Stealing The Heavens

Wu Qi followed Wu Xian for a short distance with some hesitation. Wu Xian’s prescriptions were too alluring, but his cultivation base was too terrifying, and his appearance was too bizarre to behold. It was not an easy task for Wu Qi to get any benefit out of him.

‘One just can’t have everything in life…’ Wu Qi sighed softly and made a quick wave to the void. With the gesture, dozens of stars in the sky burst with a dazzling silver light. He had triggered their natal star power with a secret spell, which condensed into an Evil-suppressing Shackle of Four Quadrants as it fell onto Wu Xian’s enormous body, freezing him in place. Then, countless silver lightning bolts began to explode across him with harsh noises.

‘Even though I can’t kill you now, I can still make you sick!’ With a sway of his body, Wu Qi transformed into a breeze and drifted away, following the subtle aura of the golden light.

Wu Xian was bewildered by the sudden attack. He hissed and roared while plumes of sticky gray mist gushed out of his body to ward off the bombardment of the silver lightning. A great force had twisted his body and imprisoned his magic power. He was thrown into confusion, and could only rely on the divine ability that came with his formidable mutated body to cope with the attack.

What Wu Qi had drawn over was the natal star power of the Lunar Mansions’ twenty-eight Celestial Lords, which possessed the purest evil-destroying power. The divine abilities Wu Xian practiced were no longer considered witchcraft, for even the wickedest divine ability in the world was not as wicked as his. Therefore, when the starlight fell on his body, it immediately caused the most direct damage to him, like water being poured over fire.

As plumes of gray mist constantly gushed out of Wu Xian’s body, he howled in fury, cursing the man who had attacked him in the dark with the most vicious curses. But, Wu Qi was long gone, and his aura had long turned into chaos. Unless Wu Xian could see him in person, cursing like this would never hurt him.

Amidst the chaos, a purple-golden jade medallion shot out of his body. Thirty-three clouds were carved into it, and on the topmost cloud stood a small palace. It was a token for the core high-ranking official of Heaven, and the location of the palace was a direct indication of the holder’s position in the core circle of power of Heaven.

The moment the medallion shot out, all of the star power disappeared while dozens of Celestial Lords appeared with embarrassed expressions. They took a suspicious look at Wu Xian’s bizarre image before cupping their fists and bowing to him. Wu Xian snorted angrily, but he did not bother himself with these Celestial Lords. Instead, he murmured curses at the man who had attacked him and flew for the Thirty-three Heavens, his body wriggling and twisting all the way.

Wu Qi traced the faint aura the golden light had left in the void as he drifted past the edge of Pangu Continent and flew downward for trillions of miles, arriving to the back of the continent.

On the back of Pangu Continent, in a world of lava situated roughly antipodal to Xuanyuan’s dwelling place—Xuanyuan Peak—Wu Qi saw the mass of golden light suspended on a huge red tree.

It was a very different world from the topside of Pangu Continent. Although it also had stars shining in the sky, the sun rising and the moon setting, the environment here was extremely harsh. Except for a few species of spirit roots and divine woods with incredible vitality, other plants could hardly survive here. In addition, only animals with at least the peak-level cultivation base of Gold Immortals were eligible to live here. Creatures below this level would be reduced to ashes within the span of two breaths.

When the sun rose, it was an ocean of lava, and when the moon rose, it was a snowy land riddled with ice-clad mountains. Regardless of cold or hot, gusts of astral wind that were sharp as blades constantly blew at all things, their power as powerful as the attack of a superior-grade Gold Immortal Artifact. Lightning bolts were produced every time the wind collided with one another, each as strong as a full-force attack unleashed by an upper-tier Gold Immortal.

This was a hell of a place. However, it was a place like this that produced and nourished countless amazing things that could not be found on the topside of Pangu Continent…

…Like the huge red tree. Standing millions of miles tall, the tree’s roots covered a radius of some 10,000 miles. It was fiery red, with only twenty-four branches, and on each branch were only nine leafless twigs. The trunk was as smooth as a mirror, covered in a layer of flame tens of feet thick that looked like molten glass. The dreadful heat emanating from the tree enveloped the land hundreds of millions of miles around it, turning it into an ocean of lava.

It was a divine tree that was about to create its own interstitial world, and when it succeeded, it would gain the cultivation base of a Primordial expert. By the looks of it, it was now only a huge tree without any sentience, but its power had been accumulated to the limit. Once the qualitative change was triggered by the quantitative change, it would immediately give birth to its sentience and gain its human form, thus having various formidable divine abilities. Given its incredibly strong true form, once it gained its human form, its overall strength might be at the peak-level of Dao Reasoning realm.

‘What a mighty divine tree…!’ Wu Qi could not help blinking at it. If he could uproot it before it gave birth to its sentience, he was confident that he could at least refine it into a supreme-grade Chaotic Spirit Artifact, or perhaps even a Supreme Artifact of Primal. In fact, none of the materials he used to forge the six superior-grade Chaotic Spirit Artifacts in his previous life were nearly as good as this divine tree.

