Amid the thick black smoke, the second Crown Prince of the Jade Emperor was extremely exasperated.

Of course he was! He had been captured by Zhou Bao at the Treasure-snatching Rock and imprisoned in the Dark Garbha-mandala Canopy. There was no light, no sound, no airflow and no distinction of time and space, only complete darkness. He was able to withstand such an environment only because he was an Immortal. Otherwise, he would have gone stark raving mad.

“Crown Prince! It’s good that you’re still alive!”

“Zhou Bao, how dare you!” At the sound of Zhou Bao’s voice, the prince’s eyes glowed with rage and his divine thoughts shot out. But it couldn’t penetrate the dark poison gas around him. “Release me immediately! Get on your knees and be my slave. I’ll ask my father to forgive you. Or, I’ll—!”

“Smack!!!”

Zhou Bao slapped him hard. “Idiot! How could you be so presumptuous even after being caught! Seems like the Jade Emperor Sage did not teach his son any manners!”

“You—!”

Zhou Bao shook his head, thinking that the prince was hopeless. He then stretched out his fingers and suddenly grabbed the prince’s forehead.

“I am not interested in you. It’s only because you killed Huang Lei and I’m very interested in his fate!” Zhou Bao didn’t want to talk too much. He instantly performed the Soul Searching. Streams of poison gas penetrated the prince’s body and began to corrode it, even though it was as tough as steel.

“Zhou Bao, you—!”

If Zhou Bao performed only one type of Soul Searching, the prince might be able to hold on for a while. But Zhou Bao used the Elixir Poison of the Nine-headed Fierce Beast to corrode his body first and then searched his soul. The prince was overwhelmed and unable to resist.

He was completely at Zhou Bao’s disposal and was later refined.

“Zhou Bao! I curse you. You won’t die in peace! Even if I die, I’ll curse you for thousands of years. You will be executed by my father! Anyone related to you will be killed! I—!”

Zhou Bao tuned out his ranting and narrowed his eyes intently. He started The Soul Searching. Huge amounts of memory were extracted. Even though some of it was not complete, it was enough for Zhou Bao to uncover the secrets of Jade Emperor Palace.

As the son of the Jade Emperor Sage, the second Crown Prince had an unfathomable cultivation. He had lived for so long and was a famous expert since antiquity times. The Soul Searching took almost twelve hours since his memory was so extensive and rich. Due to the erosion from the Elixir Poison, the prince’s body withered to a skeletal state. After he died, his body was discarded.

Zhou Bao was not happy at all with the memory and Divine Sense of the prince. His expression turned grave.

The prince knew too much, which was a shock to him. He realized that he had underestimated the power of Jade Emperor Palace. The so-called Jade Emperor Palace was literally another Heavenly Court of the Heaven Realm in the antiquity times. Most experts and practitioners of the Heavenly Court survived the Necromancer’s Tribulation and followed the Jade Emperor Sage to the Immortal Realm. They secured a place for themselves and created the family of Jade Emperor Palace.

However, the prince had no idea of the emperor’s strength. He didn’t have any desire to know, because in his eyes, his father was too powerful and invincible.

Besides Jade Emperor Sage, there were three more people in Jade Emperor Palace that the prince dared not offend. They were among the ten most powerful Earthly Immortals along with Emperor An and were only half a step away from being Celestial Immortals.

Emperor An, who beat the hell out of Zhou Bao, was not among the three. In the prince’s memory, his brother Yu An couldn’t get along with his father and the two were like enemies. He was a big problem for the emperor. But since he was too strong, the emperor could do nothing about him.

“The Emperor of Moon Temple, the Thunder Emperor and Tai Sui are among the ten greatest Emperors of antiquity times. They are the strongest Earthly Immortals in Jade Emperor Palace. Each of them is almost as powerful as a Celestial Immortal. The deadliest one to me is the Thunder Emperor. I took his Pool of Thunder Tribulation. In front of him, I’ll be totally vulnerable!”  The thought seemed to remind him of something. He waved his hand and brought out the Thunder Tribulation. The weapon had been severely hurt in the fight against Yu An and its device spirit looked rather depressed now. Under Zhou Bao’s control, the Thunder Tribulation shrank into the size of a palm. The device spirit was trying hard to withdraw its thunderbolt.

