Beastmaster of the Ages

The date of their arrival was creeping ever closer, and there were only some ten days left in their journey. By now, they could see a terrifying black spot in the far distance. That was the Infinitum Bodhimanda, a name for the faction that ruled that world. The name of the sixth-level world was actually Ebonia, and like its namesake, it was a world of pitch darkness.

"In the coming days, you\'ll see that spot expand more and more. Five days later, it\'ll be so large that it\'ll take up your entire field of vision. Even after that, it\'ll take you another five days of flying at full speed to actually reach the surface of the star! However, you\'ll have to slow down as you approach the nova source storms near the surface, so it\'ll take an additional five days to properly reach it," Ji Ji explained.

The sight of the world expanding before them made it look like they were plunging into darkness. Five days later, they could no longer see anything but the star, and even then they would need five more days to pass through the equivalent of the sun\'s flaming cloud layer to reach the surface. They would only be able to start decelerating in another five days before landing.

A fourth-level nova source world was already large beyond description. After all, the eyes could only take in a very limited part of the gigantic world, while Ebonia was far larger than what eyes could take in at one time. Not to mention, a nova source world of this class wasn\'t just physically large. The energy it contained would also be of far higher quality than normal worlds, resulting in more frequent manifestations of things like universal manna. The sheer awe that worlds of this class instilled in onlookers was something difficult to imagine.

This gigantic dark star seemed to represent all things evil, insidious, and savage. Tianming felt a hint of fear welling up when he was still ten days away from landing. He was but a speck of dust in comparison to this massive celestial body, and the fear he felt was that of the vast and unknown universe.

Ebonia didn\'t look like a star at all, but a hell of darkness that only seemed to visibly grow as Tianming approached. The larger the star grew, the deeper the fear seemed to set in. It was often said that people could crush the skies if they had the will for it, but Tianming felt like it was his will being crushed instead, and he was already among the mentally stronger of his cohort. The three girls didn\'t dare to keep staring long ago and huddled together, hidden away in a corner somewhere.

"We just have to get used to it. It\'s our first time encountering universal oddities like this one, after all," he constantly told himself, breathing in deeply.

Ji Ji\'s predictions turned out to be correct. On the fifth day, they saw nothing but an endless dark void, and there were still five more days to go before their final descent. The shape of the astralscape itself seemed to warp. The deep, hellish abyss before them was so vast that it began to look like a flat surface the closer they got to it, almost like the Welkin plane, a flat world without an end in sight. Behind Tianming was the same starry void that he had once seen from the Flameyellow Continent, seemingly robbed of its dimension of depth, like a veil that was supported by the flat land beneath them.

The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb didn\'t look like it was heading toward a star at all, but rather falling headfirst into the ground as darkness swallowed up everything. The hellish dark abyss beneath them was akin to the flaming cloud layer of the sun, and the true realm where people resided existed beneath that layer. However, the black of that layer alone was enough to instill despair in others. While it looked black, it was actually a mix of flaming, frosty, lightning, windy, and metallic nova source.

Tianming spotted hints of crimson through the darkness, a sign of what lay beyond the layer of black. The red nova source inside should be energy from the core. If he was not mistaken, it could well be a cosmic impulse, which was wild and hard to tame.

When there were eight days left, he also saw some other things on the surface. He had initially thought they were rings, only to find that they were gigantic chains when he got closer to them. The star had been surrounded by quite a few layers of black chains despite its humongous size! The metallic chains surrounded the star a few times over, and Tianming no longer dared to approach them in fear of crashing into them. When he drew close to those chains, he found that each link was as large as a skypiercer-class world, and they were all surrounded by blood-colored lightning, making each chain link look like breathtaking pools of lightning the size of entire stars. If each of those links was an eye, then the lightning bolts that streaked in them were the capillaries of those eyes!

"Archfiend?!" More and more, the chains began resembling the old weapon that Li Muyang had given him. Li Muyang had neglected to tell him that there was an even more terrifying set of chains in Ebonia.

