The Desolate Era

Ji Ning followed Emperor Goldisle and Emperor Blackcloud through the dark passageway. After walking for a short while, he finally saw yet another stone door.

“Open,” Emperor Blackcloud command. The stone door instantly sank downwards, revealing the vast treasury behind it.

“Wow.” Ning felt dizzy when he saw what was behind the stone door. He was able to sense many varied auras, some brutal, some cold, some stately... countless treasures were hanging there, so numerous that at a glance Ning was able to see tens of millions of treasures just with the naked eye alone.

“All treasures stored within our treasury are quite extraordinary.” Emperor Goldisle smiled. “Many treasures here are one-of-a-kind! But of course, there are also some that are quite numerous, in which case we’ll just put a single sample item here.”

“Seniors,” Ning said hurriedly, “My lifeblood weapons need to personally touch the treasures in order to sense if they can make use of them or not.”

“Just touching is fine,” Emperor Goldisle said solemnly, “But don’t damage anything. Some of the treasures here are incredibly valuable.”

“Please don’t worry. My lifeblood weapons wouldn’t dare,” Ning said.

The nearby Emperor Blackcloud laughed. “Go, then. Inspect them to your heart’s content.”

Ning nodded. “Come out,” Ning willed mentally. Swish! Swish! Swish! All six Northbow swords flew out from their scabbards, and as they did so an adorable child appeared from each of them.

“Master! Master!” All six children began to call out repeatedly.

“Listen up. This treasury is filled with countless treasures. You can touch them to sense which are of use to you,” Ning said, “But remember, you absolutely must not damage any of them, nor are you allowed to absorb any of them. After the inspection is complete, with any luck, I’ll be able to give you some treasures to absorb.”

“Alright.”

“Haha, don’t worry.”

“Leave it to us!” All six Northbow sword-spirits were quite excited.

“Go.” Ning immediately sent them flying into the skies towards the various treasures, which they began to scan.

This vast treasury was filled with long stone tables that were covered with countless treasures. There were also incredibly long twelve-layered treasure shelves, with each layer filled with many treasures. The ones placed on the shelves were clearly less valuable! There were also individual stone daises that held only a single treasure each.

This place had all sorts of weapons, even Universe weapons! There were all sorts of marvelous treasures here, including many strange curios that had been collected from the Terror Starsea...

......

Time slowly passed on, one minute at a time. Ning continued to furiously send his six Northbow swords flying everywhere, touching the various treasures. After roughly the time needed to boil a kettle of tea...

“Master! Master! I can sense that if I ate this flower, it would be of big use to me,” Northbow Five called out spiritually to Ning.

Ning’s eyes lit up as he immediately looked towards the sword. This was a semi-ethereal flower that was surrounded by a faint gray aura. There was a jade slip next to it that introduced it as the ‘shadowless six-thief flower’. It was capable of hiding itself amongst other objects, making it extremely difficult to find. It was an incomparably marvelous item.

“How many of those can you eat?” Ning asked spiritually.

“I’m not sure. At least ten thousand,” Northbow Five replied.

“Got it.” Ning nodded, silently memorizing this flower. He then continued to search for other treasures. This treasury most likely had copies of almost all of the decent treasures located within the Flamedragon Realmverse! When would he ever have another chance like this to just scan them as he pleased? Even if he wasn’t able to acquire what he needed due to not having enough fruit, he could at least memorize them for future collection.

......

Outside the Palace of Immortals. Hegemon Brightshore, Hegemon Windrain, Hegemon Netherlily, Emperor Severfive, and Emperor Islehide continued to wait patiently alongside their retainers.

“Brightshore,” Hegemon Windrain said hurriedly, “The Dao Alliance wouldn’t be playing a trick on our young friend Darknorth, would they? If he ends up trading with them without giving us a chance...”

“Agreed. Brightshore...” Emperor Islehide said hurriedly, “Darknorth belongs to your Brightshore Kingdom.”

“Don’t worry.” Hegemon Brightshore smiled. “I can reach out to Darknorth at any time! He’s currently within the treasury of the Palace of Immortals, scanning the countless treasures there. This process will take some time, so don’t be impatient. Once he knows which treasures he needs, he’ll publicly announce it.”

“Good. At least we can compete fairly,” Emperor Severfive said. All of them were truly the most elite figures of the Endless Territories, but this competition over the coldflame cauldron fruits still made them nervous.

