"You two, defend this place with the rest to your death! Don't let Li Tianming leave! I'll go myself, since we might not have any troops there," Xue Yi decided. Of the four ghoul kings, one had died and Fu You had stayed at the black hole star to guard it, leaving only two of them at the fiery star.
"Alright."
Whether they would be able to kill Tianming was still uncertain, but at the very least, they should be able to stop him from leaving. Xue Yi immediately made his move. By then, most of the people who had entered the fiery star had retreated back out. Now that Tianming was no longer pursued, he poked his head out from the surface of the star and saw the red light that had spread throughout the whole domain.
"What’s that?" he asked.
"I don't know," Yi Xingyin turned to look at Xue Yi and the rest, "but they seem rather excited. That's probably their main objective for coming to the Kilostar Domain."
"Could there be an even more impressive treasure?"
"That could well be the case."
Right as they said that, something else happened—the fiery star they were on shook so much that it seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Wild magma sprayed all over the place, turning the flaming star into a gigantic, fiery ball. The star seemed to have concentrated its light into a gigantic pillar that shot toward the very center of Kilostar Domain.
"This is the power of a formation!" Yi Xingyin said with shock.
"How powerful is it?"
"Only a god could make a formation like this!"
Just as Yi Xingyin finished talking, Tianming saw the people surrounding the star being torn apart by that pillar of light. At least a thousand tribulation elders hadn’t managed to evade before being completely vaporized.
"That's our chance!" Tianming got Meow Meow to transform into the Regal Chaosfiend form. Meow Meow then charged along the side of the pillar of light at lightning speed. It had long been prepared to break out of the encirclement, and was about to succeed as some of the elders were still reeling from the shock while Xue Yi and the rest were paying attention to the bloody light.
"Li Tianming's escaping!" They began to notice what was going on.
"Fuck off!" Tianming struck with Archfiend, instantly killing a few more of them. The rest didn't dare to approach the pillar of light, either, which made it the perfect path for Meow Meow to tread. Now, they were finally out of their predicament. Even if Xue Yi and the others tried pursuing them, they wouldn't be able to catch up.
"Holy hell! It's as if the Kilostar Domain's aiding him all the way!" Changsun Shenqiong said after he gave up trying to catch up.
Neither Xue Yi nor You Ying could keep up either. "What do we do now?" You Ying asked.
"Let's ignore him for now. The blood dragon should be our main priority. Once we destroy it, our mission will be a success. Treasures are secondary to that. We'll have more than enough chances to kill that cur after we deal with the blood dragon." Xue Yi was all too annoyed at all the trouble Tianming had thrown his way. "Even though he's escaped again, the fact that the blood dragon has appeared is great news for us. Enough talking. Let's head toward it."
After Xue Yi made his decision, he came to Changsun Shenqiong. "Brother Changsun."
"What is it, Brother Xue Yi?"
"Please bring my elders here to the black hole star. You Ying and I have to leave for a while. Defend the black hole star together with Fu You, and make sure Tianming doesn't enter it," Xue Yi said.
"No problem." While he had many doubts about the situation, he knew that with his status, he shouldn't be asking about things he wasn't explicitly told. Defending the black hole star with Fu You wasn't a difficult assignment, after all. With the forty thousand elders they had there, and those here with them, they had a combined force of about sixty thousand. And now that Tianming no longer had Photondragon, he would have no choice but to run if he encountered them.
"Let's go!" Xue Yi and You Ying proceeded to head toward the center of Kilostar Domain.
……
Outside the fiery star, Tianming remained hidden in the distance, watching the group split up.
"Boss, are we going to the black hole star or in the direction of the bloody mist?" Meow Meow asked, pumped and ready to accelerate.
"Let's go to the bloody mist. We have to reach it before they do!" Tianming decided.
"Alright! Sit tight!" Meow Meow said, then charged at its full speed.
There were two reasons Tianming had made this decision, the first being his feeling that it was far more important than others would let on, given how Xue Yi had even given up on pursuing him and risked him going to the last black hole star, and the second being the sheer number of enemies waiting for him at the black hole star. Abruptly charging in now would be both a waste of time and a futile effort.
He squinted as he looked at the center of the domain. Right now, all the stars in the domain had a bright pillar of light that pointed toward the center, just like the fiery star from before. It was as if all the stars were fusing into one.
"I wonder what's happening there…."
