Beastmaster of the Ages

”Li Tianming, don’t you know that you’re committing a horrible sin? Your actions will—”

Tianming interrupted Mo Shen before he could finish. ”Stop repeating all that boring bullshit. It just makes you all sound like retards. You all deserve to die, and you’re just the first of many.”

The cosmic gods let out a sinister laugh. ”Fool!”

Tianming ignored them, given that he didn’t have much time to spare. These cosmic gods of a fortuna-class world were nothing more than helpless remnants that couldn’t do anything, not even to help themselves. Whether it comes to making them into minced meat or cooking them some other way, I call the shots!

He mustered his power and began slashing away at Mo Shen’s cosmic god essence. They were all human cosmic gods whose essences weren’t as tough as those of specters or lifebound beasts, so they were easier to work with. With a few hundred slashes, Tianming was able to make an opening; it felt just like splitting coconuts.

”Dammit, my hands are sore! I heard that essences of higher-level cosmic gods can even move around and escape. They’re getting harder and harder to kill...” he grumbled.

His beasts had also chipped in with their abilities. Xian Xian and Bai Ye stood out the most when it came to killing cosmic gods. The former released as much Quadform Radixbreath as possible to make Mo Shen’s essence rot away.

”Li Tianming!” Mo Shen finally began panicking when he felt that his life was at risk.

”Shut up. You have no lines left. Now, the next one....” Tianming kicked the essence away and headed toward Yanri Huang’s essence.

”You lowly slave!” he spat, though that didn’t stop Tianming from hacking wildly away before infusing it with poison and traces of Bai Ye. He had established a good workflow and gotten used to it, though it was tiring all the same for him, Xian Xian, and Bai Ye.

By the time Mo Shen perished for good, Tianming reached his fourth essence. Yanri Huang, who had heard the agonized cries of the rest and the final shriek of despair as Mo Shen perished, felt like he was at death’s door. Desperately, he pleaded, ”Li Tianming, spare my life! I’ll serve you like my daughter Yanri Shuang once did! I’ll willingly hand over my part of the formation core!”

”To think that a cosmic god of the Starfall Pantheon would beg for mercy...” Tianming chuckled, then shrugged. ”I already killed a pretty girl like Yanri Shuang. What makes you think a disgusting old man like you deserves different treatment? Dream on. The formation core was already mine to begin with, and I do love taking things from others. Letting you willingly hand it over would just ruin the fun.”

Yanri Huang despaired at the sound of those words and the clangs as the Grand-Orient Sword hacked into his shell. Then Xian Xian and Bai Ye followed suit to deal with the rest.

Tianming made openings in the final two essences and left his beasts to deal with them while he went to Mo Shen’s dim corpse and started absorbing the core of the Starmoon Guard Formation.

”The Sun used to be an imperial-class world defended by an imperial-class formation that had the Flameyellow Coffin as the astralguard formation core and the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb as the fusion formation core. Starmoon Haven probably also has a ship as its fusion formation core, yet its astralguard formation core was split and fused with actual bodies....”

There were six parts, and he only needed one to be allowed to travel in and out of the formation as he pleased. However, that wasn’t enough. He wanted to use the Starmoon Guard Formation as his own and determine who would and wouldn’t be allowed to pass through.

With the six ’coconuts’ opened, it was only a matter of time before he took full control of the Starmoon Guard Formation. As for the six maniverse-class ships within Starmoon Haven that served as cores for the fusion formation, Tianming only needed to kill the cosmic gods to claim the cores. The cosmic gods’ threats, pleading, and cursing no longer meant anything to him.

At the very least, we’ve triumphed in this battle...” he sighed in relief. ”Next, we’ll have to save my people in Starmoon Haven and take the resources that’ll be crucial for us—like the bodies within the divine tombs, for instance.... He would never let the powerful ancestors of those pantheons rest in peace when they could do so much for him!

By the time he finished absorbing the third core, Yin Chen had some news. ”That wonderian... left with... Worldgazer Skyeye... Long Xing... should be... able to... catch up!”

Tianming immediately contacted Long Xing with his transmission stone and learned that he was in pursuit of Female Mo. Long Xing had singlehandedly killed almost all the cosmic gods in Starmoon Haven!

”Should I take her down and bring you the Worldgazer Skyeye?” he asked.

Tianming gave it some thought and said, ”Let her go!”

”What’s your reasoning?”

”The Worldgazer Skyeye’s a precious treasure of the sacred lord of Saturatia-49. If we take it, they’d no doubt launch an attack on us right away! That isn’t something we’re able to deal with right now. Even though we were able to save our kin in Starmoon Haven, there’s still around five billion more in the other two havens. If the sacred lord comes here now, the heavenly oath that still guarantees that our kin will be untouched for ten-plus years more would be rendered useless. We’d completely lose our initiative and endanger everyone,” Tianming said.

Though taking down Starmoon Haven did mean trapping many members of the enemy pantheons, they weren’t the same people as those in Wondersky and Wargod Havens. People from those worlds wouldn’t care too much about what happened to the denizens of Starmoon Haven.

”I see. If we let her go, the cosmic gods of the other two havens probably won’t dare to cry out for saviors. Two of their sacred lords who are the same level as me are returning, and they have a reputation to care about. Losing to the two of us and crying out for aid would be far too embarrassing for them.” Long Xing had dealt with these people for far too long and understood their character well.

”That’s right. Even though it isn’t certain, at least there’s a chance that we won’t attract the sacred lord’s attention.” Not to mention, the Worldgazer Skyeye wasn’t an offensive artifact; it could only be used for capture and suppression, so it wasn’t of that much use for him.

”I believe they’ll still look for someone on their level for help, or maybe ones that’re only slightly stronger. It’s already embarrassing enough that they had to borrow an artifact from the wonderian sacred lord,” Long Xing said.

”True.” Either way, there was no guarantee of anything. The best they could do was reduce the odds of the worst-case scenario. Even if their enemies could stomach the humiliation to ask the sacred lord to intervene, it wasn’t something Tianming could do anything about.

The time afforded to them by the heavenly oath would only continue slipping away, so they had to finish taking over Starmoon Haven and save the three billion flameyellow descendants there.

The rainbow-colored star of beauty was now Tianming’s to claim!