Stealing the Heavens

All that remained of the two palaces Emperor Haozun had given Wu Qi was a great hall. The rest of the building had been reduced to black dust by the Ten Traps Formation, and the land where the manors and the gardens once stood had been turned to a dead zone. Nothing was growing on the dark, rotten soil, not even a blade of grass. A few crows who had flown over from somewhere were standing on some rocks, cawing noisily.

Inside the great hall, Wu Qi was reclining on a leather cushion placed atop a stone couch. There was a ball of Inferno of Hell floating in front of him, with King Bai Shan's soul was writhing and struggling within while screaming at the top of his lungs. But, his voice traveled only on the soul level, so the terrible screams were completely inaudible to ordinary people's ears.

As its name implied, the Inferno Hell Fiend Scripture was an evil, malicious, and brutal technique. Wu Qi had only tortured King Bai Shan's soul for about an hour, and the man had told him everything. At this moment, King Bai Shan did not even want to be reincarnated. All he wanted was for Wu Qi to kill him completely, which would be the greatest blessing for him.

Wu Qi burned King Bai Shan's soul cautiously, lest he died too soon, while interrogating him carefully about all the information he was interested in. Huang Liang, with his eyes gleaming, was standing by the stone couch and writing quickly on a thick book, recording all that King Bai Shan had revealed in detail.

From time to time, he would tear a sheet of paper from the book and hand it over to one of the captains standing next to him. The captain who received the paper would then leave the hall in a hurry, bringing with him dozens of elite soldiers and running away in a certain direction. The papers contained detailed information about King Bai Shan's secret strongholds, where warehouses of various sizes could be found. Those were the places that stored his personal treasures.

These treasures were either rare materials, life-saving medicines, powerful spirit talismans and armors crafted by Directorate of Celestials, or precious treasures sought after by immortals but considered prohibited items in Great Yu. Many of the secret warehouses were left behind by King Bai Shan's ancestors and contained mountains of treasures.

Wu Qi carefully interrogated King Bai Shan. Within an hour, he was told of the exact locations of more than three hundred secret strongholds. On the face of it, these locations had nothing to do with King Bai Shan, and many were simply the most common civilian estates in You Xiong Plain. Even the owners of the estates did not know that countless valuable treasures were buried beneath their feet.

Luckily, Wu Qi now had plenty of capable people under him. He had dispatched hundreds of teams to dig out all of King Bai Shan's treasures in those strongholds outside the city. As for the treasure vault in King Bai Shan's mansion within Liangzhu, it was already Emperor Haozun's private property. Wu Qi was not interested in getting into trouble in the city.

The most valuable treasures of King Bai Shan's clan were all stored in these secret strongholds. If Wu Qi could get them all, the astronomical materials needed to lift the curses from all the people of the six dynasties would no longer be a problem for him.

Time passed by, and two hours later, Wu Qi finally squeezed out King Bai Shan's last penny. Satisfied, he gently slapped the ball of flame that trapped the poor fella and asked with a smile on his face, "So, you want a quick death?"

King Bai Shan stared blankly at him and said, "Just let me die! What else do you want?"

After considering for a moment, Wu Qi nodded and said, "Fine, I'll give you a quick death once you answer one last question! Tell me, why did Liu Bang come to you? What exactly are your plans? Answer this question and I'll release you from your suffering!"

King Bai Shan breathed a long sigh and told Wu Qi all about Liu Bang's plans.

"Liu Bang, the King of Han, is just a new addition to the council who serves the crown prince of the Heaven. My clan and crown prince have been working together for many years..."

In a corner of the great hall, a small alchemical cauldron was burning ragingly. Princess Zhang Le was concocting a cauldron of pills, the 'Nine Death Resurrection Spirit Pills'. It was a prescription handed down by the Directorate of Celestials to save badly wounded and dying soldiers on the battlefield.

The fleshly bodies of Great Yu's soldiers were very strong, but once they were seriously wounded and unable to absorb the Pangu Sacred Energy to heal themselves, their strong bodies would cause great trouble to the treatment. Ordinary medicines simply could not penetrate their flesh. The Nine Death Resurrection Spirit Pill was a kind of emergency medicine that could overcome this problem. If a seriously wounded or dying soldier was fed one, there was a chance that he could be saved.

As the name of the pill implied, it was a medicine so strong that only one out of ten who took it survived. Nonetheless, there was still some hope for the wounded to return to life. But, if a normal person took it, he would die of severe pain in the internal organs. When the Directorate of Celestials was formulating the prescription, a large number of people who tried it had died from severe pain. Of the one hundred people who tried it, less than ten percent survived.

The hall was filled with the pungent smell of the pills. Just by inhaling it, the few soldiers standing at the entrance felt as if they had been punched in the noses, with tears and snot trickling down their eyes and nostrils. They watched the princess in horror, who was yawning in the corner of the hall, wondering in their minds how terrible the strength of the medicine she was concocting was.