It was a pity that this divine tree had an owner, for it had been carefully protected. Someone had surrounded it with a layer of restrictive spells, which guarded the tree like a solid wall while limiting the area where its fire could spread. Otherwise, with the power of the flame on its trunk, the size of the lava ocean around it would have increased by at least tens of thousands of times.

Wu Qi carefully drifted to the edge of the restrictive spells as he sent out a wisp of divine sense and made it swim along the border. What he found out made him stick out his tongue in awe.

These were the simplest restrictive spells of five elements, and there was nothing mysterious about them than that they would set fire to the people who touched them. However, the cultivation base of the person who had laid them was insanely terrifying! There were a total of 360,000 invisible runes around the tree, and each contained the same amount of magic power as Wu Qi, who was now a Sixth-tier Dao Breaking expert!

In addition, they were constantly emitting spiritual waves that were overbearing, arrogant, and contained one simple message, ‘Get out of here if you don’t want to die!’ The message spread ceaselessly in all directions as the spiritual waves moved across the land, covering almost a tenth of the back of Pangu Continent.

‘The overbearing manner is kind of familiar…’ Wu Qi pondered as his body turned into a breeze and drifted over the layer of restrictive runes, approaching the tree cautiously. The dreadful power, as well as the overbearing and arrogant tone, were quite in accordance with someone he had known in his previous life, who was known among the Chaos Fiend Gods for his insolence and rudeness. ‘Is he still alive after behaving like that for so many years?

‘Those restrictive runes fit his style too. That guy hates sophisticated magic power controls and all sorts of ingenious ideas. Like wild beasts, he is accustomed to crushing his enemies with the most direct, most domineering brute force, and dislikes all the fancy moves. I’m pretty sure those runes are his work, and, perhaps he is not simply reluctant to lay down cleverer restrictions…’ Wu Qi had reason to suspect that that fella had not made any progress after all these years, and that these simplest restrictions were the only kind he knew.

‘He must be Greathorns, the Lord of Fire, the idiot who is famous among Chaos Fiend Gods for having his brains replaced by lava.’

In fact, Wu Qi had some history with Greathorns in his previous life; the Lord of Fire actually owed him a debt of gratitude. Greathorns had once clashed with several other Chaos Fiend Gods. In a one-against-ten battle, he was badly beaten up but managed to escape. As he was dying, it was Lord Yuan Ling who rescued him with some spirit medicine. But when he was bedridden, Lord Yuan Ling, who was equally simple-minded, took most of the scales off him, and even chopped off one of his horns and took them back to refine some artifacts.

Wu Qi smacked his lips and felt a little bothered. Was he being kind or unkind to Greathorns?

‘It has been so many years…In a world where other Chaos Fiend Gods have fallen, if Greathorns were alive, he should have stepped into the realm of Dao Fusing… If so, it would be a fool’s luck. Even the wise and intelligent Lord Yuan Ling has fallen and reincarnated. How did he manage to survive and become a Dao Fusing expert?’

He carefully approached the tree and dived into the lava at a distance of about ten miles from it. The escape art in Scroll of Stealing was amazing, and his movement was even more untraceable after he had learned how to use the Primal Purple Energy. However, he was likely to face a supreme existence of Dao Fusing realm, and he dared not to be careless.

On the tree, the golden light revealed its true form. He was a monster with a frame as strong as a lion and a pair of golden wings, and yet his head was that of a dignified-looking middle-aged man. He was holding a shield with his left front paw, and a sword was clutched in his right paw. A ring of golden flame surrounded him, which should be his natal fire divine ability, the flame refined with dozens of divine flames of the same rank as Nirvana Flame.

On a flat ground beneath the tree surrounded by two tiny roots, a handsome man in a red robe, about thirty feet tall, was sitting straight on a large, flowing chair of lava.

At first glance, the man’s face was very handsome, but on a closer inspection, the corners of his eyes and his brows seemed to be carved out of granite by a lousy stonemason. They were tough and handsome but rough, as if he had not paid any attention to his own appearance when he manifested his human form.

Two large spiral red horns, extremely sharp and nearly ten feet long each, protruded from the top of the man’s head, curving outward first before inward to almost form a ring with a diameter of about several feet. They made him look quite awe-inspiring. Flames were burning ragingly around the horns, and from time to time, there was a dull whistle of wind and fire ringing out of them.

It was surprising, however, that one of the horns was three inches longer than the other, and that its texture was much denser, and even redder. It was like an elk having its horn chopped off, causing the newly grown one to always be a bit tender.

Wu Qi rolled his eyes. ‘That’s right! He’s Greathorns, the Lord of Fire, an old acquaintance from my previous life who was nearly torn apart by Lord Yuan Ling and used to forge artifacts…’ Wu Qi was a little hesitant, wondering whether this fella owed him a debt of gratitude or hated him for destroying his body?

Green Emperor, White Emperor, and Black Emperor stood in a row in front of Greathorns with tendrils of gray smoke drifting out of their bodies. It was not until the gray color completely vanished from the trio’s skin that Greathorns spoke.