life just because they annoyed him with truth.
Mr. Zero chuckled in a way that made Phong dislike him immediately.
"The boy has fangs, dear sister," he said, glancing toward the White Tigress with a smile too easy to trust. "And he did a damn good job at hiding them until someone came for his people."
Phong felt his shoulders tighten.
He did not like how quickly Mr. Zero saw through him.
The man gave off the same dangerous feeling Em did. Maybe not in shape, not in tone, but in the way he seemed to understand human nature too thoroughly. The difference was that where Em felt chaotic and hungry for conflict, Mr. Zero felt cleaner. He moved like someone with clear purposes, like someone who understood the rules of the systems too thoroughly, that bending those rules for convenience's sake became his second nature.
That made him better in some way, and worse in other.
It made him looked like Josh's father.
Mr. Zero adjusted his sunglasses again and looked between Phong and the White Tigress like a man casually refereeing a dispute over lunch rather than a standoff between a trapped camp and multiple Pillars.
"So," he said, smooth as polished steel, "why don't we meet in the middle."
Nobody interrupted him.
Phong did not trust the phrase at all.
Mr. Zero kept smiling.
"The farmer does not report this little incident to the elder." He tipped his head slightly toward Bai Hu. "And dear sister promises not to pick on Camp Orthrus again."
The White Tigress's expression did not change much, but Phong caught the faint twitch in her tail. She did not love being summarized into "picking on them." That pleased him more than it should have.
Still, he did not answer right away.
He looked at the frozen lime-oak.
At the lake beyond.
At the chubby form of Horns of the Earth still standing there with visible annoyance. At Bai Hu in his aunt's face. At Mr. Zero, smiling like he expected the conversation to end exactly where he wanted it to.
At the people around him.
Then, Phong escalated.
"I'll fix the land," he said.
That drew every eye back to him.
The White Tigress narrowed hers slightly. "And?"
Phong met her gaze.
"I require something from you too."
That made Mr. Zero's smile widen. Phong couldn't tell if the floor boss wearing the persona of a businessman / coding genius was surprised or amused by his answer. Nevertheless, Phong gathered all the social battery an introvert like him could ever mustered in a week under normal circumstances and held his ground against the gazes of three god-like beings.
The White Tigress leaned back by the frozen trunk and asked, with open curiosity now,
"What do you want?"
Phong did not hesitate.
"Information," he said. "And maybe some boons."