Another hour passed, during which, King Bai Shan had confessed the details of his involvement with the crown prince and Liu Bang—including what Liu Bang wanted him to do, where the armed forces he had prepared for it were hiding, and who in Liangzhu would listen to his orders when the time came.

After hearing the confession, Wu Qi pondered for a moment, then crushed the flame and King Bai Shan's soul together with one hand. "Interesting...Liu Bang's scheme is truly remarkable. The Heaven wants to control the Pangu Continent? But, is this arrangement enough?"

He thought for a while, then nodded slowly and muttered, "First the Sovereign, then Prabhutaratna Buddha…Even the few Primordial experts I've recently killed are now an excuse for them to threaten Empress Nüwa. Apparently, the more Great Yu cracks down on those itinerant immortals and cultivators, the better the excuse it gives them! No wonder they've been building the powers of itinerant cultivators in Pangu Continent all these years. They are using them as cannon fodders, so that they can have an excuse to demand an explanation from Empress Nüwa!"

Wu Qi could not help but shake his head as he recalled Great Yu's extreme tactics against itinerant immortals and cultivators living on Pangu Continent over the years. They had already gathered too many excuses; and coupled with the recent killing of some important members from both the Heaven and Buddhist League, the other side had enough excuses to keep Empress Nüwa's hands tied, even if she wanted to defend the human race.

No wonder they were able to block the main entrance to Palace of Empress Wa. They had taken the absolute moral high ground!

'But, should I report this information to Emperor Haozun?' Wu Qi was hesitating.

Just as he was considering, his eyelids suddenly twitched. The divine sense he put out had detected the men he was waiting for, and they were approaching the hall. Without hesitation, he drew a Kunwu Sword and hacked Huang Liang on the thigh, breaking the bone with a loud crack. Huang Liang shrieked in pain and wrapped his arms around the thigh as he fell to the ground, groaning and yelling miserably.

Meanwhile, Princess Zhang Le dashed out from where she was squatting like a gust of wind. The dozens of captains in the hall reached out their arms, and the princess began to beat them one by one. The sound of bone breaking rang without end, and before long, each of these captains had at least seventy to eighty bones broken, all laying on the ground while grunting and groaning.

Wu Qi put away the sword, and then gave his own body a twist. The sound of cracking could be heard coming out from inside of him as dozens of his bones broke and shattered according to his will. It was a technique found in the Scroll of Stealing which was used to feign death in order to escape the enemy's pursuit. So long as he exercised the same technique within the same day, all his bones would be mended, and it would not cause any harm to his body.

Soon afterward, King Yang Shan and Ji Ao, together with many Great Yu's courtiers, stormed into the great hall under the protection of numerous soldiers, accompanied by a rumble of footsteps. As soon as he stepped in, Ji Ao was startled by the captains moaning across the ground. There were marks of broken bones all over their bodies, and some of them had obviously been struck hard in the chest. From time to time, blood-red bubbles were spat from their mouths, and their eyes were rolling. It was clear that they were all dying.

Such a sad sight, combined with the unique sharp smell of the Nine Death Resurrection Spirit Pill, made it easy for anyone to see how badly Wu Qi and his men had been attacked. Together with the hundreds of miles of black, rotten ground outside the hall, anyone with eyes knew what had happened to this place.

Ji Ao rushed to the stone couch where Wu Qi was lying, then took his hand and cried out in panic, "Are you all right, King of Dong Hai Province?"

Wu Qi turned with difficulty to look at Ji Ao. There was a snap, and his neck bone broke in two. "Y-yo-your... High... nesssss... y-yo... you have... come..." Words drifted out of his throat as he struggled to breath. "I thought... King Bai Shan is... is... being imprisoned in the-ee... imperial dungeon... Why did he show up at my residence last night...?"

Because of a broken neck, Wu Qi's head dropped at an eerie angle as he stared up at Ji Ao. The bizarre sight frightened Ji Ao. Even Princess Zhang Le, standing to a side waiting to watch the show, cried out in horror. She hurried to Wu Qi's side and carefully pieced together the broken neck bone, then placed a palm against his neck. A stream of strong life force began to rush into him as her palm glowed with a bright green light. Gradually, life returned to his eyes, and he panted and cried out, "My lord, all my personal guards and servants are dead! I am only left with so few people now... My lord, you have to demand justice for me! You have to complain to His Majesty! Why can King Bai Shan openly attack me with tens of thousands of troops?"

Ji Ao opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but the words were caught in his throat.

King Yang Shan strode over and said in a low voice, "Tan Lang, His Majesty already knows what's going on here. King Bai Shan was freed from the imperial dungeon by someone without permission. His Majesty has ordered his whole clan to be executed…men, women, and children alike. You can rest assured that this will never happen again!"

King Bai Shan's whole clan was to be executed?

Wu Qi breathed a sigh of relief. He struggled to hold onto King Yang Shan's sleeve, then put on the face of a loyal subject and cried out, "My lord, I have... I have a secret intelligence to inform His Majesty, please help me..."

He whispered something into King Yang Shan's ear, and the latter's face suddenly turned pale!