“Delia, she…” Linley could completely imagine what sort of pain Delia was in… because he was suffering that same pain! Death wasn’t frightening, in and of itself, but to die the way Yale had, after having been tortured to the point of insanity? That was terrifying. “No matter what we do to torture this Odin, it won’t be enough. Won’t be enough!!! And his Death-type clone… I will definitely destroy it as well!”
“How vicious.” Those eighty-two distant Deities watched as Delia and Reynolds took their vengeance, and their hearts quailed as they watched.
Reynolds and Delia were both taking a breather.
“The eighty-two of you.” Linley turned to look at them.
“Lord Linley.” The eighty-two were extremely respectful.
Linley said icily, “Each of you, come up with a method to humiliate Odin. Remember – humiliate! Just stabbing him with a sword isn’t enough! If someone is unable to come up with something…I will kill that person.”
The eighty-two Deities were stunned.
“Oh?” Linley’s gaze was like an icy dagger as he swept them with his eyes. “Would you prefer death instead?”
The eighty-two Deities stared at each other. Odin was their leader, after all. But after hesitating slightly, they all began to walk towards Odin. They knew their own limits… and they could tell that Odin was definitely going to die. Since he was going to die, humiliating him wasn’t a big deal.
“Odin, who would’ve thought that you’d have a day like this?” one of the Deities said, stabbing Odin viciously in the throat.
“Don’t kill him!” Linley growled.
The most important part was the head, as that was where the divine spark was located.
“Remember. Humiliate him!” Linley said coldly. “You call that humiliation?! Not enough!”
These Deities looked at Linley, and then, gritting their teeth, they began to use all sorts of methods to humiliate him, either using the spears to stab at Odin’s nether regions, or even tearing his clothes off. Moments later… Odin’s body had become utterly horrific to behold. But seeing this, Linley didn’t feel satisfied at all.
His eyes were still like ice.
“Big Bro, everything’s ready,” a voice rang out from behind. It was Wharton.
“Bring those people over,” Linley ordered.
Immediately, a group of people began walking over from the various shattered walls of the palace. They were… beggars! These were beggars that had been summoned over from all over the imperial capital. Although the imperial capital was fabulously rich, it had its poor regions as well, along with a large number of beggars. Hundreds of filthy beggars had entered the imperial palace.
“Oho, so this is the imperial palace.” The eyes of the beggars were all shining.
“Go. Please, use your imagination to come up with ways to humiliate that person on the ground. Each of you will receive a gold coin, and whoever does particularly well will be gifted with a hundred additional gold coins,” the youthful looking man leading these beggars said in a clear voice.
“A hundred gold coins?”
The eyes of the beggars lit up.
“Haha, humiliate someone? Easy.” A big fellow rushed forward.
“Those hundred gold coins are definitely mine.”
The hundreds of beggars, all wanting to be first and none wanting to be last, charged forward. They had no idea that the person on the ground was a Highgod. No idea that this was the emperor of the Odin Empire. All they knew… was that if they performed well, they would receive a hundred gold coins. To these beggars, a hundred gold coins was a sum of money that could make them go crazy.
“All of you, come,” the youthful leader immediately barked.
“Haha…” The first beggar immediately urinated into Odin’s mouth.
“That’s nothing.” The second beggar sneered, walking to Odin as well.
One beggar after another came forward, summoning all of their imaginations in their desire to win the hundred gold coins, and using all sorts of ways to humiliate this person.
“This… this…” Seeing this, the eighty-two Highgods were in shock, and their faces turned white.
Compared to these beggars, they were simply too gentle; what they did could only be considered ‘punishing’. What these beggars were doing truly caused one to be in a state worse than death.
“Hey, this fellow’s skin is too tough. I’m not able to cut it open no matter what I do!” one beggar called out. This beggar was holding a needle, as though wanting to do something to punish him, but unfortunately… this was the body of a Highgod, after all. Although Odin didn’t specialize in body training, his body was still made from divine power.
How could an ordinary beggar possibly pierce the skin of a body formed from divine power?
