Beastmaster of the Ages

Were wildbeasts, humans, specters, and lifebound beasts really no different? What about the sole beast soul, as opposed to the tripartite soul of caelum, terra, and vita? In the eyes of the voidheart worm, there didn't seem to be any difference. But if it really was that certain in its belief, Qingyu's words wouldn't be able to rile it up that easily.

It violently dragged the girl along by the head to where it thought it would be safest using the cauldron. This was the true lair of the Void God, covered in so many black webs that they easily weighed a few tons. The sheer mass of the Void God necessitated the size of its lair. Given how revered it was, nobody from Skywolf Frost dared to tread in its territory. It was completely silent, with no lifeforms to be seen save for the child spawns within the webs. That made it a perfect place for the voidheart worm to start the parasitization process.

"I was living a fine life on my own in the Sky Palace, yet you all came to fight me and destroyed my physical body! No amount of deaths you suffer can make up for my loss! While I can't touch Li Tianming or Ye Lingfeng, at least there's you! I want to make you watch as Skywolf swallows your star and wipes out all the life on it!"

It tossed Qingyu into a dark hole. She fell straight into a pool of foul liquid that felt like a quagmire that kept her stuck and bound. She wasn't able to move a single limb, and her head was still covered by the Divine Worldeater Cauldron. Not being able to see a thing and smelling the foulness around her, she felt fear creeping toward her in the pitch-black darkness. She could hear nothing but the insidious noises the voidheart worm made as it mourned the loss of its body. "Die! Die!" it cursed, its beast soul twisted by hate.

Qingyu experienced nothing but darkness, fear, a foul smell, and icy cold. The crushing force on her head seemed to be fracturing her skull. Blood still flowed and pooled around her eyes and nose. Did she only exist to suffer? There was nothing else waiting for her in this hellscape apart from being parasitized. If it weren’t for Yin Chen informing her that Tianming was still fighting the Void God and the specter army and that Lingfeng had turned into a Transcendent Truefiend and was slaughtering his way toward her, her mind would have collapsed from the pressure.

Wherever Lingfeng's storm of darkness went, countless specter corpses fell. Even so, many of them still packed enough fearless bravado to try stopping him. While Tianming had the protection of his ship, Lingfeng at least didn't have to deal with the Void God. Even so, hundreds of millions of specters were nothing to scoff at. No amount of slaughter seemed to thin the numbers of those hungry wolves.

The black vortex behind Lingfeng ground away at the specters’ souls like a machine, exterminating any that were within its vicinity. Even after dying, they would be hard pressed to reincarnate. The Xenoworld Gate seemed to have hijacked the cycle of reincarnation, appropriating it for its own ends. In a sense, Lingfeng had unleashed something that’d replaced the cycle of reincarnation.

The three-faced, six-armed fiend charged in a specific direction, slaughtering anything that stood in his way without a single word. Those that dared block him ended up dead without exception. His sheer brutality startled some of the surrounding specters, but it was pointless as the specters behind them couldn’t see what was happening at the front lines and kept pushing forward. The world itself seemed to groan from the weight of the sheer bloodbath! The fiend within the black miasma swept across a large continent on Skywolf Frost, wiping away every obstacle without diverting its eyes from its final destination.

Every single kill made his eyes look bloodier, and each vita consumed added another tortured soul to the miasma that hovered near the hair on the three heads. The souls soon formed a huge mass, crying and wailing about what they had suffered as they became a part of his power. Tens of millions of tortured souls piled upon him and fused with the black miasma, forming hellscapes as far as the eye could see.

Endless wailing could be heard as tens of millions of faces formed in the miasma, swirling around like a sadistic killer's idea of a gaseous art piece. The more people he killed, the more terrifying Lingfeng became. Perhaps he had already seen this coming long ago—it was proof of bearing the heavenly burden of sin. But at this point, nobody was able to stop him any longer. The path to fiendhood had contorted under the weight of feelings and desires. It was the hardest path to thread, a path from which there was no turning back.

......

Qingyu couldn't see what Lingfeng looked like right now, but Yin Chen told her that he was coming as well as the changes that were happening to his body. In the dark, silent world, she felt him approaching like a black, warm flame. He was a terrifyingly powerful mass of souls!

