Leilin ransacked the massive resource vault without the slightest restraint, tucking away several of the smallest yet most valuable items into his own possession.
The rat wizard trailing behind him rode on his coattails and managed to snag quite a few benefits of its own.
Once Leilin had satisfied his appetite for plunder, he finally returned to the entrance and addressed the group of dark wizards who had been watching with longing eyes: "The rest is all yours…"
"Thank you, Lord Bloodhand!!!"
The dark wizards present bowed to Leilin, then let out a cheer and rushed headlong into the treasury, plundering to their hearts' content.
"What a shame! If I had some kind of spatial-storage Magical Items, I wouldn't have let you lot have any of this…"
Leilin gazed at the massive resource vault being torn apart and felt a faint twinge of regret.
These things—even if he couldn't use them all personally—could have been traded for Magic Stones or something similar.
But time was tight, and he couldn't carry much more on him, so he had no choice but to let them have it cheaply.
"Rat! Come here!"
Leilin's voice was calm and flat.
"My Lord! What are your orders!" Having witnessed Leilin's exploits today, the rat wizard was thoroughly awestruck and practically ready to pledge itself into his service.
"You have a specialty in searching, don't you? I recall that last time, when we were looking for the entrance to the secret realm, you were the first to find it…"
Leilin's tone was perfectly even, but a sharp glint shone in his eyes, as though he had already seen through the rat wizard from the inside out.
"It's just one of the side effects of my Perpetual Transformation Spell…" The rat wizard felt a chill run through its heart and forced out a dry laugh.
"Good. Find the location of this aura for me!"
Leilin extended his index finger. Wisps of dark energy drifted out and coalesced into a tiny black serpent, which instantly darted toward the rat and sank its fangs into the creature's nose.
"Aaaah—" The rat let out a miserable shriek, but the expected agony never came. Instead, a wizard's aura had been firmly imprinted into its mind and memory.
"That's the one! Take me to him!" Leilin's voice was perfectly calm, betraying not a hint of emotion. But this very state of composure made the rat wizard all the more terrified.
"Yes! Yes, my Lord! I'll take you right now!"
The rat immediately dropped to all fours and pressed its nose to the ground, sniffing furiously.
After a few minutes, it locked onto a direction: "This way. My Lord, please follow me!"
Beneath the blood-red mask, Leilin's face settled into a faint smile. What he had given the rat earlier was the aura of Bill—the very person in charge of this merit-exchange point.
As the first wizard Leilin had extorted, Bill's aura was something Leilin had naturally kept as a reserve.
He had heard it clearly from Bill's own lips: what he had just ransacked was only a secondary storage. The true vault was something even Bill didn't have the authority to bring anyone into.
Now was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
Leilin estimated that the true treasury must contain every top-tier rare material the
If he got his hands on all of it, it would likely be enough to fuel his cultivation all the way up to Second-level
At the thought of this, his breathing grew involuntarily heavier.
This rat-like wizard had no talent for combat, but the fact that it had caught the attention of the Thousand-Leaf Hand was precisely because of this tracking gift.
Leilin followed the rat wizard through several concealed passages. Along the way, there were naturally plenty of alarm mechanisms and magical traps, but Leilin smashed through all of them with brute force.
Originally, these traps served mainly as alarms—once a wizard was detected intruding, they would immediately summon a large number of Four Seasons Garden wizards to the scene. In the worst case, even Leonot would be alerted, and with a Second-level Wizard standing guard, the place would be as secure as a mountain.
But things were different now. The entire Four Seasons Garden headquarters within the Ganges Secret Realm had descended into chaos. Leonot, the Second-level Wizard stationed here, had been drawn away by the Second-level dark wizard of the Thousand-Leaf Hand.
With every mobile force gone, a few rigid traps and spells trying to stop Leilin was nothing but a joke!
"We're here, my Lord. If my sensing is correct, the owner of that aura is somewhere inside this passage…"
After passing through a labyrinth filled with traps and branching paths, the rat pointed to a green-lit corridor ahead with absolute certainty.
The passage looked narrow—only wide enough for one person to pass through—and at its entrance stood a massive wall of green, formed from countless intertwined vines. Powerful energy fluctuations radiated from its surface, and this energy felt隐隐 familiar. Leilin had seen it just a short while ago—it belonged to Leonot, the Second-level Wizard!
"That's right! This is the place!"
Leilin scrutinized the magical barrier before him, and his heartbeat quickened slightly.
As the person in charge of the merit-exchange point, Bill would certainly return to the true vault in a time of crisis. Moreover, given the secrecy of this location and the layers of magical defenses protecting it, its safety far surpassed the danger-ridden world outside. So there was an eighty percent chance he would choose to take shelter here.
