“Little Li, let me take this move! I haven’t contributed much yet, after all. Make it up to me by preparing lots of food!” Xian Xian’s spiritform said, standing on Tianming’s shoulder.
“No worries, consider it done!” They weren’t in a place like the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb, so food for Xian Xian would be easy to find. It was just as hard to kill as Yin Chen, and now, it was no longer the youngest after Yin Chen’s hatching. It was almost as if Xian Xian had matured overnight.
“I’ll show you the power of symbiotic cultivation!” Xian Xian’s tree uprooted itself and landed in front of Tianming, gathering all of its leaves, branches and roots close together and forming a gigantic shield that blocked off the stampede. Its Radiant Vines were at the forefront of the shield, tying everything tightly together. Right after it formed, the full force of Li Haochen’s attack collided against it, tearing and burning away large chunks of the shield. Then the blade came crashing toward Tianming, though much of its force had been blocked by Xian Xian. As the leaves, roots, and vines were curling up from the flames, Lan Huang quickly came to put them out.
“Ouch, it hurts! Avenge me, quick!” Xian Xian cried, completely unlike its previous courageous stand. It disappeared into the lifebound space, almost having gone bald from the flames. Though, the fact that it was willing to take the blow despite knowing the pain it entailed was a sign of having matured. This was a kind of relationship that totemancers would never be able to understand.
“Totems are only a part of the body, while lifebound beasts are life forms in their own right. We fight through life and death side by side as comrades!” Tianming and the rest were enraged by how badly hurt Xian Xian had been. Even though it could easily recover with enough food, seeing it crying out like that didn’t feel pleasant in the slightest.”I’m angry!” Yin Chen’s hundred and eighty thousand remaining bodies cried in unison. Though it sounded robotic, it was clear that it considered itself part of the family. All of its attempts at hiding how it really felt were just fronts. The others knew how it truly felt.
“Let’s avenge our little sister!” they all cried.
With the Myriadbeast Heavenly Judgment having finished its execution, the eight vastsun godbeasts assembled back together. Li Haochen’s slash had only wounded one of Tianming’s beasts, which was a rather unsatisfying result. “Avenge? I’ll see if you can still say that once all of you are dead.” He smirked. So far, everything was under his control, including the expressions of the hundred thousand seniors that were watching them. He knew that he had to prove his might to them as the son of the sun emperor.
“I’ll show these shortsighted fools who really rules Orderia!” He raised his blade once more, only to find his arms badly hurt. Turning and looking, he noticed that a scorpion had crawled on him once more and injected more Ghostwater Mercury into him. By now, quite a substantial part of his skin had been metalized. With the slightest loss of his focus, the invisible cockroaches would be able to crawl on him and turn into ants that completely swarmed him. He had almost been entirely swallowed up by the bonegnaw ants while he was focusing too deeply on executing his proud blade art.
“Ignore his totems and focus on attacking him!” Tianming said to his beasts. The totems were really hard to deal with, so they would only effect any real change by attacking Li Haochen. Yin Chen had started the onslaught by taking its bonegnaw ant form. While not many managed to reach his bones, it could still inflict a lot of pain. By now, there were around a thousand of the ants that had burrowed into his bones, only for around nine hundred to be eradicated by the astralforce between the albi. However, the remaining hundred or so began gnawing away, causing Li Haochen to shriek in pain. Though those numbers weren’t enough for Tianming to exert complete control over him, it could still inflict constant pain on him.
This was their chance. Tianming and his other beasts rained down attacks with all the rage and fury they felt on Xian Xian’s behalf and from being looked down upon. While Lan Huang had been intercepted by the vastsun godbeasts, Ying Huo and Meow Meow managed to rely on Infernal Haze and speed, respectively, to shake off the other totems and reach Li Haochen. Ying Huo unleashed Skyscorch Featherblast, but a godbeast jumped in to take the blow. However, it underestimated the piercing power of Blazebane, Cosmic Blade and was pierced straight through by the feathers, being an ethereal spiritform itself. Though it hadn’t been harmed by the feathers, it’d allowed tens of them to embed themselves in Li Haochen’s body.
