Stealing The Heavens

All over the sky, thunderclouds were pushing down fast. Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le stood under the dark clouds with hundreds of generals from Dong Hai Province. The lightning lit up their bodies, and the twinkling light made their faces flickered like evil spirits.

Three days had passed since Emperor Haozun convened a grand council of courtiers in Liangzhu, and the purge of rebels within Great Yu had only just begun. At the moment, Wu Qi was leading hundreds of generals and tens of thousands of soldiers from Dong Hai Province to attack the very root of Jiyi Clan, a famous clan of Great Yu.

Jiyi Clan was an honorable clan with the blood of the Sacred Emperor, Xuanyuan. It was considered a collateral branch of Great Yu’s imperial clan. The clan’s overall strength was extremely powerful. It virtually controlled all the various artisan workshops under Directorate of Celestial, and was responsible for the production and storage of all ordnance and armaments. Therefore, Jiyi Clan’s wealth was only under Emperor Haozun, and of all the powerful clans in Great Yu, it was the most extravagant clan whose lifestyle was the most lavish.

The long enjoyment and carefree life had turned Jiyi Clan almost a pure merchant clan. They did not care about the power struggle in the imperial court, nor did they care about anything outside of Great Yu. They were only concern about whether their mansions were luxurious, whether their concubines were beautiful, whether their maids were luscious. Their whole energy was devoted to enjoyment, so Jiyi Clan was almost the first to betray Great Yu.

Over the years, relying on the advantage of being in charge of ordnance production for Great Yu, Jiyi Clan had secretly skimmed off large quantities of rare materials each year and sold them to the Heaven and the Buddhism League. These materials, which were considered precious even in Pangu Continent, were the most valuable treasures enough to make people risk their lives in outer heavenly realms, and yet Jiyi Clan had secretly sold them to outsiders.

As the price for their betrayal of Great Yu, the people of Jiyi Clan had received a lot of spirit pills that could prolong their lives, and countless luscious and beautiful female immortals who they could use freely as forbidden mistresses. And each generation of their patriarch and elders were secretly taken away at the end of their lives, then received initiation from those Primordial experts who crippled the cultivation bases of the human race they had cultivated since young, and finally had their fleshly bodies remade in the Eight Treasures Lotus Throne of the Buddhism League, which gave them the physique of cultivators.

At present, in the Heaven there was an immortal clan in charge of immortal artifacts production, and their surname was Jiyi!

It was a total betrayal. Because of the betrayal of Jiyi Clan, the immortals of the Heaven were able to obtain the materials enough to produce at least three to five Primordial artifacts every eon, many of which were rare materials that did not produce and could not be found in outer heavenly realms. But they were all secretly sold to the Heaven by Jiyi Clan.

Shocked and awed by Emperor Haozun’s boundless killing intent at the court, the patriarchs of the powerful clans, who knelt down and confessed their crimes, had been imprisoned in the Secret Palace’s divine dungeon, tortured and questioned about what they had done. Before Jiyi Clan, more than thirty powerful clans had been slaughtered, and because of its tremendous wealth, Emperor Haozun had specifically asked Wu Qi to led an army to annihilate Jiyi Clan.

“All the wealth found after the destruction of Jiyi Clan belongs to King of Dong Hai alone!” It was obviously Emperor Haozun’s extra reward for Wu Qi, and naturally Wu Qi welcomed it with open arms. He hastily assembled hundreds of generals with the cultivation bases of the Second Pangu Heaven, as well as hundreds of thousands of soldiers of varying overall strength from Dong Hai Province, and then retrieved large quantities of heavy ordnance from the armory of the Directorate of Celestial to attack Jiyi Clan.

The present Jiyi Clan did not have Supreme Oracles. They had, after all, evolved into a merchant clan. The strongest members of the clan were the few sons-in-law who possessed the cultivation bases of the Second Pangu Heaven. A clan like this was extremely easy to be annihilated to begin with, but no one expected that Jiyi Clan had actually constructed a powerful formation in their very base, one that was clearly a product of the immortals.

