Beastmaster of the Ages

Lingfeng still hadn't finished digesting the xenofiends he had consumed. Like Xiaoxiao, he also relied on consuming something for cultivation, but it was merely a supplement for him. As he relied more on his own efforts, his power was more stable than Xiaoxiao's. In the past month, he had relied on the 'nutrients' from the xenofiends to reach the Lifecycle Sky level, two levels higher than Tianming.

As for how he fared in combat, it depended on who he was up against. Given his current power and the Soulfiend's combat capability, his limit against beastmasters was a first-level constellier. If he was up against totem users, their totems were as good as useless and they would have to suffer the pain of burning, too, so even second-level constelliers weren't his match. All in all, Tianming's path was still the most difficult one among them. He relied purely on his own cultivation. Though his divine will grew slowly, it grew firmly.

"Everyone's path is different. I shouldn't be envious of Feng and Xiaoxiao's unique talents, especially considering that I have my own. They wouldn't be able to keep up with me otherwise."

He had quite a laid-back view about it. If it weren't for his stable and well-paced growth, his power wouldn't surge every time he made progress. "It's only been a month. The competition over rankings has probably only just begun."

......

After finishing another round of cultivation at the Violetglory Pagoda, Tianming recounted his past few days. "I'm getting closer to the tenth level."

This time around, he had focused on developing his Lifesbane Will. As it was still a heavenly will, rather than a divine will, it wasn't as difficult to improve. Whereas for his Imperial Will, each step of progress would lead to another bottleneck. The breakthrough he had thanks to the Grand-Orient Sword's shard was probably the last one for his Imperial Will for quite a while to come.

He held the minorsky stele in his hand. "This might really be a shard of the Grand-Orient Sword. I wonder what'll happen if I get the patterns on it to fuse with those of the five gates?"

Tianming felt the patterns on the stele with his fingers, looking puzzled. He took out his sword and wanted to try to see if he could cut it, but he hesitated. "Forget it. This stele originated from the Voidsky Realm, so perhaps it has some other use in the next phase of battle. It could be some kind of key, for all I know, so it's better to keep it around."

He didn't think the stele was only good for three thousand points, so he put his sword away.

"Li Tianming, save us! Your lifebound space is about to overflow!" Ying Huo cried from within.

"What in the world? We're running out of real estate and it's not even a good spot!" Meow Meow said.

But those two were still fine relative to Xian Xian and Lan Huang. The former had pulled its leaves back and kept sighing nonstop, while the latter huddled up in a corner and stood on its two hind legs and hugged its tail with its forelegs, having no space to stretch them out. Something else had taken up their space.

Tianming hadn't paid attention to it for quite a while. When he looked within, he saw more than ten thousand eggs rolling about inside, all of which had two black eyes that alertly looked at its siblings as they expanded their territory, not allowing the rest to approach.

"Hey, it's your kid! Take responsibility!" Ying Huo snapped.

"It's got nothing to do with me. It ain't my fault you guys are so weird! I always have to make do!" Tianming said. He couldn't afford to damage the eggs yet, but not because he was worried it wouldn't hatch. Lan Huang had accidentally crushed one, only to find that it had split into three eggs.

"Hatch it quickly! I want to beat it up!" Ying Huo said.

"Huh, you think you can handle it after it hatches when you can't even deal with its egg form?" Fifth was promising to be quite a troublemaker. Ever since it had started moving, it behaved like a fellow with a short temper. Everything about the egg's expression screamed 'weird'. Perhaps it was some kind of instinct.

Tianming didn't worry about it too much, believing that the rest would come to embrace it as family. Every child was born wild and alert, after all, but they would eventually learn to love with the help of their siblings.

"Come, it's time to eat." Tianming took out a divine artifact, a sword made of some kind of metal. Artifacts made using divine ores were either metal based, mineral based, or a mix of the two. The Grand-Orient Sword was a hybrid artifact that skewed on the side of metal, while the one he just took out was purely metal based. The ore used to forge this blade was called nonaflame arcanite. The moment he said that, a bunch of eggs popped out of the lifebound space, looking alertly at Tianming and greedily at the divine artifact.

"It isn't your first time feasting, right? Why are you still hesitating?" He tossed the artifact on the ground. Then, around a thousand of the eggs surrounded the sword. Soon, metallic crunching could be heard nonstop. Then the eggs sluggishly rolled about the ground as if they had eaten their fill. Some of them even burped.

Tianming noticed a silvery sheen on the shells of the eggs. It looked like the eggs were impenetrable and even usable as hidden weapons to lob at others with. There was no doubt that they were as hard as a divine artifact. Interestingly, the hilt of the weapon that it had consumed was still left there. Only the metal parts were cleanly eaten, and not a single part of the hilt was touched. Looks like he had a picky eater on his hands. Ever since he'd found out about its preference, Tianming had fed it many metallic divine ores and artifacts.

"It must be a metallic broodmother beast, huh...." It was a fusion of two types. He had guessed that it was a broodmother thanks to its ability to duplicate itself.

"Will this become... a metal legion?" He was already looking forward to it. His beasts kept getting weirder and weirder, starting from a phoenix, then to a cat, then a two-headed dragon, and then to a plant, with equally unconventional abilities. What in the world would be next?

"Fifth, everything is ready. We're only lacking the final push. The whole family will wait for you to join us in the beautiful world of the living."