Stealing The Heavens
chapter-878

The torture instrument was a big black net with incredible elasticity. A red rune was attached to each of the black strings, and they tangled with one another like red and black poisonous bugs while exuding a forbidding cold air.

Measuring a thousand feet in circumference, the net was suspended midair in the largest cell of the God's Jail. The cell was empty and surrounded by hazy fogs on all six sides in place of walls, ceiling, and floor. Off to the side, more than a hundred investigators and spies were preparing various instruments of torture; they looked up at Torch Dragon's soul from time to time and laughed excitedly.

Torch Dragon was tied to the net in a sprawl. Countless black needles poked out of the net's string, a thousand times finer than cow's hairs, tens of feet long, and undetectable by ordinary people. They pierced into his body and twisted into thousands of restrictive runes, becoming a part of him.

Unless he self-detonated his soul, he could not escape from this net, which was the most powerful restrictive artifact in God's Jail. In ancient times, it was used to imprison 64 of the 360 highest-ranking elders of the Gods, and none of them managed to escape. Everyone was slowly drained of all their divine power by the net and died when their souls were completely exhausted.

Wu Qi did not ask the jailers to activate the net's power-draining function. Even so, Torch Dragon's face was unsightly, with so many black needles piercing into his body. In fact, he looked rather pathetic, a three-feet-tall, skinny man tied to a big, cold, black net.

When he saw Wu Qi walk into the cell with a group of men, he snorted coldly and turned his head away in disdain.

Wu Qi strode up and slapped him over a hundred times in the face. Torch Dragon had an amazing cultivation base, and because of that, the human form he conjured with his soul was almost identical to a real fleshly body. The slaps had thrown his head left and right and tore his face, causing purple-golden light liquid to spray out in all directions.

The light liquid was the essence of his life force, and every drop lost signified a part of his soul vanishing. The amount of essence he had lost from Wu Qi's slaps was at least equivalent to all the soul essence of several peak-level Gold Immortals combined.

Torch Dragon howled in exasperation, "King Dong Hai! How dare you..."

Wordless, Wu Qi reached out a hand and grabbed Torch Dragon by the chin, slowly pulling out his two front teeth with the other hand. As soon as they left his mouth, the teeth turned into two masses of strong purple-gold flares and vanished in the blink of an eye. Torch Dragon's face turned paler. Before he could yell again, Wu Qi took a triangular spike bayonet from a nearby investigator and slowly stabbed him through the heart.

The bayonet was forged of the Underground Poison Gold, a kind of metal that was once the essence of the gold element, but had absorbed an immense amount of poisonous gases and fires after soaking in the underground poisonous fires for countless eons. It was also called the Evil Gold, for it was not only useless to cultivators, but whoever touched it would die, and any soul that touched it would instantly perish. Even those from the Fiend League scarcely crafted their artifacts with this nasty material, because they could not prevent it from hurting themselves.

But, Great Yu had been mining it and using it to forge various instruments of torture. The bayonet was one of them, and just now, it was soaked in a formulated venom that included the venom of Red Widow spider, the saliva of Green Kiss snake, and the brain of Nine-legged centipede, which boosted its lethality against souls to the maximum.

As the spike bayonet went deep into his chest, Torch Dragon's eyes grew wide, and he let out a shrill shriek. His body changed colors quickly; it looked normal at first, but then suddenly changed to black, followed by red, blue, white, yellow, and many other colors. With every change that happened, he trembled and roared in pain.

A sizzling noise came out of his chest as the bayonet corroded a fist-sized hole there. The torture had severely damaged his soul which he had cultivated painstakingly over countless of years. He had lost at least ten percent of his cultivation base.

The sun and the moon shone brightly in Torch Dragon's eyes as he scowled at Wu Qi and bellowed, "What do you want, boy?"

Wu Qi coldly pulled out the bayonet and slowly pointed it at Torch Dragon's forehead as he said, "Listen very carefully…I don't care what ancient god you are or your other identity, you are now a watchdog in Great Yu! Do you understand? You're just a watchdog!"

Torch Dragon's eyes blazed with anger. He howled furiously and cursed Wu Qi repeatedly, but his vocabulary was so limited that he only knew 'little b*stard' and 'son of a b*tch', words that had no lethal effect on Wu Qi, who was born at the bottom of the social ladder. [1]

Wu Qi slapped Torch Dragon hard in the face once more, throwing his head sideways and almost breaking his neck. "A good watchdog barks when a burglar breaks in," he said while staring at Torch Dragon with a cold grin, "But, you didn't even howl after your master was murdered. I really don't know what's the point of keeping you!"