Leilin had sent the rat to search for Bill's aura precisely because he was gambling on this—and now, the appearance of Leonot's Second-level Wizard defense array only proved his guess correct.
Even if that weren't the case, behind a Second-level Wizard's seal there were bound to be some fine treasures.
Leilin let out a long shout. Both of his hands suddenly turned crimson, the Scarlet Hand unleashing its full power. A massive blood-red claw wreathed in blazing crimson flames hammered into the vine wall with devastating force!
BOOM!!!
Enormous energy shockwaves radiated outward in all directions. The corridor trembled violently as falling rocks and dust rained down from the ceiling.
Once the dust settled, the rat wizard hiding behind Leilin could see a basketball-sized hole in the wall-door.
The edges of the hole were charred black, and thin tendrils of blood-red flame continued to burn and spread across the surface.
CRASH! A flash of green light swept across, and the entire door suddenly came "alive." Countless vines, thin as hair, twisted and interwound to seal the hole that had just been torn open. Wisps of green luminescence rose from the vine surface and entangled with the blood-red flames. The green and red lights clashed briefly before both quickly died down.
"A defense array set by a Second-level Wizard—truly nothing ordinary!"
Leilin voiced his admiration, though no trace of disappointment had yet appeared in his eyes.
The Scarlet Hand was merely one of the spells he used as a cover—it was nowhere close to representing his true strength!
He had already reached a level infinitely close to that of a Second-level Wizard. Even facing one head-on, he had a fair chance of escaping. A mere barrier laid down by a single Second-level Wizard was naturally not something he took to heart.
"Chip! Have you recorded it?"
Behind the mask where no one could see, a flash of blue light flickered across Leilin's eyes as he spoke silently in his mind.
"Eighty-nine percent of the magical array's operation has been recorded. Commencing simulation—calculating energy weak points now…"
The Chip reported faithfully, then projected several energy nodes of the spell array's operation directly into Leilin's field of vision.
Under normal circumstances, when the defense array was inactive, the Chip would have had little chance of gathering such detailed data. But just now, Leilin's attack via the Scarlet Hand had triggered the array into full operation, exposing every energy fluctuation to the Chip's scan. This had provided the Chip with a wealth of detailed information, enabling it to crack the array in a single attempt!
"So that's how it works!" Leilin studied the node diagram the Chip had simulated, and the crimson glow on his hands flared once more.
"Scarlet Hand!!!" The blood-red claw struck again!!! A colossal spectral claw, wreathed in raging flames, slammed down on a point three meters below the center of the vine gate.
CRACK!!! The entire gate shuddered violently, and then a surge of vines rushed forward to repair the damage.
"Ha!" Leilin didn't pause. The blood-red claw lashed out once more, striking several different points on the gate.
CRACK! CRACK! The entire gate groaned under the strain, and even the vines began to slow their regeneration.
"Now!!!" A flash of crimson light blazed in Leilin's eyes.
BOOM! From the several spots where the gate had been struck, the blood-red flames surged to life. The crimson fire swept across and converged violently in the air.
VRRRM!
A colossal blood-red fireball materialized and, pulsing at a specific frequency, struck the exact center of the vine gate.
SIZZLE!!!
Like countless sheets of parchment being torn to shreds, the green vine gate disintegrated strand by strand. Its color shifted from emerald green to withered yellow, as though every last drop of life vitality had been drained from it in an instant before crumbling to the ground.
CRACK! The entire gate shattered into pieces!
Leilin strode forward without hesitation and walked straight through.
Behind him, the rat wizard's face flickered with a look of inner struggle. Its foot lifted several times to follow, but in the end, it let out a deep sigh and turned away.
"You actually managed to find this place?"
After passing through the corridor, Leilin found himself in what looked like a small private vault. Standing at the far end was a wizard dressed like an appraiser, wearing a single gold-rimmed monocle—Bill, standing there in silence.
At this moment, Bill wore an expression of relief: "I had been worrying about how to explain myself after the trading hall fell, but now… it seems I no longer need to worry about that…"
Then he fixed Leilin with a long, penetrating look: "To have made it here this quickly, you must be someone I know. Can you tell me your true identity?"
Leilin had no intention of letting Bill die ignorant. BOOM! He lunged forward a single step, and dark energy particles surged like a thick mist, engulfing both him and Bill…
HISS! The mist spread thickly, but from its center came not a single sound.
A few minutes later, Leilin emerged with a calm expression and stepped into the Four Seasons Garden's true treasury.