Stealing the Heavens

Between two mountains, a great city halted the march of Great Wu’s army.

Constructed of black boulders, the city wall stood a thousand feet high and half a mile thick. It stretched for thirty miles from end to end, densely surrounded by numerous no-fly formations and other large and small defensive formations. It had completely cut off the passage of Great Wu’s army from Wu River Valley to the north. Across the city was the territory of Chu State, another mortal dynasty that came from some outer heavenly realm.

The sun was setting, smearing the clouds in the sky fiery red. Everything seemed to be covered in a thick layer of blood.

Hundreds of thousands of slave soldiers divided into groups of ten thousand men were charging and attacking the wall like continuous waves of a rising tide. The no-fly formations had prevented them from leaping into the air, so they could only brave the garrisons with crude ladders and other siege machines. Meanwhile, arrows were raining endlessly down from the parapets, and a row of Oracles behind the archers, hundreds of them, raised their hands over their shoulders with fireballs shooting out of their palms. They arced across the void and exploded with booms as soon as they came in contact with the ground, enveloping everything within hundreds of feet in raging flames.

Soldiers fell to the ground with arrows from time to time, but they quickly pulled them out and rushed back up the wall again, gnashing their teeth and crying in fury.

Soldiers were blown away by fireballs from time to time, but they immediately struggled to their feet and charged toward the wall again with black smoke drifting out of their armor and clothes, paying no mind to the injuries.

Armed with bows or crossbows, teams of slave soldiers blended themselves in the siege force, hurling volleys of arrows and bolts over a section of the wall as they ran forward. There were also some Oracles mixed among the crowd, carefully dodging arrows and fireballs falling from the wall while occasionally releasing fireballs and lightning to attack the Oracles on the wall.

There were also slave soldiers who dropped their weapons and armor, weeping and screaming as they fled to the rear. But they often would not have gone a few steps before they heard a shrill whistle, the sound of the custom made soul-wiping arrow mercilessly released by the elite archers of Great Wu’s anti-retreat forces, which pierced their heads and shattered their souls in the blink of an eye.

The first wave of ten thousand soldiers was quickly routed in the frantic attack of the defenders on the wall, fleeing for the rear. Meanwhile, amidst the furious curses and shouts of the anti-retreat forces, a new wave of soldiers roared like savage beasts while charging toward the wall as fast as they could.

The three million soldiers of Great Wu’s northern expedition had set up an encampment in the valley. At the forefront of all the orderly arranged tents was the messy camp of the slave soldiers. At the moment, some 200,000 slave soldiers were sprawled on the ground, absorbing Pangu Sacred Energy at full speed to heal and restore their strength.

These slave soldiers were actually garrisons in the cities that had been captured since the beginning of the northern expedition. They were reduced to slaves and incorporated into the slave army to serve as cannon fodder. In the face of Great Wu’s formidable military forces and fine armaments, these soldiers had no room for resistance. So, they could only fight to the death and try to kill as many enemies.

Great Wu promised them that if they could kill an enemy, they would be freed from slavery and incorporated into the rear service. If they killed three enemies, they would be transferred out of logistic camps and made to join the ranks of regular soldiers; killing ten enemies, they would gain the status of Great Wu’s citizen and be eligible to become an officer; killing a hundred enemies, they would be promoted to generals. And if they killed a thousand enemies, they would be given a piece of land and a noble title!

All slave soldiers were originally soldiers of the Chu State. In just a month, Great Wu had captured 37 cities, capturing more than 600,000 soldiers and some 2,000 Oracles. Now, they were all incorporated into the slave army, serving Great Wu at the cost of their lives.

When the thirteenth wave of ten thousand slave soldiers was routed, Wu Qi, watching the battle from a low hill behind the anti-retreat forces and shook his head. Guigu’zi shook his head as well. The city was so well defended that it was impossible for the slave soldiers to take it. “They are still very useful…We can’t let them die for nothing under this wall.”

Guigu’zi reached out his left hand and grabbed at a boulder beside him, pulling out a stone slate. Then, he carved a few runes on the slate with a stream of immortal energy and handed it over to a boy waiting next to him. The boy bowed, and with both hands holding the slate, he began to walk slowly toward the city wall that was a dozen miles away. Behind him followed several other boys and girls, forming a group of twelve to conform with the Art of Six Ding and Six Jia ¹ . The runes drawn on them also conformed to the same art, and once gathered together, they would naturally produce divine power.

Twelve boys and girls walked with very speedy steps, and it only took a few seconds for them to get within two miles from the wall.

Their strange appearance immediately alarmed the defenders on the wall. At the command of a general, three monstrous crossbows fired thirty-six giant bolts, each as thick as a fist and over ten feet long, at the chests of the boys and girls.

When the bolts made of pure metal were still several hundred feet away from their targets, a flash of lightning suddenly fell from the sky and exploded in front of the boys and girls. All the bolts instantly melted into molten metal and splashed all over the ground, with some droplets flying as far as a few hundred feet, and yet all avoiding the boys and girls.

