by <unknown>
Li Yao quickly restored Qi Yuanbao's artificial body into the normal mode. Jabbing his head so hard that his iron skull was almost cracking, Li Yao demanded, "Confess now. Are you behind the accident, or is there anything else that you have been hiding? Did Blackstar the Great give you any other secret orders?"
"No! It wasn't me! It really wasn't me!"
Qi Yuanbao felt so wronged that he was almost shedding lubricant. He whined, "I really don't know anything. I confessed all the arrangements I made in the Seven Seas Grand Market a long time ago. Blackstar the Great did not give us any other secret orders either. He merely asked us to undermine Jin Yuyan's power, but he told us not to kill Jin Yuyan unless it was absolutely necessary. Even if we had to take care of Jin Yuyan, we should at least wait until the battle of Seven Seas was won.
"It was I who acted recklessly because of my greed. If Wuying Qi had given us other secret orders, I wouldn't have been bold to kill him at such a moment at all!"
"It does make sense."
Li Yao considered for a moment and felt that Qi Yuanbao really did not look like a mastermind with his wisdom. The main reason was that the guy jumped out too soon and had been on the stage all the time, which was not expected of a schemer in the dark. Shouldn't a real schemer be keeping a low profile all the time, always ignored by everyone even if they were observed all the time?
His heart palpitating, Li Yao suddenly thought of someone. "Where is your sister, Wuying Qinxin?"
"I-I don't know."
Qi Yuanbao looked confused. "She and I were caged separately. It was impossible for us to communicate with each other. I have no idea where he is, too."
"Let me ask you something else. It is a very critical question. You must answer it honestly!"
Li Yao demanded, "Was it you or your sister who came up with the whole plan of assassinating Jin Yuyan with the help of the 'Soul Transfer Technique'?"
"About that…"
Stunned for a long time, Qi Yuanbao replied in uncertainty, "I can't tell."
Li Yao said in a hurry, "What do you mean by 'you can't tell'? You don't know who came up with the idea first?"
"I was the one who proposed the complete plan, but the technological feasibility was come up by my sister, which triggered my ambition."
Qi Yuanbao said, "In the first place, Wuying Qinxin is a very excellent Meditation Healer. She even grasped many bizarre tricks that even I had never heard of in terms of soul training. One day, she told me excitedly that she had made breakthroughs in the training of 'Soul Transfer Technique', allowing her to exchange the souls of two people without any damage or trace. Even the experts above the Nascent Soul Stage could be swapped too. I was piqued and came up with the idea."
"Wait—"
Narrowing his eyes, Li Yao grasped the key point quickly. "Known as 'Hanged Man', you were the most mysterious ace assassin at the peripheral worlds of the Imperium because of your remarkable expertise in soul techniques, whereas Wuying Qinxin had been spending the last hundred years in the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors and next to Jin Yuyan. She was a talent in the business world. How on earth could she have known more soul training tricks than you did? Weren't you of the same origin?"
"I don't know about that."
Qi Yuanbao said helplessly, "Although my sister and I both had the heritages of the family, we were separated for decades after our family was massacred, and only the two of us escaped. We did not meet again until we both had made minor achievements. Naturally, she did not tell me her experiences, like whom she met, what techniques she practiced, or which relics she visited.
"We were both Immortal Cultivators. It was perfectly normal for two biological siblings to keep certain secrets from each other. I did not tell her some of my ultimate techniques either!"
Li Yao couldn't have looked more awful. "In that case, why did she tell you that she had grasped the new 'Soul Transfer Technique'?"
Slightly stunned, Qi Yuanbao said, "That's right. Come to think of it, it was indeed rather strange. Usually, my sister and I simply trained on our own. Even if we grasped any unparalleled technique, we hardly told each other. Only when we encountered obstacles or needed external protection in training would we talk to each other.
