Beastmaster of the Ages

Tianming had made lots of preparations in the two-and-a-half years so that he could go to Voidback City to obtain the imperial-class divine wonder. Apart from raising his cultivation level by studying the foundation caeli of flameyellow divinities, he also made progress in two other facets.

The first was the second move of the Xiaozhi Sword Art. It took him close to two years of experimentation and help from Feiling’s Perpetia to dilate the time he experienced. Had he tried to master the move himself, it would take him decades for little to no progress. He didn’t have a swordheart, after all, nor had he achieved resonance with his order. It was nothing but brute-force practice. Before he managed to comprehend the move, he already knew how powerful it was. Lin Xiaozhi had used her whole life to perfect the Xiaozhi Sword Art, packing as much profound wisdom into it as she could.

The keyword for the second move was ’sandglass’. The sandglass was a completely sealed-off object that looked like a drinking gourd. When it was set up straight, the sand within one section would flow into the other. The basics of this move was built on the foundation of a key fact: the density of space. Tianming had no idea what it meant at first. How could space have the property of density? Feiling used the analogy of water. Space was a liquid-like medium whose density could be changed. Using Perpetia, she created regions of varying spatial densities for Tianming to experience.

In essence, the fundamentals of that move were to use the sword intent to seal off the front and back of the target. This was achieved by increasing the density of one region while decreasing the density of another, creating a flow differential that allowed for domain-like control. It was a rare ’continuous’ sword strike, and the one who had devised it could only have been a genius of the sword. That strike could persist over long periods of time to keep up the density compression. When the ’sand’ finished flowing from one region to another, there would be a sword-shaped explosion. When the move was executed, the spatial region in front of the target would flow towards the back, dealing damage down to the level of astrons.

”This strike seems to have more fine control than Unistrike Singularity. It’s even more compatible with Grandvoid Compendium, Flowerfall Flow. Using them together can generate a powerful spacetime attack.” The fact that Tianming managed to understand the principles behind two apex sword strikes like that was a sign that he deserved the legacies of the two reges mundi. The Xiaozhi Sword Art’s Unistrike Singularity and Duostrike Sandglass sounded nice and simple, befitting of the no-nonsense goddess of the sword. The fact that Tianming had spent two years in Perpetia to be able to somewhat achieve basic mastery of this ordered sword art showed how difficult it truly was.

Naturally, that wasn’t all he had achieved. He had also made some breakthroughs with regard to his soul. Since the ebon expeditionary army was turned back, Lin Xiaodao had gotten a professional teacher for Tianming to guide him in soul cultivation. That was actually Lin Xiaodao’s drinking buddy, the leader of the Deepsoul Gongyang Clan, Gongyang Yan. She was quite the short-tempered, direct, and rambunctious woman. Her masculine personality allowed her to get along with Lin Xiaodao very well like brothers would.

Of particular note was Gongyang Yan’s hair, which stood straight up, making her hair look like an exploded bird’s nest. Regardless of how pleasant her facial features looked, with a hairstyle like that, Lin Xiaodao couldn’t see her as anything but a fellow brother. Gongyang Yan had intentionally styled her hair thusly, as that was related to a special talent of her clan. Members of the Gongyang Clan had ’soul hair’, which functioned like antennas. Special soul appendages could stretch out of their hair, resulting in immense talent when it came to the soul. In the Infinitum Mundus, their clan ranked in the top three when it came to the soul, with the other two being the ebons and Greenhill Yushan Clan.

Gongyang Yan spared no effort in teaching Tianming. With but a single request from Lin Xiaodao, she taught Tianming the core technique of her clan: Deepsoul Dreamwalking. According to her, if she didn’t do Tianming any favors now, he would grow far beyond her and it would be too late to ingratiate herself to him by then. Every time she came to Skyhold Palace, she would say, ’Lin Feng, come out and dreamwalk with your uncle!’ Referring to herself with ’uncle’ was an interesting penchant of hers. Thanks to her spartan training, Tianming, despite lacking talent in soul cultivation, managed to raise his to the peak of the fourth imperial soul level in a short two years.

”With a little more work, I should be able to reach the fifth holy soul level in a month or two, achieving the basic standard of the Order stage. I wonder if it’d be easier for me to try simulacrum at that point.” No matter how much Tianming pined after it, he hadn’t been able to raise the quality of his totems. ”It’s said that Uncle Gongyang’s divine soul is stronger than my master’s at the sixth cosmic soul level and is at the cusp of the seventh foundation soul level.”

Deepsoul Dreamwalking was wholly incomparable to Mu Ziyan’s own soul cultivation technique. While he was still only at the fourth imperial soul, his soul had changed quite a lot. With the Soul Tower, he no longer had to fear taixi souls.

With all that he achieved, he decided he would go to check out Skyhold Bridge. He left the cultivation room and took some Yin Chens with him. ”Ling’er, Xiaoxiao, are you ready to leave?”

”We are.” Those two had also been in seclusion for quite some time. They hadn’t left Skyhold Palace for quite a while to the point they were almost molding from boredom, so being able to go somewhere else was an exciting proposition.

Tianming would be bringing them to Skyhold Bridge with him, and that was possible thanks to the special rules there. They had to get some actual fighting experience, after all, instead of merely raising their cultivation without applying it. They broke through far too quickly for their own good even before they managed to stabilize the fruits of their growth. Tianming worried that they would go astray if they didn’t do a bit of reflection first.

During the time Tianming spent training, the rate of Feiling’s recovering cultivation fell somewhat, but she still managed to reach the sixth-astral phase, a whole four levels above Tianming. In practice, her combat capabilities were incredibly close to rivaling his. While he wouldn’t lose just yet, he would have to use both Grand-Orient Swords to keep up with the ever-growing powers of Perpetia and the dizzying combination of primalwings Feiling could use at the same time. She was a genius in her own right, but was often overshadowed by Tianming’s achievements.

Tianming didn’t even want to think about how Xiaoxiao reached the eighth-astral phase five months ago. The only reason she hadn’t made progress In the past five months was that she had finished consuming all the caeli of the bee-headed people they had obtained. Not only that, she had also emptied the stores of caeli obtained from the Inkwell Sea. Going months without any caeli to consume made her hunger for more.