“Next,” the young man said emotionlessly.
“I should be the winner. Those hundred coins should be mine. I haven’t even had the chance to use my skills,” the needle-holding beggar immediately called out.
“Fuck off.” A beggar in the rear pushed him aside. “Haha, it’s daddy’s turn now.” As he spoke, he flipped Odin’s body over…
“That’s… going a bit too far.” Some of the ministers weren’t even able to watch any further.”
But Linley just watched this emotionlessly, not a single hint of an expression on his face. Linley had to admit… these techniques did go a bit too far, and were enough to make a person go insane from humiliation. But he was only humiliating a single person, Odin. As for Odin? He destroyed all of the core members of the Dawson Conglomerate, forcing Yale to kill his own family.
In addition, he didn’t even let Yale die; he tormented Yale instead.
Compared to this, what was happening to Odin was quite ‘benevolent’.
“Let them go,” Linley said calmly.
“Yes,” the youth said respectfully, immediately leading the beggars away.
Linley stared at the filthy, naked, bloodstained body wearing tattered clothes, but felt no pity in his heart at all. At the same time, Linley retracted his spiritual power, but expanded his Blackstone Space once more, trapping Odin within.
Odin’s eyes opened!
“Eh?” Odin looked at himself. His face immediately changed.
“Bang!” Divine wind power swirled, and Odin’s body became completely purified, and a new set of robes appeared as well.
Odin forced himself to his feet, staring at Linley. “What did you do to me?”
“What did I do?” Linley laughed calmly. “Why don’t you watch for yourself as to what was done” With but a thought, Linley made the crystal ball above his head shoot out rays of blue light, forming a massive image in the air above them. The images began to move, replaying what had just happened.
Linley naturally had recorded it all.
After all, Odin had been in a state of spiritual stupor. If he didn’t know what had happened, how could Odin be tormented by it?
“This…” Odin’s face changed, and he couldn’t help but look towards Reynolds and Delia.
The scryer recording had finished displaying the images of what Delia and Reynolds had done. Next, it began to broadcast what the eighty-two Deities had done. The tactics the eighty-two Deities had used were far more excessive. Odin’s face was ashen, and he couldn’t help but turn to stare at those eighty-two men. “You had the gall!”
The group of Deities couldn’t help but feel startled… but then they recovered, and one laughed, “Hmph, Odin, you are about to die. What are you being so arrogant for?”
“You…” Watching the various events occur, Odin grew speechless from rage.
“Odin, keep watching. The best part has yet to start,” Linley said calmly.
In the scryer recording, the beggars had appeared.
Odin’s eyes turned round. “Beggars?” He, Odin, was a venerable, exalted Highgod. To Highgods, even Saints were like ants. As for ordinary mortals, they were to be killed as he pleased… people as lowly as these beg
gars, Odin couldn’t even be bothered to look at.
He, a Highgod, to be spat on by mortal beggars? He thought he might go insane.
But the scryer recordings showed something even worse than he imagined.
The first beggar had urinated into his mouth.
Odin’s fists were clenched, and his face first turned ashen, then turned black, before turning red. His eyes seemed to spit fire at the images.
Those beggars, for the sake of the hundred gold coins, had used up all of their imagination, each one more excessive than the last. The scenes were utterly depraved and utterly disgusting. Odin was a person who pursued perfect and who cared deeply about his face. But what was happening in the scryer recordings was even worse to him than killing him. Odin’s entire body was trembling, and his mind was in a state of chaos.
Humiliation!
Incomparable humiliation!
Worse than death!
“Linley, you will definitely die in my hands. Definitely!!!” Odin stared at Linley with a deathly gaze.
“Odin, today’s just the first day. We’ll continue tomorrow,” Linley said calmly.
Odin was so angry that a hint of blood came out from his lips.
