Chapter 1416 - Silver Nightmare
Yin Chen had eyes and ears across the entire continent, allowing Tianming to note the movement of everyone. His goal was the total annihilation of Li Wushuang's force! He would drive the celestial orderians and the outsiders out of the Azurecloud Continent, and taking down the Snowsun Quadspecters was crucial for that goal.
From the moment they met, Yun Tianque had been provoking them to risk entering the formation. Given that they were grade-six formation gurus, they definitely wouldn't be able to resist it, and they fell for the provocations in the end. When Yang Ce, Long Wanying, and the rest showed up, their expressions changed.
"The chief instructor of the Azuresoul Palace... showed up at the Supracloud Sanctuary?" That was something they could never have fathomed.
Yang Ce and the rest didn't even give them time to react. They immediately attacked the moment they appeared, five against one, and each of them weren’t one bit weaker than the specters.
"Yun Tianque controls this formation, so it should be much easier to trap enemies within it than the Divine Worldeater Cauldron. Taking down the specters is only a matter of time." Even so, Tianming urged them to be as fast as they could; time was of the essence now. As they fought, he retreated farther back and awaited the results, monitoring the situation with Yin Chen.
"These Snowsun Quadspecters spent an entire hour to pass five thousand layers of the formation, so there's no way they'll be able to escape quickly."
The thick illusory layers of the formation prevented anyone outside from finding out what was happening within. Not even transmission stones would be able to leave its bounds.
"Will we kill them off?" Ying Huo asked.
"We can't for now. They must’ve left lifesoul stones with Li Wushuang. If they die, she'll send even more people here. Ideally, we'll keep them subdued and put them to good use," Tianming said.
As they spoke, the identical specters suddenly transformed from handsome middle-aged men to gigantic hairy white apes with fiendish red faces. Their true forms were horribly ugly. It was a shame that they were facing off against beastmasters and a totemancer. Yang Ce's darknight truefiends already outnumbered the four specters, to say nothing of the other four beastmasters and their beasts. Yun Tianque was especially potent there, given that the area within the formation was the turf of his nimbus emperor.
Tianming watched with yearning as the strongest elites of this world battled it out. "When will I finally be as strong as they are?" These seniors had been cultivating for centuries, so the gap wasn't something he could catch up to, unlike that of his seniors from the Flameyellow Continent.
Gigantic beasts and figures burst through the dense layers of mist and clouds. Yun Tianque's nimbus emperor, Long Wanying's dragons, and Yang Ce's truefiends filled the skies with boundless power. Even Yan Nuxia's gigantic orange bears were shockingly powerful. Their paws were large as islands, and each slam fiercely displaced masses of clouds.
"Chase down that one with me, my bears!" Yan Nuxia yelled. She was as much a beast as her bears, the bold sweeps of her war blade capable of making even the most experienced veterans piss themselves in fear. Every battle she fought was dominated by her. Fortunately, the sheer commotion she caused was drowned out completely by the dense cloud formation to the point that not even the Tumulus Pill God noticed anything, despite being directly outside the formation.
Eventually, the chaos began dying down. When Tianming returned, the specters were completely wasted, bleeding from all parts of their body and tied up by Yang Ce.
"Yang Ce, Long Wanying, I thought you lot would be so bold as to kill us! Is this all you're going to do? Stop pretending, then!" It was a mystery how they were still able to sync up their speech despite their current predicament. They glared at Yang Ce and the rest before setting sights on Tianming. "Release us and prostrate yourselves! Beg Lady Wushuang for forgiveness and you might yet be spared. Otherwise, no matter what reason you guys are working together for, your entire families will be exterminated!"
They were infamous for massacring a few sects themselves, and up until now, they had managed to use their terrifying reputation to great effect. Yet that reputation was nothing to the bonegnaw ants. "Seniors, we won’t kill you for now because we wish to give you a chance to atone for your previous sins." Tens of thousands of silver eggs turned into ants on Tianming's body and began crawling outward.
"What in the world?" The four of them watched in shock. Gujian Qingshuang and Yun Tianque didn't even dare to look. If they were honest, their experiences of being subjugated was far from as painful as it appeared now. Tianming had the bonegnaw ants instill as much pain as they could for a far longer time to make sure the Snowsun Quadspecters would remain obedient.
By the time the parasitization was complete, each of the specters had around one or two million ants in their body. Only then did Tianming get Yin Chen to stop. They had cried out so hard and uncontrollably twitched from the unbearable pain. Now, they were simply slumped there like unresponsive idiots foaming from the mouth as their fingers still shuddered as their bodies lay limply on the cloudy surface.
"Look, you're still alive and well, aren't you?"
The four of them twitched when they heard Tianming's voice. It was like something out of their worst nightmares.
"Ugh...." They coughed and groaned as they huddled together, looking at Tianming in despair.
"You have two choices. The first is to do what I tell you, and the second is to continue experiencing the pain you did just now. It'll last as long as it takes until you die. I can assure you that you’ll regret even being born after all that is over." They had never imagined that such nonchalant words from a junior would cause their hair to stand on end. Had they known this was how things would end up from the beginning, they never would have bothered coming.
Tianming had opted to use the language of cruelty, something they probably understood well, to make his message clear. "I’ll give you the span of ten breaths to consider things. I'm sure you've been around the block for quite a while, so you should know when the right time to submit is. Open your eyes to reality, why don't you?"
He began counting the time right away. As he counted, the bonegnaw ants gradually went back to what they were doing, causing the pain to intensify more and more until their pathetic shrieks rang out again.
"We submit! Submit!" Finally utterly broken, they had fallen from grace and cried tears of submission. Though it hadn’t been that hard to break them, considering that they had never really had any backbone to begin with, given how they ran from their pursuers and sought protection from Li Wushuang. "What do you want us to do?" Never had they regarded a junior with a look of such intense fear.
"I want you to serve me for the rest of your life. Do whatever I tell you to. You have no right to refuse, understood?" Tianming said.
The four of them grit their teeth, then suddenly attacked Tianming, only for the ants to reduce them to writhing piles of agony. They began coughing out chunks of their intestines. The ordeal only lasted a short fifteen minutes. Yet now, their eyes were hollow, as if they were already dead.