In the darkness of the cosmos, severed limbs drifted silently. Shattered ships lay scattered in ruin alongside bloodstained skulls and broken weapons — a scene of utter devastation.
This battle had drawn to a close. The supreme powerhouses of both sides had clashed and emerged broken, each retreating with blood on their lips, while several Saints had paid with their lives.
Luanfeng the Saint, who bore the title of Heavenly King and had risen as a dazzling prodigy over the past thousand years, had dueled the Nine Phoenix King to a standstill without either side gaining the upper hand. He had temporarily withdrawn to the Eternal Prime Star.
The Ancient Clan fell into a grim silence. They had underestimated this star region — they had come without a Great Saint, and without an Extreme Dao Ancient Imperial Weapon. To continue fighting would mean courting death.
“Retreating just like this — I cannot accept it. Yes, we seized some evolution fluid, but we also lost several Ancestor Kings. The price we paid was far too steep for what we gained,” said an Ancestor King of the Huntian Clan, his voice cold and cutting.
The Nine Phoenix King had entered seclusion to tend to his wounds. The remaining Ancient Kings gathered together and deliberated carefully. This ancient star almost certainly harbored a Great Saint, and perhaps even a divine battle armor left behind by an ancient god — a genuine threat.
“Put aside any notion of sweeping through this entire star region. Let us first learn more about the situation before making any decisions,” counseled one of the elder Ancestor Kings, measured and composed.
From that day forward, both sides fell into a deadlock. The Ancient Clan no longer ventured freely into the great life-bearing ancient star, choosing instead to linger outside the domain.
Of course, they occasionally slipped inside in disguise, traveling to various locations to seek their opportunities.
Yet the technological civilization of Eternal was no trifling matter. With genetic imprinting and other identification technologies, ordinary disguises could not escape their all-seeing detection.
The holy beasts were formidably powerful, and monitoring systems blanketed every corner of the entire star region. There were even times when an Ancestor King had barely descended before being locked onto, igniting immediate conflict.
This was a protracted standoff. The Ancient Clan grew increasingly uneasy as they learned that, beyond Luanfeng’s imminent ascent to Great Saint, this world might harbor a true peerless Great Saint — one of genuine stature.
What unsettled them most was the existence of ancient divine armor comparable to their own Extreme Dao Ancient Imperial Weapon. That was a blow to the head.
“In recent times, as we travel through outer space surveying divine ore deposits in the depths of the cosmos, we keep encountering individual holy beasts. Our lives are under constant threat.”
“We call upon the Great Saint to act! We call upon supreme powerhouses like Luanfeng to continue their campaigns and drive these savage beasts and monsters out of the Eternal Star Region once and for all — our peaceful lives have been disturbed!”
The Ancient Clan were naturally no benign creatures. Though they had kept a low profile these past days, they had still been active, causing no small amount of bloodshed. The people of the Eternal Star Region had begun petitioning en masse, urging supreme powerhouses across all territories to take action.
“I truly wish to annihilate an entire contingent of theirs — to shatter their arrogance and reduce them to eternal slaves!”
One Ancestor King’s face had turned iron-dark, his words brutally cold, his eyes carrying a glacial, predatory light. A proud Ancestor King of his stature felt utterly humiliated in this place, reduced to being called a “savage beast and monster” by others’ mouths.
He thought back to how glorious they had been in the Big Dipper, where the human race had feared and trembled before them — yet now they were hunted like prey on all sides, and worse, they dared not act rashly.
“It takes a villain to grind down another villain. None of them are decent folk — best they keep fighting each other,” Ye Fan said with a cold laugh.
He had been quite at ease of late. Having studied both sides’ strengths in detail, he was confident that without Great Saint reinforcements from the Big Dipper, these Ancient Kings alone could not conquer the Eternal Star Region — in fact, they might face total annihilation.
After half a month of standoffs, covert skirmishes, and slaughter, the Ancient Clan grew ever more wary, while the morale of those on the Eternal Prime Star soared higher by the day.
“Kill these holy beasts! Sweep them all out! They’ve been lurking outside the domain causing trouble — they’ve brought us nothing but grief!”
“They are a vast and precious quarry. The flesh, blood, hide, and bone of these holy beasts are all divine-grade materials. Brave warriors, take up your weapons — go destroy them and bring them back for study!”
The people of the Eternal Star Region were a proud race. Their brilliant history, radiant civilization, and formidable foundations had long allowed them to look down upon this stretch of the cosmos. Now their fighting spirit blazed. They refused to allow what they saw as savage beasts and monsters to lord over the domain of space. They wanted every last one driven away, and it was precisely under this sense of superiority that mercenary groups of all kinds mobilized.
