Beastmaster of the Ages

”Who said they can’t? Yi Daiyan managed to take on the entirety of the Infinitum Mundus alone! Would you have been able to imagine that a century ago?” Lin Xiao asked.

”That’s true. Though, it’s still uncertain whether she’ll interfere with the ebons’ attempt to attack Mount Taia,” Lin Xiong said.

”As the rex mundi of the Infinitum Mundus, she should be able to interfere. However, the luxdaemons that stand behind her are too small a faction. They’re constantly under threat from the ebons. As long as Yi Daiyan doesn’t want the ebons to turn against her, she might just pretend to be ignorant of this whole affair for now. She’s still young, after all, and she’ll only be much more terrifying in the future. Given how the two past reges mundi of our clan managed to put the ebons firmly in their place, I believe Yi Daiyan should be capable of the same if she’s given enough time.” Lin Xiao and Dongshen Yue were far more familiar with Yi Daiyan than the reformists were. Knowing that, standing on the side of the ebons didn’t seem like a sound decision.

”Young people represent the future of a clan. They symbolize the strength of the legacies that’re passed down! In the top ten spots of the minor reges mundi ranking, there’s six ebons. In the top hundred, seventy-two ebons have places. Even the highest-ranking Lin Clan member is only twenty-ninth. They’re all children that were born around the time Lin Mu’s incident happened, roughly a century ago. Their comparative strength also marks a stark shift in the future of the Infinitum Regal Clans since that incident. The event being held in the Oldgod Domain also affords quite a bit of advantage to the fragile and unstable ebons, which seems to have given rise to positive sentiment in their favor among the reformists.” The powerful performance of the ebon geniuses would no doubt inspire respect from many within the Lin Clan, regardless of age.

”Looks like more and more people are paying attention to the minor reges mundi ranking. Is this a good thing, or....” The worry in the eyes of these two old men grew more and more obvious.

”It’s a shame these three girls are far too young. It’d be ideal had they been born sixty or so years earlier,” Lin Xiao said. There was no longer anyone the traditionalists could place their hopes on.

......

Tianming, sweating hard from his effort at unlocking the tomb, was completely unaware of the undercurrents going on at the surface. Lin Hongchen hugged his white sword beside him, looking at him with a cold smile. ”Looks like you’re panicking. What happened to your confidence from before?”

”My face was itching, that’s all. Don’t be impatient. This needs time,” Tianming said as he raised the middle finger of his left hand. His finger was covered in hexagonal scales, making it incredibly sharp. Atop the finger, light was swirling.

Lin Hongchen seemed offended by the sight of the middle finger. He speechlessly looked at Tianming before turning away. ”I’m going to emphasize this one more time: if you’re of no value and unable to open the tomb, I’ll be forced to silence you.”

Though the threat was fierce, Tianming completely filtered it out. He was fully immersed in unlocking the tomb and had spent nearly half a day in deep thought to see if there was a faster way to undo the hundred thousand green text locks that only seemed to be growing in difficulty, and he finally got an idea. He was going to try it out now.

When I assimilated the ten Archaionfiend Eyes, that senior said that sky plunderers have three talents: the finger, the fist, and the palm. The finger refers to the Skypierce Finger. While the name of the skill sounded quite old fashioned, it contained nuance and deeper meaning. It wasn’t quite a battle art, but a unique extension of the talents of sky plunderers. Tianming’s black arm had been transformed into the Fiendsky Arm. He channeled astralforce into the tip of the middle finger of his left hand, causing the hexagonal scales to shine.

Back then, I relied on brute force to unlock things and have never tried to control or master it. I wonder if that’s even possible. He took a deep breath. The black Sky Plundering Eye entered the lock, causing a thousand-plus-stroke character to appear near Tianming’s finger. There were far too many strokes, making the character look like a circular vortex.

”Screw you!” Tianming used the Skypierce Finger and pushed it deep! He didn’t expect anything to come of it, since he didn’t think that the hundred-thousandfold lock would be a pushover. Yet, his finger pierced through the green character in the middle.

”Huh?” It suddenly felt incredibly slippery. The next instant, the complicated character crumbled like shattered glass, then completely disappeared. His Skypierce Finger had burst straight through it!

”Heavens!” His dumbfounded surprise was quickly followed by joy and elation, and he almost burst out praising the sky plunderers. ”You stupid annoying contraption, die!”

Tianming unleashed the frustration and rage that had built up in him. Over the past ten days, he had patiently solved each character, but when he learned that he could just bust through them, he felt a kind of relief and bliss that words could hardly describe.

”I’ll screw you up! Screwy screw for you!” Again and again, his middle finger rammed into the spherical tomb before being drawn back out, covered in green divine celestial patterns.

”What’re you doing?” Lin Hongchen came again and furrowed his brow at the unsightly movement of Tianming’s left middle finger.

”I’m looking into unlocking the formation, of course,” Tianming said with an earnest look as he kept the piston motion going.

”Thankfully, you aren’t wearing the Oldgod Ring. Otherwise, people might think you have some sick fetish for fingering rocks,” Lin Hongchen said with a wry smile.

”Get your mind out of the gutter, will you? Stop interrupting me.”

”Hehe, keep going.” Lin Hongchen naturally didn’t think that was actually working.

Tianming mowed down character after character in single strikes, regardless of how much text they had. Looks like the growing complexity of the text is no longer an issue, at least for now!

It was a huge difference. And to think that he’d barely had any idea how he was going to work through all those characters not too long ago. Even so, I’ll run out of stamina after using the Skypierce Finger a hundred thousand times, right? I hope my finger doesn’t get shaved until it’s needle-thin. Then again, I do need to practice the Skypierce Finger more.... I guess I can consider it training.

”Screw! Screw! Screw!” Tianming came to understand that nobody apart from sky plunderers could possibly hope to unlock such a complicated lock formation. ”I’m one-of-a-kind!” Ideally, he wanted to be able to monopolize everything inside. However, Lin Hongchen had been the first to discover the place, and he even stayed back after discovering Tianming.

The green characters continued getting mowed down nonstop. He managed to undo two thousand locks in a day despite his previous rate being a thousand in ten days.