I carefully focused on my energy. It was contained and I didn’t come across as someone with a lot of stats. The main issue was that I would not be able to use any skills or focus on combat while I was focusing on controlling my energy.

The other limitation was that I wasn’t able to control what I was expelling, just where I was expelling excess energy from. Which was my feet. If anyone looked up from below, I would be spotted. But as long as they were touching the ground, I should be fine.

It was a struggle to maintain, but it was possible. I had also managed to clean up both sets of armor. One of them fit Bao Wang, but the other larger set was quite small for me. It would fool people at a distance, but not up close.

The worst of the smell had removed as well through frequent cleanings, but they were usable. Bao Wang had been brooding for a while. But he just had to learn to suck it up. Life was tough.

“Alright, let’s run through the plan from the top,” I said.

“Again?” Bao Wang complained.

“Yes, again. And think. I mean really think. We need to be ready for when it all falls apart and what we do. We won’t have time to discuss things in the middle of the heist. Or are you getting cold feet?” I asked.

“It is stupid! You saw what happened to the Chief Diviner. We should just leave all of it alone.”

“Well we aren’t. It is your only chance at survival. I don’t want to use the stick, but you aren’t running away after everything I have invested into you,” I replied and Bao Wang winced at that.

“Fine, from the top,” he said in a defeated tone. I was really not liking his attitude, but I had no choice but to deal with him. He needed to get that stick out of his ass and quick.

“The first phase is to go Nanjing to the Southwest of our position and slightly Southeast of the Forbidden City. We will prepare cart of crystals before hand to bribe our way in and armor. We will appear to be from a tribe, enter the city to get soldier positions.”

“The second phase is to ditch the cart and wear soldier uniforms and learn if the Divine Empress is back and observe for the tribute cart. We intercept the tribute cart inside the city. We load up the special armor into the cart as well.” I wasn’t going to leave Bao Wang alone for a second. While he could speak Chinese and cause issues that way, he would die first if he betrayed me.

“I will use humanoid summons to mimic the other soldiers so we appear to have enough. We leave the city and then I ditch the summons and we make our way to the Forbidden City. Any tribes people I will kill off.”

“Then we have the third phase of the plan, which is when we will be fully committed. We enter the Forbidden City and make our way to the treasury. Once there, I kill everyone inside. Hopefully before an alarm goes up and you barricade the door, while I go to the airship port and take the remaining airship.”

“I will not be able to hold the door for long or even moments,” Bao Wang said.

“Well, I doubt they will be prepared for an attack like this. The fourth phase is I steal the airship hopefully before it takes off and fly it over the treasury. I melt a hole in the roof, and we load up the airship before flying off. Well you will load it up while I hold off any attackers,” I replied.

“There will be a lot of chests. It is no simple matter. That airship from before was small,” Bao Wang told me.

“We will have to figure it out. Dump the crystals into the hold and toss the chests.”

“A chest can hold about 10,000 crystals. You are talking about 20,000 chests if they all contain 50 point crystals. Even if I did one per second, it would take five and a half hours to load up all the points. It isn’t possible, even if an airship could hold that many chests,” Bao Wang countered.

That was a sticking point. It was like trying to rob a gold vault. The gold was stupidly heavy. While it was worth a lot, it wouldn’t be easy to move it all. Same with cash. A billion dollars would be ten pallets of hundred dollar bills. This had been the most recent sticking point of the entire plan.

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The heist was too big. “We might get 200 chests, which is 100 million points. That is one percent, but that is not worth the risk,” Bao Wang said.

“Then we recruit other people to help load the airship up and pretend to be guards,” I replied. “We take as much as we can fit. If we empty the chests the hold could probably hold a 1,000 chests worth of crystals.”

“Yes, and that leaves 19,000 chests. I like the idea but trying to get away is just not possible. And taking the entire city? You think you can do it? If you did, then that would be the plan. But it isn’t possible,” Bao Wang replied and shook his head.

This was why we needed to plan things out. Why couldn’t all the crystals be combined into a single 10 billion point crystal and that was all I needed to steal. Instead of millions of 5 and 50 point crystals. I couldn’t pretend to cash them out either since only the Divine Empress took crystals out of the treasury.

