Beastmaster of the Ages

The storm tore through the Inner Yin without end. Tianming and Eminent Jiguang made their way through the Inner Yin like tiny boats on a stormy sea, constantly facing the risk of being overturned. Tianming himself was already fearing the worst.

All Eminent Jiguang could do in the situation was reduce the area of her cosmoforce field, which kept pressing them closer together. It was the only way she could properly protect him and stabilize their way ahead. And it reminded Tianming of his time in Jiguang Sea when they had used the soulblend formation.

Eminent Jiguang had cared for him so gently, making him feel like a child in a mother’s embrace. And now she had to endure most of the destructive force of the storm in the Inner Yin. The force was so powerful that her pink cosmoforce field was compressed more and more until it was only a layer that wrapped around their bodies. The two of them were pressed close together, struggling to advance through the storm.

Being so warmly protected by an elder-sisterly figure like that was new to Tianming; normally, he was the one who protected girls. If it weren’t for the purple mask, he would have let himself indulge in the feeling even more.

As Eminent Jiguang tightened her defensive field around them, she constantly thought about how the youth had saved her. It was unavoidable; becoming an astral god meant becoming a higher lifeform.

Procreation became millions of times harder as a result, the difficulty of which only made their yearning for offspring even more powerful to the point of obsession. It was an instinct that was carved deep into every single astron of their bodies. Without a heightened level of desire for that, astral gods would have gone extinct long ago.

Doesn’t that mean that carnal desires like these will only grow more powerful farther along the road of cultivation? Is that the only way higher lifeforms are pushed into leaving a legacy? Tianming had nothing on his mind, so he began pondering the ways of the universe. Recalling Huang Qi’s insanely huge astral-giant form, it no longer seemed as unlikely for astral giants to be able to copulate as well.

Damn, I should stop thinking about that. He was worried that Eminent Jiguang would sense something off and toss him into the storm. He focused on leading the way. The Yin Chens outside his lifebound space had mostly died out, so he had to guess the rough direction.

Fortunately, the Yin-Yang Baleflame vortex wasn’t too far away, and was incredibly immense. After a few more rocky moments, Eminent Jiguang eventually spotted a baleflame vortex that was ten times larger than the one she had seen.

”I hear the voice again!” she cheered, almost squishing Tianming so tight that he lost his breath.

”Ah, good....” He knew that, now that she had seen her target, there was even less chance that she would leave no matter how dangerous it would become. Oh well, even if we end up not being able to leave, I can still send them out with the astralship once I gain control of it.

An astralship of the Yin-Yang World probably wouldn’t need to go through the Lumistar Formation to leave the Yin-Yang World, he reasoned. As he pondered that, Eminent Jiguang apologetically said, ”Savior, can I request more of your time? I’ll go in to look for her, then take you to a safe location.”

”It’s fine.” Tianming looked at the vortex and felt that Yin Chen had given a conservative estimate of its size. It was at least worth two thousand kegs. That amount would probably be difficult to claim in full; he definitely wouldn’t be able to do it, given the powerful storm, so he had to wait for Eminent Jiguang to attempt her rescue and see if she had time to help out.

”Wait, is there really something at the bottom of the vortex? Can there really be a special location that someone can survive in? Will it be dangerous?” Tianming asked.

”My sister-in-law’s subsoul’s persisted for a hundred years, so it’s probably safe. I’m more worried about other things....” She hesitated for a moment, but determination soon returned to her gaze. ”Savior, since you can’t go out on your own, I’ll have to take you down with me.”

”It can’t be helped! Anyway, I’m a native, so this surely can’t harm me,” he claimed. Eminent Jiguang didn’t see any flaw in that logic, either.

”I hear the voice again! She’s calling out!” She didn’t say anything else as she advanced toward the baleflame vortex. The storm was so loud that Tianming didn’t hear anything himself.

”Do any of you hear it?” he asked his lifebound beasts, only to recall that he had sealed off his lifebound space in fear that they would say something that would give away his identity. ”Those guys are messing around again....”

Ying Huo and the rest had nothing better to do, so they raged and stomped on the three eggs that weren’t ready to hatch yet. The eggs had been growing this entire time. Even though they hadn’t reached maturity, Tianming could already feel how harrowing they were becoming.

As they drew closer and closer to the vortex, Tianming noticed a suffocating atmosphere coming from within it. It looked like an abyss of endless darkness that stimulated a primal fear within him. Yet Eminent Jiguang bravely continued on, dragging him in with her before he had mentally prepared himself.

When they were finally in, he didn’t feel like he was surrounded by flames. Instead, it felt like entering a rather warm swamp. There was nothing but dead silence once they entered the vortex; the storm outside couldn’t be heard at all. That was how he figured that they had entered a completely different region of space.

His ears crackled for a few moments from the sudden absence of noise. It took a while for him to get used to it, then the only noises he could hear were faint and bubbly.

Eminent Jiguang hugged him tight as they went deeper. The bubbles they had displaced from the bottom rose past them toward the top of the vortex. Even though the depths seemed much quieter and calmer than outside, it was so dark that they could barely see anything.

Tianming and Eminent Jiguang relaxed a bit now that the storm was out of reach. They exchanged glances, but not words. Eminent Jiguang let him go and the two of them continued heading deeper. Soon, they ’fell’ out of the watery region and found themselves floating in a dark void. It seemed to be a rather moist area that had been void of people for who knows how long. Even the air there smelled weird.

All of a sudden, the two of them winced from the stench. It was the signature charred smell of baleflame, yet at an intensity that not even more than a thousand kegs of it would be able to produce! Perhaps it was due to the nature of flowing space outside; inside the vortex, space had been completely still for untold eons. On the other hand, there seemed to be even more baleflame there than there was outside.