But then, Odin suddenly turned his head to the skies, laughing wildly. “Haha… you are vicious. Vicious!” Odin stared at Linley, as though he wanted to skin Linley alive. “Linley, I have to say though… your skill in humiliating someone is still rather lacking. Compared to what I did to your older brother, Yale? You are a long way off! Do you know how I tortured him, when I hung him up on that tree in the palace? Haha, I imagine… that he wouldn’t dare tell anyone of it. He wouldn’t even dare think about it. Haha…” Although he was saying this, Odin had already been tormented to the brink of madness.
Linley just stared at him coldly.
“No matter how incredible you are, all you will be able to do is destroy my divine wind clone. My most important body is my Death-type clone. If my divine wind clone is destroyed, it is destroyed. It doesn’t matter. If my son dies, I’ll have another one. Haha… let me tell you this. My Death-type clone went to the Netherworld long ago. If you have the ability to do so, come find me in the Netherworld! Haha, as for further humiliating me… haha, in your dreams!”
“BANG!”
While wildly laughing, Odin’s body suddenly exploded.
“Self-detonation?” The surrounding group of experts were all stunned. None of them had imagined that Odin would actually choose to die like this. Clearly, Odin was no longer able to withstand this sort of torment and humiliation, and had chosen suicide instead.
Linley’s gaze was like ice.
“The Netherworld?” Linley murmured to himself.
11
A PLEASANT SURPRISE
Odin’s sudden self-detonation caused the eighty-two Deities to be shocked. They all waited nervously.
Suddenly…
Linley turned to look towards them. The eighty-two Deities immediately said, “Lord Linley, we completely obeyed your orders. Please spare us.” “What we did in the past, we did at the orders of Lord Odin. We had no choice.”
They were all begging for mercy.
“Father, you cannot spare them!” Taylor’s frantic shout came from behind.
“Hrm?” Linley turned to look.
Reynolds, by Taylor’s side, said in an equally frantic voice, “Third Bro, these eighty-two absolutely cannot be spared. When those Saints were killed, it wasn’t Odin who personally did the deed; it was these ‘claws’ of his. George was killed by this group of people as well, and Dixie was killed by them as well!”
“It was them.” Delia couldn’t help but turn and look, her eyes filled with hatred.
What sort of status did Odin have? How could he possibly lower himself to kill Saints? All of these vicious acts had most likely been carried out by these ‘claws’ of his.
The eighty-two began to panic. “Lord Linley, we can’t be blamed. It was Lord Odin’s orders.”
Linley swept them with a cold look. One of the Deities, terrified, actually began to flee while frantically calling out through divine sense, “Flee, quick!” He could already sense that things were growing grim from Linley’s gaze. As he fled, immediately, the other eighty-two began to flee as well.
Some flew into the skies, others drilled into the ground.
“Rumble…”
An earthen yellow aura instantly spread out in every direction, forming an enormous sphere that was thousands of meters in diameter. It even sank two thousand meters into the ground. Within this sphere, the eighty-two Deities were completely trapped. Even Seven Star Fiends would find it hard to resist this gravity.
“Bang!” A minority of them, those who had weak bodies, crumbled and collapsed from the gravity alone.
Fortunately, as long as a Deity’s soul wasn’t destroyed, death would not come. The eighty-two Deities, although controlled by that powerful gravity and being pulled towards Linley, didn’t die at least.
“Lord Linley.” The Deities who had been trying to flee were frantically begging for mercy.
“Father. Kill them. Avenge Uncle,” Taylor said frantically.
“Third Bro,” Reynolds said as well.
Linley swept the eighty-two with his cold gaze. “True, you were the subordinates of Odin and had to obey his orders. But in the past thousand years, none of you have departed from the Yulan Plane. You willingly remained behind… and so you were serving Odin and obeying him out of your own free will. You cannot blame others for your death!”
If these Deities had wanted to escape Odin’s control, they could’ve simply gone to the Arctic Icecap and departed to the Higher Planes. Odin wouldn’t have cared.
“Linley, you, you…” The eighty-two Deities began to beg for mercy in terror, curse in rage, or just mumble. But under that gravitational pull, they flew at high speed to Linley’s side. Linley sent out a surge of divine earth power like arrows into the eighty-two.
