Beastmaster of the Ages

The eightpart apparitions appeared next to every single wonderian like baleful ghouls, seeping into their vitae. The twisted faces of the apparitions and the aura of death and decay that radiated from their bodies caused many wonderians to stiffen and shiver. This was the ultimate divine wonder of their kind, an absolute myth, yet it was being directed toward them as if they were prey!

They gasped as their hearts beat faster and faster, inadvertently drawing the blood away from their faces.

”How... how’s the rex mundi’s divine wonder here...?”

”Is... is it here to help us take down Li Tianming?”

”No! Look! I think it’s looking at us—aaah!”

The apparitions launched their attack mere moments after they appeared.

”Kill them all! Leave none alive!” Tianming declared. He wouldn’t show the slightest bit of mercy to those who invade the Sun. That was the baseline he had set for himself, and anyone who crossed it would be met with only death. ”Any mercy I show you will turn into malice toward my subjects and followers! If I don’t kill you out of some obstinate, saintly obsession, I won’t be able to bear the consequences that come! All of you must die!”

Moran could clearly feel the killing intent Tianming had toward the invaders. It was completely ruthless, and she channeled that rage in herself to bring out the most savage forms of the eightpart apparitions. They seemed to react to her thoughts and feelings, immediately donning ruthless expressions as they commenced the slaughter.

The apparitions tore away at divine wonders and flesh alike, turning the battlefield into a meat grinder. Tianming didn’t idle around, either, and slaughtered them on his own too. He knew that the million wonderians would eventually gather in one place, so the more he could kill before that, the less of a threat they would be to the Sky Palace Formation.

Cries of pain and agony echoed throughout the battlefield, each carrying a hint of despair, unwillingness, and regret. One after another, astral gods were torn into smithereens in that sea of baleful souls.

Normally, divine astralship formations had to regulate nova source within the ships. As such, they usually only had one firing mode: firing in bursts. They couldn’t really aim at individual astral gods. However, the infinitum-class Ninedragon Imperial Tomb didn’t care about astral gods at all and fired away! f.𝐜om

The savage apparitions and Xian Xian’s seeming omnipresence on the battlefield broke down the usually lofty wonderians, with some even kneeling and begging for mercy. Meng Ying was the only one who had been driven by rage and vengeance. The others weren’t prepared to go to war in the first place, and barely knew of what had happened. Many of them had come along on their rex mundi’s excursion as if they were going on a vacation.

Not to mention, the Skydome Mundus had been united under one banner for so long that none of them had experienced the horrors of war. On the other hand, the Infinitum Mundus had had multiple wars in recent history, such as the defense of the Sun and the worldwide war of Ebonia, to mention a few. Astral and normal gods alike had had their hearts tempered by those experiences. It went without question that the different mindsets resulted in wildly different outcomes.

”Perhaps this is a theme that I can explore in the future!” The wonderians found it impossible to believe that they were about to die. They had been far too relaxed and could never have thought that death would come so swiftly. Tianming merely kept himself cool and ruthless. Astral gods weren’t the old and weak—they were elite cultivators in their own right!

He kept the frantic slaughter going for an entire hour. Moran and Tianming left no wonderian in their sights untouched. They would perish before they could muster up a reasonable defense, no exceptions! The eightpart apparition wonder, an infinitum-class divine wonder of the Foundation stage, worked with Xian Xian to ensure that not a single wonderian would be able to escape. Tianming himself also killed at least three thousand pairs of wonderians.

After the fight, the apparitions returned from whence they came. Tianming looked at the battlefield that was littered with cosmic artifacts and spatial rings. There were no corpses at all, for all the astrons that made up their bodies had scattered in the wind along with their caeli. The new Sun had been enduring the harsh flames of battle even before anything substantial had been built!

He gave the battlefield one last look before returning to the ship with his beasts. Within it, he saw Moran, seeming rather worn out from all the fighting with the eightpart apparition wonder. Almost worried that Tianming wouldn’t let her help out more, she hurriedly said, ”We can still go on.”

”Alright. Good work.” It wasn’t the time to be overly soft. ”The seven million wonderians outside haven’t made their move. That must mean that Meng Ying intends to wait for the elites from Myriadpath Valley and Intrepidus to arrive. We should kill as many of them as we can while they wait!” The invaders were like thorns in the Sun’s back; they could cause a lot of trouble if left unattended, much like the ebons.

Back when Tianming had been slaughtering the enemy, many similar battles broke out all across the Sun. The Lin Clan’s forces engaged the wonderians in close combat. First, they had their ships break apart the enemy troop formations, then they used their absolute numerical advantage by sending double the number of troops to deal with the wonderians!

However, the Sun only had seven hundred thousand astral gods. How could they possibly outnumber the invaders? The answer was simple: the rapid deployment of troops by using astralships gave them a huge edge. The Lin Clan had to leave some groups of enemies unattended. Of the seven hundred odd groups of wonderians, only around three hundred of them, numbering up to half a million people, had endured attacks by the forces of the Sun. The rest were still trying to group together.

”It can’t be helped. We only have so many people to send around, so we have to make the right sacrifices for the best outcome. If we’re too greedy, we’ll end up killing fewer than we need to,” Lin Xiao had said during the planning stage.

They weren’t aiming to wipe all the enemies out; all they wanted was to fight in conditions favorable to their forces to reduce their own casualties. Coupled with the return of Xiaodao and Tianming—along with their ships—the enemy had indeed suffered quite a huge blow.

However, those other theaters of battle weren’t without casualties of their own, unlike Tianming’s side. With both sides being roughly equal in combat prowess, casualties were inevitable. But the sacrifice of the Sun’s astral gods only fueled the rage of the world itself, rage that would be siphoned directly into Tianming’s body, allowing him to take on even more omnisentient power!