Beastmaster of the Ages

"With the entrance gone, the Heavenly Dao Arena should be cut off, too. There's no longer any point in putting up a show in the lower ruins," Tianming said. He had wanted to use this chance to spread his name across the Upper Star Ruin and let the flameyellow descendants learn about him, but that wouldn't work with the Heavenly Dao Arena gone. "I should seek out Mushan Xue to ask about the situation."

He left the ark and asked Yin Chen to contact her. She knew that he would be coming, so she had already opened the gateway in anticipation. Tianming entered their pocket dimension in the Ancestral World and saw Mushan Xue in the corner, arms crossed. He was about to match her in height.

"What do you want to know? Ask away," she said, recalling that Tianming had been but a tiny pipsqueak when they’d first met. She had noted his rapid improvement, which hadn’t slipped past the figures behind her either.

Tianming didn't dally and directly asked her, "Were the two entrances into the Ancient Flameyellow Ruins opened because of you to begin with? Can you open and close it as you wish?"

"Yes. Why would the entrance appear out of nowhere and connect the Primordial Sands to the Eightpart Pantheons' territory? It was bait to begin with."

"I see! You really kept it from me for far too long," Tianming said, overwhelmed with awe. He had never expected that that would be the case. He had thought that their plan was limited to killing the geniuses within the lower ruins.

"It's only to be expected. There was no ruling out the possibility that you were a spy on their side. If that had been leaked, our efforts would've been for naught! Either way, this turn of events is advantageous to you as well."

"You're right." Tianming nodded and came to her side. "Can you give me a hint of what your next moves are?"

"There's no huge undertaking. We'll simply use our terrain advantage to wipe out the prisoners slowly at the lowest cost to us.

"I feel like that would take a really long time."