Beastmaster of the Ages

Mister Taihe seemed completely unperturbed, but Demoness Yin reacted rather unpleasantly. Her figure disappeared for an instant before reappearing. She then approached Fengqing Youyun and clutched his throat with fingers that were almost as hard as cosmic artifacts.

”Ugh!” Fengqing Youyun felt that all the astrons in his body as well as his cosmic charts had been completely sealed off. They could be torn apart with a single thought from Demoness Yin.

”What in the world are you wonderians doing?! Is your old man messing with us?!” Demoness Yin spat, her voice cold with displeasure. The Starshatter Formation required support from astral gods. If not for that, she couldn’t care less about the wonderians’ plans.

”Rex Mundi! My... my dad is dead!” Fengqing Youyun heaved.

”What?” Demoness Yin loosened her fingers in shock, sparing Fengqing Youyun from certain death.

”Not long ago, he ascended to the astralguard formation in an attempt to coordinate others of our race in their descent. We lost contact for quite an amount of time. Right after that, a message using his divine wonder was sent out. However, I suspected that something was off, so I entered the wondersky realm for a moment to ask what was happening and was told that the subsoul of my father’s been extinguished!”

”He’s really dead?” Demoness Yin and the rest exchanged glances. Meng Ying had still seemed in one piece when they’d asked for cooperation. Yet when everyone had assembled, he’d lost one half of his pair. And now the other half had vanished as well—under mysterious circumstances, no less!

”Mister Taihe, Rex Mundi, please stop my people from leaving so that we may avenge my parents!” Fengqing Youyun beseeched, though his pleas probably fell on deaf ears.

”That means we’d have to announce your father’s death, as well as the fact that his divine wonder has been stolen,” Demoness Yin said.

”Anything for revenge!” Fengqing Youyun seemed to struggle to utter the words. He didn’t want to retreat just like that before they could figure anything out.

”Very well. However....” Demoness Yin turned to look at Mister Taihe. ”Hey, have you heard of someone’s divine wonder being stolen before? Why haven’t I heard about anything like that?”

”I haven’t either,” Mister Taihe said, shaking his head.

”Interesting!” Demoness Yin smirked and looked up at the sky. ”I didn’t think there were still secrets left in this world to discover. How curious.”

She brought a group of elites from Intrepidus with her as well as Fengqing Youyun as she flew to the top of the Sky Palace Formation. Black smoke began coalescing into a gigantic foundation fortress of darkness. A dark figure surrounded Fengqing Youyun. Subsequently, a gigantic figure resembling him appeared above the gigantic foundation fortress. He also had an ephemeral world wonder, which he used to appear in front of many other wonderians.

”Friends of the divine wondersky race, don’t hurry to retreat. Listen to what Fengqing Youyun has to say,” Demoness Yin said.

Fengqing Youyun was a ninth-level cosmic cartographer and the strongest son of Meng Ying. As such, he had an incredibly high status in the Skydome Mundus. In an instant, most of the wonderians stopped their retreat.

He took a deep breath and explained to them about his father’s broken subsoul. He also confirmed the rumors about his mother’s death. Millions of wonderians fell into despair at the news.

”Impossible!”

”Our rex mundi was unaging and immortal, not to mention a foundationeer! How could they perish?!”

”It’s absolutely impossible!”

”Fengqing Youyun, have you sold out to them? Is that why you’re uttering such heinous words?!”

Countless people began to curse and argue.

”More than all of you, I wish that this weren’t the case! However, if my father were still alive, he should appear before me and kill me for such a ridiculous proclamation! Do you see him anywhere?!” Fengqing Youyun said in a grieving tone.

More and more wonderians were struck by the implication. Tianming also witnessed all of it happening.

”Should I go out to beat him up?” Moran asked.

”There’s no need. Without the actual body, there’s no way we can fool them,” Tianming said.

”Doesn’t that mean our announcement was pointless?” the sisters said, disappointed.

”Not necessarily. As far as I’m aware, the wonderians aren’t a monolith. The Weisheng Clan is also really influential in their mundus and they don’t entirely submit to the Fengqing Clan. Once news of Meng Ying’s death spreads, there’ll no doubt be some internal conflict among them.”

Things progressed as Tianming had predicted. Moran didn’t make any other appearances, essentially proving Fengqing Youyun’s words true. After a bout of silence, many wonderians broke out in tears.

”The rex mundi is... gone?”

”Is... is that true?!”

”Who?! Who was it that killed him?!”

There were still more than seven million astral gods of the initial eight million that made their way to the Sun. But before the actual battle had begun in earnest, their supreme leader had been killed! How could the wonderians bring themselves to accept such a fact?! 𝑓𝘳ℯℯ𝔀ℯ

”Rex Mundi! Come out!”

”Go kill Fengqing Youyun for his insolence!”

”Rex Mundi! Rex Mundi!”

They desperately clung to any hope they could find, but hope and faith faded into despair with the passing of enough time.

Fengqing Youyun felt the pain and grief around him. ”It’s clear that someone made use of my late father’s divine wonder to spread fake news! My father no doubt died at the hands of the denizens of the Sun! There must be a foundationeer among them that possesses a top-tier cosmic artifact that used an underhanded tactic to kill my father! If we retreat like they want, we’ll be falling for their ruse! Everyone, please stay with me and cooperate with Mister Taihe in destroying the Sky Palace Formation and the Sun! We’ll use the blood of these lowly animals to avenge my father so that his soul may rest in peace!”

Yet another wave of commotion spread through the wonderian ranks.

”Vengeance?”

”That’s right! We came all the way here, so there’s no way the rex mundi would order us to retreat! There must be something off about that!”

”We have to take vengeance! Not just for the rex mundi, but also for the hundreds and thousands of our fallen!”

The death of the rex mundi was entirely too humiliating to bear. Far too many wonderians wouldn’t want to let things end like that. However, quite a few of them had already left through xenogates. Even more of them had been struggling for ages to get through the Flameyellow Guard Formation, only to retreat back into the astralscape after hearing the order to retreat. They would have to do that all over again to take revenge, subjecting themselves once more to the mercy of the solar storms!

It ended up being quite a predicament for the wonderians.

As Tianming had predicted, the second strongest elite from the Skydome Mundus stood out at that moment. They were Weisheng Xu, from the Weisheng Clan, and they stood facing Fengqing Youyun and Demoness Yin.

In the same voice, they said, ”The voyage to the Sun was always Meng Ying’s personal ambition, and it was one of taking the treasures here for their own use at the cost of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of our astral gods. They ended up dying in the most humiliating fashion, becoming a laughingstock for us all. We believe that it’s highly inappropriate for even more of our elite astral gods to sacrifice themselves to help these aliens of other mundi pillage another world for its treasures!”