"I-I did not think too much at that time. I only thought that she told it accidentally when she was too excited…"
Gnashing his teeth, Li Yao asked, one word after another, "Therefore, without Wuying Qinxin's breakthrough in the 'Soul Transfer Technique', your ambitions wouldn't have burst out, and the assassination against Jin Yuyan wouldn't have been activated. In other words, while you were the main perpetrator on the surface, she was actually the mastermind behind the curtain. Everybody, including you, was led by her with extremely subtle psychological hints!"
Stunned for a long time, Qi Yuanbao said, "Now that I think of it, it is possible."
Li Yao shouted angrily, "Why didn't you say it sooner?"
With a bitter expression, Qi Yuanbao said, "I didn't realize it until now. Besides, would the Black Wind King have believed me even if I had said it sooner? Wouldn't you have believed that I was assigning all the blame to Wuying Qinxin and understating my responsibility, and therefore despised, loathed, and tortured me even harder?"
Lost for words, Li Yao took a deep breath and searched for Wuying Qinxin's prison with telepathic thoughts.
To localize the few important persons, other than leaving a mark on Qi Yuanbao's artificial body, he had also put a neck ring on Wuying Qinxin that released waves of a special frequency every second. Li Yao should be able to detect it as long as it was within several thousand meters.
However, Li Yao's scan had no result at all.
It was impossible. Li Yao's tracing neck ring was extremely solid, and it was fully charged with spiritual energy yesterday. Even if Wuying Qinxin had been blown into smithereens or crumpled by the collapsed building, there was no reason why the tracing neck ring would lose effect.
The only possibility was that Wuying Qinxin had escaped with the tracing neck ring, after killing all the guards next to her the moment of the explosion.
Li Yao cursed himself hard in his heart again, wondering why he hadn't learned any lesson from all the setbacks. A guy who jumped out and caused trouble openly since the beginning like Qi Yuanbao must be a lackey or a scapegoat. Wuying Qinxin, being so low-key, should've been treated with more attention!
"I'm going to believe you one more time. If I ever find that you're lying, I'll rip your soul apart and drink wine with it!"
Li Yao grabbed Qi Yuanbao by his neck and threw him to the midair before he kicked him right out of the window at an altitude of almost a hundred meters. He also sealed the guy's artificial body by the way, simply letting him drop while screaming.
The man was a ghost after all, and the artificial body was sturdy enough. Even though it wouldn't be the most pleasant experience, the fall would not kill him.
It was the fastest way to get him away from the burning plaza.
Next, Li Yao stomped on the floor, breaking it and descending to three floors below, before he dashed to the room where Wuying Qinxin had been held in custody.
As he expected, the corridor and the room were empty. There was nothing except for the dead bodies of almost ten guards. Wuying Qinxin had vanished.
On one of his knees, Li Yao examined the corpses of the guards. The more he examined, the more scared he became.
The guards were not knocked out by the blast of the explosion or smashed by the falling ceiling, but blown up by somebody, who crumbled their skulls, squeezed their brains, and shattered their souls into pieces.
Everybody's head was nothing more than an empty balloon. Not the slightest remaining soul could be found inside. No gods in the entire universe could save them now.
Two guards summoned their crystal suits in time. Their heads were protected by the hardest helmet, but they were still killed.
Judging from the clear marks of fists on the helmets, the attacker was not even weari
ng a crystal suit but still managed to kill the muscular men in crystal suits barehandedly.
Li Yao compared his own fist to it, only to discover that the fist mark on the helmet was much smaller than his own. It was obviously a woman's fist.
It was Wuying Qinxin.
Li Yao's heart sank into a bottomless abyss.
All the files stated that Wuying Qinxin was a pure Meditation Healer who was between an admin-type Immortal Cultivator and a research-type one. Her combat ability was not very tough.
Jin Yuyan also told Li Yao that he had barely seen his wife attack anyone in the past hundred years. Wuying Qinxin preferred to use her brain than her fists.
Li Yao had performed a full examination on Wuying Qinxin himself before she was locked and did not notice any anomaly.
If she had hypnotized the guards through the unique mental attacks of the Meditation Healers, forcing them to brutalize and die with each other, Li Yao would have found it more acceptable.
