Beastmaster of the Ages

Tianming didn't give it too much thought. Since the stigma vanished, that means it came from the voidheart worm. It disappeared after the worm died, I guess.

Taking over the solar core would be quite an undertaking, thus, Tianming had left it for a moment to check on the Flameyellow Guard Formation for one final confirmation and to tell Long Wanying that he would be occupied. As for the details of the Flameyellow Imperial Star, he would leave it to Yin Chen to explain that. While it would take its sweet time, time was something they had in abundance while Tianming worked on the solar core.

He quickly returned to the wooden building and entered the room on the right, once more coming before the gigantic, snow-white sphere. He had familiarized himself with it before. As it was something that had been made by the sky plunderers, it was made to be quite user friendly to any of their descendants. In fact, Tianming had far more compatibility with it than any of the Sky Palace members across the generations could ever have dreamed of. In fact, he could probably handle the solar core possessed by the celestial orderians well, too.

Over the next two hours, he tested out the surface-level functions of the solar core, allowing its mysterious energy to flow into his body through his black arm. "It's said that the best way to control the formation core is to assimilate it into my body like a divine wonder...." It wouldn't be able to be used like a divine wonder for attack and defense, however. It was just a matter of integrating the formation’s core circuits into his body.

One benefit of succeeding was that Tianming would have even finer control of the astralguard and fusion formations. It would be as if he had assimilated the star itself. At the very least, it would be far more efficient than separately controlling the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb with the wheel formation. Not to mention, it made it harder for others to take the formation from him.

However, if he were to be killed, the solar core would separate from his body and be lootable, unlike divine wonders that simply disappeared upon death. That showed that the integration of the solar core into the body wasn't as deep as that of divine wonders. At most, Tianming's body would serve as a vessel for the formation core.

No doubt, the many previous generations of Sky Palace members hadn't been able to use that method, seeing as they weren't even able to enter the wooden building. The sun emperors of the celestial orderians probably weren't able to do the same, either, as they weren't sky plunderers, nor did they have any foundations of assimilating formations into their bodies like divine wonders.

All of Tianming's albi were shaped like Prime Towers, a change that had made his body more formation than living organism. The changes the Prime Tower had brought him weren't limited to just a single prime wonder. In fact, his body had inherited many of the properties of a formation. That was why he had learned that he was able to assimilate the solar core after some testing, being able to bring it with him wherever he went. Though doing so would require more time than just manipulating it normally, time was something he had since the Flameyellow Guard Formation had been activated to fend off Skywolf. Not to mention, he could ponder the ninth and final strike of the Ninedragon Tribulation during the assimilation process!

"Let's do it! As a sky plunderer, apart from the twelve eggs I got from my dad, I never got anything else. I hope my distant ancestors here went through the trouble of making it easier for me when they were making this formation." Tianming was confident that he could use his black arm as a conduit for the solar core to start leading the divine celestial patterns into his body.

"Huh? Weren't there just ten eggs? Where’d the other two come from?" Xian Xian wondered, ignorant of the fact that there was a testicle joke in there somewhere.

"Aha!" Tianming found that his ancestors had lived up to his expectations after all. After the solar core recognized him as a descendant of the sky plunderers, it took the initiative itself and started the assimilation process. Tianming's 'formation body' was incredibly compatible with the solar core. As the white divine celestial patterns flowed into his 'Prime Tower' albi, they didn't conflict with the prime and carefree wonders at all. While the human body was small, it was filled with countless mysteries, especially astral physiques. The countless tiny albi were able to store a shocking amount of things within.

The assimilation process went smoothly, thanks to Tianming's own efforts and good compatibility. The formation core was slowly restructured within his body, which would eventually make him the formation core when it was complete. The divine celestial patterns were engraved into his Prime Tower-shaped albi one after another. He knew that things would be smooth sailing from now on, but it would still take quite a bit of time thanks to the sheer size and complexity of the solar core. He couldn't afford to have any mistakes or missing patterns, so the process would take some time to complete.

"It'll take three or four months, eh...." He breathed a sigh of relief. At least he would finish before the arrival of Skywolf. Before that, they weren't going to be of any threat.

"All that remains to be seen is what the sun emperor will be doing over the next few months. I wonder if he'll be preparing to fight Skywolf or doing something else." He was still rather worried about one thing: the celestial orderians were sending all of their god-level troops south for a sweeping operation, and they had absolute numerical superiority. Should that really be the case, the ten billion scattered gods of the Myriad Solar Sects would suffer even more severe losses. "Though if he does that, it would also result in the celestial orderians suffering casualties. Since we lost our defensive formations, the rest of the Myriad Solar Sects already pose no threat, me excluded. They’ve already announced the unification of the sun, so the sun emperor probably won't go to those lengths." The sun emperor's true goal in conquering the sects seemed to be the activation of the Flameyellow Guard Formation, after all, rather than the true extermination of the Myriad Solar Sects. It would be foolish of him to expend his troops to wipe out the defeated remnants as Skywolf was creeping up upon them. Thus, Tianming, Long Wanying, and the rest didn't think the risk of the sun emperor hunting them down was high.

"Then again, he is quite the madman, so we can't count on him to be rational. We can't be careless about things." Tianming still had Yin Chen surveilling the changes across the entire sun. The three hundred million celestial orderian troops didn't leave the Myriad Solar Sects. Instead, they had spread out to conquer the other factions within the top hundred. They also stayed behind in conquered territories to set up their own defensive formations, seemingly intent on keeping the conquered territory.

That was only to be expected. The more time that passed, the greater the odds were stacked against the Myriad Solar Sects. Yet the survivors weren’t in a rush. As long as Tianming was with them and they were alive, they could always rise again.