Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

BAM!

A massive chunk of iron the size of an ox dropped onto Yang Qi.

And yet, the mere wave of his hand shattered it into pieces. Next, thousands of holes opened up in the wall, unleashing a barrage of arrows, each and every one of which was covered with magical symbols that gave them defensive true energy.

Regardless, Yang Qi’s true energy turned them into dust.

Moments later, countless razor-sharp blades shot up from the floor, and yet, instead of stabbing through his feet, they were destroyed by his armor.

Not a single one of the traps could hurt him.

Occasionally, iron doors would block his path, but even the thickest one was easy for him to blast through.

As long as he relied on the Strength of the Hell-Crushing Godmammoth, he was like the king of the labyrinth.

Of even more note, he could tell that the Lifeseizer up above was not using true energy to watch the labyrinth, but instead, had it focused elsewhere.

BOOOOOOOM!

After blasting through an iron door that weighed hundreds of thousands of pounds, he found a spray of poison heading toward him that his armor easily deflected.

In fact, when the poison landed back onto the ruined iron door, it sizzled and began to melt.

Yang Qi stepped through the remnants of the door, and found himself in an enormous chamber, filled with case after case of energy convergence pills.

From the look of things, there were at least a hundred million pills there.

‘So many energy convergence pills! It's too bad my thumb-ring can’t fit them all. The dimension inside is too small.’ Suddenly, his eyes lit up. ‘Wait a second. Wasn’t that trident inside the ring absorbing the energy around it? Why don’t I just pull it out and let it absorb the energy convergence pills here? Then, I can move on to another storehouse.’

Without any hesitation, he sent some true energy into the ring, grabbed the trident, and then pulled it out.

Instantly, the weapon began to vibrate in his hand.

Waving the trident through the air, he broke open one of the nearby cases, causing all the energy convergence pills inside to spill out. Then, he crushed the pills with his own true energy, transforming them into a medicinal mist that began to flow toward the trident.

The greedy trident instantly absorbed all the energy.

‘This thing is going to turn into a daemon pretty soon….’

He could see the numerous meridian passageways forming inside the trident, gradually spreading out to fill its entire structure as it got more energy convergence pills.

If it eventually became a true spirit weapon, it would be even stronger than a Master of Energy.

“Humanoid True Energy!”

The summoned humanoid wielded the trident to smash more boxes and absorb the energy convergence pills therein.

At long last, it was truly being given a chance to eat its fill.

“I wonder how it will transform if it absorbs all of the energy convergence pills here?” Filled with anticipation, he sped onward to look for more treasure storerooms, leaving the trident behind to do its work.

And he did find them. In one chamber after another were heaps upon heaps of energy convergence pills. He went through over a hundred such rooms, where he also found an assortment of mostly mid-grade medicinal pills.

None of that was particularly enticing to him. Eventually, he reached a sprawling chamber where the floor, walls, and ceiling turned into white jade, inset with gold designs and rare crystals. Amidst the kiosks and pavilions that filled the area, mist swirled, and the ground pulsed with true energy.

That was when he caught sight of an enormous bottle gourd made of crystal, fully half as tall as an ordinary human. Filling the gourd were numerous golden medicinal pills, exactly the same type that he had discovered in the mansion grotto of that white ape back in the Blackcorpse Mountains.

“Oh wow! Golden Nine Transformations Pills!” These pills could be used to break through to the Master of Energy level, and were incredibly valuable.

From what he could tell, there were several hundred such pills there.

Delighted, he sucked the gourd directly into his thumb-ring.

‘If I give Golden Nine Transformations Pills to Li He, Hua Yinhu, and He Jili, they’ll all be able to reach the Master of Energy level. And then there’s eldest brother and second brother. They could use them too…. I wonder what other treasures are around here.’

After looking around, he found a jade box filled with emerald green medicinal pills. Although he wasn't sure what they were made of, from the medicinal fluctuations coming off of them, he could tell they were high-grade pills that were in no way inferior to Golden Nine Transformations Pills.

He put the jade box into his thumb-ring, and then continued on to find dozens of other types of pills.