"Feng, that idiot...." She understood him far too well. He was a simple and stubborn man, immune to disdain and contempt. He lived his life as he pleased, but gods forbid anyone ruffle his feathers. Once wronged, he wouldn’t rest until redress was attained, regardless of the method or cost. That precious, younger boy she loved so much could be the cutest person of all and the most savage fiend at the same time. He used to be so naive that he thought of worms as food, but now he was chasing after her like a man possessed. She understood him so well that all his effort only seemed all the more moving to her.

"Feng...." The sadness in her clashed with her strong feelings. Though things seemed bleak, she knew that it wasn't time to give up. She had to be mentally strong, and so did he! Thus, she bit her lip to force the sadness away.

"Yin Chen, tell him that no matter what I become, I’ll always be by his side! He'll always be my cute Feng! With his strong soul, he’ll be able to protect me! I’ll never lose to a mere bug!"

In terms of the soul, Lingfeng's was possibly the most superior of them all. While the voidheart worm had many bone-chilling tricks, it didn't scare her at all, for before she’d even fallen to true despair, Lingfeng's demonic intent had already propped her back up. She wasn't one to try and take it. She knew what she wanted and would do anything to get it.

I can't lose! I can't let down Father and Big Brother's hopes for me. I can't waste Feng's efforts. He still needs me! That line of thought kept her going. She bit through her lip and into her tongue and used the pain to calm herself down.

"Why bother putting up a strong front? Once its beast soul makes its way through the soul path into you, you won't be able to hide your fear no matter how much you pretend," the Ultimate Pill God said after a long silence.

"Come on then! I hope it doesn't disappoint," Qingyu snapped, tasting blood in her mouth.

"The fearless are simply ignorant...." The old man would probably shake his head and sigh if he had a body.

"You're an ignorant person, too, even if you don't want to admit it. You don't know why Feng and my brother are so powerful. You’re ignorant to the fact that strong belief can change everything."

"How laughable.... Belief, eh? Such pointless ideals. If they worked, nobody would need to cultivate at all. We’d only need to believe strongly enough." After a short pause, he expressionlessly continued, "The parasitic capabilities of the voidheart worm are innate to its being. It’s to be feared as much as its powerful physical capabilities. Even though you have a complete tripartite soul, which boasts a better quality, its beast soul has far more volume, easily a thousand times your vita's. No human would be able to defeat an insect a thousand times its size. However, your vita is a malleable thing. Even as the beast soul enters it, it won't burst, but inflate.... By then, you'll know what true pain is like. Your ramblings are merely the delusions of a fool."

He chuckled as he relished in Qingyu's fear. Fear was poison to the soul and would proceed to weaken it, which was why he employed it as a psychological attack. True fear couldn't simply be hidden away. The fact that Qingyu didn't snap back at him should be a sign of that fear... yet he didn't smell it in her soul. Instead, the girl's soul looked like it was being protected by faith like an immovable mountain that was stronger than any metal. It was a startlingly powerful fighting spirit. The Ultimate Pill God had never expected such a frightening tenacity to come from a weak girl like that. She simply didn't look like that kind of person. How did she do it? With mere love, fortitude, stubbornness, and blind faith?

"There's someone who’s willing to turn into a fiend for my sake. I can't let his efforts go to waste. That wouldn't be fair to him." If she gave up, she would be letting others down, and that was the last thing she wanted. Her body concentrated her soul together with her firm belief and courage. So what if the bug was a thousand times larger?

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"Bugs are just bugs at the end of the day. No matter how much larger your soul is, it doesn’t change the fact that you don't have a complete tripartite soul. All you know is eating and breeding. You don't know love or hate. You believe in nothing. Even after tens of millions of years of living, your life is much more boring than a simple mortal human's that lasts less than a hundred. Why should I fear you?"

"Bullshit! I’m just like you! Who said I don't know love or hate? I hate you all!" it howled, its face contorting as its eyes widened.

"Even an insect would try to hurt me if I stepped on it. So what? Is it even the same kind of hate we experience?" she retorted.