Stealing The Heavens

Ding!

A crisp sound shook Wu Qi, making him glance to the east of the bedchamber. After pondering for a moment, he dived through the candlestick into the ground, carefully drifting in the direction of the sound.

A small hut, which appeared to have been recently built, stood right outside the bedchamber. It had a striking three-feet-tall iron threshold but no door. A black-clad daoist sat cross-legged in the ten-feet structure with a carp-shaped jade inverted bell floating in front of him. He was reciting some scriptures, and the words flew out of his mouth in the form of golden lotuses, striking at the bell and making it sing.

Wu Qi attached himself to one of the straws in the hut and studied the man carefully. Although he was dressed as a daoist, what he practiced was the cultivation technique of the Buddhist League. In his body, Wu Qi could sense a vast, almost infinite energy. When he looked at him with the Primal Dharma Eyes, the man seemed like a little sun hovering in the hut, emitting a strong light that gloriously lit up the ordinary structure.

The man was definitely one of the few almighty experts in the Buddhist League today. Although he had kept all his magic power within him, Wu Qi could feel that he was only half a step away from the realm of Dao Breaking, and he could achieve that as easily as poking through a layer of window paper. Perhaps, even today’s Lord Buddha, Amitabha, did not have such a cultivation base. Who the hell was this guy?

After a closer look at the daoist, Wu Qi was shocked to find that he did not have a lump in the throat, and that his neck was slender, his skin fair and delicate. There was even a faint sweet scent wafting out of his body. ‘He’ was actually a woman! Wu Qi was lost in thought. He studied the daoist again for a while, then glanced in the direction of the bedchamber. At length, he nodded thoughtfully.

The eight Apsaras must have been the work of this black-clad daoist. She must have hidden her slivers of psyche in them, making them have coitus with the emperor day and night. In this way, her flesh could be kept clean, not contaminated by any filth, while her heart was struggling in the boundless world of mortals. The method was like a man walking on a steel wire on a cliff, trying to conquer his fear of death. Once she managed to break free of the mortal world as a nestling broke out of the shell, she would immediately attain the fruit of her labor.

She was not only protecting the emperor, but also using him to temper her buddha-nature in order to break through to the realm of Dao Breaking.

So, the artifact which the eight Apsaras lived by should be in the hands of this daoist? Wu Qi looked up and down her for a long time, and finally his eyes were fixed on the carp-shaped bell.

After a moment of pondering, Wu Qi quietly left the hut and returned to the House of Carefree to merge with his clone. At the moment he left, the daoist suddenly opened her eyes and glanced around suspiciously for a while. Then, she counted on her fingers, trying to figure out where the thing that had just given her a sight throb came from. However, Wu Qi’s escape art was so amazing that he did not leave any trace behind. And as the Heaven Secret was already muddled by the eighteen Saints, she was unable to find out the reason.

With a cold snort, the daoist nodded slowly and said, “It seems that the filthy world of mortals has defiled my mind. It doesn’t matter, everything will be alright if I can transcend this! Your Majesty, please use the eighteenth mystic art I’ve taught you. I’ll assist you in breaking through your present realm.” When she had finished, she began to recite a mantra. A golden lotus the size of a fist flew out of her mouth and struck the bell.

The emperor shivered as the bell rang. A stream of hot air rose from his abdomen, and he struck an odd pose. The eight Apsaras began to dance on the bed around him, and had sex with him one after another. Streams of hot air poured endlessly into him, smashing at the bottleneck of his cultivation base.

All sorts of visions floated before the daoist’s eyes. The eight Apsaras who were having sex with the emperor seemed to have become her. With her face shifting between red and pale, she continued to recite mantras, enduring the various uncomfortable feelings that filled her body while silently drawing out wisps of pure Zen power from the boundless lust, fusing them into her natal relic.

“Everything with form is unreal… If all forms are seen as unreal, the Tathagata will be perceived. Neither the past, the present, or the future mind can be found. He who sees me by outward appearance and seeks me in sound, treads the heterodox path and cannot perceive the Tathagata. Because all phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, and a shadow… like dew and lightning… thus should you meditate upon them.” The mantra transformed into golden lotus flowers and drifted slowly down from the top of the emperor’s head, branding into all the vital meridian points across his body, while a great sheet of golden light wrapped him within. [1] ¹

Wu Qi was very busy over the next few days. With his status as chief honorable elder, he acted like a tyrant in New Yu. Every day, he sent officials out to help him gather herbs, as if they were his grandchildren. Whenever they did something he did not like, he beat and scolded them at will, making the officials in charge of the Temple of Honorable Elders miserable and afraid to get close to the House of Carefree.

Several days later, after all the supplementary herbs he needed were gathered, Wu Qi announced that he was going to meditate in seclusion and shut himself behind closed doors. He had laid out a powerful formation around House of Carefree, which would strike anyone who tried to get close. In just a few days, some oracles, honorable elders, and officials were badly wounded or killed by the formation as they tried to brave the restriction, either intentionally or unintentionally. Since then, no one dared to step close to the place.

