Beastmaster of the Ages

”Where in the world is this?” Tianming felt that he had been consumed by some kind of creature, which made him feel rather ill. When he entered, all of the albi in his body seemed to be compressed to the point that it hurt a lot.

”Am I inside the ring?” He felt around his body and was shocked. ”Wait, this isn’t my caelum! It’s my actual body!”

Every time he had entered the world inside an artifact, it had always only been his caelum. Spatial rings that were divine artifacts were made of a special kind of ore that didn’t allow living beings to enter them. The only exception was the fauna worldstones the ebons used, and even then, the environments within were only suited for hibernation and nothing else. Nothing could move freely within. Usually, only dead creatures without a soul could be put inside spatial rings, yet Tianming had found himself within the mysterious ring, body and soul together! He was still conscious and could move around!

”What a mystery this giantess’ ring is. I wonder if I’ll be able to carry my personal army with me if I manage to learn how to control it.” He tried calling Ying Huo out from his lifebound space, only to find that it really came out beside him. ”So this is possible too, eh?”

He didn’t dare to let Lan Huang out just yet, for fear that its size would cause the ring to explode from within. As for Meow Meow, it was outside the ring so he wasn’t able to contact it. However, the Yin Chens that remained in his lifebound space could still reach those on the outside, so he had them relay the order to continue advancing to Meow Meow.

”I wonder if I can also use it to hide if I run into danger....” It was too bad that it didn’t feel like he could do anything like that for now.

”What is this place? It’s so dark....” Ying Huo looked around before it nestled in Tianming’s chest, only exposing its little head. Tianming suddenly recalled how terrified it had been back in the Tomb of the Ancients.

”There’s something over there.” All around them was a pitch-black void. There was only silence. It was as if it was a night sky without any stars, primeval sources, or nova sources. But in the distance was a small green light.

Tianming cradled Ying Huo’s head and flew toward the light. Soon, he discovered a black wall ahead of him. ”I almost slammed into it.”

He put his hands on the wall, feeling its rough texture, but he didn’t dare to break it. As the green light was on the upper left corner, he decided to fly toward it. Eventually, he seemed to have passed over the wall. All of a sudden, it felt like the world around him had expanded.

The wall was actually some kind of platform. Tianming gently landed atop it. It felt rather soft to the touch, like he had landed on some kind of thin membrane. As the world within the ring was too dark, he drew the Grand-Orient Sword and made his body glow at the same time to illuminate his surroundings, only to be shocked by what he saw.

He knew something felt off about where he set foot. It was some kind of white membrane, but that wasn’t a big deal on its own. The film seemed translucent and Tianming saw hexagonal rooms beneath it! He was standing atop a boundless bees’ nest. The wall he had previously run into was just one of the sides of the nest. The nest he saw beneath him was similar to the bees’ nest he had been transported to, but far larger.

The nest had captured young participants from the Oldgod Realm back then. But the nest beneath him contained something else other than rooms with sticky green honey in them. He was shocked to find a giant beneath him, rolled up in a fetal position. He was about five to six meters tall and looked like a normal person, save for the head— it had mandibles, compound eyes, and feelers, all of which looked incredibly lifelike!

”Holy whatchamacallit....” Startled, Ying Huo shrank deeper into Tianming’s abdomen.

”Stupid bird, stop trying to burrow into me!” He tried to grab it, only for it to wriggle into his pants. Calming himself, he squatted and stared at the membrane beneath him with his Sky Plundering Eye.

”I wonder if that thing’s alive....” The bee-headed person didn’t move in the slightest, nor was there any light in its eyes. However, there was a luster to its skin that suggested it hadn’t grown old. Tianming also noticed green honey flowing around it.

”I wonder what this membrane’s made of.... Even though it’s thin, it’s blocking my senses.” If the membrane hadn’t been there, he would be able to feel signs of life in the flow of energy, even in a hibernating creature.

”Should I tear it open and see?” He tried poking the membrane with his sword. It was dented, but didn’t break.

”Stop messing around. Let’s look around first,” Ying Huo said.

”Pathetic.” He shot Ying Huo a disdainful look and flew over it. The hexagonal rooms were all connected, as he had expected. ”Every room has a bee-headed person. Are they slumbering, or are they corpses? Maybe taxidermic samples? How big is this nest anyway?”

Then a shocking thought occurred to him. ”If they’re all alive, I wonder how terrifying an army they’d be....” He stopped and landed above another room, also sealed by a white membrane. The membrane wasn’t a formation, but rather some kind of biological film, almost like the spider silk Yin Chen could spin. Looking at the curled-up giant below him, he raised his sword high.

”That’s right!” He suddenly felt a fright right as he was about to strike. ”Perhaps the skeletons I got were the remains of these bee people. If the caeli stored within them all belonged to peak-level cosmic cartographers, these monsters beneath me could possibly be on the level of the top elites of Ebonia.... If I bring them out, wouldn’t they just completely overwhelm me?”

He immediately put his sword away. While he didn’t know if he could break the membrane with a proper strike, he didn’t dare to try. ”How many of them are in here? Wouldn’t the world end if I just... let them all out?”

He flew straight ahead at high speed for a long time, but there was no end to the bees’ rooms. ”This is insane!”

There were so many that he began feeling terror set in him. He was worried that any careless move by him would unleash the monsters to the outside world.

”Oh, right. The green light.” He looked up and saw that even though he had flown quite some distance, the light was still ahead of him. But at least it was bigger and brighter. ”I must be approaching it. Could that be the center of the nest?”