A low rumbling sound could be heard. The eighty-two figures transformed into dust.
“Wharton, you take care of these things.” The floor was littered with divine sparks, interspatial rings, and divine artifacts. They were caught up in a surge of divine power and floated towards Wharton. These Demigod sparks and God sparks, in a material plane, were still very precious.
Wharton immediately collected all of the things.
“Let’s return.” Linley didn’t have a hint of a smile on his face. He just charged into the skies.
The forces of Dragonblood Castle immediately flew into the skies as well, leaving behind only two Saints. These two Saints immediately headed towards the surrounded and bound Envoys of the Baruch Empire. Seeing the situation, the soldiers around the Envoys were so frightened, they hurriedly loosened the bonds.
“Haha, your Odin Empire is finished,” an Envoy said in a clear voice.
The ministers of the Odin Empire all looked at each other. They understood as well… that in front of the overwhelming power of the Baruch Empire, the Odin Empire had indeed been finished.
“The Empire is finished.”
This battle in the imperial capital of the Odin Empire and Linley’s sudden appearance and killing of Odin as well as eighty-two Deities caused the entire Yulan continent to once more enter a state of chaos. Those experts who previously had been subjugated by Odin’s power… how could they remain loyal to the Odin Empire now? They immediately rebelled against the Odin Empire.
In the space of a single night, the entire Odin Empire collapsed.
Although Odin had a few other Deities under his control who were scattered throughout the Yulan continent, once they learned that Odin and the eighty-two Deities had died they were so terrified that they immediately fled to the Arctic Icecap, all of them leaving the Yulan Plane.
The Odin Empire disintegrated at an astonishing speed. As for the Baruch Empire? It expanded at an astonishing speed. The entire Yulan continent once more knew of Linley’s presence.
Grandmaster Linley, who had disappeared for nearly two thousand years, had suddenly reappeared. Emperor Odin had been killed!
The entire Yulan continent was rocked by the news of this battle.
DRAGONBLOOD CASTLE.
It had been nearly half a month since the killing of Odin. During this half month, Linley and Bebe had remained within Dragonblood Castle. Although Linley knew that Odin’s Death-type clone was in the Netherworld, the Netherworld was simply too vast. How could he find him? It was like searching for a needle in the sea.
“Third Bro, drink less,” Reynolds said.
At this moment, Linley and Reynolds were seated facing each other within a courtyard, drinking wine. None of them wanted to discuss Odin or Yale. Linley was actually just drinking nonstop, gulping down one bottle of wine after another into his belly.
“Third Bro.” Reynolds grabbed Linley’s arm, forcing Linley to halt.
Linley slammed the bottle to the side, then looked bitterly at Reynolds, sighing softly, “Fourth Bro, I feel miserable!”
Linley raised his head, tears in his eyes. “When I think of what happened to Boss Yale, I feel miserable. Have I ‘avenged’ him? With all my power, all I did was kill Odin’s divine wind clone. To Odin, his divine wind clone wasn’t nearly as important as his Death-type clone. And that clone is in the distant Netherworld.”
“And Boss Yale? He was so shattered that you had to go kill him, Fourth Bro.” When Linley thought about what Yale had experienced, he couldn’t help but feel the rage build in his heart, making it ache. “I want to go to the Netherworld and kill Odin, but… finding Odin is too difficult. The Netherworld is simply too vast, too vast!”
The Netherworld was like the Infernal Realm; both were Higher Planes.
Just by looking at the Infernal Realm, one could imagine how if Odin had secreted himself into a corner of the Netherworld, that Linley could spend countless years without being able to find him.
“Third Bro.” Reynolds was heartsick as well, but he consoled Linley, “This isn’t your fault. Boss Yale did die an unjust death… and an extremely unjust one! But if you hadn’t returned, we wouldn’t have been able to kill even as much as Odin’s divine wind clone. You’ve already done very well. I think… if Boss Yale knew of this, he would also feel slightly consoled.”
The Planar Wars: Book 7 of the Coiling Dragon Saga Page 9