Many powerful organizations began posting bounty missions, encouraging supreme powerhouses from all walks of life to venture beyond the domain and hunt holy beasts.
“The Lanto Family has posted a bounty — they’re offering an entire vein of rare Purple Cloud Crystal Ancient Ore, enough to forge a Saint-level mothership, in exchange for a single vial of holy beast blood. Now that is a lavish offer.”
“I’ve already heard. The senior disciple of Luanfeng the Heavenly King took the commission and slipped out beyond the domain in secret, gravely wounding an Ancestor King and retrieving a vial of blue-hued blood in exchange for that ore vein.”
“Heavens — that’s truly enviable. That Purple Cloud Crystal Ancient Ore, once refined through a hundred processes, could even be used to forge a Saint-grade royal armor. It is among the rarest of all materials.”
People discussed it endlessly, full of envy, their hearts stirring — yet most could only look on. Hunting holy beasts was not something ordinary people could accomplish, only figures of supreme renown.
“Hmm — the Celestial Fire Mercenary Corps has dispatched a great fleet of cosmic warships. They are a supremely powerful organization, one that has always loved colonizing native peoples.”
However, the Celestial Fire Mercenary Corps returned in defeat. Many of their battleships were destroyed, and they retrieved only a few drops of Saint-level blood — and even those were obtained purely by chance, collected when an unlucky strike pierced the arm of an Ancient Clan Ancestor King and a few droplets happened to spill.
Many failed, but sheer numbers made up for individual shortcomings. Any group possessing a cosmic mothership could attempt an assault.
“Major news — the Cao Family has posted an astronomical bounty. Whoever successfully hunts down a complete holy beast will receive ten jin of Thousandfold Starriver Divine Sand. That is absolutely staggering!”
This announcement sent shockwaves through the crowd. Thousandfold Starriver Divine Sand was extraordinarily rare — refined from the cosmic starriver — and could be used to forge Great Saint-level instruments of war.
The Eternal Prime Star naturally erupted in excitement. Many coveted it, and figures like Luanfeng, who stood on the very threshold of the Great Saint realm, paid especially keen attention.
In the end, Miluo the Heavenly King made his move. He had been in seclusion for several centuries and was a supreme powerhouse — one likewise half a step away from becoming a Great Saint. This time he struck with overwhelming force.
A fierce battle erupted beyond the domain. Miluo was devastatingly sharp. He slew an Ancestor King, preserving the massive body intact, and delivered it to the Cao Family, obtaining what he sought.
This was a time of turmoil. Various battles erupted without warning, and the Ancient Clan mounted fierce counterattacks. Those who ventured beyond the domain to hunt were nearly all slaughtered in a tide of blood, nine out of ten never returning.
The most devastating blow came from a powerhouse belonging to the Primordial Clan — ranked first among the Ten Great Primordial Royal Clans — who launched a surprise assault, sinking an immortal sacred ground to the depths.
The conflict between both sides had reached a fever pitch.
All the killing did nothing to stop the various mercenary corps of the Eternal Prime Star, nor the warriors who poured out for the sake of those astronomical bounties. To hunt holy beasts, they spared no means — some even detonated entire planets!
“I’ve had enough! I truly want to bathe this star region in blood and slaughter this entire species to the last!” One Ancestor King raged, stomping with fury.
In those last few days, warriors swarmed into space by the thousands — strong and weak alike — all of them screaming about hunting holy beasts, leaving a group of proud Ancient Kings so enraged they felt their lungs would burst.
“So many have died, yet they still learn nothing, throwing themselves forward one after another. When will it end? I truly cannot hold myself back any longer. Seeing a swarm of ants declaring they’ll bite a lion to death — I want to grind every last one of them into dust!”
“Calm yourself. There are genuine experts on the Eternal Prime Star — have you not noticed? Another Heavenly King has appeared out of nowhere, this Miluo, bent on hunting our kind.”
The Ancient Clan seethed with fury and were utterly exhausted by it all, yet the warriors of the Eternal Star Region grew in number by the day, driving warships of every kind, setting elaborate traps to hunt holy beasts.
In the midst of this, one Slashing Dao practitioner spent a fortune at an auction house to acquire a forbidden weapon, which he buried on a small planet. An Ancestor King who happened to land there inadvertently triggered it. The entire small planet exploded. Blood poured from the Ancestor King in great sheets as he retreated, badly wounded.
The man collected enough blood and, without intending to, became a celebrated example — sparking a storm that fell just short of turning the hunting of holy beasts into a universal crusade.
