"I am quite curious how this battle will end" an indigo-glowing badger mused softly, while his apprentice strained to hold two neutron stars, one in each hand.

"...Grandpa! We should also fight." Yue demanded with a pleading voice. Her hands felt like they would soon shear away from the shoulders, while her qi reserves had barely any energy left. Only the constant qi regeneration of an Elder God rank sustained her tremendous effort, and that barely helped at all. She felt like a single fly landing on an arm would be enough to bring the whole edifice crumbling.

"...Oh? You still have enough strength to speak. I should add a few moons..." the Taotie answered with a smirk, while a pair of moons flashed into existence in orbit around the two stars.

"..." Yue simply growled in silence, straining herself to withstand the increase mass and the imbalance from the extra moons.

"Good. Your regeneration has increased again, young child. Remember this feeling, because this is how you truly win an impossible battle. All cultivators can appraise an opponent's strength, but almost nobody can sustain a long fight. In this realm, there are only two people who truly learned this, and one of them was the Jade Emperor. I can't speak of this Silent Monk though, as his actions break the pattern of normal cultivators, but your dear husband is also threading a similar path. This is why we will not interfere with his battle against the so called Devourer of Worlds." the old beast explained in a patient voice, knowing that his ward would not understand otherwise.

Yue's indigo eyes flashed with subdued anger, but she eventually relented and nodded slowly. Gravity was a difficult Dao to learn, but she did have the best teacher in the universe after all.

She was also feeling herself get stronger everyday, although the Taotie always insisted she was much too weak, and instead praised her husband.

Although, she also doubted that Pef could hold a single neutron star in a hand, nevermind two of them.

As if reading her mind, the ghostly beast smiled gently. "You think your husband is weaker than you, right?"

Yue could only nod in silence, waiting for her beast Grandpa to agree.

"Ha! I was the one to get smacked in the face by the Heart Ruler. That thing is ten times heavier than one of these stars. And your husband is holding it with a finger. I think he's trying to teach it how to fly..." The Taotie murmured a bit confused, as he spied over Pef's activities from a couple dimensions away.

As Yue tried to imagine how and why Pef would do such a thing, the people beside Pef in the Mausoleum station had their own ideas.

Aria simply held her Legion knife up and made it spin in lazy circles, as if to prove towards the Heart Ruler what an easy feat it was.

Rejin wanted to facepalm and hide himself, but his dignity as an exalted alchemist forced him to resist and present a gentle yet benevolent face to his employer.

Lin just watched curious, while inwardly wondering what took the damn sword so long just to learn to fly. Flying swords were nothing special after all.

The two Power Word Guns exchanged a bewildered look between them, then vanished away from all the stupidity.

Gena Feng stood still, as if awaiting something glorious to happen.

However, appearances could be deceiving, and in this case everybody was wrong about the situation.

'Are we there yet?' Pef asked inward, as the glove completed the last calculations.

'Quiet! About 30 seconds or so.' the glove muttered as if it was strained under a great pressure.

And the Heart Dividing Ruler itself was only considering its next trajectory, aided in the last details and calculations by the Orange Glove.

'Almost, skip two universes down and reduce power by 0.11 percent' the glove provided as a last hint.

The Heart Ruler confirmed the latest trajectory shift, and locked onto the target universe. Finally, the great hunt was about to begin.

With a blue pulse, it signaled the authorized user to hang on tight, then released its Dimensional Piercing Bridge.

'Destination!' the ruler sent, as the translation begun.

Flashing through millions of universes, and bypassing the ridiculously strong wards around the Desolate Beast, Pef and his party arrived at their destination, barely singed and frozen by the Great Realm Barrier skip. And while the ruler didn't actually pierce the Barrier, they did bounce to and from it into their quarantined target domain.

Pef took a first glance at the monster, noting the mesh of features from a myriad species, including 13 closed eyes along the head and neck of the Desolate Beast.

'It is too strong. We should leave now!' Gena sent with a panicked qi pulse.

'Slow and Hibernate!' Pef uttered instead, knowing the Word Guns would know exactly what he meant. They were capable weapons, after all.

As Reason and Faith begun to speak, Pef Blinked forward and began laying down a barrage of Voidcutters and a storm of Voidswords, half of them targeting the joints of the beast while the rest speared towards the eyes.

To his left, Wixtal Xi followed with his own Cutting skills, face grim with determination.

Under their feet, Aria's Garden began to unfold, billions upon billions of vines growing out to entangle the beast before it could properly react.

"Sigh" a single sad word filled the void as the Alchemist took action as well, sending the Cauldron forward just as the beast opened its giant maw. However, despite the beast increasing drastically in size as it detected mortal danger, the Cauldron filled the humongous mouth with ease, and it soon blocked the maw like an inflatable toy in a dog's jaw.

A muffled 'bang' and sizzle emerged from the Cauldron as the breath weapon of the beast rebounded back into its throat, and then the pandemonium started.

Thousands upon thousands of Cutting skills gouged chunks from the beast's flesh, all easily collected by Pef's glove for future smithing and alchemy.

'More eyes! Don't kill it yet!' the glove demanded with glee, as the beast kept regenerating its eyes while Pef scooped them out with Voidswords and Voidclaws.

'More legs! Don't forget the legs!' Lin demanded from the sides, her voice imbued with greed for more bones to forge.

'...' Pef agreed with those demands as well, but it took a hundred Voidcutters to chop off a single leg from the Desolation Beast, and he was the one to withstand Heaven's retribution.

Well, his father contributed as well to some degree, but the main work was still his own, as Wixtal had barely reached Tier 5.

More Power Words lit up the darkness of the desolation realm, freezing the tail of the beast before it could slash at the hunting party and splatter them like flies.

Another muffled scream emerged from the beast, as it trashed and flayed about, trying to free itself from the binding vines holding it prisoner.

Seconds passed, yet as filled with strikes and skills the hunt was they felt like hours. About 30 seconds later, the beast lost its head and slumped to the ground, while the party erupted in cheers.

Giant black clouds continued to pour down tribulations, yet the Alchemist didn't care. He rapidly collected the steaming bits and filled the Cauldron, then began guiding the Heavenly Lightning into the large oven.

Gena Feng slapped her face to confirm this was real, then turned towards a nearby hunter. "We did it! It's finally dead!" she exclaimed in joy.

Lin held up her weapon and grimaced with a stone face. "We killed one. Now the rest of them are coming."

Looking around and extending her senses, Gena noticed the shadows trampling the surrounding vines, closing from 7 directions at once.

She gulped and tensed her hands around the red feather gifted by Pef.

"Now we run." she heard Pef order in a calm voice. She ran.