Beastmaster of the Ages

Since she didn’t want to elaborate, Tianming didn’t press her on it. They stopped talking and flew toward the Darkfiend Den.

”They didn’t wipe out the Darkfiend Den... I wonder if it’s because there’s something that could come from it in the future?” That was but a rough guess without any proof, but it did feel like something Myriadpath Valley would indeed do.

Despite appearing close, the den itself was incredibly far off. With Jian Qinghe tagging along, it took them more than ten days to reach the surface of the staggeringly huge structure.

The Darkfiend Den was a cavernous world. Tianming stood between the inner walls of one of the bottomless caverns. A black-and-red miasma of blood seemed to pour out of it. Even though it was just the surface of the den, they could hear the growls of the darkfiends. They were savage creatures that’d been driven mad with hunger since Bluemaple had turned on its astralguard formation. The only snacks they’d gotten in recent times were those brave warriors from Bluemaple that had come to kill them.

The thick inner walls vibrated with the growls and shrieks. There were at least hundreds of thousands of such caverns in the whole den. With so many darkfiends within, each of which was at least as strong as cosmic cartographers, cultivators from Bluemaple were greatly inconvenienced whenever they had to leave their world. Effectively, the Darkfiend Den had cut off Bluemaple from interacting with other star worlds for thousands of years.

All Myriadpath Valley did was send disciples on casual missions to kill a few darkfiends, so the problem didn’t seem solvable in the short term. Tianming believed that the cultivators of Bluemaple had nobody but themselves to count on.

”Let’s go, Yin Chen!” He wasn’t in a rush to make a move and sent Yin Chen to scout ahead. As the Darkfiend Den didn’t seem to have any gravitational pull, Yin Chen could move about in its smallest form. Tianming didn’t have to send out that many for them to scout out the depths of the den. They might not be able to cover the entire den in a short time, but it should be enough to ’light’ our way

. Having Yin Chen go ahead was a great way to ensure their safety. Jian Qinghe seemed to stop when he stopped. She was only there to pass the time, so she kept close to Tianming at all times, though she was so quiet that it didn’t even feel like she was there.

After half a day, Tianming felt that it was about time to move. Yin Chen told him that it had spotted some darkfiends.

”Wait, you’re telling me that there’s cultivators fighting darkfiends down below?”

”That’s correct,” Yin Chen said.

”What about the darkfiends?”

”They are... a little... like archaionfiends.”

That lined up with Tianming’s expectations. He began descending through the bottomless, twisting cavern. The inner walls were covered in a kind of sticky, wet mud. And thanks to primeval source, they were also as tough as divine ores. Whenever he set foot on them, he felt like he was being pulled in. Falling into the mud would be like falling into a swamp; a weak astral god might very possibly die from being crushed simply by falling too deep into the walls.

”It’s almost like the Darkfiend Den itself is a kind of living organism.” The stickiness was simply disgusting. It somehow reminded Tianming of the wondersky realm, which resembled a butterfly and gave him the same feeling. Then again, the Darkfiend Den should be fundamentally different, since it came from the Ancestral World and not the Xenoworld.

”Are there many cultivators from Bluemaple down there?” Tianming asked.

”They are... almost everywhere!”

Tianming had expected that. Darkfiends were the natural enemy of cultivators from Bluemaple. For the sake of the planet’s survival, they had no choice but to wipe out as many of them as possible, unlike the disciples of Myriadpath Valley that had no stake in it and were only there for some merit points after casually killing a few darkfiends.

”Lead me to the fight,” Tianming said. He sped up and used Fiveway Blitzrun for a bit. When he turned back, he saw Jian Qinghe behind him, floating on a green bamboo leaf. ”She’s able to keep up, eh? I knew she was more than meets the eye.” Tianming sped up a little more.

Since Archaionfiend eyes are able to unlock the talents of my Sky Plundering Eye, I wonder if darkfiend eyes can be used for the same thing? Even if they’re of lower quality, maybe they’ll still have an effect if I get enough of them.

That conjecture was the main reason he had come on this mission. His Sky Plundering Eye hadn’t grown for quite a while. There were formation locks all over Myriadpath Valley—not just the old cleaner’s cuffs or Jian Qinghe’s veil, but also the myriadpath steles! As such, the Sky Plundering Hand was key.

Soon, he heard loud darkfiend roars coming from nearby. ”Over there!”

He found himself in the depths of the den and was completely surrounded by the black-and-red miasma, which had the effect of confusing one’s mind. With the miasma limiting his visibility to such an extent, his speed was held back even with Fiveway Blitzrun.

Eventually, he saw eight gigantic darkfiends fighting something through the miasma, bloody soul lightning crackling from their bodies. They were covered in thick black scales and had dragon-like heads. Their bodies were covered in exceedingly sharp bone spikes all over. When they spread their fleshy wings wide, they crackled with lightning.

”They do look similar to archaionfiends! Wu You doesn’t look that different!” As far as Tianming was aware, Wu You, like Ying Huo and the rest, had changed. It was no longer in its strongest form. True archaionfiends were probably much stronger, stronger than even the darkfiends.

The darkfiends seemed even more savage than Wu You, but they were social creatures, as was apparent from their coordinated fighting style. That showed that they communicated with one another despite their savage forms.

While they seemed to have been driven mad with bloody lightning, they were incredibly different from normal wildbeasts. The gazes of wildbeasts only contained violence, feeding, and slaughter, whereas there was a hint of sapience in the gazes of darkfiends. They were taking advantage of the terrain to corner a group of cultivators!