Against the Gods

“You knew that the poison wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but it was enough to damage him severely… that's why you were still tempted to poison him that day, am I right?”

Something strongly tugged at Yun Che’s heartstrings.

Qianye Fantian was an incredibly dangerous person. It was why Xia Qingyue had accompanied him when the god emperor had sent him an invitation at the Eternal Heaven Realm. After that, she left him before he got to say too much, and he hadn’t put any real thought behind most of his words. If Xia Qingyue hadn’t brought it up now, he wouldn’t even remember what he had spoken back then. 

But somehow, Xia Qingyue was able to deduce the fact that he possessed darkness profound energy, the Sky Poison Pearl’s current strength, and perhaps even more she didn’t say from those careless words alone...

Was she really Xia Qingyue? It was almost as if her soul had been switched with someone else!

Yun Che couldn’t help but be shocked, but what really annoyed him was how focused Xia Qingyue was in front of him.

Noticing that the man behind her had fallen silent and was even looking at her in a slightly different light, Xia Qingyue turned slightly towards him and asked, “Was I wrong?”

“No, you’re correct.” Yun Che finally said, “The Sky Poison Pearl hasn’t recovered much power, but its poison is an incredibly high level existence. Qianye Fantian may be able to brute force it out of his body, but he’ll never be able to truly neutralize it. Even if it wasn’t enough to kill him, its power should last long enough to give him the time of his life.”

Xia Qingyue turned around and extended a hand toward Yun Che. She wasn’t wearing any adornment, and every finger looked like they were from the first snow. “Let me try it!”

“Okay.” Yun Che didn’t hesitate. The Sky Poison Pearl possessed both the ultimate poison and the ultimate purification ability, so he wasn’t worried that Xia Qingyue would get hurt during the attempt.

He extended his right hand and touched Xia Qingyue’s palm with a finger. His own palm flashed blue for an instant before a wisp of sky poison was poured into Xia Qingyue’s hand.

The sky poison came active immediately after coming into contact with Xia Qingyue. It was only a wisp, but it immediately caused her entire hand to glow dark green.

A frown sprung to Xia Qingyue’s face as she quickly circulated her Purple Pylon profound energy. A purple light instantly surrounded her hand and suppressed the greenish glow.

However, suppression was all she could manage… despite her cultivation and the Purple Pylon divine power, she actually wasn’t able to extinguish or neutralize the sky poison at all. It was completely locked down inside the veins of her palm, but like a solid block of ice it refused to fade no matter what she tried.

And this was just a wisp!

“It is impossible to neutralize!” whispered Xia Qingyue.

“The poison of the Sky Poison Pearl is ‘alive’,” said Yun Che. This ‘living’ poison had only started accumulating after He Ling had become the Poison Spirit. Before this, the poison of the Sky Poison Pearl was still fatal, but could easily be neutralized by any profound practitioner. “Not even a True God may necessarily be able to neutralize it if it enters their body, much less the living things of the current world!”

While speaking, Yun Che stretched out his left hand and used the purification ability of the Sky Poison Pearl. A flash later, the poison aura in Xia Qingyue’s hand had disappeared completely.

Yun Che was the only one in the entire world who could unleash or purify the poison of the Sky Poison Pearl. Unfortunately, the Sky Poison Pearl’s power was also accumulating much too slowly.

If he had a couple more years, if he had been able to wait like he told He Ling before, the Sky Poison Pearl would’ve accumulated enough power to kill even an expert like Qianye Fantian. Unfortunately the heavens had other plans, and he was forced to return to the God Realm earlier than expected due to the crimson calamity. Right now, the Sky Poison Pearl simply did not have enough sky poison to kill Qianye Fantian.

“How long is its ‘lifespan’?” asked Xia Qingyue after withdrawing her profound energy.

“Forty hours or so, give or take,” Yun Che said, “Qianye Fantian may not be able to neutralize it, but he’ll definitely be able to last beyond the forty hour mark considering his profound energy and divine body. Right now, there just isn’t enough sky poison to induce the ‘desperate straits’ or ‘crisis of death’ you wanted.”

