Beastmaster of the Ages

Tianming had had a feeling that this would be the case from the beginning. When his fears had come true, though, no amount of mental preparation could help him endure the anguish, let alone Yi Taoyao, who’d been completely caught off guard. She shrieked and pushed hard against Tianming, making him feel even worse.

After a while, she glared at Tianming and asked, ”Am... am I... also the same....” The longer she went on, the more despair creeped into her voice. Tianming, seeing green tears flow out of her compound eyes, could only nod. Her body softened and she almost fainted from the shock. She began to sob and cry, something Tianming was trying hard not to do.

”There’s... still good news,” he said.

”What?” she numbly asked.

”It isn’t just us. Everyone else that got captured got turned into this.”

”You call that good news?”

Seeing a bee-headed person talk to him felt so weird that Tianming’s ’Grand-Orient Sword’ lowered its mast and almost got sucked all the way back into his body. ”At least we aren’t alone in this. If we survive, we’ll all be monsters.”

”Fine!” she said, her voice shaking.

”Well, at least you can be satisfied that you managed to kiss a handsome man like me before you turned ugly. You won’t get another chance like this, I’m afraid.”

Yi Taoyao was so deflated that she couldn’t muster any energy to murder anyone. Seeing his face made her despair even more.

The nest was still capturing participants. Something of its magnitude had shaken the entire mundus without a doubt. I’m still wearing this ring, so I wonder if Grandpa, Grandma, and Ling’er will be able to see me through this.... He used Yin Chen to pass his words to them. ”Ling’er, I’m sorry.... When we make love in the future, you’ll have to keep your eyes closed....”

”What’re you thinking at a time like this?! There’s definitely a way to fix it! Don’t give up! Your grandparents are preparing a divine astralship. We’ll be coming to you!” Feiling urgently said.

It felt nice to be cared for by others. Yin Chen repeated Feiling’s words to him at its usual slow rate. By that point, the green tentacles had spread so far out that the participants’ movements were heavily restricted. Even those in the care of the enforcers had been captured and dragged into the hexagonal rooms.

”There’s six thousand here now.” Only around eight thousand participants hadn’t been eliminated, and six thousand of those had been captured. Almost all of the participants that ranked in the top four thousand had been captured. Lin Lele had been fortunate enough to have left earlier. The tentacles couldn’t reach her inside the Firmament, after all.

”It feels like we’re mosquitos and this nest is a frog, shooting its tongue out to catch us. It’s picking out us youths and leaving the old people to the side,” Tianming commented.

”Enough! I don’t want to hear it!” It was clear that Yi Taoyao’s sanity was constantly slipping over the edge and back. No doubt the six thousand others within the nest were feeling the same. Many were strangers to their roommates, and being squished together only made them want to kill each other. However, their desire to do so immediately vanished when their heads turned into bee’s. Many comforted each other in their shared misery.

”The tentacles stopped stretching out. I think it’s gotten enough people. There’s roughly six thousand or so. The lucky ones were those that didn’t dare to venture deep into the Oldgod Domain.” The lucky ones were also the weakest ones, yet they were the ones that had managed to avoid this catastrophe. ”I bet nobody saw this coming. The whole of Ebonia must be in chaos.”

Even Lin Xiao and the rest said that they would be coming over as fast as they could. The only thing about the outside world that Yin Chen bothered to report was that it was a huge, chaotic mess. That wasn’t a surprise, since the young participants of the ranking event were mostly the elite young talent of their respective clans. Tianming could only wonder how things would continue unfolding.

......

Many senior Mundus Enforcers attacked the nest from above, but it was completely fine. Not long after, all of the captured disciples had been pulled into the tomb. Quite a few of those hexagonal rooms were occupied, their inhabitants turned into bee-headed monsters.

The enforcers were growing more anxious. They formed lines of defense around the nest, trying to stop it from taking the six thousand plus participants away. Even stronger elites arrived, but there was nothing they could do about it.

Then the nest began wildly spinning before their eyes once more. Even Tianming and Yi Taoyao felt dizzy, even though their room was near the center. If this went on, the insane centrifugal forces would strip the flesh from their bones and crush them into a mushy soup of flesh. They could vaguely make out the loud shouts of the seniors outside.

”Huh?” Tianming suddenly felt a terrifying tugging sensation that was distinct from the sensation of being crushed. The tugging mainly acted on his Prime-Tower-shaped albi, seemingly causing their shape to change.

”What’s going on?” The nest was only spinning around, so how could it cause such a weird change? He didn’t understand what was going on, and neither did the enforcers outside. The nest, from their point of view, had turned into a spinning top that let out a blinding green light that forced them to back off. The light turned into an expanding vortex in a sea of green.

”If this keeps up, the children will die!”

There were still quite a lot of people that were unaware that the victims’ heads had turned into bee heads, but many spectators outside saw it clearly through the Oldgod Rings.

The speed of the rotation kept increasing. ”This is bad!” Nothing the enforcers did was having any effect.

”Does the rex mundi know about this? She was the one that chose the Oldgod Domain as the location!”

”She must know. She’s one of the new generation of luxdaemons and also participated in the ranking event back then. Yi Taoyao was also among the earliest to be sucked into the nest.”

”I really don’t get it. How could this thing look so similar to the order of a cosmic cartographer?”

Something even more unconceivable happened. The nest suddenly vanished when it reached its highest rotational speed. It was gone, just like that, and left nothing behind, not even the green light. The heavy shaking suddenly stopped.

”What?”The tens of thousands of rescuers blanked out for a moment, then their expressions morphed. They had surrounded the nest in preparation to stop it when it tried leaving until someone who could do something about this arrived, but it had just vanished into thin air right before their eyes!