Beastmaster of the Ages

“Even though a month has passed, nothing about the Imperialdragon Palace has changed.” The stalemate between Zhan Yuance and Long Longlong still persisted. “Looks like killing thousands of dragon golems to obtain the black war drum isn’t that easy after all.”

Tianming figured it wouldn’t be too much longer. As nothing about the palace had changed, he was really relaxed. He wasn’t in a rush to raise his score by defeating dragon golems or other disciples, for he knew his own power was going to be much more important in the upcoming fights. He continued keeping to his own pace, switching between the Violetglory Pagoda and his swordsmanship.

This past month, Xiaoxiao had processed many of the fifty thousand caeli they’d taken from Zhan Yingying to cultivate, reaching the second level of the Constellation stage before Lingfeng. Like usual, she seemed completely drained and hurt after the breakthrough, taking a few days to recover.

Yu Ziqian began to see the wondrous effects of their ‘last-minute studying’. At the very least, he was dumbfounded by Xiaoxiao’s rate of growth. Naturally, he still respected Tianming the most; there were hundreds of thousands of holes in the wall of the pathway made by him alone, and they were only increasing in number.

……

Whenever a disciple passed through, Tianming would use them to practice his moves. It seemed like a battle royale was still happening within the tomb.

“Phew….” Tianming took a deep breath, having been stuck for a long time. “Let’s change my approach.”

He split the Grand-Orient Sword into two, which caused the scale to split as well. One part was completely silver, while the other had eight colors. When he practiced the Blooddragon Sacrifice, the blood-red color would dominate the other seven.

“The Grand-Orient Swords can be used completely independently, allowing me to use two different moves at the same time. Perhaps that’ll help me fuse them quicker.”

He closed his eyes and stood in front of a wall. Half of his body was immersed in a world of blood, while the other was in a world of silver. His normal right hand held the gold sword, which was dyed silver and swept around rapidly. His black left hand held the red-dyed black sword, its powerful strength fitting for executing the bloody, sacrificial move.

“One slash for a flash-quick kill, another to turn legions into blood sacrifices!” Using his new method, there was more of a chance. The complicated gears finally seemed to click into place as they ground together. This new Dualdragon Tribulation would have the speed of the silver dragon and the ferocity of the blood dragon.

A few days later, the blood color from the eight-colored split scale left and fused with the other scale that only had silver, shining bright and dimming from time to time. The silver blended with the red into a new, metallic-crimson sheen. After more than a month of long training, Tianming had finally completed his first step in practicing the move.

“If I can use totems to form a sword formation and cultivate a sword body, it’d be even more impressive.” That would triple his power, and that was only an estimate. Tianming had ten sword totems to begin with, all of which excelled in terms of attack power. Surely, using them to execute the second-fusion strike would strengthen it much more. “I guess I can easily find out how powerful it can be with my seven registered totems in the wondersky realm.”

……

Tianming gripped his swords within the spherical battlefield, facing off against a ‘young’ third-level constellier in his eighties with seven of his sword totems. Ying Huo and the rest didn’t show up.

“Lin Feng?” The opponent recognized him, but right as he spoke, Tianming charged in with both swords and his totems. It was complete domination when the two dragons bore down on the poor man.

“Lin Feng is victorious!”

Tianming’s expression was one of shock. “So this is a sword art designed specifically for totems!” Now he was certain that the Ninedragon Emperor wasn’t the one who had invented this battle art. Its true name might not even be Ninedragon Tribulation. “A non-totem user couldn’t possibly have created a divine sword art that so perfectly works with totems.”

Given his ten totems, he should be able to quadruple the moves’ power if he used his totems and cultivated a sword body. The Ninedragon Emperor was probably only able to bring out double the power by fusing the moves.

“This can’t be an eighth-realm divine art. It should be at least a ninth-realm one once all nine moves are fused.” Tianming now knew how truly precious the battle art was.

……

Right as he was about to enter Violetglory Pagoda, the heavenly locus formation informed him that someone was approaching it. Tianming had told Yu Ziqian to not interrupt, so something had obviously happened. His caelum immediately left the wondersky realm, causing his real body to wake up. He opened his eyes and saw Yu Ziqian. “What happened?”

“Someone’s looking for you there.” Yu Ziqian shrugged and turned towards the pathway’s entrance.

Tianming felt his eye twitch. No doubt, the little green iris in his eye had turned back into a fish and was swimming around. He looked behind him and saw an inky black silhouette with long, black hair. Even in the weak light, her irisless left eye could still be seen. Her right eye was an inky green, looking deep and void. Even from a distance, her absolute beauty could be felt. She looked like a girl out of one’s dreams and didn’t even seem to exist in the real world despite standing right there. Her presence was so fleeting and transient.

“Careful, don’t fall for her. She has a member,” Yu Ziqian whispered, snickering.

“Buzz off.” Tianming had wanted to look for her to ask about the eye-iris long ago. He approached Weisheng Moran, seeing her face more and more as he did so. He noticed that she was the only one other than Feiling to have made him aware of their beauty—it was awe-inducing. Though Li Caiwei and Sovereign Xi were both charming beauties of the highest caliber, they just weren’t his cup of tea. His type was the pure, ethereal, celestial maiden kind.

However, Weisheng Moran was both male and female, a fact that made Tianming feel a little awkward when he was hopelessly reminded of how much of his type her female side was. Deciding to try his best to ignore her enchanting looks, he cleared his throat. “Bro, stop showing off your feminine wiles. I have no grudge with you, so why put a fish into my eye? Did you hit the wrong target instead?”

“…Bro?” She bit her lip and blankly looked at him as he spoke, her voice sounding just as airy and light with a hint of magnetic charm, digging its way into his heart. The fact that it affected him so much made Tianming feel all the more uncomfortable.