“Forty hours…” Xia Qingyue pondered for a moment. “It’s shorter than I predicted, but it should still be enough.”

Yun Che, “...?”

“The sky poison won’t be enough to kill him, but the fact that it cannot be neutralized by the power of a god emperor and the fame of the Sky Poison Pearl should still be enough to give Qianye Fantian quite the scare. No one knows that the sky poison can only exist for forty hours except you and I. As his defense and power grow weaker and weaker, so will he begin to fear for his own life… once that happens, his fear and the possibility that he might die would only torment him more and more with the passage of time!”

“Hm?” Yun Che shot her a glance before saying, “I won’t ask why we even want to poison Qianye Fantian for now, but even if we…”

“Forty hours of terror may not be enough to destroy Qianye Fantian’s willpower, I know. The chances of success should be lower than thirty percent.” Xia Qingyue interrupted Yun Che before he could finish his sentence. She clearly knew what he was trying to say. “However, don’t forget that his body was already implanted with something that will magnify his fear a thousand times over, the Evil Infant devilish energy!”

But Yun Che frowned slightly in puzzlement. “You want me to whip the devilish energy inside him into a frenzy after I poison him…? That can’t be right! Not only will it be a meaningless move, it will expose the fact that I can control darkness profound energy.”

“What happens when the sky poison of the Sky Poison Pearl and the power of the Evil Infant's Wheel of Myriad Tribulations are combined?”

The creases in Yun Che’s brow deepened. “They will become the Myriad Tribulations!”

“Correct!” Xia Qingyue’s eyes looked as deep as a bottomless, cold lake right now. “There is no one in the entire God Realm who hasn’t heard of ‘Myriad Tribulations’. After all, it was this poison that ended the Era of Gods and altered the entire Primal Chaos drastically! This is a name that would terrify even True Gods and True Devils, much less a mere mortal!”

“Wait, wait!” Yun Che said with an odd look on his face, “You’re not asking me to combine the sky poison and the Evil Infant devilish energy in Qianye Fantian’s body together, are you?”

“Can you do it?” asked Xia Qingyue.

“Of course I can’t!”

“I don’t think you can either.”

    “……”

“What I want isn’t for you to combine them.” Xia Qingyue stared at Yun Che as her words grew slower and heavier. “Is it possible to just mix them together?”

The fact that the Evil Infant's Wheel of Myriad Tribulations and the Sky Poison Pearl were the devil race’s Heavenly Profound Treasures a long time ago proved that both the essence of their power were on the negative side. Therefore, Xia Qingyue had reason to believe that their energies wouldn’t reject one another.

“...” Yun Che thought for a moment before answering, “I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer if I had never come into contact with the Evil Infant’s devilish energy in the past. But having treated it multiple times already, I can tell you that this devilish energy is unusually compatible with me despite being deadly enough to torture a god emperor. Even when I was purifying it with the light profound energy, it didn’t struggle nearly as much as I thought it should.”

“Maybe it’s because my darkness profound energy is special. Or maybe…” Yun Che exhaled slightly before continuing, “It’s because it’s ‘her’ power, and so her aura is imbued in them.”

Xia Qingyue, “...”

“That’s why I’m confident that I can slip the sky poison power into the Evil Infant’s devilish energy perfectly.”

He had performed a purification once for the Eternal Heaven God Emperor and twice for the Brahma Heaven God Emperor. Three contacts were enough for him to confirm this.

“Excellent!” Xia Qingyue nodded as her gaze grew a tad darker. After testing the sky poison personally and hearing Yun Che’s confirmation, the chance of success she kept in her mind had climbed a little higher. “In that case, please slip all the sky poison into the Evil Infant’s devilish energy when you treat him the day after tomorrow… Make sure it erupts after we have left the Brahma Monarch God Realm, and he will be thrown into the nightmare that is ‘Myriad Tribulations’!”

