Beastmaster of the Ages

Within the Gladean Ruins, Tianming, Wudi, Xiaodao, and a few elites of the Lin Clan's council surrounded Fengqing Youmeng, staring at her.

"So what secrets does Meng Ying have? What are their weaknesses?" Tianming went straight for the heart of the matter. He knew that she was already in the bad graces of Meng Ying. Coupled with the fact that they lost so much at the Sun, Meng Ying wouldn’t let the debt remain unpaid. Seeing how they had even sent Li Fan to capture him in the Xenoabyss, they didn't seem to be giving up on him either.

Fengqing Youmeng paled even more as she grit her teeth. Tianming didn't hold back and snapped, "Tell me!"

She shrank back in fear, but calmed herself. "When they fought against you all last time, they lost quite a few dreamchildren, so they’re severely weakened. You can probably guess the rest."

"Tell me the broad strokes."

"Basically, they're at the very end of their lifespan. However, they wanted to resist the natural order of things. To survive, they cultivated an apex fiendart from who knows where long before I was born."

"Apex fiendart?" It must be a powerful technique if even Fengqing Youmeng described it as such.

"That's right! It's called the Starembryo Fiendart," she said. It was a rather off-putting name.

"Tell me more," Tianming said.

"It's a technique that's used to exclusively train the seventh astral organ. I don't know where it's from, as it isn’t something created by us divine wonderians. Perhaps it comes from Myriadpath Valley. What it does is restructure the seventh astral organ, almost lowering it to the level of more basic lifeforms to increase fertility. In a sense, the couple becomes able to create many spawns, almost like broodmother-type beasts." Fengqing Youmeng hated the memory and winced at the mere mention of it.

"What in the...." Tianming and the seniors looked at each other, flabbergasted.

Wudi slapped his thigh and said, "We all know that making offspring as higher lifeforms is much harder as the offspring will also be born as a higher lifeform, right? If those two foundationeers use such a technique, wouldn't they be able to create a lot of innately powerful offspring like you?"

In terms of talent, the Fengqing You twins were nothing to scoff at. But hearing that, Fengqing Youmeng shook her head. "It's impossible. The laws of the universe are reasonable. Since Meng Ying chose to birth many offspring, most of them will have weak talent. They might be weaker than newborn children of lower-class nova source worlds, and some of them are even born crippled."

Tianming was reminded of the dreamless celestial emperor who had created Moran and her forty-nine sisters. He was also a wonderian! They seemed to have the wackiest ways of reproducing. How could a seemingly refined and elegant race of people engage in acts of such cruelty and darkness?

He recalled the tanks within the Dreamchild where quite a lot of children were suspended in some kind of fluid. "What's the point of making offspring despite those consequences?"

"The point of the Starembryo Fiendart isn’t to create descendants. Instead, it's to create offspring that share one's bloodline so they can be connected to the parents to funnel away the life force of those offspring, nourishing their astrons and extending their lives and youth!"

"What?!" They still couldn't quite grasp the nature of it all.

"Basically, all those children in the tanks in the Dreamchild are the actual offspring of Meng Ying?" Tianming said.

"That's right. They're all my siblings." Fengqing Youmeng shook her head and smiled in resignation.

Tianming fell silent. That was... far too wild. "I want to know.... Those children were all born with a tripartite soul, right?"

"Tripartite soul?" Fengqing Youmeng looked at him and smirked. "Didn't you notice? They don't just have souls. They're at least a full month old! Some of them are one year old! Not only do they have souls, they're sentient and have seen the real world!"

In other words, the children weren't non-sentient flesh bags, but rather actual sentient beings that could perceive the world they had been born in.

"Fengqing Youyun and I were picked out of that bunch because of our talent. Otherwise, we'd have been fated to die...." Tears began flowing from her eyes. "That's why I hate them! They’re the very epitome of the oh so lofty and wise divine wondersky race! On the surface, they claim to be generous and benevolent, but at their core, they're nothing but fiends!"

Tianming couldn't help but see her in a new light. He used to think that her actions were merely part of an ill-thought-out rebellious streak, but it seemed like she was doing all she could to reject what her kind stood for. If he had been born in the same environment, he wouldn't have been able to accept the circumstances of his birth! There were tens of millions of siblings in the Dreamchild alone! All those children, born into this world, hopeful for life, only to be thrown into tanks to nourish their parents!

"I beg you! You have to kill them, kill Meng Ying! The older they get, the more insane they become. As long as they live, countless future siblings of mine will be trapped in a nightmarish existence!" It would have been better if they hadn’t been born. Fengqing Youmeng knelt and desperately kowtowed to Tianming, begging him to save others by killing her very own parents. While it was a huge ask, everyone felt that it was only reasonable.

"How can I kill them?" Tianming asked.

She looked up and said, "Destroy everything in the Dreamchild. That’ll cause them to lose their power in an instant!"

"How can we enter the Dreamchild, though?" Wudi asked. A chance like they had during the battle at the Sun would definitely not come again.

"Let me go. I'll be able to sneak inside," she said.

"If you could've done it, you wouldn't have had to wait until today," Tianming said.

"That's because I didn't have an adequate chance. If you all can hold them back while they're outside the ship, that'll be my chance."

"Then you should wait here until that day comes. I hope you'll be as indignant on that day as you are today."

"I'm not being indignant for the sake of it. I only want to seek redress for those children and stop the tragedy for good."

"Alright, I'll temporarily trust you! Stay here and wait." Xiaodao kept her in a cell within the Gladean Ruins; it was far better treatment than she deserved.

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