Beastmaster of the Ages

The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb was surrounded by darkness, so Tianming had no idea what was happening outside. It almost felt like the entire ship had been shoved into a coffin. Given Ebonia’s size, even a ship like Gongshu Ding’s would take quite some time to reach its destination.

Tianming had planned to talk Gongshu Ding into revealing some information about the Swordgod Lin Clan and Lin Mu to him, but the powerful elite couldn’t be bothered speaking with him. He vanished after saying a few words, and it wasn’t like Tianming could directly ask what Lin Mu was like or what gave him his reputation. It sounded like something everyone knew, yet they didn’t, and asking would reveal that they weren’t from Ebonia. It wouldn’t fly even if he was Lin Mu’s son and had left Ebonia since childhood. After all, this was a big deal concerning his father.

His own considerations aside, Gongshu Ding ignored him anyway. All he wanted to do was to verify Tianming’s identity and trade him to the clan for riches. Tianming called out to him a few times, but Gongshu Ding didn’t respond, so he either had gone drinking or cultivating.

With no hope of escaping on their own, Tianming and the others took the time to cultivate with the high-quality nova source of Ebonia, converting it into astralforce to replace their own. In a few days, Tianming’s lifebound beasts and totems had switched to the new energy as well.

”The nova source of this world contains every element and is incredibly well balanced. One can find the energy of any element in full abundance. More importantly, this nova source even contains traces of cosmic impulse power. Cultivators that use it can dominate those from other worlds, all other things being equal.”

After the conversion, it felt like Tianming, his lifebound beasts, and his totems could unleash energy at an even more robust rate. In a short few days, Feiling had also managed to break through to the Sovereign stage, also known as the Stellaminoris stage here in Ebonia. She was the fastest of them all to make it. It went without saying that Xiaoxiao would be next, but Feiling’s rate of growth was still something that not even a monstrous leveler like Xiaoxiao could match up to.

”Ling’er, tell me the basics of the new stage, quick!” Tianming urged. He really wanted to know all he could about cultivation, and that knowledge was too tempting to ignore. It was said to be the last stage of the astral physique. Overall, the Ascension stage was the beginning phase of the gods of the cosmos, while the Stellaminoris stage was the fulfillment of that state of being. There was a reason it was called Stellaminors instead of Stellamajoris, after all.

”Upon reaching this stage, the sacrosun inside my albi reached the pinnacle and scattered into a starry sky against the walls of my albi. That changes them to have an astral-disc-divine-will-minor-stellar-chart structure. The minor stellar chart inherits the power of the constellation and sacrosun, and absorbing astralforce allows it to shine brighter and brighter. Once the stars on the chart reach their full luminosity, every single albus will radiate starlight to allow you to reach this new stage,” Feiling explained.

That was the core of the Stellaminoris stage. Their minor stellar charts were able to contain even more energy than sacrosuns, and everyone’s was different. Unlike a sacrosun that had to be projected outward, minor stellar charts were contained inside the body, but could store even more energy. Being the core component of that stage, it was also used as a name for the stage. Only lower-class worlds referred to their stellaminor rulers as sovereigns.

”So the next stage of cultivation starts once a minor stellar chart is fully developed?” While Tianming looked forward to it a lot, he was still just an eighth-level solarian. ”With a minor stellar chart, one becomes a higher god of the cosmos. Gongshu Ding was able to suppress even my astral discs with a single thought, and that must be why! He’s on a completely different level compared to us, and understands the universe’s true nature much better. Back during the war on the sun, I thought that gods were the apex lifeforms, but now it seems that they’re still too far off from the level of the Primordial Chaos Beasts I witnessed in those dreams. True gods shake the stars with the power of mere mortals! I guess the only people deserving to ’talk’ to the universe are people of that caliber....”

Tianming organized his thoughts on cultivation as a whole. Gongshu Ding’s little trick had given him new insight into the next step of his cultivation, while Li Muyang telling him that a single sword strike was capable of cutting a star world apart felt too abstract and didn’t resonate with him. It took experiencing a power capable of stopping the circulation of his astral discs for him to truly comprehend the extent to which higher gods were capable of controlling anything in the universe.

”Well, I hope that the Swordgod Lin Clan will give me a chance to survive this trial! As long as we survive, there’ll be no fear of anything in the future!” This journey had been quite the shocking one. Tianming had never experienced such a low point before. All it depended on now was how the Swordgod Lin Clan would treat him. That aside, he did notice that his rate of improvement was almost ten times as fast as usual since reaching Ebonia, probably thanks to the pressure he was under. ”Peace and serenity takes the edge off one’s talent indeed.”

Though this world was foreign and fraught with dangers, he still felt truly alive with Feiling and the others accompanying him. He took note of the time and counted twenty-three days before the ship finally stopped. The journey on an ether-class ship had taken that much time to reach the Swordgod Lin Clan’s headquarters, so he could only imagine how many years it would take for them to travel without a fast divine astralship. With a skypiercer-class ship, he could circle around the entire sun in under six hours. Tianming figured that divine astralships also served as land transport in Ebonia, as he had seen quite a lot of them on the surface when he first arrived.

Gongshu Ding’s snake-shaped ship had stopped, but it still didn’t let go of the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb. Then, Tianming heard his loud muttering.