Beastmaster of the Ages

The wondersky fairy said, ”Before I reveal the secret, I need to know if Master knows the true nature of wondersky realms.”

Tianming smirked. ”Did I say you could ask questions? Tell us everything you know.”

She pouted. ”Master, you’re as impatient as usual...”

Tianming couldn’t quite connect the wonderian before him with the wondersky fairy from back then. Though they had identical faces and figures, she was ninety thousand meters tall in the real world. In the wondersky realm, however, Tianming could send her flying with a kick. While it didn’t seem possible in the real world, he had a feeling that she wouldn’t resist even if he tried.

”The wondersky is a construct based on formations and phantom beasts. You must’ve seen many phantom beasts already, Master.”

Tianming nodded. The rainbow butterfly, greenmouth clam and black squid were all phantom beasts. ”Are they living beings?”

”Yes, much like soulbeasts,” she answered with a wink. ”We wonderians built different formations to accommodate for their different body sizes.”

”In other words, the wondersky realms exist within the phantom beasts’ body, right?”

”Yes. Phantom beasts are really good at attracting caeli. In fact, all wondersky realms in the Lower Star Ruins are part of the Perpetual Wondersky Formation! The perpetual wondersky wonder that I showed off earlier is the core of the Perpetual Wondersky Formation.”

”So, the phantom beasts you unleashed earlier were real and not just manifestations?” Tianming found it rather weird at the thought of the creatures that captured Ying Huo and Meow Meow.

”They’re fake, of course. They’re merely corporeal forms generated by the divine wonder, not actual soulbeasts,” she said a little nervously. ”The real phantom beasts that make up the formation exist in the Lower Star Ruins, containing countless caeli of cultivators down there.

”Now for the big secret... The elites of wonderian society, Imperator Shen, especially, have been using the formation to absorb the soul talent breath from the cultivators’ caeli to push the limits of their own talent and order! The more often a cultivator from the Lower Star Ruins enters a wondersky realm, the more talent will be absorbed!”

Tianming was utterly dumbfounded. He had figured there was a plot, but would never imagine it was on such a universal scale! The wonderian elite had made milking farms out of a large chunk of the universe! ”I thought that letting only the caelum into the wondersky realm was relatively risk free, only to find out about the sigils they left on my caelum’s spine... Is that what you use to absorb soul talent breath?”

”That’s right,” she said pitifully. ”People who acquire a sigil from the Skydome Battlefield are basically talented crop from the Lower Star Ruins. The sigils actually increase the siphoning of their talent. Naturally, it all happens gradually in the background at an imperceptible rate. In fact, not much is absorbed from them individually. We mainly count on absolute quantity across a large period of time.”

The wondersky fairy had just revealed a terrifying plot. The wonderians truly were trash like Old Man Voidback claimed. The only reason a race like that was able to maintain their supreme reign over everything was the Perpetual Wondersky Formation. They were able to look down on everyone from their lofty heights, absorbing the refined talent of countless cultivators through the wondersky realms!

The cultivators of the universe were nothing but livestock for the wonderians! The strong fed on the weak literally, a universal maxim. In fact, not slaughtering them and only taking nibbles at a time was better for the wonderians in the long term. After all, the talented cultivators would be able to pass on their legacy to even more talented successors who would feed back into the system, closing the cycle. There would essentially be an endless supply of talent soul breath! The wonderians had to be getting something out of painstakingly building the wondersky realms in the Lower Star Ruins, and this was it.

”I’ve also entered wondersky realms before. Does that mean that some of my talent soul breath has been absorbed?” Tianming asked, expression grim.

”Yes...” She seemed incredibly timid at the sight of his anger. ”But as I said earlier, it is an insignificant amount on an individual scale. Master, in particular, spent far too little time in the wondersky realms and at far too low of a frequency, so it has barely affected you.”

Even so, how many people or generations have the wondersky realms affected over the timescale of eons? Nobody in the Lower Star Ruins knew that their talent was being stolen without them noticing. Even though they were able to obtain battle arts in exchange, that wouldn’t make up from having talent stolen across hundreds of years!

”You wonderians truly are the parasites of this universe,” Tianming said, giving her a cold look.

”Master, I have seen the light. That’s why I came to tell you all this! Can you believe in the sincerity of my actions?” She teared up pitifully once more. Coupled with her unkempt clothes, it looked as if Tianming had just done something rather wild to her.

”There’s something else,” she said. ”In times of emergency, the elites are able to lock up all the caeli within the wondersky realms and refine them all, resulting in a huge boost to our core combat strength!”

”They can even trap and refine caeli?!” Tianming felt a chill in his whole body. How many people were in the wondersky realms at any given time? If they really went through with it, it would cause a major catastrophe in the universe like never before!

If that was true, Tianming really did have to change the way he viewed the Perpetual Wonderqueen. He didn’t think that she would tell him something like this. ”It seems like you are pretty sincere.”

In other words, she would have been able to gain an explosive boost in power using the Perpetual Wondersky Formation had she wanted to. Tianming might not have been able to defeat her. It seemed that she was truly so scared of Tian Jiu that she even dared to release one of the biggest secrets of the wonderians.