Beastmaster of the Ages

Ebonopolis had fallen for good! The scattering of the wildbeast wall had allowed four million astralships to bombard its defensive formation. Eventually, the formation collapsed. And long before that’d happened, quite a lot of ebons had long been resolved to their fate. Shenxi Xingtian’s every grand ambition had brought his people closer and closer to the abyss. His followers had grown numb to his constant, unending failures.

Originally, the Infinitum Bodhimanda had had many ships, but they still wouldn’t have been able to easily take out Ebonopolis’ defensive formation. After all, their fleet didn’t have an infinitum-class ship as a vanguard. However, the complete loss of morale of the ebons greatly destabilized their defensive formation, resulting in their eventual fall. With no hope to cling to, many ebons had mentally broken down.

The breach of the defensive formation marked the point of no return and the certain damnation of the ebons. Even those that were still alive no longer had the heart to fight. Their minds blanked out as they wailed in grief and self-pity. Among them, Shenxi Xingtian was the one that suffered the most. He’d never had a victory to his name since the day he had lost his top spot to Yi Daiyan, and his record had only continued spiraling downward.

The ebons announced their complete defeat when the formation was breached. Even the Ebonfiend, their flagship, had been wrecked by the Infinitum Stele. With its divine astralship formation rendered nonfunctional, it wouldn’t be able to take flight in the short term. As for Shenxi Xingtian himself, his life was still threatened by Yi Daiyan. Could there be a fate more pathetic than that?

”Yi Daiyan! Yi Daiyan!” Shenxi Xingtian fled into the subterranean world, tears flowing nonstop from his pitch-black eyes that glowed a bloody red. Every single astron in his body pulsed with rage, despair, and hatred.

Sword ki shot out from behind him and formed a cage of black and gold that turned the surrounding rocks and ores into powder. ”Stop shouting. You’re very annoying. After sending you to hell, I’ll wipe out all the ebons and wildbeasts in Ebonia without leaving a single one behind. The world will thus be cleansed,” Yi Daiyan said, her sharp voice ringing in Shenxi Xingtian’s ears.

”You’re cruel! Too cruel!” To be able to betray the Sun simply to wipe out the ebons for good required a great deal of cruelty and ruthlessness, something that people hadn’t expected from Yi Daiyan. Shenxi Xingtian finally realized that she was far more ruthless than he was.

”Don’t talk to me about meaningless morals. Winners triumph, losers resign. As a loser yourself, all you have to do is to resign yourself to your fate. Now die!” Streams of black and gold sword ki formed into a tornado that vaporized everything in its path, even the many wildbeasts that attempted to stop it.

”Fiend! Witch! Victory hasn’t been decided yet, so don’t celebrate so soon!” Shenxi Xingtian roared. He suddenly turned his body as two beams of golden light emanated from his palms. It was his taixi soul! It turned into two figures that shot toward Yi Daiyan. Normal sword ki or strikes couldn’t stop them. At the same time, countless vines of the bloodline wisteria burst out from the surroundings, forming a tight, bloody net between Yi Daiyan and Shenxi Xingtian.

More and more vines appeared, tying Yi Daiyan up in tens of thousands of layers in mere moments. Then they began constricting! But that clearly wasn’t enough to do her in. Shenxi Xingtian used that opportunity to run for it. He chose to abandon his taixi souls and the Ebonfiend as he continued escaping toward the depths of Ebonia, tears of blood trailing behind him.

He turned into a black flash and rammed through everything in his way. Behind him, Yi Daiyan had torn apart the vines of the bloodline wisteria, but lost her lock on Shenxi Xingtian. However, the threat of the taixi souls was far more worrying to her than the vines. The souls invaded her body and started a war in her astral brain.

The two of them struggled for a long while as her eyes turned more and more bloodshot. It took quite a while for her to force the taixi souls away and regain some clarity of mind. Tens of billions of vines shattered around her, but the main body of the bloodline wisteria was still hidden deep inside Ebonia, still living.

”Shenxi Xingtian, if I can’t kill you, I’ll kill your descendants, all of them. You’ll die sooner or later as well! I told you that I’ll leave no ebon remaining in this world, and that’s precisely what I intend to see through to the end.” She looked at the depths with an even colder gaze than before. Then she vanished, heading in the direction of the Ebonfiend. It was one of her many spoils of the day. While she wouldn’t be able to use it yet, she could stop Shenxi Xingtian from using it, depriving him of yet another card.

The other two cards were Ebonopolis and the bloodline wisteria. The former was out of commission, and the latter was still hidden. ”Final victory is close at hand. The Ebonian War shall come to a close,” she muttered as she looked in the direction of the Sun above.

......

Deep within Ebonia, a transmission stone lit up. Shenxi Tianxi’s haggard face appeared in the projection.

”Dad! Where are you? Ebonopolis has fallen!” The sound of grief in his voice was unmistakable. The ebons had lost the place they’d called home for tens of millions of years. ”Dad! My Ebonfiend Minor’s been grounded as well. My little sister is here with me! Come save us! Quickly!”

However, Shenxi Xingtian could do naught but hold on to his transmission stone as his tears flowed. His body shuddered from his sobs. He wouldn’t be going to save them! Yi Daiyan had no doubt headed in Ebonopolis’ direction after losing track of him, so going back to save his children meant certain death.

”Dad.... They’re attacking! Little Sis and I are barely holding on!”

”Dad! Little Sis was captured!”

Shenxi Xingtian’s tears flowed even more profusely than before.

”Dad, Little Sis has been killed. I think... the Shenxi Clan’s bloodline has ended for good,” Shenxi Tianxi reported, despairing.

”Yishker Sayedi must’ve come at the orders of Yi Daiyan, that witch! They’re massacring as many of the Shenxi Clan as they can without negotiating anything at all. They killed Little Sis!”

No matter how much Shenxi Tianxi despaired as he described the doom that his clan faced, there was nothing he could do about it. Once the Ebonfiend had been taken down, the entire ebon race had been left at the mercy of the enemy armada. The city where the ebons kept all their legacies had been mercilessly bombarded by astralships of the Infinitum Bodhimanda. Legacies, caeli, wildbeasts, and people were vaporized all the same.