Beastmaster of the Ages

"The ordered manna I gave them are both hive shaped with ninety-three apertures.... One is called Beacon Starflame, while the other’s called Chaosswamp Starblitz." One of them was a flaming hive, while the other was surrounded by crackling lightning.

After they evolved, both their star counts rose to nine hundred and thirty thousand!

"What’re the changes?" Tianming asked.

"I feel like I gained a link skill after my bloodline shackles were undone," Ying Huo said in slight confusion.

"That's right," Meow Meow echoed.

"What kind of link skill?"

"In other words, Cat Bro and I can link up to unleash an ability. It's pretty powerful when combined.... What's going on?" Ying Huo said.

"Does it mean we were good brothers in our previous lives too, Chicken Bro?" Meow Meow suggested with excitement.

"It could also mean that you two managed to overcome the species barrier and were each other's mates," Tianming said.

"No! Nonsense!"

"Come, Chicken Bro, let's try our link skill!"

"Yeah! Let’s fry Little Li for even stipulating that!"

The two of them went off, wing and paw on each other's backs, leaving Tianming in a corner. Apparently, they really did have a link skill, which they'd named Beacon Chaosswamp. The power of fire and lightning explosively intermingled, creating a force greater than the sum of its parts!

This huge step in their evolution covered up most of the weaknesses they’d had in the past, at least when it came to the sheer difference between orderans and cosmic cartographers.

"Yin Chen's the only one remaining." In fact, Tianming was looking forward to its evolution the most, and it didn't disappoint; Yin Chen had unlocked a few more insect forms, making the total rise to more than ten!

Naturally, Tianming was far more concerned with the upper limit of bodies it could control at a time. Back when it had a star count of around three hundred thousand, it could control ten billion bodies. But in the Xenoabyss, it needed a single silver egg to form one invisible cockroach instead of the usual ten smaller cockroaches in order to move quickly enough to avoid being stomped flat.

"What's your upper limit now?"

"You guess."

"Twenty billion?"

"You're wrong!"

"Thirty?"

Yin Chen shook its head. "Can you... not go... any higher?"

"Higher? Fine, a hundred million trillion!"

"Fuck off."

The final number turned out to be a hundred billion, which was far more than Tianming had expected. He would have been happy with fifty billion.

"That number really makes a lot of things that were impossible before possible!" Whether it was searching the Sun for hidden assassins or setting up a surveillance network in the Xenoabyss, it would work.

"Alright, go eat!" Gladeus had many ore mines, which Xiaodao had thoroughly excavated for Tianming. Getting Yin Chen to duplicate itself until it reached a hundred billion silver eggs might seem like a huge undertaking, but it actually wouldn't require that much time. Yin Chens grew at an exponential rate, after all; as long as it had enough ore, it could endlessly grow, doubling every duplication.

Back then, the Yin Chens on the Sun would turn dormant when Tianming left for the Xenoabyss. So he had to have two sets of Yin Chens to use—one for the Xenoabyss and another for the Sun—so there weren't enough.

With a hundred billion, though, Tianming could leave thirty billion on the Sun and another thirty billion in the Xenoabyss while keeping forty billion in his lifebound space for when he needed them. He could easily swap between the ones in the Sun and the ones in the Xenoabyss wherever he went without having to recall them that often.

The moment he had returned to the Sun, the Yin Chens that awakened from dormancy immediately started bathing.

Upon hearing that Yin Chen could increase in number, Xiaodao came over with something to discuss. "Stay here on the Sun for a bit. I need to ship thirty billion Yin Chens around with divine astralships to properly scatter them around. Let's see if we can pick out all the hidden spies and clear them out."

"Alright!"

Once more, Yin Chen and Ji Ji went off to help Xiaodao. There were more than enough divine astralships on the Sun, so it was far more convenient to scatter Yin Chens there than it was in the Xenoabyss.

It took two weeks for the deployment to finish. During that time, the pink sun advanced in the direction of Ebonia. No doubt, Shenxi Xingtian and Yi Daiyan had already heard of its movements. And over the past month, quite a few assassins had been killed, and many informants within the Sky Palace Formation were captured. However, they were still unable to locate the ancestral world monster.

"Based on our last encounter with it, that fellow probably isn’t a foundationeer yet. When I become a foundationeer myself, I have to find a way to smoke him out. Otherwise, we’ll always be worried about him sabotaging us when it really counts in future conflicts with the factions on Ebonia," Xiaodao said.

"Is there any hope?" Tianming asked.

"After getting an infusion of Flameyellow Bloodsoul, I'm starting to feel it's possible."

"Great!"

It would take quite a while longer for the Sun to arrive at its destination, so Tianming would leave it up to them. At the end of the day, the key to his dynasty's security was his own power. He had to return to the Xenoabyss and grow stronger, as well as find Qingyu and Feng for the sake of Wudi and himself.

He entered the Xenoabyss with seventy billion Yin Chens this time around.

"Not only can they help me avoid danger, I can also glean more information about this world and the Ancient Oldgod Domain. Hopefully I’ll even get word of Qingyu and Feng." Since divine astralships didn't exist in the Xenoabyss, Tianming could only slowly scatter the metallic cockroaches. When nobody was looking, they turned into locusts or swordbugs, which could fly faster than its invisible cockroach form could crawl. It wasn't too hard for them to hide within the dark corners of the Ninth District.

"Did anything happen while I was gone?" Tianming asked Zi Zhen, who had been waiting for him when he arrived.

She shook her head, not having encountered anyone there. After the Yin Chens he had left behind awoke, he waited while they went around gathering updates about the Ninth District. In the meantime, he began to train his swordsmanship.