Beastmaster of the Ages

Chapter 1135 - Radiance

Give up! Give up! The words came like poisoned blades to Tianming, piercing his heart countless times. Even though he was within the mooncore, he could sense the experiences of everyone on the continent through the Omnisentient Threads as they looked toward the sky. As the moon fell, each of them felt how small and insignificant they were. They shivered, cried, and despaired. Tianming couldn't even catch a single breath when beset with all those feelings.

"It's over! Everything's done for!"

"There's going to be nothing left!"

"Mom, where are you? I'm scared…"

The skies rumbled and the ground broke apart. Like Bodhi had predicted, the collision would no doubt result in a brilliant flash all around, the light of which would probably be seen from high up in the astralscape of order. From a distance, it was sure to be a beautiful, sublime sight. However, those present during the collision would know that this expression of nature's beauty came at the cost of billions upon billions of sentient lifeforms.

Despair was endless. Time seemed to have stopped as everything quieted down. The flames of death had now engulfed both worlds. Those on the continent and moon alike cried out in helplessness. As Bodhi was now dead, the Divine Moon Realm's astralguard formation was still activated. Even so, those on the moon wouldn't be able to survive the collision either. Despair seeped into everyone’s hearts.

Tianming had experienced countless battles to the death, but never had his mind blanked out like it had now. He understood that no matter how talented he was, there were some things that were simply out of the realm of his control, mainly the hearts of people. Bodhi, Sovereign Xi, and even Little You might be minor figures in the history of the entire astralscape of order, but their thoughts and motivations were unbelievably complex.

By now, the light of the moon had enveloped the entire continent. Tianming took the Archaionfiend’s place and used all the power he could muster, groaning so hard that his voice turned hoarse as he twisted the Moondream Soul, but to no avail. In the silence, his heavy breathing sounded piercingly loud.

Right then, the distance between the moon and the continent was about half the diameter of the chaos skyjail. Even more rumbling occurred all over as some people were drawn upward toward the moon by its gravity. Cries flooded into his mind; they were like poisonous needles to him. Bodhi had said that the eradication of the Flameyellow Continent would haunt him for life, and he was right. The pain of surviving and enduring the death of one's loved ones—Bodhi's pain—was now fully clear to Tianming. Little You's suicide had completely broken the specter.

Tianming felt like his soul was being torn apart. It was over. Nobody could stop the collision of the moon and the continent now. The moonlight had overpowered the light of the orderian sun by virtue of its sheer proximity to the continent. The next instant, the human realm would be plunged into eternal hell.

However, everything seemed to turn quiet, and even stop. Was it a trick of the mind that slowed down the subjective sensation of the passing of time in the moment of death? No, it had slowed down too much for that to be the case. It couldn't be.

Waiting for a good while with his breath held, Tianming finally breathed a sigh of relief. He had discovered something incomprehensible from the Omnisentient Threads. It appeared that the moon had stopped falling and was affixed at a point in space. Even though the gravity of the moon was still drawing parts of the continent toward it, the collision didn't happen.

"What is going on?"

The ones who had survived were watching the scene with wide eyes.

"How is this happening?" Tianming tried to look for the answer through the Omnisentient Threads. "That's the chaos skyjail!" For a collision to properly occur, the moon would first have to collide with the chaos skyjail, which was a gigantic dome that covered the part of the continent that resembled a human head. The trajectory of the moon's fall had brought it close to that area. The barrier that was colloquially known as the Canal of the Dead had stopped the moon in its tracks by letting out boundless black smoke that took the shape of hands that held the moon up high, not allowing it to finish the collision! Not only that, they were holding the moon stably in place!

"This… this is a miracle!" the Archaionfiend cried.

Tianming was even more flabbergasted that something like this had happened at his place of birth. The chaos skyjail was actually managing to hold up the moon like it was a ball in a game.

"Keep turning!" Tianming hollered at the Archaionfiend with all he had.