“Zhou Bao, why are you calling me out at such a time? Don’t you know that I’m recovering my strength? Emperor An gave me a hard blow. It will take about one hundred, no, one thousand years for me to recover. Don’t count on me to help you again!” Zhou Bao had refined the Pool of Thunder Tribulation, but he was not powerful enough to rein in its device spirit. He could eliminate the device spirit by force, but in that case, the power of the Thunder Tribulation would drop to that of a Taihao Fairy Weapon. This wouldn’t benefit him at all. The device spirit knew this and treated Zhou Bao coldly. It only provided some help when it was a matter of life or death, for example, when facing Emperor An. If it didn’t, it would be destroyed as well.

“Don’t complain now. Look! What is this?”

While speaking, Zhou Bao put out his index finger. Ten centimeters away from his finger point, a trace of a crimson thunderbolt appeared out of nowhere. It grew bigger and bigger. The thunderbolts intertwined with each other and expanded. At last, a thunder ball the size of a basketball was formed. This crimson thunder ball spun slowly in the hollow. Deep inside the ball, endless thunderbolts repeatedly appeared, evolved and disappeared.

“The Crimson Thunder belonged to the Three Devil Deities of the hell. How did you get it?” The device spirit of the Pool of Thunder Tribulation was shocked at the sight of it. Thunderbolts were known to be the most horrible natural phenomenon in the world. All the tribulations started and ended with thunderbolts. Therefore, any Divine Sense related to thunderbolts had infinite power. Three divine thunders were especially powerful. One of them was the Purple Heaven Thunder, also called the tribulation thunder. The tribulations for the evolution and promotion of all living creatures generated from the Purple Heaven Thunder. It was studied and practiced by the Thunder Emperor in the Heavenly Court. The Pool of Thunder Tribulation had also been refined and evolved from it. The other two supreme thunderbolts were the Crimson Thunder controlled by the Three Devil Deities of the hell in the remote antiquity and the black Thunder of Fate, which was said to have started the Primordial Origin.

The Thunder of Fate was untraceable. It was one of the causes for the evolution of the Primordial Origin and was not something that practitioners could control. The Crimson Thunder was different. The Three Devil Deities, who had long surpassed the Celestial Immortal phase, were the most powerful rulers in the era of ancient deities. They were said to have been conceived from the Crimson Thunder and thus held the secrets of the thunder, which were lost with their decline.

No one knew the reason for their decline. It was one of the biggest mysteries in this era.

No one expected that Huang Lei, from the Northernmost Sea macro world, could inherit this from the Three Devil Deities and obtained the Crimson Thunder, which was now in Zhou Bao’s hand.

For others, the Crimson Thunder was only a powerful Divine Sense, a sort of bluff. But for the device spirit of the Pool of Thunder Tribulation, whose origin was a trace of Purple Heaven Thunder, it was more than that. If it obtained the Crimson Thunder and comprehended the two supreme thunderbolts, its phase and power would be significantly improved. It would have the power to challenge Celestial Immortals. The moment it comprehended the Crimson Thunder, it would step into the Celestial Immortal realm.

How could it bypass such a good opportunity?

So, he became agitated.

But Zhou Bao remained calm. He looked at the impatient device spirit and laughed. “I fought for it. Do you want it?”

“I—!” The device spirit stopped the sentence just in time. He stared at Zhou Bao and asked, “You want to control me with the Crimson Thunder?!”

“No matter where you come from, you’re a Heavenly Fairy Weapon refined by me. However, obviously you’re not conscious of that, which upsets me very much. Your attitude makes me anxious. I’m not sure if you will turn against me in front of the Thunder Emperor. Do you think I should give the Crimson Thunder to you?”

“What do you want me to do then?”

“I need a totally loyal Heavenly Fairy Weapon. No matter how powerful it is, I wouldn’t have to worry. On the contrary, the more powerful it grows, the more beneficial it will be to me. Especially when its original owner shows up, I want it to help me wholeheartedly. It’s that simple. Can you do that?”

“I cannot guarantee that, because I was created by the Thunder Emperor. Even if I were to betray him, I don’t know what he will do to me. Even if I have the Crimson Thunder, I won’t be his match, let alone help you against him!”

“I don’t want you to help me against the Thunder Emperor. I want you to handle someone else. We need a new contract!!”