Beastmaster of the Ages

"There's no need. They won't be able to do anything we can't do ourselves. We're only just a little bit weaker than them. We should let the ghoul kings or Long Cangyuan act, instead. For now, we need to split into two groups and head to the other two black hole stars. Tell them what happened here. Tianming can only be dealt with by someone at the peak level. We should have Uncle Qing Ming and the others stop searching for treasure for now," Ye Bodhi said.

"What about you?"

"I failed and won't be able to do anything to help, so I'll travel around a bit."

"Alright. We'll do as you say," the elder said.

"Now that our plan has been exposed, will he still head to the other two black hole stars?" Long Yichen asked.

"I can't be sure. Perhaps there's a reason why he must."

Ye Bodhi's voice sounded much lower in pitch than before. While he tried not to let it show, the earlier events had obviously irked him a lot. The remaining second-origin tribulation elders had hurried away to the two remaining stars to report word of the sighting.

"Are you not going too?" Ye Bodhi asked.

"I'll stay by your side," Long Yichen said with his head lowered.

"Suit yourself. I'm only going to take a casual look around." He took out a starmap and began to pace about.

"What's on your mind?" Long Yichen asked after trying to hold the question back for a long time.

"I'm trying to think whether the location of the nine black hole stars mean something." Ye Bodhi's forehead wrinkled in deep thought.

......

When Tianming exited the pathway, he saw the word 'seven'. "That's the seventh one. I wonder how many more there are."

He looked around, trying to ascertain his location. As he had been around for quite a bit, he had a rough grasp of where he was in the domain by recognizing the stars he'd seen before. There was one star nearby that had a muddy surface. Tianming had been there just half a day ago.

"That means I haven't been sent too far away. So, those folks are nearby too!" Right as he thought that, he saw a group of people approaching. He hurriedly hid in one of the stars and saw that they were the second-origin tribulation elders from before, but there were only fifteen of them—half as many as before. Thankfully, he had managed to escape, or he wouldn't be able to take on all thirty of them alone. If it weren't for the black hole star, the chase might've lasted much longer.

"They were trying to ambush me just now, so they definitely know that I'm trying to enter the black hole stars. I guess I can't just simply go into the next one I find now."

If entering one posed a huge risk, he wouldn't do it. He wasn't in a rush anyway. Right now, his mind was still on the bald youth he had encountered just now. "The good karma that can come from killing that fellow isn't something I can miss out on. If he won't seek me out, I'll hunt him down!"

He went back into hiding. "There's fifteen of them here. I hope the rest aren't still with the bald fellow."

He turned and looked at the black hole star he was at. "His foul aura stands out too much, like a glowing beacon. I can see him all the way from here!"

Tianming didn't care who he was or what status he had. All he cared about was taking his life!

......

Ye Bodhi stopped and wagged his finger at Long Yichen.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he came to him.

"Look here." Ye Bodhi pointed at the star map.

"I wouldn't dare steal a glance at it."

"If I ask you to look, you'll look."

"Okay."

Long Yichen peeked at it and shook his head. "I can't see an issue with it."

"This star is the one where the ten thousand tribulation manna were found. It wasn't marked on the starmap."

"That's right."

"Look at the line I drew," he continued, "Can you see it now?"

"So the line connects four stars on the map, three of which are marked as having treasure. However, the one that wasn't marked to have treasures actually had all that tribulation manna. To think that you were able to detect a pattern like that.... You must be a deductive genius."

"Shut up." Ye Bodhi wasn't in a mood to joke around. He drew another line and said, "Now look at this one."

The star map was rather cramped, depicting a thousand stars in total, so it would normally be rather unexpected for a single straight line to cross four stars, yet it seemed incredibly easy to join stars with a single straight line on the map.

"This line also crosses four stars, three of which are marked," Long Yichen said.

"And?"

"The unmarked one might contain treasure!"

"That's the same conclusion I arrived at. Let's go there."

"Yes!" Long Yichen was truly impressed that Ye Bodhi had managed to detect such an obscure pattern.

Xue Yi was hiding near one of the black hole stars. All of a sudden, fifteen tribulation elders came his way and interrupted his stealth state. "What's the matter?"

He was already feeling rather humiliated by the whole affair. If the outside world found out that someone like him was lying in hiding for a young brat, he would be laughed out of every room. Yet now, these newcomers even wasted his darkfiend tome.

"Ghoul King, Li Tianming appeared where we were!"

"Where's his head?"

"Still on his neck, Ghoul King!"

Xue Yi felt a vein bursting as he listened to their explanation. "And he still managed to escape?!"

"The black hole star was too near, and he was stronger than we expected. He entered it before we could even react."

"Ghoul King, Ye Bodhi said that you're the only one capable of stopping him now."

They all sounded rather pathetic.

"This will be troublesome. Now that we're exposed, there's little chance he'll show up again. Should we continue staying put here?"

They felt the prickling sense of humiliation on their faces. If they continued their treasure hunt, Tianming would be able to continue killing them. But if they didn't, what else could they do to him? Would the five divine realms really be held back by Tianming alone?

While Tianming was easy to deal with, they hadn't really paid him any heed. But now he had matured and become a god of death in the Kilostar Domain. It would be really hard to locate him within this large area, and what was worse was that no matter what decision Xue Yi made, it wouldn't wipe away the mark of shame he suffered from allowing a little fly that killed his daughter and son-in-law to trample all over him. The killing intent radiating from his body caused others to not dare to approach him.

He finally made a decision. "First, we shall stop searching for treasures in the domain, including the other four sects! Second, we will send a thousand eighth-level death phase samsarans from the sect here and focus on killing Li Tianming!"

Such a move was truly paying Tianming too much heed, but it didn't matter. Xue Yi wanted to end this torment once and for all. Better a painful cauterization than letting the wound continue festering. Nobody would remember the humiliation he had suffered today decades from now, anyway.