However, punching so many guards to death with her own fists, with a strength that pierced through two crystal suits as if they were just paper—how was it possible?
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao suddenly thought of something. His whole face was almost blackened, and he hurried to go to the other side of the corridor to check.
Before he broke into the room, he already discovered another body on the corridor, the body of another woman.
It was a woman who had a rising cheekbone, huge eyes, and long arms that reached her knees.
Her eyes were still open after her death. Inside the frozen eyes were questions and fear. Her mouth was wide open, as if she were about to exclaim in disbelief.
However, her chest had been deeply dented, and her spine could almost be seen.
There was also a tiny hole on her forehead, which pierced to the back of her head. All the brain tissues in between had been burnt up by the flames of spiritual energy.
She was Red Lady, one of the four "gods of death" on par with Qi Yuanbao, leader of Bloody Skull, and one of the strongest snipers in Imperium.
Chapter 2572: The Most Furious Burning! |
While Red Lady was also one of the assassins who tried to kill Jin Yuyan, she was hired by the four families, which were on the opposite side of Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin.
Also, Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin intentionally indulged her to carry on the assassination although they had seen through her plan, essentially regarding her as a bait. Naturally, she had every reason to hate Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin.
Later, Red Lady's shooting from the high altitude contributed a lot to Qi Yuanbao's easy capture too.
Therefore, Li Yao had suggested to Jin Yuyan that Red Lady be caged somewhere not far away from Qi Yuanbao and Wuying Qinxin. It would be easier for the prisoners to be controlled if they stalled and fought each other because they belonged to different forces.
He did not expect that Red Lady, a legendary expert in the Divinity Transformation Stage, had died so abruptly.
Li Yao looked around, only to notice several deep footprints on the wall and even the ceiling of the corridor. Somebody seemed to have stomped on them heavily.
The footprints were very small, leaving no doubt that they belonged to a woman.
Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!
Thinking quickly, Li Yao calculated and recreated the scene back then.
At that time, the explosion inside the building destroyed the security measures and barriers on all floors, allowing Wuying Qinxin and Red Lady to escape.
Red Lady had long reached an agreement with Li Yao and Jin Yuyan, and she was more or less joining them. She was not really imprisoned here but was meant to watch over Wuying Qinxin and Qi Yuanbao.
After the failed assassination, it was impossible for Red Lady to return to the four families. Naturally, she could only be loyal to Li Yao and Jin Yuyan. Therefore, the moment she discovered that Wuying Qinxin had escaped, she went forward to stop her.
Perhaps, in her eyes, Wuying Qinxin was merely a Meditation Healer with barely any combat ability, and she could capture her without much trouble.
But unexpectedly, Wuying Qinxin made small-scale dodging movements on the wall and the ceiling without a pattern at an extremely high speed, so fast that even the eyes of an ace sniper like Red Lady could not catch her trace.
Measuring Wuying Qinxin's acceleration from the depth of the footprints, she must've crossed a hundred meters in 0.1 seconds and appeared before Red Lady. Then, she destroyed Red Lady's internal organs in a heavy attack, before she stabbed a finger into Red Lady's forehead. Flames of spiritual energy surged out of her finger, burning Red Lady's spiritual root and even the whole brain into nothingness.
The whole process couldn't have lasted longer than one second. The top sniper of the Imperium was killed before taking any action.
How exactly… did she manage it?
Walking in the shoes of Wuying Qinxin, Li Yao inferred again and again but still couldn't think it through.
Although Red Lady was a sniper who was not best at melee combat, she was a battle-type Immortal Cultivator after all, and her melee combat ability must've been higher than that of a battle-type Nascent Soul Stage expert in any case.
Of course, since she attempted to murder Jin Yuyan, neither Li Yao nor Jin Yuyan could've allowed her to keep all her strength. Therefore, Jin Yuyan had forced Red Lady to take medicines that would confine her soul, and Li Yao had also put manacles and shackles on Red Lady that could block the cycle of spiritual energy. At most, she could unleash the combat ability at the starting level of the Nascent Soul Stage.