I could bluff, but I wouldn’t get away with a bluff like that. “I get the airship. You and the other people will load it up. Then I will take and cash in the rest myself before we leave, while killing anyone in my way.”

“Madness. It will take at least half a minute, if there are no obstacles to move from the treasury to the pillars in the plaza and back. Even with your stats. That would be 9,500 minutes or 158 hours. Are you really going to stick around for an entire week just moving chests?” Bao Wang sneered slightly. “It is impossible!”

“There has to be a way,” I muttered.

“The Divine Empress has hundreds of people moving chests when she takes all those points. She can do one per second and it still takes a long time.” I hated to admit it but Bao Wang was right.

“Alright, then what about plan audacity. I know what the Divine Empress looks like. I get a mimic and disguise it as her. You can speak on her behalf as someone who earned a position. If they get uppity, I can kill them as a masked guard. No would question the Divine Empress,” I said.

“And the crystals? When she doesn’t take them herself?” Bao Wang asked.

“Just say that her masked soldier is her personal apprentice. Who she has trained in secret and she is rewarding for finding the Astrologer. No one will question her, and the Chief Diviner is dead. He would be the only real person to claim her energy isn’t right. But with her divinity, no one will know the difference and who would dare question her?” I asked.

Bao Wang silent as he mulled over the plan. “I like it more than the other one. But this mimic won’t be able to speak, and will it appear convincing enough?” he asked.

“I will figure out the look, but the speaking will all be on you.” I had no idea how I was going to manage the look, but I would figure out a way. “Hopefully I can get it to say a few key phrases. Like ‘fu cong’.”

“Your accent is terrible. It would be better if you didn’t speak at all. But pretending to be the Divine Empress will send everyone into a frenzy. The Envoy will rush back and he will instantly know,” Bao Wang said.

“Well, we dress in the fancy armor and it should be believable. If not, we fight and run. But who will question the Divine Empress even if she is a bit off?” I asked.

“No one. No one would dare think of impersonating her. Not many people have seen her and lived. Alright. If you can get a convincing mimic of the Divine Empress, then this plan might have a chance. A chance mind you. It is still insane and we are probably going to die, but if it works…” Bao Wang trailed off clearly thinking of all the crystals.

Dammit, I wouldn’t be able to cut him out with this plan or he would betray me. Now I just needed to find a mimic or an older Asian lady with balls of steel to impersonate the Divine Empress. Well things just got harder, but it was good we had talked through all the details ahead of time.

It would have been really stupid to get to the treasury with no way to steal it all. That was why it was important to constantly think and iterate the plan. This wasn’t some car theft or a home robbery. This was billions and billions of points from the most dangerous person to ever exist.

The only bad part of this plan, was if the Divine Empress was present, we were toast. But that would always be the case, but I wasn’t about to let all those points sitting there, go to some other idiot. Also this theft would break the evil empire more than anything else I could do.

With the Divine Empress missing, the entire tribute system would collapse with the theft. The Lords would raise armies as the ‘true’ inheritor of the Empress’s will and to take the Forbidden City back from the people who betrayed her.

That way if she showed up, they were just trying to bring the culprits to justice. If she didn’t show up they would battle for power.

Either way the Lords would die, and the Divine Empress would have to spend a lot of time and energy cleaning up her empire to get it working again. Also the rumors she would be an imposter would piss her off. I know it would piss me off something fierce.

This would lead to purges and more purges. That was the problem with an evil empire. Once it started crumbling it was a pain to build it back up since it had an unstable foundation. It couldn’t endure that much stress and the Divine Empress was the center of that foundation.

With her missing and a theft combined with an impersonation, it would be disaster. I liked this new plan a lot more. Even if there was now a new headache I had to figure out. We would need to head Northeast first and I would need to get a mimic pet from the shadowlands southeast of Purgatory. Then I had to try and figure out a way to make it look like the Divine Empress.

At least the face. I would dress it up to pretend to be her, so the clothing wasn’t such a big deal. But the face and hair needed to be perfect. At least I had gotten an up close and personal look at her.