He was gaining so much on this adventure that he was feeling a bit numb.

Considering that a single Golden Nine Transformations Pill was worth millions of energy convergence pills, and that he had numerous other pills of equal or higher value, how much wealth did he have?

After more searching, he acquired even more medicinal pills, as well as demon cores, all of them from demonlings in the Master of Energy level.

In one location, he found a place where numerous demon cores cast scintillating light into the room.

Surprisingly, the demon cores were actually part of a mural.

It depicted a sage-like individual, with a shaved head and a , riding an enormous black tiger. The image itself radiated the aura of some ancient beast, something that would shock one to the core.

As for the sage, concentric halos floated at his back, radiating light that reached the furthest corner of the chamber.

There were at least ten thousand demon cores that made up the images of the halos, all of them at the Master of Energy level.

In order to create this mural, someone had to kill more than ten thousand high-level demonlings.

And yet, there was something else that was even more shocking to Yang Qi. The sage had a pearl in his hand, which he was about to feed to the tiger he was riding.

That pearl was so bright and lustrous that Yang Qi could tell it was the demon core from a demonling in the Lifeseizing level.

‘Dear heavens! Someone killed a Lifeseizing level demonling, took its demon core, and then used it to make a mural? It also seems to be imbued with true energy…. Wait. This is a spell formation! This mural is actually a magical item? Too bad it's so big….’

Waving his hand, he sent some true energy into the mural, which to his surprise, came right off the wall.

The mural was almost like a rug, roughly five inches thick, and crafted, not from paper, but from what appeared to be the hide of some beast. The material used to paint the mural itself was apparently made from the powder of ground-up demon cores.

Yang Qi had no idea what this magical item did, but he decided to take it anyway, and sent it into his thumb-ring.

However, the instant it entered the ring, a voice suddenly echoed out from within it. “What audacious thief dares to steal my Sage-Devil Painting!? It took two hundred years of hard work to complete!”

As the voice spoke, a stream of true energy rushed down from above, piercing through the ceiling to strike at Yang Qi.

It was force like that of a mountain, hundreds of times beyond the Master of Energy level.

“Lifeseizer!”

Not only was Yang Qi not afraid of this true energy attack, but he was actually a bit excited. Now, he knew that the Sage-Devil Painting was obviously the most valuable treasure here.

“Hell-Crushing Godmammoth: Hellfire Crucible!”

Boundless true energy rushed out to block the attack, transforming into the illusory image of a crucible.

BOOOOOOOM!

A huge shock wave rolled out, destroying almost the entire room around him.

Yang Qi’s energy and blood were cast into chaos, and his sea of energy felt completely unstable.

However, the attack stimulated the life force quintessence of the lightning mammoth, turning the pain into a relaxing, calm feeling.

“Trident!” he shouted, summoning his Humanoid True Energy back to him, along with the trident, which had absorbed who-knew-how-many energy convergence pills.

‘Alright, I got plenty of treasure. I think this is enough. Time to go fight that Lifeseizer! I wonder how I’ll do. If I can get the power of twenty ancient megamammoths, I’ll finally be able to form my Hellfire Crucible….’

With that, he simply shot straight upward, blasting through earth and stone until he found himself in a palace hall.

This was the grand hall of Krorän’s imperial palace, which now looked like hell on earth, as numerous pits had been hewn out, and were filled with blood and corpses.

The entire room reeked of gore.

However, what was most shocking wasn’t the blood pools, but rather, a huge sphere of blood-red true energy that was in the middle of battling a sun-like convergence of sword light.

Every clash between the two of them destroyed parts of the surrounding palace.

No Master of Energy would dare to join a fight like this.

These were two Lifeseizers going all out in battle. As for the sun-like sword light, Yang Qi recognized it immediately; it was Chu Tiange’s Cosmic Sunflare Sword technique.

While Yang Qi had been down below looting treasure, Chu Tiange had come to Krorän and found the ultimate leader of the hundreds of thousands of vampire brigands, the Lifeseizer Jing Wuxue.

‘Where’s Yun Hailan?’ Yang Qi thought, looking around. ‘Didn’t she come?’