He thrust the bayonet deep into the old man's shoulder, and the latter shrieked at the top of his lungs. This time, there was a lot of purple-gold sweat breaking out of his body, each drop being a part of his soul essence. In the span of a few breaths, Torch Dragon's body had turned almost transparent. He stared venomously at Wu Qi, as if he was eager to swallow this torturer.

While smiling, Wu Qi pulled out the bayonet and pointed it at Torch Dragon's forehead again. "A dog that can't even guard the door deserves to be killed and cooked. Let me be honest with you, a lot of people around me are interested in the meat and internal organs of the Torch Dragon. Am I right, Gold Horn?"

The dragon python brothers and sisters, who looked like two pairs of cute teenage boys and girls, nodded at the same time. Suddenly, their upper bodies swelled, transforming into fierce and brutal dragon pythons. Four huge mouths opened widely and pointed at Torch Dragon as saliva was constantly dripping out of them.

Torch Dragon's face grew even uglier. Dragon Pythons of Fire and Ice were the nemesis of all dragons. Although he was an Ancient God and unrelated by blood to the dragon clan Ao Buzun had passed down, his body was still that of a dragon. He fully understood what kind of deterrence dragon pythons had for dragons, and he had no doubt that these four fierce things could easily devour his whole fleshly body.

After considering for a brief moment, he said indifferently, "What do you want to know?"

Wu Qi looked at him in surprise. "Something is not right," he said while shaking his head. "You should be angry, despairing, or cursing me. In any case, you shouldn't talk to me so calmly!"

Torch Dragon stared back at Wu Qi as he shook his head and said, "What is not right? I've fallen into your hands, a group of vile..."

"Over seventy percent of your soul's cultivation base has been destroyed by me," Wu Qi interrupted him. "For a mighty figure like you, for someone with your status and cultivation base, I don't believe you can still talk to me so calmly. You're not that magnanimous! If you were, why did the Sacred Emperor confine you in the imperial palace, use you as the core of the formation, and never release you even after so many years?"

Torch Dragon was silent. After a while, he looked at Wu Qi curiously and asked, "So, why do you think I'm so calm?"

Wu Qi narrowed his eyes and laughed. While nodding, he said, "Old Torch Dragon, your true-self is still out there. I've not yet retracted the Fiend Slaying Sword Formation, so there is no way your true-self can flee. Are you willing to give up your powerful fleshly body?"

Torch Dragon looked at Wu Qi with even more surprise. "What are you talking about, King Dong Hai? My soul is here…How am I supposed to flee?"

Wu Qi stared at him for a long time before bursting out laughing. In the next instant, he grabbed Torch Dragon's soul with a hand and swallowed him. A bizarre aura spread out of his body as the Innate Thievery Energy extracted the soul and energy Torch Dragon had lost from the surrounding void, and then injected them into his own body.

Wu Qi's divine soul grew rapidly while Torch Dragon's soul howled painfully and struggled with all his might. But, under Wu Qi's strong repression, there was no way he could escape at all. In less than ten minutes, his soul was completely digested by Wu Qi, and all his memories were extracted.

There was no information in Torch Dragon's soul about the murder of Emperor Haozun. It seemed that he had been cultivating in seclusion here all these years, and had never been involved with anything in the outside world, as Xuanyuan had commanded him. But, in this soul was a distinct memory that intrigued Wu Qi—three eons ago, when Emperor Haozun had just been enthroned, Torch Dragon suddenly obtained a mystic art and successfully divided his soul into three parts.

His soul was divided into an old soul, a middle-aged soul, and a young soul. The mystic art had boosted his attainment, giving him the strength to almost get rid of the restriction Xuanyuan had imposed on him. On top of that, by borrowing the power of the 'Sun and Moon Torch' that was stuck out of his head, the first torch born in the Primal Chaos, he was able to control Liangzhu's ultimate defensive formation.

It was a pity that Torch Dragon had completely miscalculated this time. He had handed over one of his souls to Wu Qi, hoping that he could get away with it. But, he never dreamed that Wu Qi would not reason with him at all. Instead, the latter had devoured his old soul straightaway and searched through his memory.

Wu Qi laughed viciously and said in a deep voice, "This Torch Dragon surely has something to hide. There is no information in this soul about the murder of His Majesty. How about the other two souls?"

Before his voice had died away, the ground suddenly shook violently.

An angry roar rose to the sky, so loud that even Wu Qi could hear it clearly from deep inside God's Jail.

"King Dong Hai! You vile punk! Give me back my soul!"The author refers to his present incarnation.