The ancestral land of Jiyi Clan was situated between three hills, a basin about two hundred miles in circumference. Originally, the small basin was inhabited by only about a thousand core members of the clan and tens of thousands of servants, but as their patriarch was thrown into the divine dungeon, and Emperor Haozun had issued a decree to execute Jiyi Clan, now the total number of people who seek refuge here, including the members from both lineal and collateral branches as well as servants and guards, had increased to over five hundred thousand.

A pale golden light blanketed the entire basin, and on the peak of each of the three hills surrounding the basin hovered a cloud of purple smoke. On every purple cloud there were nine round mirrors, about a thousand feet tall each, shining with cold light. Snakes of lightning could be seen slithering back and forth around the edges of these bronze-colored mirrors, and occasionally when the mirrors trembled, there would be countless golden rays shot out from them. The rays unleashed by twenty-seven mirrors interweaved into a huge net of light, slicing anything along the way into pieces. The broken bodies of nearly a thousand soldiers from Dong Hai Province that scattered messily all over the place was the credit of these golden light.

Wu Qi had led an army to attack Jiyi Clan. At Huang Liang’s order, who was in charge of the campaign, hundreds of thousands of soldiers fell into a neat formation and charged toward Jiyi Clan’s ancestral land. But suddenly the mirrors emerged on the peak of the three hills, and numerous beams of golden light cam falling down toward them. As a result, nearly a thousand soldiers at the head of the formation were silently sliced into chunks of meat the size of fists by the golden light, without even had the chance to let out a single cry.

The sudden attack of the golden light caused Huang Liang to hastily order the army to retreat three miles back.

Wu Qi, hovered midair, exercised his Chaotic Divine Eyes, and saw over a palace at the heart of the basin a fat middle-aged man was furiously scolding a few young men in Daoist outfits, whose faces were pale. Clearly, when the few young men saw the army was charging at them, they hurriedly activated the formation, and in the end the golden light had only killed about a thousand soldiers.

If they could let the army came a little deeper, the formation could at least kill over eighty percent of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers from Dong Hai Province. This was the reason why the fat middle-aged man was scolding them now. They had wasted an opportunity to inflict heavy losses to Wu Qi’s army.

Wu Qi snorted coldly, then muttered under his breath, “You should be thankful that your Jiyi Clan has a stroke of good luck, for you’ve only killed slightly over a thousand men. If you really caused serious losses to my army, what awaits you will not only be a pure slaughter. There are many ways to die… well, since you’ve killed some of my men, I’ll kill you all by cutting and slicing each of you a thousand times. If my men get hurt again, you’ll realize that being dead is better than alive!”

Princess Zhang Le nodded seriously. A little irritated, she glanced at the remains of the soldiers who had been killed, gritted her teeth and grumbled in a low voice, “Such heavy casualties… how much is the pension do we need to pay?”

Even as Wu Qi was stupefied by her remarks, the frustrated princess had pressed both her hands down, causing the thundercloud that blotted the sky to smash down like a massive wall. The cloud blanketed a region in the void that was hundreds of miles in circumference, and when it was less than ten thousand feet from the ground it suddenly shot out countless bolts of lighting, each as thick as a water bucket. At that very moment, it was as if a forest of lightning had grown out over Jiyi Clan’s ancestral land. The dazzling lightning pierced the formation of golden light and blinded the eyes of the countless people in the basin.

The twenty-seven mirrors began to tremble violently. Under Princess Zhang Le’s terrible attack of the thundercloud, they let out cries of agony. The biggest advantage of this formation was that it could borrow the endless energy beneath You Xiong Plain to fight against enemies equivalent to the level of Gold Immortal. But in the face of Princess Zhang Le, who was already a Primordial expert, the formation’s power was just too weak.

