Stealing The Heavens

After figuring out the mysteries of the emperor aura, Wu Qi founded a kingdom which he named Yanhuang in the world inside him.

It was only a few years since he had rescued all the people of that planet from the mortal world. But, because he had repeatedly activated the Dark Yin Celestial Tower’s time-acceleration function to help others practice, and he himself had spent tens of thousands of years in it, those people had already given birth to trillions of offspring in the world within him in that time period with the incredible reproductivity of the human race.

He had founded a kingdom with trillions of people, and he was the only god they believed in. In that instant, immeasurable power of faith gathered and merged with the enormous virtues stored in him, condensing into a huge dragon-shaped purple aura that swirled inside his body.

Then, it quickly devoured the emperor aura he had extracted from the emperor of New Yu, and in the blink of an eye, the two merged into one. Wu Qi had never felt so energetic before, and he sensed a strange power fill his entire body, which was very different from physical strength, magic power, and divine sense. It gave him a delusion that he could turn the sea upside down without any divine ability or mystic art, and hold both the sun and the moon in his hands as toys.

Gradually, the emperor aura rose into his spiritual ocean and began to wheel around his divine soul. They communicated with each other as his divine soul slowly refined and compressed. At his current cultivation level, it was extremely difficult for him to improve his divine soul even just by a little. But nourished by the emperor aura, and as the faith power of trillions of people was being constantly purified and poured into his divine soul, its strength was skyrocketing at a rate that Wu Qi could clearly perceive.

Wu Qi even felt that he could unleash an astonishing battle prowess with only the power of his divine soul.

Only now did he understand why those lofty emperors were able to intimidate hundreds of millions of their subjects with a simple gesture. Relying on their meager emperor aura, the mortal emperors in the secular world were able to possess such a mighty power, let alone Wu Qi, who had obtained all the benefits from half of Great Yu’s emperor aura he had plundered?

With his eyes narrowed, Wu Qi sent out his divine sense. Even though he did not use any of his magic power nor exercise any divine ability, the rich energy within a thousand miles in front of him shrunk abruptly and compressed into a gleaming energy crystal the size of a sesame seed in the blink of an eye. He smiled and opened his mouth to swallow the crystal, quickly digesting and converting it into Primal Purple Energy.

He roughly estimated the power now his divine sense possessed, and found that it could easily suppress any early-stage Dao Breaking expert. Moreover, as it could attack the enemy in silence, it was many times stealthier than fighting with fists, flying swords, or magic artifacts.

While laughing, Wu Qi slowly stood up, his eyes gleamed brilliantly. As he rose, the people cultivating in the spirit cave, the officials, immortals, and oracles of Dong Hai all found him very different than before. In the past, he was as elegant as an immortal, like a hermit who lived in seclusion. But now, he was surrounded by an aura that was as vast and boundless as a great sea, as heavy and steady as a lofty mountain; when he walked, he had a majestic gait. As soon as he moved, the crowd felt a stabbing pain in their eyes, and they dared not to look him straight in the face.

Horror-struck, everyone fell to their knees almost reflexively, their heads bowed.

It was the same even for the courtiers of the six states in the spirit cave. They felt the aura around Wu Qi being thousands of times more majestic and stronger than their emperors, which was not something they could resist. Wu Qi’s power fell onto them like a great mountain, and they could not help but kneel down and worship him reverently. In the face of Wu Qi with his boundless awe-inspiring aura, everyone knelt on the ground and did not dared to move. Their minds were completely blank, as if all their thoughts were controlled by him. No one dared to harbor any thoughts before he spoke.

Wu Qi nodded with satisfaction after he had briefly tested the suppression of emperor aura on those around him. The amazing result had come from the emperor aura condensed by trillions of people in the world within him. Once the time came when he combined the entire Dong Hai with Yanhuang, he would gain at least a hundred times more faith power from the people. At that time, he only had to figure out ways to get more virtues…

He suddenly froze in place at the thought of virtues.

According to the information brought back by the spies, outer heavenly realms were returning and merging with Pangu Continent at a steady rate. And, whenever a landmass merged with the continent, there were Heaven Lords from outer heavenly realms who took away the immense virtues bestowed by Heavenly Dao with special vessels.

Could it be that Heaven and Buddhist League were having the same thought as Wu Qi? If they wanted to suppress Great Yu in terms of emperor aura, they would have to produce a great deal of it by fusing an enormous amount of virtues and the faith of countless people. After all, Great Yu had existed on Pangu Continent for immeasurable years and accumulated an incredible amount of emperor aura. Even though Heaven and Buddhist League had split it with schemes, the remaining half was still too much for any ordinary power to suppress.

Even if Zhang Tengyun could unify all the mortal kingdoms from outer heavenly realms, he would not be able to gain the loyalty of all the people in a short time and accumulate enough emperor aura to compete with Great Yu. So, they could only use some other means to help him accumulate the emperor aura.

The thought of it caused a grim smile to appear on Wu Qi’s face. ‘You think you can put that Zhang Tengyun on the throne of the Human Emperor so easily? Well, I’m not gonna let that happen.’ After pondering for a brief moment, he hurried out of the spirit cave. As he took his leave, he told everyone to practice hard and improve their cultivation base as fast as possible.