But even if she were merely a sniper at the beginning level of the Nascent Soul Stage, she was still not someone that a Meditation Healer like Wuying Qinxin could've killed!
Wuying Qinxin's body was relatively soft and vulnerable, just as all the other non-battle-type Immortal Cultivators. It had been examined by Li Yao and Jin Yuyan carefully and couldn't possibly be wrong.
Even though she had certain secret techniques of instant outbreaks, say, imposing strong psychological hints on herself to make her soul overload and unleash a ten times higher combat ability, her weak body would not be able to handle it at all.
The outbreak of spiritual energy of such a high intensity would burn her into ashes after only a few hours.
Was she out of her mind? What was she trying to do?
While thinking, Li Yao suddenly felt something wrong in his hand. Rubbing Red Lady's forehead carefully, he picked up a broken bone that was somewhat weird.
It was a bone that was smaller than a tooth. It was unlike a piece of the skull and more like one's fingerbone.
Red Lady's hands, on the other hand, were absolutely intact. Even the skin was not damaged, much less the bones.
Seeing the broken bone, Li Yao immediately had a picture in his head—
In the mayhem of the explosion, Wuying Qinxin rushed out of her prison cell like a crazy devil. With unusual flames of spiritual energy surging around her body, she lunged at the few tall, strong guards in crystal suits.
There was no telling where she got the strength that was far beyond her capacity, but she killed all the guards in the end. However, her weak body could not withstand the recoil of the flooding spiritual energy as well as the heavy punches. Her fingers cracked like fireworks, and even the finger bones were broken and fell out.
But she was like an animal that had lost the sense of pain. Not caring about the damage that was inflicted on her hands at all, she went on and killed Red Lady with the broken hands, before she crashed the glass window at the end of the corridor that was embedded with dozens of defense rune arrays, fleeing successfully.
Li Yao turned around and checked the wounds of the few guards. As he expected, he did find more broken bones from the dented helmets of two guards.
After assembling the broken bones, several intact fingers would be formed.
Li Yao shuddered in coldness.
Wuying Qinxin gave him the fee
ling that she was not a Meditation Healer at all. She was not even a battle-type Immortal Cultivator, but an animal that had completely lost sanity and got controlled by fiends!
Picking up all the broken bones, Li Yao dashed out from the broken window through which Wuying Qinxin escaped.
"Neltharion, attack!"
The "Blood Stripe Virus", the antecedent to the mental devil, was an alien virus that lived on and moved with blood. It had the keenest senses on the smell and type of blood. From the tiny blood left on the broken pieces, it was possible to track the source of the blood.
Besides, since Wuying Qinxin was burning her soul so crazily and blatantly, the waves of her spiritual energy couldn't have been normal. It couldn't be covered at all.
Li Yao spread out his telepathic thoughts and soon discovered Wuying Qinxin's trace in a populated downtown area.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
At this moment, intense explosions burst out in all directions at the same time. The earthquakes were so devastating that the whole planet seemed to be falling apart. Countless skyscrapers were shaking, and the whole world was occupied by a black fog.
"Damn it. How many accomplices does Wuying Qinxin have? How many crystal bombs have they planted in the Seven Seas Grand Market? Why are they doing all this?"
Li Yao hopped and swung among the crowded buildings, tracing Wuying Qinxin's blood.
New explosions echoed from all directions incessantly, gradually approaching the downtown area. The super metropolis where tens of millions of people lived was reduced into chaos, the order completely gone.
Suddenly, dazzling sparks burst out between the blue sky and the white clouds above everybody's head. In the next second, the blue sky and the white clouds were all twisted into a messy swirl, before they were completely gone, revealing the cold, iron dome behind them.
The artificial sky had collapsed, and the whole planet fell into darkness. Even all the enemy supply had been cut off. Cries, screams, and collisions of shuttles were echoing in the dark. The shuttles were crashing into each other or even the buildings around like headless flies after losing automatic navigation, resulting in countless tragedies.