Realizing this, Void Sandalwood's jaw dropped, shock beyond all measure, and it stared at Shi Jin in disbelief. "You're a Grade Five beastmaster???"

"Uh." Shi Jin blinked, looking at Void Sandalwood's crumbling expression. "Doesn't matter much, doesn't matter much. My talent's telepathy, and either way I can't contract Overlord-class beasts, so Grade Five or Grade Six is all the same—doesn't affect my combat strength at all."

Void Sandalwood: ???

Tele... telepathy talent?

"Owww, aooow aaaah."

Damn it—as Void Sandalwood screamed, it suddenly noticed: right, this challenger, why the hell hadn't he used his beastmaster talent?

So it wasn't that he forgot—it was that his telepathy talent gave next to no boost in battle, which was why it never showed?

Void Sandalwood's entire worldview took a direct hit. It wept in agony, more bitterly than when it had admitted defeat moments ago.

Which meant this blockhead had pushed it to the brink without any beastmaster talent buff at all?

At that thought, Void Sandalwood's face darkened—and a face that was already black turned even blacker.

It had been raised by the Void Emperor after the legendary rank! How could it lose to a black-and-white bear raised by a Grade Five brat with a telepathy talent? This—this made no sense.

"Eee! (Want some?)"

Just as Void Sandalwood's worldview shattered, an aroma and a voice roused it. A Ginseng Baby clone had walked up holding a fruit and offered it, asking.

Void Sandalwood stared at the brat in silence, then looked at Cen Yu.

Why would such a powerful beastmaster still contract a Ginseng Baby?

"Not eating." Void Sandalwood said coldly and proudly, then went back to drawing on the ruins' void energy to repair and restore its injuries. The Ginseng Baby clone pursed its lips—heh~ a loser to the boss.

Meanwhile Shi Jin was grinning as he probed: "So, uh, that Starry Void Beast egg... and I heard that if you beat you, we get to train in the Void Emperor Ruins—is that true...?"

Shi Jin rubbed his hands together, full of anticipation.

Void Sandalwood screeched: "I know, I know, you're a pain in the ass."

With that, it summoned an egg the size of a soccer ball—round, white, patterned with purple markings.

"Here—"

It tossed it carelessly toward Shi Ying for Shi Jin to catch, and at the same time, a leather blueprint fell onto the egg.

"It records the methods for hatching and contracting."

Shi Jin ignored the egg and turned his attention to the blueprint. The writing on it dated from the Void Emperor's era and differed only slightly from the modern script—Shi Yu could read all of it.

He glanced over the blueprint. The contract method did not hold Shi Jin's attention for long, but the hatching method made him freeze on the spot.

So much trouble.

It recorded that for a Starry Pet Beast egg to absorb enough nourishment and hatch, it required a specific kind of stellar force.

Ordinarily, a beastmaster would have no way to find stellar force at all, but the Void Emperor had made ample preparations for the lucky one.

Since only specific geographical locations could draw down specific stellar force,

he had established four great arrays in four places, each capable of attracting a different kind of starlight.

The beastmaster who obtained the egg could go to those places and, with the aid of the ruins' array diagrams, help the egg hatch.

Had it been only that, Shi Jin would not have minded. But when he glanced at the four special ruin sites marked on the map, his face went dark at once.

What the hell—one ruin in the Seven Isles, one in Glory, one in Tingxiang, and one in the Totem Zone. Was the Void Emperor messing with people for fun?

Soon enough, though, Shi Jin figured it out. If this had been the Void Emperor's era, those locations would have been no trouble at all, because the Void Emperor had built intercontinental teleportation arrays—anywhere on Blue Star was an instant away. The problem was, those arrays had long since stopped working!

"Let's go out and take a look, out we go."

Before Shi Jin could complain any further, Void Sandalwood could not hold back its heckling. It said, "If you want to cultivate in the Void Emperor Ruins, then starting tomorrow, you all leave first. This lord needs a rest. Oof."

Having met challengers for several days straight, Void Sandalwood had been pushed to its limit by this battle and suddenly wanted nothing more than a long, deep sleep.

Before Shi Jin could react, he—along with Eleven, who was clutching the ginseng baby in pain and bliss alike—was teleported out of the ruin space.

…………

The outside world.

The people outside were genuinely bored out of their minds.

Ji Feng, fifth in the Sequence, was plainly a socially anxious sort—no telling how he had ever managed to work as an undercover agent.

At this moment, under everyone's questioning, he had no choice but to disclose a little about his battle with Void Sandalwood.

"Not even an Elemental Lord's half-self-detonation worked??"

"I said it before—unless it's the spatial type, other types can hardly wound that thing."

"But if it is the spatial type, then before that opponent it's just showing off in front of an expert. There's simply no way around it."

"Ji Feng, don't be discouraged. I get you." Seeing Ji Feng's silent look, Zou Tianwang felt a deep kinship—he too found that mantis unbearable.

"Don't get familiar with me," Ji Feng said after a silence.

"I'm not discouraged. That is, after all, a beast the Void Emperor bred, and its strength really is formidable. Even Jiang Tianyang, whom I fought once—his Overlord-class beast up against that Void Sandalwood—probably wouldn't come out ahead."

Jiang Tianyang, fourth in the Sequence, a legendary beastmaster. Ji Feng had once challenged him publicly, and lost.

Everyone sighed. True enough—that Void Sandalwood could well be regarded as Overlord-class fighting strength.

Its long failure to break through was most likely because it was stuck at the level cap; after all, its skill proficiency was close to meeting the standard.

"A pity," President Wang said from the side. "A pity that among Donghuang's top masters, there is no beastmaster with a 'spatial enhancement talent.' Otherwise, perhaps through the combined efforts of beastmaster and beast, along with the Association's targeted training, we might one day earn the right to fight that Void Sandalwood."

"Defeat your opponent with the attribute he excels in."

Temporal enhancement, spatial enhancement—both were first-rate talents, exceedingly rare and exceedingly hard to pass down. That Donghuang presently had no top master with such a talent left the Association quite helpless.

"Speaking of which, why hasn't Shi Jin come out yet?" Zou Tianwang suddenly looked toward the rift. It had been so long.

"Could it be that Senior Shi Jin can defeat that Void Sandalwood?" Young Fang Lan said with hopeful anticipation.

"Child, don't harbor unrealistic fantasies." Zou Tianwang, plastering on a smile, looked at Fang Lan and said, "You'd do better to hope that Shi Jin succeeds in his beautiful mantis scheme... using the Beautiful Mantis Phantom to trade for a pet beast egg."

Fang Lan: Mm...

"Maybe that Void Sandalwood is playing around again," Ning Tianming snorted, thoroughly displeased with Void Sandalwood's arrogant, twisted sense of fun.

"That's probably it..." Everyone present had clearly been toyed with by that Void Sandalwood before.

Bzzz!

Just then, a ripple in space suddenly appeared, and the figures of one person and two beasts emerged into the outside world.

"Eee—" Eleven was still clutching the ginseng baby, wailing and crying. Three极限 bursts had hurt terribly, every bit as agonizing as the lessons in the Undying Golden Body. The Ice Doudou pain-relief battle-suit—battle-suit—it didn't want the ginseng baby, it wanted Ice Doudou.