There was a rough, accepted ‘value’ to these fruits, but they were simply never available for sale. Very, very few were willing to sell these fruits, which was why in normal times the Hegemons were willing to pay multiples of the ‘accepted’ value for the few coldflame cauldron fruits which appeared from time to time! Now that Crimsonwave Temple was going to be located within the Endless Territories indefinitely, they’d be able to harvest 300 of the fruits every 100,000 chaos cycles. This was why they hadn’t offered excessively high prices in their negotiations with Ning.

However... they also understood that the future couldn’t be predicted. Who knew when Emperor Waveshift would end up taking the temple away again?

......

Within the treasury of the Palace of Immortals of the Dao Alliance.

Ning continued to control his six Northbow swords, sending them flying about like streaks of light towards various treasures, then gently brushing against them.

“Master! Master! I can sense that this stone is going to help me out a lot!” Northbow Three called out as well. Ning immediately memorized the stone in question.

By the time he had nearly finished a complete scan of all the treasures within the treasury, he had already discovered a total of twelve treasures that would be of use to his Northbow swords! However, the Northbow swords would devour absolutely enormous amounts of material as they grew. Ning worried as to whether or not this would even be enough.

Finally, after roughly ten hours of scanning, Ning had finished his first review of all the treasures.

“How’d it go?” Emperor Goldisle and Emperor Blackcloud both looked at Ning.

“There really are quite a few treasures that are useful to my lifeblood weapons,” Ning said.

“Which treasures do you need? Go ahead and tell us and we’ll try to help you collect them as best we can,” Emperor Goldisle said.

“I should probably say it outside,” Ning replied hurriedly. “The Hegemon reminded me long ago that we have to keep things fair.”

“Oh. Right, right. Fair.” Emperor Blackcloud and Emperor Goldisle exchanged a glance, rather resigned. In the end, Ning belonged to the Brightshore Kingdom, making Hegemon Brightshore’s instructions quite effective.

Emperor Blackcloud and Emperor Goldisle didn’t really worry too much. Given how filthy rich the Dao Alliance was, they were quite confident in their chances.

“Let’s go.” Emperor Blackcloud and Emperor Goldisle led Ning in departing from the treasury.

......

Outside the Palace of Immortals. Ji Ning, Emperor Blackcloud, and Emperor Goldisle flew out at the same time.

“There they are.” The three Hegemons, Emperor Severfive, Emperor Islehide, and the various retainers all looked towards Ning, their eyes lighting up.

The time for the final negotiations over the coldflame cauldron fruits had come.

“Darknorth, did you find any suitable treasures?” Hegemon Brightshore asked.

“I found twelve,” Ning said. The Hegemons and Emperors were all rather startled by this answer. Twelve? It seemed likely that everyone would be able to provide Ning with something he needed. action

“The first is known as the ‘shadowless six-thief flowers’,” Ning said. “I need at least ten thousand of them.”

“The shadowless six-thief flowers?”

“Over ten thousand?”

“But...”

The three Hegemons and the various Emperors exchanged glances, all feeling rather resigned.

“What is it?” Ning was puzzled.

“Darknorth, even if we scraped up all of the shadowless six-thief flowers that the Flamedragon Realmverse has accumulated over the countless years of its existence, we would probably only be able to find a few hundred of them,” Hegemon Brightshore said.

Emperor Goldisle nodded as well. “The shadowless six-thief flowers are invisible, hidden throughout the cosmos. They are extremely hard to find. Although they aren’t that useful, they really are quite rare.”

Ning felt quite helpless upon hearing this. If the Northbow swords were to grow, they needed materials in sufficiently large quantities. For example, they had absorbed a terrifying amount of that golden sand! Based on what the Northbow sword-spirit had predicted, he would need at least ten thousand of those flowers, but it seemed as though Ning wouldn’t even be able to acquire a tenth of that. Such a small amount would be of limited benefit.

“The second type of treasure is known as the flamebearer tathata-metal,” Ning said. “I’ll need a mountain of it, a mountain which is roughly thirty thousand meters tall.”

“Thirty thousand meters tall?” The Hegemons and Emperors sighed again.

“You are asking for too much. Flamebearer tathata-metal is used in palm-sized chunks for forging treasures. You want a mountain of it?” Emperor Goldisle shook his head. “There’s no way to get that much in the Flamedragon Realmverse. If the Dao Alliance was willing to pay incredible prices to have other realmverses help out and deliver them, we might be able to do it... but the coldflame cauldron fruits in your possession aren’t nearly enough to trade for a mountain of the tathata-metal.”