……
An hour before what had just happened, a long-haired middle-aged man in black and red robes had come to the center of the domain. One of his eyes was filled with a bloody light. It was as if dragons of blood were swimming on its surface.
The surrounding area was empty, with the nearest stars quite a distance away. The middle-aged man stood with his nose held high, as if he were trying to sniff something out.
"It should be right here. I've been looking for four months. I might finally be able to fulfill the grand wish of my clan soon. After bearing two hundred thousand years' worth of sins, we were finally able to cast away the curse and open our eyes once more. It's almost like a dream…."
He reached out his hands and felt the void with his eyes closed, focusing instead on his sense of smell to track down the familiar scent.
"Ancestors of mine… where are you? Please lead me to you…" he said in a dreamlike tone, as if he was sleepwalking.
All of a sudden, his hand seemed to touch a solid object in the void. "This is it!"
He opened his eyes with anticipation. "Come out!"
He backed off ten meters as two bloody dragons emerged from his lifebound space. Each of them were around three hundred meters in length. The two gigantic dragons were male and female respectively, each having its own unique characteristics. The male dragon was big and strong, with its flesh infused with a bloody tinge. The female dragon was savage and slender, and glowed with a bloody light. Each of them had around nine hundred and thirty stars in their eyes and seemed individually stronger than the greenvoid skydevourer. Not even Long Cangyuan's four dragons could compare to these two.
"Attack this spot." The bloody light in the man's eyes glowed far brighter than before. Then, his two dragons began ramming against the empty space. Oddly enough, something sounded like it was breaking. The man himself also attacked with all he had like a madman. On and on, the sound of something breaking continued ringing out.
"The smell is getting stronger! It's the scent of my ancestors! It's the scent of the Blood Progenitor! It's been far too long! Nobody knows that those of my clan didn't used to be surnamed Dugu.."
Bloody tears seemed to form in his eyes. They weren't tears of pain, but agitation. How long had he waited for the Kilostar Domain to open up? With a loud rumble, the formless object seemed to shatter from the attacks, resulting in a huge force that sent the man flying off. He had been shaken so badly by the blowback that he bled from his mouth. However, that didn't dampen his enthusiasm in the slightest, instead having the opposite effect. His eyes shone with what seemed like his destiny.
The bloody mist in front of him began swirling, causing great turbulence all around that affected the entire domain. His eyes opened even wider as he watched a bloody star manifest at the empty spot in front of him. Compared to the others, this star looked to be of average size, but the bloody mist that covered it rampaged like storms. Countless blood-colored heavenly patterns swirled about it with terrifying force. The patterns looked like dragons; there were around a hundred thousand of them swirling amidst the blood mist. The rustle that came from the strong winds sounded like the songs of dragons to the man's ears.
"You… It really is all of you! Throughout the countless aeons… there is no end in sight to the sea of suffering…" The bloody tears flowed from his eyes as he knelt with a pained look. "Oh great ancestors of mine, your descendant Dugu Jin has finally come to your rescue two hundred thousand years later! Please grant me the blooddragon quintessence! From now on, the world shall know that we are the true Archaic House of Xuanyuan!"
He wiped off the tears of blood and used them to draw an eye between his brows. Then, he stood up and opened his arms wide before charging toward the bloody star.
All of a sudden, someone called out to him. "Dugu Jin!"
The first tribulation elder of the Archaion Sect, Dugu Jin, immediately stopped and turned back. The one who called out to him wore a green robe. He seemed completely tranquil, as if he had no worldly desires whatsoever, standing there like he belonged in the void.
"Feng Qingyu…." Dugu Jin's fervor from before was nowhere to be seen. "Have you been stalking me?"
"Yes. I've been wondering these past few days what you were really looking for."
"Hmph. You sure do know how to go about unnoticed."
"What is that?" Feng Qingyu asked, pointing at the bloody star. But Dugu Jin didn't answer and instead turned back to charge for it.
"Halt!" Feng Qingyu gave chase.
……
Meow Meow kept blazing past the stars toward the bloody light ahead. Tianming noticed that the light from all the other stars were concentrating on a point where a bloody star was.
"What in the world is that?"
He saw countless bloody dragons formed of heavenly patterns all across the star.
"It's a formation!" Yi Xingyin exclaimed.
"What kind?"
"The whole star itself is a formation that only those on the level of gods would be able to create!"
