Beastmaster of the Ages

Long Wanying's dragons were pure white, with crystalline horns, jewel-like eyes, and pearlescent scales. They were the most beautiful dragons Tianming had ever seen, all with an aura of elegance. They were all seven-star divine beasts of top-class bloodlines, making them incredibly powerful.

Li Wushuang's totems had been just as beautiful when she was still in her youth, but now their terrifying faces were horrifying to behold. She was just barely holding on against Yang Ce with her seven totems, so Long Wanying's participation completely tipped the scales. The five dragons used the same ability: Worldcleanse Dragonbeam, which pushed apart the blood mist immediately before slamming into the faces of the ghostface moongoddesses and causing all seven of them to shriek in pain. The nightmarish darknight truefiends of Yang Ce continued holding them back, biting, tearing, and using their totemic calamities to keep Li Wushuang at bay.

"Her injuries haven't healed yet, so she's got less than an eighth of her normal combat capability. It's a good chance," Yang Ce said.

"Alright. We'll take her down and use her to save the other three Dragon Imperials," Long Wanying said. While they had planned to do that long ago, they were simply lacking the chance and adequate justification. Now, only the two of them were fighting, so they only represented the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect. With Li Wushuang still weakened, this was their chance to turn things around.

Li Wushuang still managed to divide some of her attention to attack Tianming, but Long Wanying's dragons turned into a gigantic white vortex that sucked in the slashes the moongoddesses unleashed, reducing the threat of their attacks until they were minimal. Then, Yang Ce's figure flashed as he turned into a hundred thousand afterimages. There was no way to tell which was the real one. All of those figures rained down sword ki on Li Wushuang.

"Hmph." Faced with a fatal attack like this, all she did was smirk. The look she shot Long Wanying was even more twisted than before. Yang Ce was a prime talent, given his eight totems. Yet another impressive man was coming to Long Wanying's aid, reminding Li Wushuang of the mocking words Long Wanying had said to her: 'nobody has ever loved you'. It was too humiliating. What did she ever do to deserve the difference in treatment? Even though she wouldn't admit that she was simply jealous of Long Wanying, that was exactly what was going on. And thanks to that jealousy, she would be led to her demise.

"Die." As the smoke around them began to clear, things began seeming like a lucid dream. Despite facing Yang Ce's attacks, Li Wushuang turned to Long Wanying and got her totems to point at her. Then a savage, bloody aura emanated from her body, stinking of an ancient evil as a red-robed, long-haired female demon with a long tongue emerged from her broken bane-ring. It was a completely new totem that was even larger than the other ones. Many venomous insects crawled around its dress as its tongue abruptly shot toward Long Wanying like a sword, closing a distance of a kilometer in an instant.

"What?!" Long Wanying was taken aback; it had been too fast and fierce! The attack would be fatal! How could a new totem emerge from a broken bane-ring, one that was even fiercer and uglier than the original? Nobody was able to react to it aside from Yang Ce, who swerved the trajectory of his swords to slash toward the new totem in red. The swords pierced into the red dress and tongue of the totem, weakening the attack somewhat.

"Wanying!" he cried, face covered in cold sweat.

Long Wanying's dragons returned and used an ability to block the tongue attack. The clash resulted in a bright white flash that shook the area around them. Fortunately, she had been able to avoid being killed thanks to Yang Ce's interception. She rode one of her dragons higher into the sky with the others following behind as she looked at Li Wushuang. "Haha… I don't know where that totem of yours came from, but it really suits you. Its ugliness is a perfect match for yours."

Li Wushuang gripped her Skymoon Holyfiend tight as all eight of her totems were affixed on Long Wanying, only for her to hear that. She was stunned. Looking up, she saw that her new red-robed demon was ugly to the extreme. Not even her other totems could bear to look at it. Then she recalled her reflection in the mirror from just a little while ago. Didn't her face look identical to her red totem's? Back then, her totems looked like stunning goddesses of beauty, just like her, and she was definitely no worse than Long Wanying. But how did she look now? The memory of how she looked in the past contradicted with her current appearance, reminding her of the blonde-haired man that claimed to be doing all of this for her in the name of love. The rage that rushed to her head kept her rooted in her current position, causing her to vomit a huge mouthful of blood.