"Oh? Okay!" It snapped back into action and tried to take control of the Divine Moon Realm once more. Now that it was no longer falling, it was worth giving it another try. The Archaionfiend used all of its power to turn the Moondream Soul, resulting in a piercing sound reverberating throughout the mooncore. Initially, the Divine Moon Realm began to shake and crumble as a result of the opposing forces of attraction, but then a brilliant radiance could be seen as the moon began rising again.

The gigantic celestial body began leaving the hold of the chaos skyjail as countless cheers erupted from the moon and continent. The moon grew smaller and smaller from below. Eventually, the clouds on it were so small that they couldn't be seen anymore.

The two worlds that had been apart for millions of years were going to split up once more before they could even touch. Eventually, the damage being done to the Flameyellow Continent started to taper off until it was no more. The higher the moon rose, the stabler the situation grew. Though it still shook a few times and almost began its descent once more, it still managed to keep its course.

"Hey! Have a stable grip on it, won't you?!" Tianming snapped when the moon shook.

"Shut up! You're only going to distract this old gal' doing her work!" the Archaionfiend snapped.

"Huh? With how rough you sound, I never thought you’d actually be female." Tianming rolled his eyes.

"Boss, you're so dumb! I knew Sister You was female as I tossed her up into the sky when we played around!" Lan Huang said with a gleeful look.

"Shut up!" The Archaionfiend felt like it was going to vomit blood.

"Tortoise Bro, what did you see?" Ying Huo asked with excitement. Even Meow Meow waited attentively, waiting for Lan Huang to tell them more.

"Hahaha… well—" Before it could finish, it saw the seething glare of the Archaionfiend and shuddered. "I didn't see anything! I'm a pure and innocent dragon-tortoise!"

"Say it!" Ying Huo snapped.

The Archaionfiend was frustrated to find that its identity would actually cause them to react like that. However, it didn't stop working. Though the process was slow, the moon was still rising without a doubt. Once it was past the height of the Kilostar Domain, the power Tianming had gained from his subjects vanished again. He began to calm down and absorb stellunar source, raising him, his totems, and beasts to the Octasaint Sky level.

"By now, I’ll be able to fight constelliers on even footing without the Omnisentient Threads." Bodhi was already dead, so Tianming would be unrivaled on the moon.

The Divine Moon Realm continued rising. The two worlds no longer tore at each other, putting an end to the ongoing damage. As the collision hadn't really happened, no real, lasting damage was done. As for the collapsed buildings and ruined homes, people could rebuild. Those on the continent continued watching as the moon shrank smaller and smaller.

"This disaster is finally over," Lin Xiaoxiao said, having witnessed the whole incident. Even with the power of all life, they could only barely stop Bodhi. The thing that had really stopped the moon was the chaos skyjail. Though the commotion was over, people were still left rather traumatized. Nobody cheered at the near brush with death they just had, neither on the moon nor the continent. Everyone was still paralyzed with fear.

"The Divine Moon Realm should be back at its original position in half an hour," the Archaionfiend said.

Tianming decided to leave the rest to it while he calmed himself and dealt with the aftermath. Bodhi's corpse was still floating in the mooncore, the transformation from before having been undone. Even so, his pale eyes remained open. He thought he had won, so a smile of satisfaction could still be seen on his face. It was a blissful death, if nothing else.

"Everything ends when you die. As far as you're concerned, none of this means anything anymore. In that sense, you’ve truly won, Bodhi. You achieved the result you wanted. Your fate is far more enviable than those who died in resentment."

After all, wasn't that all that mattered? One had to go on living to perceive the truth. As far as dead people were concerned, their experience of the truth ended at the point of death. Any further discussion past that point in time didn't concern them any longer.

Tianming continued looking at the corpse whose blood was about to be drained in full. At the end of the day, the blood belonged to his ancestors, not him, so it left his body after he passed.

"Perhaps like Little You, this is your true self. You both carried far too heavy a burden of resentment that didn't belong to you."