At that moment, Wu Qi did not know that just because of what he had said, the people in the spirit cave began to practice hard as if they had gone mad, improving their cultivation base at the cost of their natal blood essence and at the risk of making critical errors when practicing. In just a few short months in the outside world and tens of thousands of years in the cave, the cultivation base of the officials, immortals, and oracles of Dong Hai skyrocketed, their progress shocking even Wu Qi at a later time.

After leaving the spirit cave in a hurry, Wu Qi summoned a Blood-draining Celestial Fiend and made it disguise as him, ordering it to sit in Dong Hai in his stead. Then, he transformed himself into a gust of breeze and drifted toward the northern region of Great Yu. Far north of Great Yu, several armies of the Ling Dynasty were defeating mortal kingdoms from outer heavenly realms, killing their emperors and plundering their emperor aura.

With Wu Qi’s current cultivation base, it took him only a few days to reach the war-torn northern region without attracting anyone’s attention. There, he saw an army of Ling Dynasty crazily attacking a large city. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers surrounded the city with only tens of thousands of garrisons, who were barely resisting the great invading army with the city’s defensive formations.

It was the capital of a small kingdom called Hang. The national strength of this kingdom was not strong, but it seemed that the emperor had treated his subjects kindly. So, even though more than half of his lands had fallen into the enemy’s hands and his capital was surrounded by ten times his forces, the soldiers and generals in the city were still fighting the formidable enemy desperately at the cost of their lives. The emperor, sitting in his throne inside the city, did not have a strong emperor aura in him; but it was extremely condensed and active, looking like a real dragon.

Nodding to himself, Wu Qi exercised an escape art and silently slipped into the city, transformed into a breeze, and blew past the emperor. Without alerting anyone, Wu Qi stole all his emperor aura and then turned to leave. No one knew that he had gotten the prize.

Several days later, the capital of Hang was breached and captured, and the commanding general of the Ling Dynasty triumphantly brought the emperor to the city of Wanling. Amidst the cheering of all his subjects, Zhang Tengyun killed the emperor with a punch, but was shocked to find that the man did not have even a wisp of emperor aura in him. He was simply a hollow dumpling, all empty inside.

Zhang Tengyun was struck dumb, and so were Liu Bang and Lu Buwei. Meanwhile, none of the courtiers around them could utter a single word for a long time.

It was a long silence before Zhang Tengyun said mockingly, “This emperor of Hang was probably a fatuous monarch, and his subjects must have lost faith in him. That’s why the emperor aura in him is gone.” The courtiers of the Ling Dynasty all chorused in agreement, but everyone’s mind was filled with a sense of foreboding—even if the people had lost faith in him and caused the emperor aura to dissipate, he wouldn’t be left with nothing, would he?

Wu Qi had stolen the emperor aura that belonged to the monarch of Hang. After that, he swept across the northern region of Great Yu, and none of the emperors of the mortal kingdoms from outer heavenly realms escaped him. As none of these kingdoms covered more than tens of thousands of miles across, he could visit tens of thousands of them in a day and a night. Like a bee in the blooming season, he worked hard to get the emperor aura out of these emperors, leaving nothing but empty flesh for the generals of the Ling Dynasty to take over.

After months of hard work, Wu Qi finally stole all the emperor aura from the emperor of every mortal kingdom in the northern region. Then, he immediately rushed to the southern region of Great Yu without stopping. It was several months of hard work again before he finished plundering the emperor aura of every kingdom there, as long as they sat close to Ling Dynasty. However, he did leave many kingdoms situated near Great Wu untouched.

Afterward, he went on with his journey to the western region. But, when he got there, he found signs that told him something was not right. After much hesitation, he simply exercised a mystic art and flew straight up into the sky. From there, he stole the emperor aura of all the mortal emperors on the outer heavenly realms which were heading toward Pangu Continent but were still a long way from reuniting with the continent.

As there were tens of millions of outer heavenly realms heading toward Pangu Continent, even though Wu Qi tried his best, it took him years to visit all of them and collect the emperor aura from every single emperor.

During the years when he was hard at work, Ling Dynasty wiped out thousands of kingdoms. At least one or several kingdoms were annihilated by its great armies each day.

Despite that, Zhang Tengyun was disappointed to find that the emperors of the annihilated kingdoms had very little emperor aura in them. Even if he absorbed all the emperor aura in these men, it would provide him little to no help. It was like he had sent an army to slay a dragon, only to find that the prize they brought back was a small catfish. The contrast was so huge that he could hardly stomach it.

But, he did not know that he would not even have gotten the little catfish if these emperors had not accumulated a little bit of emperor aura in the years after Wu Qi had stolen everything from them.

By the time Wu Qi returned to Dong Hai from the outer heavenly realms, Zhang Tengyun and Liu Bang could no longer contain their suspicion and reported the strange incident to Heaven.

Shocked and angered, Heaven immediately sent competent Celestial Lords to investigate the matter.