After sending the message to Xu Miaoran, Tang Jie made his way up to the seventh floor of the Celestial Flame Pagoda.
Upon arriving at the seventh-floor lobby, he didn't stop, proceeding along the corridor, and after traveling for quite some time, he arrived in front of a small door.
There were two guards in front of the door, both Spirit Ring True Persons.
Upon spotting Tang Jie, they shouted, "This is an important storehouse! Nobody is allowed entry without good reason!"
This was the treasury of the Four Heavenly Kings, holding the accumulated fortune of a thousand years. Tang Jie had naturally developed some understanding of the Celestial Flame Pagoda in his time there. He now walked up and declared, "This one is Zuo Quanming. I have come on orders of the Eastern Heavenly King to take a treasure."
"Present an edict from the Heavenly King!"
"Of course." As Tang Jie strode over, he put a hand into his bag as if he was going to take out an edict. In just a few steps, he was in front of the guards, and with a flip of the wrist, he swiped the Sovereign Blade across the neck of a guard. The other guard was aghast, but just when he was about to take action, Tang Jie thrust a finger at his chest. Blood fountained out, and before that guard had time to shout, he was swept up in a cloud of blood that rushed into that hole in his chest and instantly ground him to bits. These two guards had been True Persons, so Tang Jie had to use all of his strength to take them down without setting off the alarm.
The turning of the Flesh Millstone cleaned up the corpses, and Tang Jie created two blood duplicates to take the place of the guards.
The ability to take the form of others was the greatest upgrade Tang Jie's Duplication spell had received, and today, he finally had a place to use it.
The two fake guards kept watch at the entrance while Tang Jie went in.
Within was a vast space even larger than the pagoda itself. The Celestial Flame Pagoda itself was a valuable treasure that contained its own vast dimension, and this treasury was clearly no different.
Standing in the center of the treasury, Tang Jie was surrounded by metal racks that were piled high with various treasures.
And these were only middle- and lower-grade art relics. The treasury had three sections in total, with the more valuable items farther in.
Tang Jie didn't immediately grab the art relics. He knew that all of the treasures in this place had seals that would trigger upon being touched, and all of them had been fixed in place. Not only could he not take them, attempting to do so would tip off the Four Heavenly Kings. Only a Heavenly King edict could undo the seal, but there would be a numerical limit. Once one exceeded the quantity or level permitted by the edict, one would trigger the seal.
As a formation expert, Tang Jie naturally had ways of undoing these seals. The problem was that each seal was different, so Tang Jie would need ages to undo them one by one. There were tens of thousands of treasures here, so even one hundred days might not be enough to properly undo all of the seals.
Fortunately, Tang Jie had no plans on doing such a thing.
He swiped the Sovereign Blade across his arm.
Blood flowed out and turned into numerous duplicates, more than a hundred of them filling up this spacious treasury.
They simply stood in the rows while Tang Jie himself continued farther inward, entering through the second door.
The outer chamber contained middle- and lower-grade art relics, and the middle chamber contained upper- and ultimate-grade ones. Besides that, there were also numerous rare materials, which Tang Jie cared about more than the art relics. Looking around, he couldn't help but marvel at all the rare materials.
"Mindsoothing Lumber, Triheart Stone, Sunset Jade, Prism Ice Apple… There's quite a lot here," Tang Jie muttered.
Many of these materials were hard to come by in both Rosecloud and Blood River, and among them were materials for laying formations and divine herbs. For example, the Triheart Stone was a top-class material for making pills for the charge to Heart Demon Tier, and Mindsoothing Lumber was an important item for nurturing the Divine Soul. And this was only the middle chamber! What would he find in the last one?
Just like before, Tang Jie made a bunch of duplicates before heading farther in.
He pushed open the third door and entered the inner chamber.
There was much less here than in the other two chambers.
Placed here were primarily divine treasures, with not a single Dao armament in sight. If they did have such things, they probably wouldn't have been left to gather dust in the treasury and instead would be carried around to be used.
There were twelve divine treasures in all, much fewer than Tang Jie had expected. The Celestial Flame Pagoda was probably constantly selling its treasures, trading them for rare resources. After all, resources existed to be used.
These divine treasures were mostly combat treasures, and Tang Jie wasn't interested in them. But two of them did manage to draw his interest.
One was a Heavenly Scent Lotus Lamp, a cultivation-type treasure. When lit, this lamp would float in the air and exude an aroma that calmed the mind and made spiritual energy circulate faster. This treasure could improve cultivation efficiency by 20% on average.
He didn't understand why the Four Heavenly Kings had just left it idle here rather than using it themselves.
But after thinking it over, Tang Jie understood. Even treasures had their limits, just like how the Herding Yang Pearl had a threshold. While the lotus lamp was a fine treasure, its effect on a Violet Palace cultivator was probably minuscule, much less than the claimed 20%. As for others, they would need contribution points to trade for it, and without those, not even a disciple of a Heavenly King could take this lamp away, which was why it had been sitting idle here for all this time so that he could take it.
