In the skies above, the crimson and gold clouds of fire had turned dark. Amidst the sea of flames were countless twisted baleful souls, as if the entire area had turned into a haven for them. The sky across the sun had been swallowed up by the darkness as if it was within the belly of a beast. No matter where one was in that world, they could hear the howls and cries of the baleful souls, sending chills down their spines and goosebumps across their skin. The world seemed to have been grasped by pure resentment. Even the surface of the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb was plastered with a large number of baleful souls, their twisting, ethereal forms anchoring themselves on the ship as they shrieked in the strong wind and flaming rain.
“Die, die! All shall die!”
Even Tianming felt rather disoriented from all that howling. It must be taking Lingfeng a staggering amount of willpower to use so many baleful souls. Should he be the slightest bit weaker, he might become the very kind of demon that Tianming sought to wipe out.
The undamaged specter corpses continued raining down on the ship, smashing apart in the process and dying it with huge splotches of red. The nine dragon heads at the very front looked incredibly ghastly from all the dripping blood. Some of them were bodies of celestial orderians; Lingfeng hadn’t made a special exception for them.
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It took Tianming quite a lot of time to finally reach the north pole of the sun, as he had to cross almost the entire hemisphere. All over the place, specters were dying, though that didn’t stop the ones that managed to slip through the cracks from dealing huge bloodshed to the sun. Even so, the corpses of the specters numbered far more than those that were still alive. Lingfeng and the Flameyellow Guard Formation had held back most of the ten billion enemy troops and saved the sun from certain ruin.
The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb eventually emerged from the sea of flames to a dark battlefield ahead, where the sun emperor fought the three starvorians alone. The scene ahead of Tianming was utterly breathtaking, with the strength of the sun emperor on full display. The three enemies he faced were among the most powerful of their heliacal-class world, each of them much stronger than the sovereigns from before, Grand Emperor Starvore in particular.
Flames of gold, red, and white peppered the battlefield. Though they almost seemed evenly matched, there were more tufts of white flame compared to the other two combined. From within the ship, Tianming heard the staggeringly loud sounds of combat. Like a gigantic tornado, the clashes moved all across the battlefield. Tianming couldn’t even see the fight well from a distance.
“Godfather!” He seemed to spot Li Wudi’s silhouette within the flaming red parts of the battlefield, a sign that he was fighting alongside the sun emperor. Whether he was being controlled or not, it was still rather dangerous for him to be in that fight. Tianming felt his heart clench from the realization. While he wanted to sit and wait, there was no way he could do that now. If Li Wudi died in battle, it would only be a loss of a clone for the sun emperor, but Tianming would lose his family! When he got closer, he could have no doubt that the one he saw was indeed Li Wudi.
Inside the storm, a gigantic, blood-red kunpeng flew with its wings spread wide. Hellish, blood-colored flames burned all around its body as its loud howl reverberated across the area. Tianming spotted the red figure with nine blood-colored totems and recalled that Li Wudi used to have eight Crimson Beastbane rings, but there was an additional dragon-faced bane-ring at the center of his chest. The nine totems that were manifested were all gigantic mythical beasts, including a dragon, phoenix, qilin, and black tortoise to name a few. They took up an impressive amount of space in the sea of flames. Like the flaming beasts of the formation, they seemed to possess bloodlines that ranged back to the day of the flameyellow divinities. [1]
The totem beasts roared as the man bravely fought with a level of power that far exceeded what Tianming believed Li Wudi was capable of. No doubt, the sun emperor had used a special method to grant him that level of power, but that might not be good news as far as Li Wudi was concerned. What was the point of power if he couldn’t even control his actions?
“That asshole!” Tianming couldn’t help but snap after he properly saw who Li Wudi was facing. The sun emperor, despite his strength and use of the Flameyellow Coffin, had let Li Wudi fight Grand Emperor Starvore! The absolute ruler of Skywolf moved with terrifying speed and force, using abilities and battle arts in tandem. He wielded a huge platinum war blade that slashed at the totems while his fists struck the kunpeng. Every single attack seemed to twist the skies and flaming clouds around them!
The sun emperor, on the other hand, fought Empress Yu while teasing her with all the vulgarities he could think of with a crooked smile on his face. It was so cheesy that one would puke at the sight of it. Tianming didn’t even know what to make of this roguish side of the sun emperor. Was that his true personality? Compared to him, Grand Emperor Starvore looked bold, cold, and fierce!
They must have been fighting for quite a while, at least as long as it had taken Tianming to fly there. While it looked like a two-on-two, Empress Ying hadn’t been idling within the Starvore and doing nothing. The ship she piloted was the true hard hitter in the fight. If it wasn’t avoided, its blast could eviscerate even the bodies of gods. Tianming didn’t dare make an approach with the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb after witnessing the ship’s might for himself, lest he be fired on and wiped out. The Ninedragon Imperial Tomb was the core of the Flameyellow Fusion Formation, after all.
Instead, Tianming had the ship hide among the nearby mountains while it continued its approach. If he left the ship, his chances of being detected by the Starvore would be far lower, which was a huge downside to divine astralships. Blasts of nova source required a lot of time to charge up, and hitting individual cultivators with them was even harder.
“Frankly speaking, apart from your godfather, the rest of those here all have to die for us to win, right? We’ll defeat Skywolf and the celestial orderians that way,” Ying Huo said from the lifebound space.
“Wow, Chicken Bro, you’re a genius! I didn’t think you’d figure it out!” Lan Huang said, as if waking from a dream.
Tianming looked at the sun emperor’s nine totems, the divine solar gods. They had adopted their golden crow forms and were dealing incredible damage. “You’re right. If they all die, that’d be the ideal outcome for the Myriad Solar Sects.”
It couldn’t be denied that the sun emperor had rendered great merit during the invasion, but at the same time, they couldn’t forget that the civil war of Orderia would resume once Skywolf was driven away. “The sun emperor only needs to take one last step to unify the sun. Even fools would know that he wouldn’t stop. We’ll always be a thorn in his eye.”
Would he really give up on persecuting them? Tianming didn’t think so; that was far too optimistic a view to hold. Yet he couldn’t afford to not work with the sun emperor, either, given the sheer pressure Skywolf applied on them all. “They should still be unaware that I’m here, so I can afford to wait a little for some openings.”
1. Li Wudi overcame his lifesbane curse back around chapter 368, but he was only mentioned to be a heptabane at the time. The author did write that he was still awakening more bane-rings though, so he probably got his eighth off-screen. ☜
