Beastmaster of the Ages

"So? What trick is that?" Long Renshe asked.

"Haha, I can't tell you yet. Let's see if it works out first," Li Shenjian said.

"Playing it mysterious, I see." Long Renshe helplessly smiled.

After having been completely ignored by Qingyu, Li Shenjian didn't want to talk about how he would deal with Tianming too much. He changed the subject and said, "Brother She, that junior disciple of Li Tianming called Feng could even defeat the tenth-level constellier Long Wangyu. Given their ages, they both seem devilishly talented. Even with your impressive Contradragon Talent, your achievements at their age didn't measure up nearly as much. Do you think their age might be fake?"

The chaos surrounding Long Wangyu's battle seemed to have died down on the surface, but in fact, it had caused a complete uproar among the celestial orderians' side. It was already hard to accept the fact that Tianming had defeated Li Haochen, allegedly the top young genius of the celestial orderians. Yet even the normal-looking Lingfeng had been able to kill Long Wangyu. Now the young celestial orderian disciples under the age of thirty couldn't even hold their heads up high. Even the youthgrand disciples, including Li Shenjian and Long Renshe, felt threatened by those two. If they lost, it would be really embarrassing. The two apex geniuses were like poisonous thorns embedded in the hearts of the celestial orderian and Veildragon Palace youths.

"I doubt their age is fake. They participated in the Voidsky Skirmish, after all. Their origins must be really mysterious, though, given their talent," Long Renshe said.

"Perhaps they excessively relied on pills and medicines to get so powerful."

"At the end of the day, you just refuse to believe that they're just that powerful."

"There is a reason for everything. For our side, being an octabane or having Contradragon Talent is the ceiling. My sister's nine bane-rings, on the other hand, is something completely out of a myth. Even though she had a really late start, I'm still nowhere as impressive as her," Li Shenjian said.

"Perhaps! There's no certainty when it comes to cultivation. Some people start off impressive, only to languish at the later stages. Nothing's decided yet." In cultivation, the first peak growth period was before the age of thirty. The second period was considered to be between thirty and a hundred. Starting the growth of one's heavenly will before the age of thirty at the saint stages was really easy. Coupled with the fact that younger people had an easier time learning, the huge strides made during early years were only normal. In a sense, the strides one made before the age of thirty were proportionally more than those they would make between the age of thirty and a hundred, and so on.

"As the saying goes, 'the peak is in sight by the age of a hundred'. Basically, one's limits are only visible once they hit that age," Long Renshe said.

"That's right. And the basic requirement to become a sovereign like the sun emperor is to reach the sixth level of the Solar stage by a hundred years old," said Li Shenjian. Even though there was a span of nine hundred years between a hundred and a thousand years old, the progress made might not even compare to that of the first hundred years of life, especially when the things one needed to learn would only grow progressively harder. Talent was like a consumable commodity that would eventually run out.

If one was able to grow from the sixth to twelfth levels of the Solar stage in a millennium, they would stand a chance to break through to the level of top sovereigns. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any hope beyond that. Past the thousand year mark, it would be lucky if one didn't deteriorate as time went on. It was really difficult controlling so many albi in the body with divine will, after all. As for living forever, that was probably something that only completely different lifeforms like the Archaionfiends could achieve. At the very least, it wasn't something that one could do with an albus-based body.

Even though those were common facts in the cultivation world, even normal folk back in the Vermillion Bird Kingdom understood the simple principle that learning became harder as one aged. Even to them, learning anything beyond the age of twenty would be much harder than in the first twenty years.

"In other words, if we don't take down these two, none of the young disciples of the celestial orderians will be able to hold their heads up high," Li Shenjian said.

"However, we'll lose even more face if youthgrand disciples like us lose to them. That's why no matter what, you have to be careful," Long Renshe said. Now that Qingyu was there, his intentions differed slightly from Li Shenjian's. Oppressing the youths of the Xuanyuan Dragon Sect was the mission Li Shenjian had been given by the sun emperor, so he was naturally far more anxious about it than Long Renshe.

"Got it," Li Shenjian said. The reason he didn't want to reveal his plans was because of Long Renshe's hesitance. If he told him about it, there was no doubt that he would try to talk him out of it, or even try to stop him. "If that's all, I'll take my leave." He turned and left, disappearing into the mountains.

Long Renshe looked in the direction he went for a long while. He had a feeling that this long-time childhood friend of his, a brother to whom he felt closer to than his real siblings, had become quite distant from him before he realized it. When they were together, they no longer felt as carefree as before and were even skeptical of each other to some degree.

"For the rest of my life, I'll have to follow the goddess no matter what. With her, I'll be on the top of the world and only subservient to her will. You can't give me that, Li Shenjian, so you don't deserve my utmost support." It was true that they had grown distant, but why should that matter? Hot-blooded camaraderie was something that would eventually cool off as they matured, after all.

……

"What in the world are they talking about?" On Whitesource Peak, Tianming didn't know what to make of the conversation. As long as Li Shenjian kept his mouth shut, Tianming wouldn't know what he really planned to do, though he wasn't too anxious about it.

"There's no way he'll be able to pull off whatever he's planning alone, and as long as someone helps him out, he'll have to tell them what to do." No matter what the plan was, Li Shenjian would need to know where Tianming and Lingfeng were to plan things out, so he would no doubt need someone to spy on them. Yet nobody was more capable of espionage than Tianming at the moment. While ten or twenty million Yin Chens weren't that many and could still let some information slip through, it already gave Tianming a really wide coverage. Yin Chen had played a pivotal role back at the Azurecloud Continent, always giving Tianming the initiative to act before anybody else.

"Just keep an eye on Li Shenjian. I want to know everything he says to everyone he meets," Tianming said.

"Got it," Yin Chen lazily said. It was a walk in the park for it. As expected, Tianming soon found out about Li Shenjian's plot based on how his subordinates acted alone. It didn't take long before he left the Great Saintdragon Peak and sent informants to Whitesource Peak to monitor Tianming, Lingfeng, and Xiaoxiao. The moment any of them left the area, a report would be made.

However, when Li Shenjian noticed that the three of them weren't going anywhere, he began growing impatient. He even tried luring Xiaoxiao out into a trap; it seemed that he was targeting Xiaoxiao to get to Tianming. Naturally, she ignored the little trick and stayed put at Whitesource Peak, leaving Li Shenjian no option but to wait.

"Let's wait him out for now." Currently, the enemy side had thirty million troops and were causing trouble in an attempt to get a pretext for war. That wasn't something Tianming could currently deal with, so he merely focused on his cultivation and waited for the next development.