Beastmaster of the Ages

After a hearty laugh, the Torchdragon Emperor squinted at the Saintdragon Emperor. “The way I see it, you’re the one who betrayed our ancestors and the sect. You’re trying to hand over the Myriaddragon Mountains to outsiders. The marriage between one of our kind with a celestial orderian represents a historic step in normalizing relations between the north and south poles of the sun. As the top-ranking sect, it’s our heavy responsibility to strive for peace for the other factions. Yet you allowed everyone else straight into our territory… Saintdragon Emperor, do you feel no remorse before our ancestors?”

People laughed at hearing his take on events. It was the thief crying thief. What he said didn’t matter, it was just argument for argument’s sake. The only reason they even bothered with this public discussion was so they could take the moral high ground once the battle started and have an appropriate justification for involving the celestial orderian troops in the fight.

Most, if not all wars required just cause, even if one had to lie to themselves about having just cause. Only then could criticism from their own kin and descendants be avoided. Too many times had war broken out, citing peacekeeping or rescue operations as a reason, yet that hadn’t prevented any bit of raping or pillaging that came hand in hand with such conflict.

Now, the Saintdragon Emperor and the rest had been branded as those who were stopping peace from being achieved between the Myriad Solar Sects and the celestial orderians thanks to such a peculiar explanation. Those of the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect had nothing but mockery for that joke of an excuse.

The Saintdragon Emperor shot the Torchdragon Emperor a thumbs-up. “Nice thinking. Your in-laws are about to hold a marriage ceremony at the graveyard of your ancestors and you’re allowing outsiders like them to defile our sacred land, yet you’re still standing up for them. This is shamelessness taken to a whole new level. I thought the clan of dragons would be proud and of upstanding character, but now I grieve to realize that no such person exists in the Veildragon Palace. You’re all just living examples of dastardly filth!”

The Xuanyuan Dragon Sect’s cultivators cheered and echoed the sentiment. Their loud demands for the Veildragon Palace to leave was a heavy weight pressing on the chests of those of the Veildragon Palace. Bloodlust between the two groups had reached the peak, thanks to the wedding ceremony. The leaders on both sides were all too aware that a battle to the death would occur the moment they heard that the Primodragon Cave would be the venue. Even though they’d come from the same origins, they had to spill each other’s blood. It was all thanks to the sun emperor’s machinations, which fanned the flames of war. This meeting was held to establish who was in the right by coming up with justifications for the bloodshed that was to come, but it was clear which side was righteous and which side wasn’t.

……

After those from the Veildragon Palace left, the other Dragon Imperials left to make preparations for war. By now, negotiations had fallen apart and there was no turning back from the upcoming bloodshed. The twenty-five million troops from the Ninedragon Army had joined up with another five million, who were guards that had been stationed at other cities and settlements. In total, they numbered thirty million. There were even a billion normal folk who were fourth-level constelliers and below that came to the mountains to volunteer, all of them scattered and hidden in the forest and mountains. Even though they were quite weak in this war of the gods, they were set on fighting to the death for the sake of their pride and survival.

They all understood that once the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect was lost, so would the dragon beastmasters be. When the ones at the top fell, the ones below would be enslaved and mistreated. The fall of the Myriaddragon Mountains would mean the fall of their kind; they were willing to fight even while they didn’t control all the formations, as they lacked the relevant dragonsprings.

In a war like this, corpses had to pile up in order for their homes to be defended. Coupled with the eighty million reinforcements, it seemed that they had a huge chance of winning. That said, the sun emperor wouldn’t fight a battle he had no chance of winning. For all they knew, the chances the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect thought they had could be just wishful thinking. A billion volunteers was nothing but a herd of confused sheep in the face of trained, elite fighters. Without a formation that they could contribute energy to, they weren’t of much use at all.

Not to mention, Yin Chen and the informants of the sect had noticed the departure of another thirty million celestial orderian troops from the north of the sun claiming to be in-laws coming to attend the wedding ceremony, which now had a staggering fifty million celestial orderian ‘guests’! Add to that the ten million from the Veildragon Palace, the wedding would be attended by sixty million people, twice the number of the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect’s troops.

The Veildragon Palace justified it by saying it was a response to the eighty million outsider troops that had gathered in their territory. By now, war had seemingly spread across the whole sun; it was ready to break out at any moment.

Reports kept coming in that celestial orderian reinforcements were gathering at the borders of the Myriad Solar Sects’ territory. For instance, the celestial orderians were eyeing the north of the Azurecloud Continent. The nearly hundred million celestial orderians made the entire Myriad Solar Sects tense about the upcoming conflict. Even the eighty million outsider troops at the Myriaddragon Mountains seemed a little panicked, having left their factions undefended. If the celestial orderians launched an attack, innocent civilians could end up as casualties, causing many among them to retreat before the battle had even started. Roughly ten million had already left, and nobody knew how many of the seventy million that remained would still be there on the wedding day.

“As long as the celestial orderians station troops at their border, the eighty million troops would worry and not be ready for a fight.” That left only the southernmost faction, the dreamless celestial nation, unafraid of enemies at the borders.

“There’s always another sneaky tactic that’ll trump the former, eh….” The sun emperor’s two moves, sending the ‘in-laws’ and gathering troops at the border, were enough to neutralize the eighty million reinforcements. He had completely grasped the complex internal relations within the Myriad Solar Sects and exploited their weaknesses using a brute force approach. The Xuanyuan Dragon Sect had been served to him on a silver platter and he could eat it however he wanted, whether piece by piece or the whole thing in one gulp.