Embroiled in a hell of endless corpses and blood, monster immortals whose cultivation was lower than Diexi’s, or who lacked unique protection methods or treasures, quickly lost themselves.
Meanwhile, Lu Yun and the rest rushed into the treasury.
The treasury of the Dragon Palace was a sizable minor world, not unlike the paradises and blessed lands in Xiankan. A great variety of exotic treasures, crystals, and ores littered the ground, surrounded by layers of defensive formations.
Nevertheless, most of the defensive mechanisms had been left by the ancient dragons. The formations and restrictions might as well not exist before Aoxue and Lu Yun.
Hands moving swiftly from seal to seal, Aoxue swiftly broke apart the draconic formations and restrictions, while Lu Yun tore down the formations set up by the monster spirit formation masters with the light of the Formation Orb.
……
“Take everything, take all of it. Leave nothing behind!” The Deaf Prince removed the size manipulation talisman stuck to him and took out his World Chest. Great power surged from the treasure, sucking in everything around him with tremendous suction force.
The other troublemakers took out their World Chests as well and devoured the wealth around them, taking everything in sight. They didn’t even have time to check what they’d taken.
Lu Yun, Qing Han, and Aoxue didn’t linger in the outer vault.
There were a great number of treasures there, but the crystals, minerals, herbs, and spirit roots were nothing to write home about. A figure could still be put upon their value; it was just that there were so many of them that losing them all in one fell swoop would greatly hurt.
What Lu Yun wanted were the real, irreplaceable treasures deep within the vault.
The six troublemakers could guess at his plan, so they didn’t follow him into the inner vault. The treasures outside were nothing special, but they were a great fortune in the outside world. That was enough for them.
A gleaming bronze door stood between them and the inner vault, covered in reliefs of dragon patterns and radiating an ancient, desolate energy.
“Dammit, those blackwater worms have opened this vault already!” Aoxue’s expression darkened when she saw the door’s condition.
“Even better,” murmured Lu Yun. “The treasures inside might not be of any use to them, but they’ll certainly have added their own valuables—treasures accumulated by the North Sea monster spirits over tens of thousands of years!”
This inner vault was the safest of all places in the North Sea. If the monster spirits possessed any particularly valuable treasures, they’d surely be stored here. If it weren’t for Aoxue, the former princess of the North Sea dragons, being with the group, no one else would’ve been able to open the vault.
“Open!” Her hands quickly fluttered through eighteen hundred hand seals, commanding an answering rumble from the door.
“Wait, the restriction on the door has been changed!” Her face paled and a rivulet of blood streamed down the corner of her mouth. The door was guarded by a restriction, rather than a formation, and the North Sea Court had adjusted it, hurting Aoxue with the backlash.
“Die, remnants of the previous dynasty!” exclaimed a furious voice as a giant palm struck at Aoxue from overhead, bearing down with the power of an arcane dao immortal.
“The North Sea Emperor!” Lu Yun tensed at the sight.
Hum.
Next to him, Qing Han released a bolt of sparkling, cosmic light that brimmed with vitality to scatter the dao immortal’s aura.
Dong!
The sonorous tolling of a bell shattered the large hand. External appearance transformed, Xue Daozi walked out from thin air with the Arcane Golden Bell.
“It’s his replica!” He stared fixedly at a point in the air, pushing the bell in his hands to its limit.
Qing Han’s face was slightly pale and he grimaced in pain. Lu Yun reached out and stuck about five hundred healing talismans on him.
“How dare you betray Us, Xue Daozi?! You are an inconceivable disappointment!” The man had been transformed by Lu Yun’s shapeshifting talisman, but the North Sea emperor knew him too well. He’d personally guided Xue Daozi and set him on the path of dao immortality, making him the elite of the North Sea that he was.
Merely changing appearances wouldn’t fool the arcane dao immortal emperor.
Arcane Golden Bell in hand, Xue Daozi sneered derisively. “Betray you? If you hadn’t taken my opportunity from me in the first place, Beigong Xuan, I would’ve become an arcane dao immortal long ago, and I wouldn’t be your subject!”
Once he became Lu Yun’s infernum, all of his loyalty to the North Sea Court vanished. The fantastic opportunity he’d served to the emperor on a silver platter was the one thing he regretted the most in his life.
“Cut the crap,” Lu Yun transmitted. “Destroy that replica!”
“Kill!”
Dong!
Xue Daozi wasn’t in the mood for more chit-chat anyway. The bell in his hand rang again, summoning a golden whale that rushed at the North Sea Emperor’s image.
“The Arcane Golden Bell! You’re under the banner of the Qing Clan of Nephrite Major!” The emperor's face clouded over at the sight.
The bell was a dao immortal treasure that the Qing ancestor had refined himself. Xue Daozi couldn’t have tapped into its full power without the clan’s permission.
Meanwhile, the bell falling into Lu Yun’s hand was so humiliating that the Qing Clan hadn’t mentioned the happening to outsiders. Besides, who would believe that someone else could refine the bloodline power the Qing ancestor had left in the treasure?
The North Sea emperor roared angrily as he manifested a gargantuan snake that coiled around itself in the air.
……
“Beigong Yu and the Scaled-Dragon King! How dare you two bastards betray the North Sea?! I’ll exterminate your clans!!” Beigong Chonglou was fighting the two monster kings with his army.
The hundred thousand soldiers under the scaled-dragon’s command had formed the Gonggong formation and were wreaking havoc in the palace, while Beigong Yu assisted them with five thousand soldiers he’d handpicked from the Infernum in hell.
Neither of them had bothered disguising themselves, and Beigong Chonglou was so furious that he didn’t stop and think why the supposedly dead kunpeng and scaled-dragon would show up to sow this chaos.
This must be a coup!
“Did they fake their deaths and use Lu Yun to break away from the North Sea, clearing their way to strike now?” one of the remaining dao immortals in the palace said, facing off against the Gonggong manifestation.
The formation itself was unrivalled in power; it’d built its reputation in the North Sea thousands of years ago, and it could stand toe-to-toe with an aether dao immortal.
“Dammit, the treasury!” Two other dao immortals had been hiding in thin air, biding their time to strike, but they suddenly received a message from their emperor.
“Ignore these traitors and go to the treasury with the clan treasure!” snarled one of the immortals.
“You’re not going anywhere,” a lilting voice sounded in the dao immortal’s ear. “You’ve been using the Poison Wheel and Poison Fiend all wrong, little poison crocodile. Watch and learn.”
Screech!
A piercing scream of anguish rang in the air as a dark green Poison Fiend lunged at the dao immortal.