Beastmaster of the Ages

”Rex Mundi...” Lin Jie felt his body shudder. Even though he was stiff, he instantly snapped his head around to look. He felt a bad omen from the chill that ran down his spine. Lin Xiaodao and Tianming’s team-up had caused Lin Jie a completely unexpected blowback at the Infinitum Swordsea, forcing him to run with his tail between his legs. Seeing Lin Yun and Lin Ziqing die by Tianming’s hand caused his swordheart to beat so erratically that it almost seized, and the trauma from back then had remained.

Shenxi Xingtian himself personally came to deal with this with his infinitum-class ship! There’s also one million ebon troops with some infinitum-class warbeasts. What in the world could possibly shock Shenxi Xingtian? Even Yi Daiyan wouldn’t be able to trigger such a reaction! Yi Daiyan’s threat would plummet quickly once she left Ebonia. After all, much of her power had been derived from her control over the world’s astralguard and fusion formations.

The intricacies of Lin Jie’s mood that shifted so suddenly would take a whole book to describe. He held his breath and widened his eyes. Time itself seemed to have stopped. Even his mouth was completely agape. He saw the pink storm of sword ki suddenly recede to open up a path, out of which a black-gold twin-headed dragon rivaling the size of the Ebonfiend emerged. It was surrounded by a great concentration of hellstar reaper sword condensate. Lin Jie could immediately tell that this ship was superior to ether-class ships. His own ship, the Judgment, was only an ether-class one. There had never been a second infinitum-class ship in the history of the Infinitum Mundus, yet, when the two-headed ship made its appearance, Lin Jie stared at it uncontrollably. His mouth chattered quickly while the hairs in his nose remained completely still from the lack of air passing through. His lungs didn’t even take in any nova source from his surroundings. ”That’s impossible!” His body seemed to have seized entirely. His voice was hoarse as he stood up and let out a harrowing howl.

The second rex mundi, Shenxi Xingtian, also had the same reaction! He had felt completely invincible on the Myriadbeast Throne, piloting the only infinitum-class ship known to their mundus. Yet, the two-headed dragon’s appearance sent him straight back to the moment when he learned that Chi Hun had perished in combat. He was filled with complete denial and disbelief. It was so vexing that even someone who had been the first rex mundi for thousands of years felt like his astral organs were being torn apart by the rampaging cosmoforce within! Just like Lin Jie, he thought this was all impossible, yet his eyes weren’t lying to him. That stark contradiction between belief and reality made his skeletal face contort in an unsightly fashion as the pools of water that were his eyes continued to boil and steam.

Shenxi Xingtian had always been a stoic person. Even after the death of Chi Hun and the loss at Mount Taia, he didn’t have that big of a reaction. He had only experienced two things in life that had truly shaken him, first when he had lost to Yi Daiyan in a rex mundi duel, having to surrender his top spot. What happened now was the second incident: the emergence of Lin Xiaodao’s infinitum-class ship!

”Wait, that is the Gladean Ruins!” Shenxi Xingtian snapped to understanding after some thought. The ruins that had been hidden deep in Gladeus had actually been an ancient infinitum-class divine astralship! That was the root of the miracles Lin Xiaodao had forged!

”He was able to reach eighth place on the rankings and obtain that cosmic artifact gourd of his because of those ruins! That’s how he was able to kill Chi Hun!” The pieces were finally in place. The appearance of an infinitum-class divine astralship was news so huge that it even eclipsed the rise of Yi Daiyan half a century ago. Yi Daiyan was just a single individual, whereas divine astralships could be passed down for countless generations to come, effectively boosting the status of any faction for eternity. The ebons had dominated the Infinitum Mundus in the past, but Yi Daiyan and this new ship’s appearance had changed everything. It was like a nightmare of destiny, pushing one sharp sword after another into the heart of Shenxi Xingtian, who had been so proud of the deep foundations of ebon power!

”All hands, brace!” Shenxi Xingtian reacted as quickly as he could. His voice spread all throughout the ship’s formation, broadcasting to the other fifty ether-class ships that followed behind him. However, all one million ebon troops in the army had experienced the same intense shock Lin Jie and Shenxi Xingtian had and were frozen in disbelief. Their eyes also seemed to boil. Many of them didn’t manage to react before the Gladean Ruins launched its charged-up blast at them.

The two heads launched a ball of energy each, one black, one gold. Each one was the size of an ether-class ship. They sucked up all the sword condensate near them and shot toward the Ebonfiend, that had been traveling in a defensive formation with the other ships. But by the time they spotted the Gladean Ruins, it was far too late for them to launch their own attack to intercept it. They had no choice but to take the full brunt of not only the spherical blasts, but also the Hellstar Formation’s attack from behind!

Had they been prepared to take it, the results would be completely different. Tianming saw the formation generate two balls of light with hellstar reaper sword condensate smash together, generating such a destructive radiance that it blinded him temporarily. The sheer sound of the explosion that had resulted caused the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb to rumble as if it had slammed straight into a wall. When Tianming looked up again, part of his sight had recovered, but all he saw was a sky that had been swallowed up by pink. The whole world itself seemed to have melted into an undifferentiated primordial soup.

”This must be the kind of power only countless generations of forebears coupled with nova source can generate! It’s far beyond what a single individual or elite can do! No person can possibly resist it!” The sight was on a scale that could inspire nothing but worship.