“Urgh!” he cried, his face contorting from the agony. He was just about to eradicate the remaining ants in his bones after wiping out some twenty thousand of Yin Chen’s bodies, only for the feathers to put more holes into him and pierce straight into his bone. Right after that, a large number of bonegnaw ants swarmed toward the wounds, with at least ten thousand of them making it to the bone. This could be fatal. While Ying Huo and Yin Chen’s combination strike hadn’t hurt the totems, they’d at least unlocked an opening. Once totemancers were sufficiently injured, they wouldn’t be able to properly control their totems, so taking them down would be enough to cripple the entire fighting unit!
“Your totems are powerful, but you’re their weakness, Li Haochen! So I don’t want to hear you boasting about your totems anymore!” Tianming lashed the Lifesteal Silverdragon out toward Li Haochen’s Crimsoncloud Dragonbane, piercing it through a few ethereal totems. While they weren’t afraid of being damaged by the chain, they similarly didn’t have the ability to stop it, either, so they had no choice but to charge in and try attacking Tianming, all eight of them.
“Do you think this ol’ tiger’s actually a sickly cat?!” Meow Meow used its Ninefold Chaos Thunderscape, covering the eight totems in countless black lightning bolts, each one infused with the power of Blitzbane, Worldbolt Blast. Thunder loudly boomed as a gigantic bolt of lightning a kilometer in diameter fired off from the little black cat toward the totems. Lan Huang also used its Primordial Wheel in tandem with the attack, sending the eight totems flying off and allowing Tianming some breathing room.
Though Li Haochen had wanted to give Tianming a taste of his own medicine by letting his ‘beasts’ loose on him, his plan had failed due to the pain that came from the ants. Not to mention, Ying Huo had appeared next to him and was constantly pestering him.
“Are you the only one who can use battle arts?” It puzzled him to see a little phoenix using its wings like a sword, not to mention the divine hazard sword ki that was released every time it struck. Even though it was using a simplified version of the four-fusion strike, it was quite the sight when paired with Blazebane. “Wait, is that the Ninedragon Tribulation?!”
Li Haochen was shocked. How could a lifebound beast execute a battle art like a totem could? Though he wanted to do his best to fend Ying Huo off while exterminating the ants in him, his Crimsoncloud Dragonbane was bound by the Lifesteal Silverdragon and wouldn’t budge. Panicking, he used the fingers on his left hand and projected sword ki from it before thrusting it toward the phoenix. The wings clashed with his fingers, almost looking like a draw as they were both weaponless, but there was no way his fingers could compare with Ying Huo’s wings in terms of toughness. The wings took off his little finger, causing him to hurriedly retreat in pain.
“You cut off so many of my sister’s branches and leaves, but I only took one finger! I’m not done with you yet, so don’t run!” Ying Huo used Sixpath Infernal Lotus to catch up and continued the assault with Yin Chen, who turned many of its bodies into spiders to continue spinning Infinite Silverthreads to weigh him down even more. Additionally, a huge tugging force came from the Lifesteal Silverdragon. With his vastsun godbeasts and Meow Meow clashing and blocking Li Hoachen’s sight, he had no idea that he was actually in a tug of war with Lan Huang, not Tianming.
“What kind of monstrous lifebound beasts are these?!” It was the first time he had been rendered so flustered and speechless. This was nothing short of humiliating, especially after he had trumpeted the superiority of totems over lifebound beasts! Yet his Solitary Slash and totemic calamity had been completely neutralized by Tianming and his beasts, with his totems unable to harm him at all! The mere notion of losing this battle caused his heart to constrict as he recalled the cold gaze from that golden figure. “I can’t lose! Not even if I die!”
His deep-seated rage reverberated throughout his body like a roar, channeling the domineering will of the celestial orderians. It was as if all of his ancestors were coursing through his veins. “How could these alien outsiders possibly compare with the millions of years of history of the celestial orderians?!”
It wasn’t just power, but also his will to fight and never give up. He vented all of his frustrations, no longer having his totems surround Tianming. Instead, he summoned them back. From his fervent gaze, it was clear to everyone that he still had a trump card to use.