In his room, Wu Qi took out Heaven Refining Cauldron and meticulously concocted a dose of ‘Ecstasy Incense’, using an innate divine plant that grew in Yuan Ling Dark Realm called the Harmonious Flower of Yin and Yang as the main ingredient, and dozens of spirit herbs with acquired harmonious energy as the supplementary ingredients. The effect of the medicine was obscene, but it was extremely powerful. In those days when Lord Yuan Ling had created the prescription, he had secretly tried it on several Chaos Fiend Gods.

His experiment had turned the seven Chaos Fiend Gods who had been close friends into arch enemies. After being intoxicated by the incense, the seven of them, four males and three females, had sex continuously with each other for a whole month. Lord Yuan Ling, who was hiding beside them, was enjoying the show, but it had also shamed them so much that they never appeared in public again. The incident caused a stir in the circle of Chaos Fiend Gods, but no one except Lord Yuan Ling knew what had driven them to do such a crazy thing.

This showed that Wu Qi’s predecessor, Lord Yuan Ling, was such a jerk, and he deserved to be beaten to death. But at the same time, it also demonstrated how brutal this Ecstasy Incense was, as even the gifted Chaos Fiend Gods could not withstand its strength, let alone anyone else.

Wu Qi laughed evilly as he hefted the incense in his hand, which was a hundred times more in weight than he had ever made. After putting away the cauldron and the restrictive formation, he swaggered out of the door. One of his clones disguised as Lord Teeth and went to the officials of the Temple of Honorable Elders, ordering them to accompany him for a visit around the city. Meanwhile, his true self had sneaked underground and come to the hut where the black-clad daoist resided.

After so many days, the emperor was still doing exercise in high spirits with the few beautiful and enchanting Apsaras. The black-clad daoist’s meditation was clearly at a critical juncture; nine rings of Buddhist light were gradually rising and merging with one another behind her head. If she could merge them into one, the Buddhist energy in her body would fuse with all the experience that the eight Apsaras had gained through the ordeals in the world of mortals, and then she would be able to step into the realm of Dao Breaking.

In his bedchamber, the emperor was howling and sprinting atop an Apsara; in the hut outside, the daoist, her face flushed, was reciting the mantra and keeping her mind as calm as water while suppressing the strange sensations that the Apsaras channeled back to her and carefully rotating her cultivation base to take the most crucial step.

Wu Qi uncorked the bottle filled with Ecstasy Incense. A tendril of invisible and odorless smoke rose from it, turned into two wisps of twisting energy, and slithered into the daoist’s nostrils. Her face, which was already so red that it looked like it was about to bleed, suddenly turned purple-red. Meanwhile, warm currents burst out from all her sensitive parts at the same time and swept over her whole body like a flash of fire, destroying her state of mind and completely devouring her sense of reason.

In the face of the Ecstasy Incense concocted by Wu Qi, all the power of Buddha and practice of Zen became a joke. Her skin turned bright red from the gush of lust, her eyes filled with boundless desire, and her whole body dripping with sweat, thick as glue and giving off an intoxicating fragrance.

Soon, a deep moan came from her mouth as she fell feebly to the ground, her eyes turned white, and her body trembled.

On the bed in the bedchamber, the eyes of the eight Apsaras suddenly grew wide as their fair skins turned blood-red and their dignified faces turned lewd and ferocious. In the blink of an eye, the beautiful, elegant, and friendly Apsaras had transformed into horrible Rakshasa. While laughing, they threw themselves at the emperor, using all kinds of mystic arts from the Delightful Branch of Buddhist League to stir up his passion.

The emperor, who was engaged in a fierce exercise with the Apsaras, felt a constant rush of pleasure wash through his body. He, too, seemed to smell a delicate fragrance, and then all his senses were swallowed up in an instant.

Wu Qi came into the bedchamber and watched the emperor’s body shrivel as his spirit, energy, and even soul was drained by the Rakshasa, all vanishing without a trace. In fact, Apsaras and Rakshasa were two sides of the same coin, which was nothing more than a change of thought.

‘I knew those old fogies of Buddhist League and Dao League had done something,’ Wu Qi sneered. ‘When their men were killed, their souls escaped from the scene and waited to be promoted as deities. But, those killed by the men they sent were unable to keep their souls. It seems that I have to warn the higher-ups of Dong Hai, lest they end up having their souls perished…’

The emperor’s corpse shattered with a crackle into a heap of ashes and scattered. The nine purple dragons inside him roared and were about to fly away like some living creatures when Wu Qi gave a cold snort as he flung out his sleeve and forced them all into his possession, storing them inside his body.

The eight Rakshasa lay panting in bed. Their minds had been confused by the Ecstasy Incense, so they were not aware of what had happened around them.

With a faint smile, Wu Qi turned and teleported out of the room, finding his clone and merging with him. Those who accompanied his clone were merely lesser immortals with meager cultivation base, who had no power to discover his traces.

Before long, the golden bells in the palace were sounded, and the ominous news spread all over the city of Youxiong in a flash.