Chapter 2226 - Infinite Beastmaster
Before the mighty Infinitum Stele, the atmosphere was solemn and tense, no one willing to even breathe too loudly. Among the ten thousand participants, the three thousand disciples from organizations other than the royal clans had all arrived the earliest. After dropping them off, none of their elders had dared to stay too long and had quickly departed. The hodgepodge of disciples were either alone or in groups of three or five. Contingents with a hundred were a rare sight.
As for large clans like the Lin Clan, even if they weren’t uniformly dressed, their sword intent, tall and slender figures, and the sword light in their eyes all pointed to their clan’s identity.
An organization's power could be extrapolated from these disciples under a hundred years old.
The past hundred years had been a special period of time for the Lin Clan that could even be called unlucky. The number of genius descendants they had had decreased as well. Having three hundred people counted as only middling among the royal clans.
Tianming had long since heard that the strongest clan on Ebonia wasn’t Yi Daiyan’s clan, but the ebons, who had stood as Ebonia’s hegemon for uncountable years.
In the last few hours before the path to Oldgod Domain opened, the three thousand ebon disciples finally arrived. A massive spherical astralship appeared in the sky.
“The Eye of the Blood Abyss?” Tianming was briefly surprised, as their astralship simply resembled it too much. It was a dark red eye that was designed so similarly to a real eye that it even had a moving pupil. However, he quickly realized that this particular astralship was countless times bigger than the Eye of the Blood Abyss. Even though it was high in the sky, it still took up three quarters of the local airspace.
The eye’s gaze seemed to pierce through Tianming’s consciousness and land on his soul.
“The ebons! They actually used an infinitum-class astralship to ferry their disciples over. How extravagant,” Lin Lele muttered.
“This is an infinitum-class astralship?” Tianming could feel its horrifying presence despite the vast distance separating them. It was still frightening, even though the Infinitum Bodhimanda had restricted astralship attacks on Ebonia. None of the thousands of people could breathe as they felt the eye’s gaze on them.
“The ebons are a race that specializes in soul cultivation. Their history is much longer and more glorious than the mysterians! They’re also the first masters of the Infinitum Mundus in history.” Tianming had read quite a bit of information on the ebons in preparation for the minor reges mundi ranking.
The ebons were equivalent to the adjacent Skydome Mundus’ wonderians. The wonderians controlled a sixth-level world and over a thousand clusters, of which the Mysterium Cluster was just one. Etherean Zhaohua had wanted to send Tianming to Skydome Wondrium, which was a sixth-level world on par with Ebonia!
The Infinitum Bodhimanda’s special rules had made the ebons lose their authority over the Infinitum Mundus, which was one area they couldn’t match up to the wonderians. However, that didn’t change the respect the other seven thousand disciples had toward their disciples.
Three thousand cultivators dressed in black and red robes descended from the astralship. They landed in an orderly fashion right in front of the Oldgod Domain’s entrance, directly cutting the queue. However, no one said anything as that was their rightful place.
The ebon youths didn’t make much noise. They were a deep, indifferent, and solitary clan, quite a lot of whom were skilled in the soul and able to see another layer of the universe, which resulted in them having prudent and cautious personalities that focused on their cultivation.
Tianming looked at the ebons nearest to him. Their hair, eyes, and eyebrows were all as dark as ebon. Even their bones and blood vessels were clearly visible through their pale white skin and seemed to be ebon in color as well. The darker the ebon, the purer their bloodlines were. Similar to the Lin Clan, the ebons had a high emphasis on bloodline purity and restricted the mingling of blood with foreign races.
“Do you see their eyes?” Lin Lele asked him.
“Yes, I do. It’s very strange,” Tianming said. Their eyes were what aroused Tianming’s curiosity the most, as it was very similar to him. He had three eyes, one of which was the Plundering Eye on his left arm.
