Chapter 1981 - Ending the Foe

Skywolf had lost far too much as a result of their greed. Even so, the three rulers still had their sights on the Flameyellow Coffin. While Empress Ying had her attention focused on the battlefield, Tianming entered the ship through the hole at its bottom. The damaged formation wasn't a big deal for his sky plunderer talents to overcome.

"This is their turf, so fighting here will be rather restrictive for me. I should be prepared." Even so, he had chosen to accept this challenge. This ship was five times the size of the Divine Sun Palace, and Empress Ying was holding its core. If he could kill her—or simply take away the core—the Starvore itself would completely shut off just like the Divine Sun Palace had before its spare formation core was remade. That would no doubt prevent many casualties.

"If the core of the Starvore falls into the sun emperor's hands, it’d be just as troubling." Despite knowing the risks, it was still worth taking it for that reason alone.

After entering the ship, he would no longer be able to see how the battle outside was going. However, he knew that if he managed to disable the Starvore’s attacks, the sun emperor and Li Wudi would be under much less pressure. Since the invasion had begun, Tianming and Lingfeng had contributed just as much as the sun emperor had to the war effort.

𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He proceeded along the cold corridors of the ship's interior. Countless invisible cockroaches were sent crawling out to find the core of the ship. No doubt, Empress Ying would be there as well. He could still hear the sounds of battle from the outside. The Starvore was traveling at great speed as it weaved in and out of the battle from time to time, and every time Tianming felt the wave of nova source surging, he knew that it had just attacked.

"Yin Chen, hurry up!" There was no way he would be able to find it alone.

"Fussing stop!" Yin Chen replied.

"You mean stop fussing?"

"Off buzz!" Yin Chen's speech quirks were getting weirder and weirder; it had even started speaking in reverse. Despite that, it didn't hamper its efficiency at all. In fact, the more obsessive it was, the better it worked. "Come here... with me!" It led Tianming along a path upon which more and more bones could be seen. They were skulls surrounded by lifeless white flames, all piled up on one another to form the walls of the ship. The baleful aura inside the ship was significant, to say the least.

"Who’s there?!" asked a woman's voice before Tianming approached.

"Hmph." Without another word, he rushed in that direction and appeared in a gigantic hall with walls and pillars all made of skulls. There was even a throne of skulls at the highest point of the hall, upon which a woman of complete pale white sat.

Her hands were placed on two spheroids covered in divine patterns that depicted the Starvore. Those were probably the cores that controlled the ship, each belonging to Empress Yu and Empress Ying respectively.

Empress Ying was dressed in simple snow-white furs, seemingly for comfort since she was in her own 'home'. The two gazes met in the hall of white bone. While she hadn't actually seen Tianming before, she could tell that it was him with a single look. After snapping out of her stupor, she smiled with disbelief and said, "Child, I know who you are. You're the miracle child of this star. I am extremely curious about you, yet I never expected that you’d serve yourself up on a silver platter like this without even securing a means of escape. I heard you have your own divine astralship as well, so you must know that you're walking into my turf. Why make it hard for yourself to escape?"

She didn't bear much killing intent toward Tianming, as miracle children like him often had many hidden powers and legacies, which were quite tempting. This might be the only chance Empress Ying could put any contribution in her own name. Her expression quickly shifted as she put away the two cores. She stood up and flaunted her alluring figure, looking down on the white-haired youth as she descended from her throne. Her gaze was so ravenous that he felt like he was being swallowed.

"What a perfect boy you are, young, bright, and proud. Surely, you must be quite a wild beast." She didn't hold back anything at all, since she wasn't worried about being overheard here. Nothing she did there would be noticed by anyone. While she appeared far more prim and proper than Empress Yu, her hidden nature would show itself under certain conditions. She was like a gaping black hole that wanted to swallow everything about Tianming. The doors were locked and the two of them were the only witnesses to what would happen there. She saw him as nothing more than prey she could sate her desires with.

"Are you not afraid?" she said, her fine feet stepping on the skulls on the ground as she licked her slender fingers, striking a salacious pose that made her appear like a snow-white aquatic snake. The sheen from her lips was so shiny that Tianming was nearly blinded by it.

He didn't think he would become the prey, even though he was the one who had snuck in of his own accord. If he’d had the time, he wouldn't mind bantering a bit, but time wasn't a luxury he had during an astral war. People were dying at every moment, so wasting time was the same as wasting the lives of his comrades!

The Starvore is a weapon of mass destruction for both sides. I didn't dare to bring the Ninedragon Imperial Tomb here because of that. But if I manage to disable the Starvore, my ship will be the king of the skies. Nobody will be capable of threatening it. I have to get those cores! While taking the cores didn't necessarily mean he could use the Starvore, the least he could do was to deny the enemy’s use of it.

Empress Ying eyed Tianming more and more, seemingly quite satisfied with her catch. He was the kind of bright youth that was the exact opposite of the cold, mature men of her world, and that was just her type. If it weren’t for the rule that sovereigns had to marry each other, she wouldn't have had to suppress her desires. However, she may have wanted his body, but Tianming wanted her life.

"Me? Afraid of you?" Tianming made it sound like he had just heard a joke. He whipped out his Grand-Orient Sword and laid it against his shoulder, his gold and black eyes shining with divine light as he glared at her. Then the ten bane-rings on his arms surged with sword ki. She had regarded him as nothing more than a flesh toy, while he looked at her like fine game to be hunted! "You destroyed my home and people. Why would I fear you? I just need to vanquish you!"

Their states of mind hadn’t been aligned from the very start. Those words immediately snapped Empress Ying out of her wild thoughts, much to her dismay. "Very well. Since you're a wild beast, I'll just have to tame you first."

Tianming didn't wait for anything else and struck. Empress Ying was much stronger than the other sovereigns he had fought, so he didn't dare to act carelessly! Empress Yu had shown him what they were capable of, after all. He summoned his lifebound beasts out in the hall of bones; the five of them had idled for quite a long time during the ship battles, so they were excited to face off against a specter sovereign.

Then his pandemonium and cyclic sacrosuns manifested. He felt the power of faith from fifty billion people surge toward him before entering his decapath era godswords. Even the Prime Wonder absorbed quite a bit of Omnisentient power, greatly expanding in size as it came crashing down on Empress Ying from above. The five grand beasts all had their eyes locked on the dainty girl, their abilities ready.

"What a monster! You're far too interesting!" Her excitement was hard to quell and her long-buried battlelust was beginning to surface once more. She looked like she couldn't wait to devour the delicious meal before her. "This is going to be fun!"

Lifeless White flame burst out of her body, lighting up all the skulls in the hall. Countless divine patterns flowed around her as flames flooded the battlefield. The pressure she gave Tianming was fitting for an empress of Skywolf! Her dainty figure suddenly enlarged, morphing into a two-hundred-meter-tall monster that seemed even tougher than Empress Yu's werewolf form. Her body, forged over a thousand years, appeared even more robust than Lan Huang's, complete with a set of ghastly claws and fangs. Perhaps this was her true form, rather than the woman from before.

When she tightened her fists, it sounded like metal rubbing against metal. Each strand of her fur was like a metallic needle. The lifeless flame burned in her eyes, making her appear even colder. She was both beauty and beast.