Beastmaster of the Ages

After a few days, Meow Meow returned and reported that a new group of people had arrived at the Imperialdragon Palace.

“Who are they and what do they look like?” Tianming asked.

“There’s a guy and three women. The guy looks like he has two huge lumps on his head and he calls the three women sisters,” Meow Meow lazily said as it groomed itself.

“Lumps? What do you mean?” Tianming thought about the intelligence reports he had read and didn’t recall anyone who met that description.

“Perhaps it’s the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect’s Long Longlong, the grandson of the Saintdragon Emperor. Those lumps are actually dragon horns. The three women should be children of the Saintdragon Emperor as well,” Yu Ziqian explained.

“I see.” Tianming seemed to have some impression of him. There wasn’t much information about Long Longlong. He was only twenty, and hadn’t shown himself much. Even his cultivation level was hard to determine. “So he’s only twenty, yet he’s able to face off against the others in the Voidsky Realm. His Saintdragon’s Blessing must be pretty impressive then.”

“He has Saintdragon Eyes and those horns. That’s a sign of top talent in Xuanyuan Dragon Sect! If you’d seen the portrait of the Ninedragon Emperor, you’d see horns like that too,” Yu Ziqian added.

Tianming nodded. This was another competitor they had to face off against. “As the descendant of the Ninedragon Emperor, he might have some kind of advantage in this tomb. The fact he’s able to come to the Imperialdragon Palace must mean that he’s defeated enough dragon golems, and perhaps he even obtained one of the nine treasures here.” He turned to Meow Meow and asked, “Did he have a black war drum when he came?”

“Meow?” The cat poked its tongue out stupidly.

“Did you fall asleep?” Tianming facepalmed.

“I only snoozed for a few moments, so I didn’t see how they arrived. I woke up noticing that they were fighting, but the blondies had more numbers and pushed them into a corner. However, they didn’t leave,” Meow Meow explained.

“A few moments? You were asleep for at least three days,” Ying Huo said, rolling its eyes.

“Chicken Bro, that’s an unfounded allegation! You didn’t see how hard I was working!”

“Enough. Go back to sle—I mean monitoring them! Notify me immediately if there’s any change. Looks like those two groups aren’t aware of the secret of the Imperialdragon Palace for now,” Tianming said.

“Roger that! I’ll keep my eye on the place. Not even the slightest breeze will escape my sharp eyes!” Meow Meow immediately slipped away, obviously in love with this easy job.

“Before they manage to crack the secrets of the place, more people will definitely defeat enough dragon golems to obtain a black war drum, which will lead them there.” Tianming effectively had more time now, since he was not far off from Imperialdragon Palace.

“Aren’t you the relaxed one? Most people would choose to stay there after finding the palace,” Yu Ziqian said.

Tianming stood at a corner of the pathway and took out his sword once more, continuing to ponder the insights from his new move. “Well, what can we do when we’re overpowered? Not to mention, being close to the place doesn’t seem like it’d afford us much advantage anyway.” He closed his eyes and let his caelum enter the nine-colored scale.

……

It had been ten days since they’d discovered the Imperialdragon Palace. Tianming alternated between going to the wondersky realm and practicing his swordsmanship. The fusion of the Blooddragon and Silverdragon basic moves proceeded slowly. Thus far, no third move had appeared within the scale. It could only mean that Tianming would only go to the next step once he fused the first two moves.

“Silverdragon’s speed and Blooddragon’s ferocity… a fusion of light and blood. The second-fusion strike can be called Dualdragon Tribulation….” As the number of moves increased, so did the number of the name. The final-fusion strike would be none other than Ninedragon Tribulation.

“These are two really esoteric sword intents….” Tianming used one of the Grand-Orient Swords to execute the two moves subsequently and saw no way to blend them together. “That didn’t feel right….”

He continued pondering in his corner, his sword flashing silver and red from time to time, going from speeding light to bloody roar, yet the two moves just didn’t seem to harmonize at all. The sword of light was a stark contrast to the fierce sword of blood in terms of ferocity, which was in turn too slow to match the sword of light’s speed. They were out of sync with each other.

“Looks like the quintessence of this move is the fusion of radically different aspects of the different moves.” Tianming had experience with fusion moves through the Shenxiao Sword Art, but this was thousands of times more complex than fusing the lightning and fire aspects of the older move. Since Tianming had broken his Lifesbane curse, it was as if he had been guided by the terrifying force of destiny, which had allowed him to easily conquer the Moonnight Subdued Strike and Imperial Descent. But it didn’t seem to work when it came to fusing these two moves.

“The one who made this divine art was no doubt a miraculous genius. It’s already this complex even before incorporating the sword body and totems into it.”

Normal divine arts didn’t differ too much from battle arts. The core difference was the complexity of the sword stances. For instance, the Shenxiao Sword Art was only a matter of shifting between a dozen stance permutations, while there were tens of thousands of possible sword formations for the Ninedragon Tribulation. It was so overwhelming that one’s foe would have nowhere to hide. It was just like how alchemy, tome, smithing, and formation gurus of Orderia could manage far more complex divine celestial patterns compared to the novices of the Flameyellow Continent.

“Haste won’t do much for me here. I have to calm myself and let go. Persevere….” He recalled what had happened at the Imperialdragon Palace. His anxiousness to hurry must be affecting his state of mind as he pondered the move. He allowed himself to completely dissociate from their current situation and focused on the present, forgetting about the flow of time and concentrating on the vertical slice that was ‘now’. He no longer cared about who went to the palace and when.

Eventually, a month passed since they had discovered the palace. Every ten days, Tianming entered the third level of Violetglory Pagoda, and so did Lingfeng, but Tianming usually stayed for longer. Out of the month or so, he spent a full fifteen days within the pagoda, and the rest of the time was spent on fusing the moves.

“If I become a constellier, my Lifesbane Will should morph from a heavenly will to a divine will.” That would explain why it was so hard for him to advance in the Ascension stage. He was trying to bring a heavenly will all the way to a divine will, which was akin to ascending to godhood a whole separate time.

“Right now, I’m really close to breaking through. I’m just a hair’s breadth away, but I’m stuck all the same.” He had tried many times, but wasn’t able to make it to the Lifecycle Sky level. “Looks like these bottlenecks will be common in the future, as is the case with everyone else. Many of those my age get stuck for years at a time.”

Tianming was still calm when it came to that. He was more or less at the point of shifting his Lifesbane Will to becoming a divine will, so in a sense, he was reliving his days of trying to ascend. The process was easy for Xiaoxiao and Lingfeng, though, who had relied on caeli and the grandpath fiend pill respectively.