As he descended through the chains, Tianming\'s eyes grew wider and wider with wonder. "Who exactly looped the chains around the star? What kind of might would be required for such an undertaking?"

Li Muyang had told him there was another secret to this place. If Tianming could obtain the item under the Infinitum Stele, perhaps he and his parents would have a chance to escape. The chains that surrounded the stars told Tianming that there was a good chance that everything Li Muyang had told him could come to pass!

Once they were through the chains, they finally saw the surface of the world. Tianming even began doubting his eyes, as it looked nearly completely flat and endless like a plane, unlike a spherical world with actual curvature. "If the Welkin plane is actually the surface of some far larger star, would Orderia and the other stars above it be outside of it, and the realm of chaos be inside the star? Would we be able to see its full form if we\'re far enough away from it?" For now, those were just his conjectures. If the Welkin plane really was just an incredibly large astral world, it wouldn\'t make sense for the living beings there to be so weak. Not to mention, the Welkin plane itself didn\'t generate any light, so it wouldn\'t be visible once people were far enough away.

"I want to stop and take a proper look at this world before going in. Who knows how long it’ll be before we leave it again?" Tianming said.

"Of course we have to slow down and stop. If we cruise through the external astral storm at this speed, the whole ship will be torn apart," Ji Ji said, rolling its eyes.

"Haha, true." Tianming felt that his mind had been dulled by fear, yet he wasn\'t the only one acting abnormally. Feiling, Xiaoxiao, and Moran didn\'t even dare to look.

Five days later, he finally felt like he was close to the surface. Beyond the boundless storm was where the people settled. From their vantage point, the world had completely transformed once more. It looked as if Ebonia was supporting the starry sky above with its boundless vastness.

"Five days to go! Let\'s keep going!" Tianming carefully piloted the ship so as to not be torn apart by the raging storm. Every nova source world had a storm layer on the surface, such as the flaming clouds of Orderia or the violetstar clouds of Violetglory. The moment the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb passed through the outermost layer of the storm, the raging force of the black flames and lightning caused it to shake.

"Careful!" Ji Ji yelled.

"What?"

"There\'s someone behind us! Make way!"

Tianming suddenly felt a pang of trouble. He instinctively changed the course of the ship, and right that instant, an explosive rumble could be heard across the ship. Tianming had just managed to evade in time and was retreating.

"That’s...." He saw many gigantic swords in the sky piercing through the surface layer of Ebonia, with the largest one being as huge as Violetglory! All of the divine astralships were about the size of nova source worlds; Tianming\'s worldview had been completely shattered.

The sword-shaped divine astralships numbered a hundred thousand, and the sword ki they exuded formed a storm that sent the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb flying off. It was a fleet of a hundred thousand gigantic swords! The mysterians\' fleet of two-thousand-odd divine astralships seemed like nothing more than a joke compared to these. Such a fleet was truly fitting of a gargantuan world like Ebonia.

While Tianming\'s ship had managed to get out of the way, it still felt like he’d been pierced through the heart countless times. Every single one of those sword-ships was larger than the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb, which looked like a mere bug in comparison to an earthshaking army that rattled the lands they marched across.

"Amazing!" Tianming\'s eyes brightened at this magnificent sight. This was Ebonia, a battlefield that was his to tread! He took a deep breath as he cast away his fears, building up his fighting spirit to its former heights. He was enchanted by this world! He kept his eyes glued to the hundred thousand gigantic swords.

"Infinitum!" Every ship was marked with that word, meaning that the Infinitum Bodhimanda owned all of them. They were the prime faction within the Infinitum Mundus, and there was no competing faction! Their reign was supreme across the entire mundus.

But unlike the patrol ships in the outer reaches, Tianming saw another line of text on the tips of these ships. As they were flying too fast, it took him quite a while to get a good look. He couldn\'t help but read them out loud when he saw them clearly. "Prime Infinitum Trade Union, Swordgod Lin Clan."

That oddly reminded him of Lin Mu, his father\'s past incarnation.