Beastmaster of the Ages

Despite the dangerous circumstances, the sun emperor actually stood on top of the Divine Sun Palace with his arms wide open. His expression was one of teasing mischief, as if he was hollering for the specters to come and catch him.

"What a clown. Can a cornered rat who can't even see his situation really be the ruler of the sun?"

"As expected, this world is likely as unruly as he is. What a lowly race of people. They aren’t significant enough to exist in this universe."

The two women's insults grew harsher and harsher.

"The nature of the world favors the mighty. Only then can the universe strive toward perfection. Our ordained mission is to remove impurities like these that taint the perfect form the universe aspires to become. Lower lifeforms will evolve to worsen the universe, so we should clean them up like the filth they are. It’s a natural process of culling. In fact, treating dirty mud like them as living things was the biggest mistake in the first place." Grand Emperor Starvore looked at the world beneath him as he would a pile of mud.

"So are the three of us the universe's janitors?" Empress Yu said, winking, inducing a laugh from her sister in matrimony, but not her husband, and resulted in a misfire that caused the beam of destruction to barely miss the Divine Sun Palace.

"Take this more seriously," he said.

"Alright." The two of them snapped out of their joking mood.

"For some reason, the spinning of the sun gives me a bad feeling," Grand Emperor Starvore said.

......

"What the hell’s going on?!" Tianming was jolted by the sudden spinning as the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb was still charging up. He hurried out of the ship to inspect what was going on. Though they were within the Sky Palace Formation, the ground shook heavily, sending people and things tumbling all around. It was the first time he had witnessed something like this; everyone seemed to have been flung around like kites in the midst of a storm.

"What in the world?" Looking up, he saw the flaming cloud layer rapidly revolving, as if the world itself was moving. Checking the fusion formation, he could feel that the sun was indeed moving. With the Welkin plane as the frame of reference, the sun's northern pole was deep in celestial orderian territory while the southern pole was inside the Sky Palace Formation. However, the powerful forces that rocked the entire star horizontally inverted the poles, making the north pole point west toward Skywolf Blaze and the south pole point right toward Skywolf Frost. That gigantuous movement had been achieved in an incredibly short time. While the elites inside the Sky Palace Formation were fine, it was a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions for most of the other lifeforms on the sun.

"That can't be! The sun emperor and I should each control only half of the solar core! Without me, he shouldn’t be able to turn the sun around like that!" Yet the impossible had happened. Tianming had no idea how he had achieved that. The only conclusion he could draw was that the Flameyellow Guard Formation had forcefully turned the sun around using the pillars of flame that dug deep into the sun. Perhaps the Flameyellow Guard Formation had a higher priority, and the sun emperor controlled the entire thing himself.

Even then, what would be the point of that? The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb had only recharged up to seventy percent of its capacity, but the sudden changes might force Tianming to stop there. He piloted the ship back into the sky toward the Flameyellow Guard Formation. As he ascended, his field of vision broadened. Rising to the top from the south pole, he saw Skywolf Frost right above him. It took up the entire sky from the point of view of the Sky Palace Formation!

"This is insane. What's he going to do?" The rotation of the sun had caused the flaming clouds to behave chaotically. Gigantic tidal waves of flames were forming from the force of the rotation, giving the Yanyi Army much trouble. However, the celestial orderians weren't faring that well in the current conditions, either.

Qingyu also asked Tianming the reason for the sun's rotation through Yin Chen, as she had a better view from her vantage point, though Tianming had no answer for her. At least he heard that Lingfeng was still continuing his slaughter at Skywolf Frost to suppress the specters. Thus, Tianming decided to seek out the sun emperor to reinforce him, as well as to ask about his plans.

"He's acting like a complete madman now...." When he finally made a move, he suddenly noticed another staggering change in the Flameyellow Guard Formation.

"What the hell? They're sticking out?" He saw quite a few gigantic gold and red pillars emerge beyond the layer of flaming clouds. "What’re the Flameyellow Divine Pillars doing up here?"

The pillars were the ones that held up the Flameyellow Guard Formation and siphoned power from the sun's core to power it, so what would bringing them up to the surface do? Right as Tianming noticed the pillars, they stretched longer and longer. Though they numbered around two hundred, they made the sun look like a burning sea urchin. The sight was a majestic one, to say the least. Tianming felt a kind of terror at the sight of the pillars, which seemed to radiate the ancient and domineering aura of the countless ancestors that had lived on the sun.

"Aren't they getting too long?" The flaming cloud layer wasn't that high above ground level. Initially, the pillars had only been tall enough to reach the bottom of the astralguard formation, but now their length was about half the diameter of the sun! Every single one of them furiously burned. The spikes could even be seen from the Flameyellow Continent—a hundred on each side, two hundred in total!

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The three stars above and the spikes looked like something out of myth for those of the mortal world. What was even more shocking for Tianming was how the tips of the pillars had all turned into incredibly sharp cones. The sun seemed to have become something like a dangerous pincushion.

All of a sudden, he had a bad omen that threatened to crush all of his internal organs! This was far too terrifying and mind numbing. It appeared that this was the power of an imperial-class world. They weren’t prey for invaders, but rather conquerors of the universe! The 'solar lances' that grew out weren't just a means of defense; they could also be used as a ruthless counterattack against the enemy! The sun emperor, who had full control over the Flameyellow Guard Formation, was to thank for all this, for the lances were part of the formation.

"What’s he trying to do?" Tianming suddenly felt one of the sharp lances pointed toward him, or rather, the undefended Skywolf Frost behind him. Normally, Skywolf needed to first take over a world and enslave its inhabitants before opening a hole in the fusion formation to transfer the nova source within for their own use. That was a process that could take up to a thousand years or more, which meant that the losing side would die a slow death lasting up to a millennium.

However, Tianming seemed to be able to imagine something completely different. The sun's spikes could possibly pierce all the way into Skywolf Frost and absorb the nova source within. After all, the spikes were structured like straws; it probably wouldn't take that long before every lifeform in Skywolf Frost died off from the lack of nova source!

"It almost seems unreal...." The current situation was beyond his understanding of the world as he knew it. He couldn't quite bring himself to believe that this was something the sun emperor was capable of, but he felt unwell whenever the scene he had imagined surfaced in his mind. The Flameyellow Guard Formation, after all, could override the sun's own astralguard and fusion formations based on how it had forced the sun to turn like that. Naturally, that came with a commensurate consumption of the sun's own nova source. There was no way half of a solar core would be enough to resist such power.

The Flameyellow Continent's sky was blindingly bright, thanks to the sun, and shadows danced across the land from the erratic illumination coming from above. Tianming opened his eyes wide, but he couldn't spot the sun emperor at all. However, he could pinpoint his location through the flaming clouds using the connection between the solar core's halves.

A golden-haired man far up in the sky looked angrily at Skywolf Frost, then his mouth cracked open in a smile. "Skywolf, you call yourselves the pale nightmare, but you're nothing but normal invaders! All of you deserve to die and vomit out all the nova source you’ve stolen from so many worlds! Nobody in your world deserves to live! All of you will be extinguished in a single moment with nothing left behind!"

His proclamation seemed like it was mirrored by the will of the Flameyellow Guard Formation, which greatly resonated with it. All of the flaming beasts within roared in unison, as if they were cheering at his words. The flaming star was like an awakened lion, all too eager to assert its dominion over other stars in the universe.

The sun emperor's smile stretched wider and wider. His eyes burned with untamed passion. "This is my sun! Skywolf Frost, without your astralguard formation, none of you can hope to survive this! Not even a speck of dust will remain! Hahahaha!"