Beastmaster of the Ages

”Tsk tsk, is it me or do I feel some chemistry between you two?” Ying Huo said from its perch on Tianming’s shoulder.

”Stop sniffing your own farts,” Tianming said, annoyed.

”I’m serious. One on top, one on the bottom.... But I feel like your top game is a little weak compared to his.”

”Damn you, fly off and stop bothering me. If you keep it up, we’ll be having chicken and mushroom stew for dinner.”

”So I’m the chicken... but where will you get mushrooms? Oh, you mean that mushroom growing between your legs?” Ying Huo said snarkily.

Tianming grabbed it and started pulling its feathers off with his black arm.

”Save me! They’re trying to slaughter a chicken!”

......

Both Tianming and Lin Hongchen had taken their Oldgod Rings off. With Lin Hongchen on the other side, nobody could see what Tianming was doing, so he could go all out instead of having to sneakily unlock it like he did with the ancestral guidance steles.

There was a good reason the sky plunderers spread throughout the universe way back when. Our unlocking abilities are far too amazing! Back in the mortal realm and heliacal-class worlds, such an ability wasn’t too useful. But in Ebonia, whether it be the Swordgod Lin Clan or the Oldgod Domain, his black arm had its time in the limelight wherever there were legacies. Now, let me take control of you!

He took a deep breath and opened his left hand wide. The tips of his fingers and the Sky Plundering Eye in his palm were pushed against the surface of the tomb. While its surface was incredibly smooth, there were many divine celestial patterns flowing on it. The gray text started to turn green and flow into his fingers.

”What’s going on?” Lin Hongchen immediately came over and observed him.

”It’s business as usual. Stay calm,” Tianming said, hushing him. Lin Hongchen was staring at his arm with stark curiosity. ”Go back and stop looking. Just wait for me to unlock it.”

Lin Hongchen hadn’t really been counting on Tianming until that moment. He had tried to study what worked for a long time, but when he saw the divine celestial patterns turn from gray to green when Tianming began his work, he decided to stay. Crossing his arms, he said, ”Just go about your business, then.”

”Are you giving up so soon? You sounded pretty confident earlier,” Tianming said.

”Just shut up.”

”Fine. A simpleton like you would never be able to learn the truth of formations, which is only reserved for top geniuses like me.” Tianming attributed all this to his talent in formations. There wasn’t any reason for Lin Hongchen to doubt him, since he wasn’t aware of sky plunderers at all and really wasn’t able to tell that anything special was going on.

Lin Hongchen watched as Tianming placed both hands on the tomb, causing the text on the surface to surround his hands like beasts that had encountered their ruler. They began swirling around, eventually forming some kind of vortex like the Pentaphase Ocean, but with green text instead of beasts. The sight truly dumbfounded Lin Hongchen. Tianming was bursting with charisma as the vigorous green text cast a green glow on his face. However, that was just a performance he was putting up. His Sky Plundering Eye was already deep within the formation and saw that it had a hundred thousand layers, all formed from that green text. The strokes that made up the text seemed incredibly complicated. Each character had more than thirty strokes!

This lock is absolutely divine! It’s far more terrifying than the lock on the Grandvoid Compendium—ten times over, in fact! What could be inside it? Tianming didn’t think much of the tomb at first, but the characters had really come as quite a surprise. Thankfully, the structure of the formation is quite similar to the green skeletons’. I already opened three of them, so I have some experience.

Even so, he still felt a little anxious and was unsure if he could actually unlock it. I really messed up bigtime this time around. He felt like a petty thief that had to unlock a hundred thousand locks one after another. Most thieves would just break out in tears. One word: fuck!

He took a deep breath and began deciphering the text. There was a character with thirty strokes that looked somewhat similar to the character for ’tortoise’, but there were many more strokes than that. His first attempt took quite a bit of time. He unraveled the character one stroke at a time with his Sky Plundering Hand. Once that was done, a second character appeared, with thirty-one strokes this time. He suddenly got a bad feeling about it.

Don’t tell me that every single character has one more stroke than the previous one.... Wouldn’t the last character have around a hundred thousand strokes?! He couldn’t quite see the characters near the end of the line, but they looked like gigantic beasts! Holy crap. If I can’t deal with this, Lin Hongchen might kill me for real.

The formation was certainly unique. I don’t believe there’s anyone but me that can undo this hundred-thousandfold lock. Though perturbed, he calmed down and continued working away at the lock. Lin Hongchen kept coldly looking on. As Tianming expected, each subsequent character had an extra stroke. The tenth had forty-one strokes, and by that point, they no longer looked like words and instead resembled messy doodles. Still, Tianming did feel like they were text of some sort. They gave off a sensation of a long-lost civilization.

It didn’t take him much time to go through ten characters, but they would only grow more terrifying the further along he was in the process. Even if he was getting more and more adept at undoing the locks, he still feared what was to come.

......

Ten days quickly passed. After so much work that made his fingers sore, he had only managed to undo a thousand layers. By now, each character had more than a thousand strokes. They no longer looked like text, but vast green drawings. It was like he was looking at a huge forest. How insane could the ninety-nine thousand characters after that be?

Dammit, with so much practice, I’ll be able to undo women’s underwear so much quicker... His Sky Plundering Hand’s fingers were incredibly well trained at this point. Even Ying Huo felt an instinct to close its legs tight at the mere sight of them, let alone others.

This is hard.... Even though he still had time, the remaining text seemed to weigh down on him like a huge mountain and he couldn’t quite catch his breath. I can’t give up, or I’ll have to start from the beginning. But at this rate, it’ll take me around a hundred years to undo it, wouldn’t it? As he wondered how he could break out of the stalemate he was in, he pulled out his Sky Plundering Hand and looked at his fingers....