While stroking his beard, Guigu’zi smiled reservedly as he nodded and said, “So long as they are protected by the runes of Six Ding and Six Jia, no evil can harm them. The essence of this rune is to unite the destinies of the boys and girls with the deities of Six Ding and Six Jia. It sounds magical, but it’s very simple. Remember, you just have to do this when you’re drawing the rune…” The immortals and cultivators who stood by the chariot and were interested in the ancient techniques of divination listened attentively to Guigu’zi’s lesson, lest they should miss a word.

Wu Qi had told everyone that his two senior brothers and he were all peak-level Gold Immortals, and that they could step into the realm of Primordial at any time. To these immortals and cultivators from outer heavenly realms, Gold Immortals were legendary beings, and they would sacrifice everything to practice under them. The problem was that Gold Immortals in outer heavenly realms were generally proud and arrogant, and they did not accept anyone as their disciples. In fact, each of their disciples was carefully chosen, even after more than a dozen reincarnations of inspection and verification. With the qualifications and background of these immortals and cultivators from lesser sects, how could they have the opportunity to practice under those Gold Immortals?

Now that Wu Qi and his senior brothers were willing to accept them as disciples, these immortals and monks naturally bent their hearts and souls to curry favor with them and follow their teachings.

Twelve boys and girls cupped their fists and bowed at the defenders on the wall, then chanted an incantation at the same time. Suddenly, the stone slate in the first boy’s hand flew up into the air, dissolved into a hazy cloud of smoke, and squeezed into the ground and mountains around the city wall. Soon, the earth and the mountains began to shake as numerous glowing lines of restrictive formations gushed out of them, and in a flash, all of the no-fly formations and other restrictive formations of the city collapsed.

With a stone slate, Guigu’zi had forcibly twisted the path of the earth veins beneath the city and caused the underground energy to dissipate, eventually bringing down the city’s defensive formations. The invisible pressure within a hundred miles vanished as soon as the no-fly formations were broken, and the two-thousand-odd Heaven Immortals and tens of thousands of cultivators of Great Wu immediately flew up into the sky, raining down flying swords to form a light curtain that looked like glaze over the city.

The soldiers in the city were instantly thrown into confusion. Dozens of heavily armored generals shouted and leaped into the air, lashing their weapons at the curtain of light. Amidst a deafening rumble, their weapons were all shattered while a great counterforce shook them, causing them to fall to the ground with blood spurting out of their mouths.

Dozens of long ropes made of dragon tendons—each as thick as a thumb and clear as a crystal, attached with a blood-red talisman on both ends—came whistling down into the city and tied these generals up like rice dumplings.

There were nearly 100,000 soldiers in the city. When they saw their immediate superiors being captured by the enemy, they uttered cries of fear, and seventy percent of them hurriedly opened the north gate and fled the city. The remaining soldiers were extremely courageous though. They rushed to the giant crossbows and other defensive equipment, then fired the specially made bolts and all kinds of weapons such as iron balls into the air.

But, the curtain of light was made up of countless immortal swords. As soon as the attacks hit it, they were cut into pieces and fell to the ground.

Thirty-seven black seven-story pagodas soared into the sky, rapidly expanding several miles high and crushing down on the plain outside the north gate like thirty-seven small hills. At the top of each pagoda stood a Supreme Oracle in a black robe. Glancing disdainfully at the fleeing soldiers, they performed an incantation gesture with both hands.

In the blink of an eye, thirty-seven small meteors that were dozens of feet in diameter plunged down from the sky with a harsh whistle and crashed into the ground. Rings of milky white blast waves swept out in all directions, carrying with them flames and rocks. Nearly ten thousand soldiers were wiped out in this wave of attacks, and more than twenty thousand soldiers who rushed at the forefront were swept up into the air, their bones broken by the rocks.

“A bunch of wastrels!” Wu Qi cried out in a deep voice. “Your Majesty, these Oracles have to be taught a good lesson. 13,799 soldiers were killed. They could have been incorporated into our slave army, which would have saved us at least a few thousand elite soldiers!”

Wu Tianming looked unhappily at those Supreme Oracles as well. “I’ll leave them to you, Master,” he said coldly. “It’s time for them to be taught a good lesson.”

Unaware that they had been handed over to Wu Qi by Wu Tianming, the thirty-seven Supreme Oracles stood triumphantly on top of their pagodas, glancing coldly at the soldiers of Chu State kneeling on the plain. Suddenly, an uproar came from behind them. The elite soldiers of Great Wu had rushed into the city, and together with those cultivators, they slew and captured any soldier blocking their way. Soon, a column of soldiers clad in Great Wu’s armor charged out of the north gate and surrounded the tens of thousands of surrendered soldiers.

The only obstacle that lay ahead of them now was the capital city of Chu State.

Great Wu’s army of three million soldiers and the army of hundreds of thousands of slave soldiers marched forward like a fierce dragon, wiping out Chu State with over half of its military forces slain or captured in just half a day. After that, the army divided into three hosts with the capital city as the base, each protected by Wu Qi, Guigu’zi, and Mo Di respectively, as they poured out in different directions. In just one year, they managed to wipe out 87 states. After the war, Great Wu’s northern border was joined with New Yu’s southern border.

The vanguard of the army protected by Mo Di clashed with New Yu’s border guards. In a matter of seconds, three thousand soldiers were killed by ten patrols.