“Isn’t it a bit naive to think that Qianye Fantian will believe that he was poisoned with Myriad Tribulations just by mixing the sky poison and the Evil Infant devilish energy together?” Yun Che raised his chin a bit as he spoke, “Forget that he’s the Brahma Heaven God Emperor, anyone who isn’t an idiot would be able to figure this out easily, wouldn’t they?”

“You are right, of course.” But Xia Qingyue nodded in agreement. “He won’t believe it, and he doesn’t need to. After all, the poison that destroyed the gods and devils and ended an entire era will still be the first thing that enters his mind when the poison activates! The shadow left behind by Myriad Tribulations is so big that anyone who encounteres any blend of the sky poison and the Evil Infant will automatically recall that name like they were cursed by a devil.

“No one—not even you, the master of the Sky Poison Pearl—knows how to combine the Evil Infant’s power and the sky poison power together to create ‘Myriad Tribulations’. No one in this era has even come into contact with it either. But it is without a doubt the most terrifying and famous name in the world, so when a blend between the Evil Infant’s devilish and the sky poison appears, no one except you, the master of the Sky Poison Pearl dare say with absolute certainty that a mutation like the ‘Myriad Tribulations’ wouldn’t happen again.

“An unknown fear that exceeds the recognition of a god emperor, the shadow of Myriad Tribulations, and the sky poison that not even a god emperor can neutralize one bit… all these factors should be enough to push Qianye Fantian into collapse in forty hours’ time!

“And just in case something unexpected happens, I’ll give Qianye Fantian enough hints when we’re there so that he’ll definitely make the connection.”

“...” Yun Che stared blankly at Xia Qingyue as his scalp suddenly crawled with something unspeakable.

Xia Qingyue didn’t seem to notice the change in his gaze, however. She continued, “Qianye Fantian is a naturally suspicious person. Our visit already made him highly suspicious, but since not even you had any idea of our real objective, there’s no way he could’ve deduced anything from your words or body language. He will believe that the purification is just an excuse, and he will set his full attention on that other ‘thing’ he cares about the most.”

“He’ll forcefully change the subject with me while you are purifying the devilish energy inside his body. I will also use my own ways to pull his attention away from you... You’ll have enough time to do whatever you want.”

“After that, just leave it to me to handle the rest.”

Yun Che put a hand to his forehead and ran through everything Xia Qingyue said in his head once. Then, he shook his head slightly and forced himself to calm down, asking, “Your goal is to make Qianye Fantian face the fear of the death, and… make him beg for mercy before me?”

“Mn.” Xia Qingyue nodded. “A person’s desire to live is proportional to the extent of their life, power, and status. Therefore, one might say that Qianye Fantian is the person who fears death the most out of everyone in the Eastern Divine Region.”

“So, the protective talisman you were speaking of was… Qianye Fantian? When he comes begging for me to purify his sky poison, we will demand a special request or some sort of information that’s fatal for him, is that it?”

“You are half-right.” Xia Qingyue paused for a second as her breathing suddenly grew heavier. “For now, Qianye Fantian doesn’t deserve that much attention from me. No, my goal is… Qianye Ying’er!

“Qianye Ying’er must know this herself! That is why Qianye Ying’er is the one who’ll show up when the time is right, not Qianye Fantian. Naturally, she is also the one who’ll accept our ‘condition’.”

Xia Qingyue’s ability to control her own emotions was already unbelievable, but Yun Che still could feel a drop in the temperature when Qianye Ying’er was brought up.

Staring into Xia Qingyue’s pupils, Yun Che ran through the idea and shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll succeed. The Qianye Ying’er I saw was an extremely selfish madwoman who’ll do anything to achieve her own goals. Qianye Fantian may be the father who gave birth to her, but I don’t think that she’ll sacrifice herself for him even if he begs her to save his life.”

Xia Qingyue closed her eyes slightly before replying, “Two years ago, I would’ve thought the same as you did. However… during my time as the Moon God Emperor, I’ve invested most of my energy into figuring out Qianye Ying’er.”

It was clear that that Xia Qingyue’s hatred of Qianye Ying’er was so deep that it could never be resolved.

“It was during this period that I came to learn a weakness in her personality.”