Many young people swore grand oaths to accomplish great deeds, each one scheming and calculating their approach. Though most of them never returned, the fervor could not be contained.
The beleaguered Ancient Clan erupted in rage again and again. Some shook with fury, veins bulging, and unleashed bloody reprisals — which in turn provoked powerhouses like Luanfeng and Miluo into action yet again, and both sides went at each other hammer and tongs.
When Ye Fan heard of this, he could only let out a cold, cunning laugh. He had been fanning the flames throughout the entire process, deliberately stoking the tensions between both sides to keep escalating. That young man who had stumbled into extraordinary luck — detonating a small planet and nearly blowing an Ancient King to pieces — was naturally none other than Ye Fan himself, acting as a model for others to follow.
His period of leisure did not last long. The Ancient Clan sold him out, loudly proclaiming to all that they had come for his Indestructible Golden Body — and that they intended to capture this public enemy!
The Eternal Star Region immediately erupted. Needless to say, the Cao Family, the Brahma Clan, and others who harbored deep hatred for him were first to respond. But beyond them, the Sun Never Sets Royal Clan, the Canghai Clan, the Lanto Clan, the Zhao Family, and the other twelve immortal heritages that had once launched an expedition against the Big Dipper were equally consumed with gnashing fury.
It had been the Demon God and Ye Fan together who had led them astray — causing them to misjudge the combat strength of the Big Dipper’s natives, resulting in their advance forces being slaughtered by holy beasts with devastating losses.
“What?! The Indestructible Golden Body has returned?! Tear this planet apart stone by stone if you must — find him and skin him alive!”
“Activate the genetic imprint sensors. Search the heavens and the earth — bring him in! His crimes cannot go unpunished!”
The Eternal Prime Star descended into chaos. Forces from every quarter mobilized simultaneously, all of them searching for Ye Fan’s whereabouts, hunting for any trace of him.
Ye Fan breathed a sigh of relief. The Emperor Wushi’s Heaven-Deceiving Formation Runes proved immensely useful — concealing every trace of his life signature, rendering useless even the sensors that not even Ancient Kings could evade.
He half-suspected that when the Emperor Wushi had passed through this place in ages past, he had encountered similar difficulties, and had therefore incorporated certain special ideas when creating this formation.
The Ancient Clan laughed coldly and with barely concealed killing intent. Even they themselves were frequently detected and could not fully shake those sensors — they were certain Ye Fan would reveal himself soon enough.
“We’ll wait for him to emerge, then cut him to pieces!”
“The Green Copper Cauldron is ours. And his corpse must be brought back to the Big Dipper. He has offended ten thousand clans — even if he flees to the ends of the cosmos, he will be hunted down and destroyed!”
Ye Fan’s true self remained hidden. He was completely composed, and soon set yet another plan in motion.
“Warriors — what are you still waiting for?! Go beyond the domain and hunt holy beasts! Conquer them and make them our mounts — we shall become Holy Knights!”
Ye Fan no longer posed as the young man who had stumbled into blind luck before. This time he wanted to demonstrate real power, and he stirred up a great wave of people.
He piloted an ancient Saint-level war machine, leading the crowd as they set up one spatial trap after another beyond the domain, then went out alone to draw in the holy beasts.
Others would have been useless for this task, but in a place where no one could see, he had no need to conceal his true strength — he could slay Ancient Saints!
And so he pressed forward one engagement at a time, beating an Ancestor King to the brink of death before sending him hurling into a spatial trap, triggering a massive explosion.
“We slew a Saint — we actually… slew a Saint!”
The group of hot-blooded warriors cried out as they discovered the Ancestor King’s skull had been blasted apart by the forbidden weapon, blood spraying through the air as he fell dead in the cold void of space.
“What a shame the Immortal Platform was destroyed in the blast — otherwise we truly could have captured him alive and become Holy Beast Knights!”
The group sighed, but they were overjoyed nonetheless. They carefully divided the holy beast’s remains beyond the domain and headed back to the Eternal Prime Star separately.
This was undeniably sensational. A group of warriors had slain a holy beast — their individual power was nothing remarkable, yet they had defied all reason and returned triumphantly with full spoils.
Without question, this had set another example, inspiring a great wave of fiery-spirited powerhouses. Though their strength left much to be desired, their ambitions were boundless, and they hurled themselves beyond the domain one after another, igniting a storm.
The Ancient Clan were truly furious now. Some Ancestor Kings trembled with rage, wishing they could slap every last one of them dead and kick the ancient star itself to pieces.