As for the ebons, they had four. Two were located on the normal location on the face. However, they were completely ebon and lacked any sclera, causing them to resemble Ebonia. Thus, looking into their eyes was like looking into the depths of an abyss. And just like Ebonia that swirled with explosive nova source within, so too did their eyes.
As for their other two eyes, they were on their palms. They were known as soul eyes and were the foundation of the ebons’ legend and might. Their soul eyes had direct links to their seas of consciousness and souls. Every ebon spent more than a third of their time cultivating their soul eyes.
It provided them with something that set them apart from the other races in the universe. Tianming hadn’t really believed it at first when he’d heard it for himself. Ebons weren’t normal beastmasters, nor were they totemancers, wondermancers, or primalwingers. Instead, they were ordinary people, who were usually considered to be the lowest, most boring, and most disadvantaged race!
Ordinary people were mostly on heliacal-class worlds and were the most numerous in the universe. On the sun and Violetglory, ordinary people were a rarity, but that was actually an exception rather than the rule. Ordinary humans made up the vast majority of the population on many heliacal-class worlds. For ordinary people, it was hard to become a god, let alone an astral god.
But if that were true, how did the ebons rise to greatness and stand at the peak of the Infinitum Mundus? That was because they weren’t traditional beastmasters, but infinite beastmasters!
It all came down to their soul eyes. By relying on the soul beastmastery left behind by their seniors, they could control nova wildbeasts. The various nova wildbeasts in Ebonia were equal to humanity, and their total power was greater than all the lifebound beasts there put together. Ever since ancient times, the ebons had historically been ‘friends’ of the local nova wildbeasts. Their ancestors were comrades with the beasts and had fought together alongside them, thus producing an infinitum-class race. Generation after generation of diligence had allowed them to create incredible control arts that let them communicate with nova wildbeasts, convincing them to fight for them even without lifebound beasts.
Of course, it wasn’t symbiotic cultivation. Nova wildbeasts were more savage and lacked intelligence, unlike lifebound beasts, but they had their advantages. Firstly, they didn’t fear death. Even if they did die, the ebon just had to find and control a new one. Secondly, infinity was the limit!
The more powerful their soul eyes were, the better quantity and quality of nova wildbeasts an ebon could control. The most exaggerated rumors claimed that, for those ebons who specialized in mass-controlling weak nova wildbeasts, they were accompanied by a horde of over ten thousand beasts.
From a certain perspective, infinite beastmasters were true beastmasters. People like Tianming weren’t actual masters of their lifebound beasts, but rather in a symbiotic relationship with them.
Due to factors like not fearing death, having no limits, and ease of replacement, many ebons would go through tens of thousands of wildbeasts throughout their lives. Just like the wonderians, theirs was a unique race. Other races might also have wonders, but they couldn’t reach the standard of the wonderians. Similarly, other cultivators with powerful souls might be able to control wildbeasts. However, they would lack the ebons’ scale.
“So it’s impossible to become the overlord of a mundus without having some inconceivable talent.” The ebons made Tianming recall Mu Qingqing. Back in the Abyssal Battlefield, she had used a forbidden art to control a Hecatoncheires Black-Devil to attack Jiang Qingluan. [1]
Of course, that wildbeast had been very weak and wasn’t that hard to control. However, the principles underlying that forbidden art and the ebons’ methods were the same. Their intricacies, though, were worlds apart. The Mu Qingqing back then definitely couldn’t imagine that, deep in the stars, there was a humongous black star on which its strongest race specialized in controlling wildbeasts!
That was also why the ebons were in conflict with all the other clans and organizations on Ebonia. Nova wildbeasts often came out of the ground to assault people, and also used Ebonia’s nova source. The Lin Clan even awarded merit for killing nova wildbeasts. However, those same wildbeasts were the companions of the ebons, who supported and even acted to propagate them. In fact, they wished for nothing more than Ebonia to become a playground for nova wildbeasts!
1. This was all the way back in chapter 124-125 or thereabouts. ☜
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