There was also the Jade Immortal Pavilion.
This palace-type treasure, when used, could turn into a small palace capable of flight. Until the palace was destroyed, the people within would not come to any harm. This treasure had extremely powerful defenses, and the insides were very spacious. While inside, one could continue cultivating while in flight. Sitting on a rack, it appeared like a model. While it was small, it had everything a palace should have, down to the smallest detail.
The rarest thing about these two treasures was that there was no minimum cultivation level required to use them. Combat divine treasures would often demand a high price to be used by a True Person, and even someone of Tang Jie's strength could only use them a few times without a supply of spirit-restoring pills.
Besides the divine treasures, there were also materials, and those of the inner treasury were much more valuable than those outside. For example, the Yellow Dragon Holy Water was an item akin to the Pale Cloud Flame, one of the mystical waters of the world, possessing divine effects. It could be used both as a material and like an offensive art relic or divine treasure. The moment he saw this item, he immediately thought of formations like the Nine Bend Yellow River Formation, the Jadefall Yellow Springs Formation, the Water Genesis Formation, and the Seven Seas Dragon Formation.
There was also Earthen Essence. Tang Jie hadn't recognized these small black stones at first, only realizing what they were later on. This was an extremely rare kind of Earth Element material. With it, Tang Jie could produce formations like the Firesand Formation, the Hundred Mountain Prison Formation, the Vast Pitfall Formation, and the Red Dust Azure Satin Formation.
Besides these numerous formation materials, there were also some rare medicines.
Tang Jie found, to his delight, that the Celestial Flame Pagoda had such items as the Accumulator Divine Flow Pill and the Divine Stride Talisman.
The Accumulator Divine Flow Pill was a cultivation pill whose production method was already lost in the Rosecloud Domain. Its greatest function was actually the same as that of the lotus lamp, improving one's cultivation. But the boost was huge, greatly reducing one's needed cultivation time, and with no side effects.
As for the Divine Stride Talisman, as its name indicated, it was a kind of treasure that improved one's flight speed. But given that this was something that could be placed in the inner treasury of the Four Heavenly Kings, it couldn't be some ordinary item. Tang Jie examined them and found something unusual about these three talismans. While they seemed like they only boosted speed, they actually gave the user the ability to fly through obstructions. In other words, upon using this talisman, one could fly through walls without a problem. While cultivators could burst through walls like they were made of paper, meaning that passing through walls without casting spell arts was nothing special, things were very different if it also meant passing through usually impassable barriers.
After looking at all the treasures, Tang Jie chuckled, left behind another batch of duplicates, and walked out of the treasury.
Once he was out, he walked back to the lobby.
He slowly began to count down.
Once he felt like enough time had passed, he gave the signal.
The several hundred duplicates in the treasury simultaneously grabbed the treasures on the racks.
As Tang Jie seized several hundred treasures, all the seals were triggered, and alarms began to blare within the treasury.
Tang Jie's duplicates ignored them all and continued to break the seals and seize the treasures.
Several hundred duplicates put together still weren't as strong as Tang Jie, but they were much better when it came to breaking seals and stealing treasure. As hundreds of hands reached out, seal after seal was broken and art relic after art relic was taken. A few moments later, the three treasuries of the Celestial Flame Pagoda had been completely emptied out.
One of the duplicates waved a hand and put away all the treasures in the Mustard Seed Bag next to him.
All of the duplicates began to charge out.
They were just in time to run into the guards who had come in response to the alarms, who were dumbfounded to see this giant crowd of people coming out.
When had the treasury become a marketplace, packed with so many people?
The duplicates ignored them and kept running.
"Stop them!" a guard shouted.
But there were several hundred of them, and stopping them was easier said than done.
The duplicate with the Mustard Seed Bag, covered by the other duplicates, charged back to the lobby and threw the bag at Tang Jie.
Tang Jie grabbed it and began to make his way downstairs. At the same time, his duplicates scattered in various directions. They weren't running, but extending their looting to the rest of the Celestial Flame Pagoda. It wasn't like there were no other places with treasure. They were just more scattered.
"Stop them!" a guard shouted, rushing forward.
Tang Jie walked past with his arms held behind his back. As he passed the guard, the guard froze, and then collapsed with his hands around his throat.
As chaos spread through the pagoda, Tang Jie came down to the lowest floor of the Celestial Flame Pagoda.
Standing before the statue of the Flame Celestial Sovereign, he gazed up at the two blazing flames on the statue and smiled. "I was wondering how he managed to get into the Treasure Paradise! So he used the Deicide Flame. Since you sold me off for the Deicide Flame, I'll just help myself to it."
He reached out for the Pale Cloud Flame.
Earlier, he had at least been trying to hide his theft, but now, he was being completely brazen about it.
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