In the midst of the mirrors’ cries, countless beams of golden light towered into the sky, trying to rip the dense thunderclouds apart. But the avatar of the God of Thunder floating over the princess had only raised both hands and swung them down toward the basin, and then countless thunderclouds immediately came whistling over from all directions. More bolts of lightning shot out from the thundercloud that was thicker and heavier now, converged into a sea of plasma that flooded the entire ancestral mansion of Jiyi Clan.

Huang Liang, standing on the crest of a hill, raised his long knife high up and cried out at the top of his lungs, “Our Lord Mother’s divine abilities are formidable, her magic power is boundless, and her lightning magic is earth-shaking! When are you, a bunch of evil clowns, going to surrender, if not now?!”

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from Dong Hai Province raised their weapons at the same time and roared in unison. Amid their wild roar, the twenty-seven mirrors could no longer withstand the attack of the lightning Princess Zhang Le had summoned; the energy within the mirrors was smashed to pieces, and the surfaces of the thick and the heavy mirrors cracked like a spiderweb. Soon after, they all exploded with a deafening rumble.

Wu Qi gently waved his hand. Immediately, hundreds of thousands of fierce soldiers swarmed into the basin like a tidal wave. One after another, the countless members of Jiyi Clan screamed and yelled in despair, and began to flee in all directions like some headless flies. However, since even the formation was destroyed, how could these people, whose cultivation bases were so weak, had the opportunity to escape?

In addition, Wu Qi had opened his mouth and unleashed thirty-six Kunwu Swords, which transformed into huge swords of light about a few miles high and stabbed into the ground around the basin, completely locked down the entire region. After that, it was a complete slaughter. Soldiers rushed into the basin with sharp swords and knives, killing everyone in there regardless of their genders, ages, or status.

Blood spilled all over the ground, slowly turned into a few crimson rivers and then poured into a nearby great river. About an hour later, the river, which was about tens of miles in width, had turned completely blood-red. Columns of fire rose into the sky from across the basin; the despairing members of Jiyi Clan had put their ancestral mansions to the torches, burning everything and themselves into ashes. However, as buildings in Great Yu were all constructed of boulders, the result of the burning was not great. No one knew how much oil of the merman had the Jiyi Clan wasted to cause such a great fire.

Similar fires could be seen breaking out from countless places, both near and far. The powerful clans who were loyal to Great Yu had raised their butcher knives toward those who had betrayed Great Yu. Just as Wu Qi was slaughtering Jiyi Clan, tens of thousands of other clans were struggling and wailing in raging flame and blood.

All the people of Baihuang Clan, the once most powerful clan in Great Yu, were killed, except Baihuang Mo and a few others from the clan’s collateral branches. Hundreds of Supreme Oracles from Baihuang Clan were executed by revered elders from the Secret Palace. In the face of these revered elders’ attacks, they were so vulnerable without their Supreme Towers, their strongest fortresses.

Wu Qi glanced around. His Chaotic Divine Eyes allowed him to see things that were happening in great distance.

He saw that in the barracks of You Xiong Army, groups of soldiers and captains were dragged to the edges of large pits by those private soldiers and guards serving the clans loyal to Great Yu, who then raised their weapons and killed these soldiers and captains who harbored ulterior motives against Great Yu, and threw their corpses into the pits.

Large-scale resistances broke out in some camps, but revered elders from the Secret Palace immediately launched bloody cracked down on these rebellious soldiers and captains. The resistance of the army rebels was so feeble and laughable under Supreme Oracles’ means that could exterminate everything.

Suddenly, a heaven-shaking cheer erupted from the army of Dong Hai Province, who had rushed into the depths of Jiyi Clan’s ancestral mansion, and then Huang Liang’s loud, excited void could be heard, “My Lord! We’ve found Jiyi Clan’s treasure vault! So many treasures, so many good things!”

Wu Qi roared with laughter as he pulled Princess Zhang Le’s hand and quickly flew in the direction of Jiyi Clan’s ancestral mansion.