"You!!" She glared at Long Wanying like a bestial fiend. Just as she was about to leap in for an attack, her face turned pale and she slumped to the ground, unconscious. Her totems returned one after another, including the red-robed demon that seemed to unwillingly return to the ghost-faced bane-ring. Everything was quiet once more.

"What in the world? Did she faint from rage?" Long Wanying asked, puzzled.

"No. Her powers are probably still unstable. The two different types of totem ki in her probably conflicted, and your words stimulated it even more, causing her soul to suffer a blow. She's temporarily out cold, but once she gets her totem ki in order, she might reawaken even stronger than before. This totem is far too terrifying," Yang Ce said.

"Then we have to bind her up while she's out, quickly!"

"Right." Yang Ce took out a black rope and went to work. "This is just a low-grade divine artifact. When she wakes up, she might break free."

They turned to Tianming at the same time.

"Aunt Ying, are you sure we can use the bonegnaw ants on her?" Tianming asked.

"She's someone we can't kill at the end of the day, and we can't expose the bonegnaw ants to the celestial orderians…. Tianming, do you have a way of using the ants without her knowing? We want it as a precaution. We can just release her after the situation at the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect is settled," Long Wanying said.

"Sure. I can use fewer ants, probably around a hundred thousand. They can pretend to be part of her bones. As long as they don't move around, she won't notice a thing. Even if she did, she wouldn't think too much of it."

"Okay."

Using the bonegnaw ants on Li Wushuang was quite a bold move, but they needed a precaution. There would probably be even more ways they could keep her bound later, so they didn't need Tianming for that. Even for cultivators, being in a state of complete unconsciousness would make them ignorant to all sensation of their bodies. Killing her now would be incredibly easy, and Long Wanying wanted that more than anyone. She tightly clenched her fists and took deep breaths, trying to suppress the urge. They had to use Li Wushuang to save others, after all.

Yin Chen was turning into bonegnaw ants in the meantime and entering her body, though incredibly slowly to maintain secrecy. At the very end, only around eighty thousand infested her body, so the effects probably wouldn't be significant.

"I'll think of other ways to keep her bound," Yang Ce said.

"How's it going with the divine tree, Tianming?" Long Wanying asked.

"It'll be done soon." Tianming was still protecting Xian Xian with all he had. Now, about half of the divine tree had turned green again, regaining its former vibrancy. The rest of the blood grudge was gathered near Tianming. "It might take another two hours. Let's hope nothing else happens during that time."

Yun Tianque and Gujian Qingshuang finally arrived with reinforcements, only to find Li Wushuang passed out. So they swiftly returned with their men. During the entire time, Long Wanying and Yang Ce used all sorts of methods to curb Li Wushuang's power.

"Are you alright, Xian Xian?" Tianming asked, hugging its spiritform.

"Yes… my head hurts a little, but… hold on… scare this mean thing away." It seemed like it was mumbling in a dream rather than lucidly speaking, but it didn't seem to be going wild, at least.

"Alright. Tell me if anything is amiss."

"Okay!"

Tianming continued nervously waiting. Then he suddenly turned to Feiling's flower. It seemed to be absorbing blood grudge as well. "Ling'er! Xian Xian, what's happening to her?"

"Don't… know…."

The light-blue flower began absorbing the blood grudge like a vortex at a rate a hundred times that of Xian Xian's. The remaining grudge didn't go through the Radiant Daffodil at all; instead, Feiling's flower absorbed all of it.

"Xian Xian, cut it off, quick!" Tianming wanted it to cut off the connection with the divine tree through the roots. There was no telling what would happen if all that blood grudge entered Feiling's flower! It might ruin her!

"No! I can't pull it out!" Xian Xian was panicking. Tianming could feel its powerlessness. Its tree form couldn't control the flow rate of the blood grudge at all, and the flower only seemed to be absorbing it faster and faster.

The bloody mist around the continent cleared at a rate visible to the eye as all of it flooded toward the light-blue flower, dying it blood red. Only after that did Xian Xian manage to remove all of its roots, but it was too late. The divine tree was free of the blood grudge, and the Radix World Tree didn't have any trace of it at all. More than half of all the grudge on the continent was now concentrated in Feiling's flower. It looked so red and beautiful like it was bleeding. The petals of the flower looked like seductive faces that looked back at Tianming.

"Ling'er…." He stood in front of the flower, his body frozen. This was something out of his worst nightmares, and he wasn't dreaming.