After dumping everything out, Wang Hao discovered that the most numerous items were actually Cat-Eye Snail shells.

“Emmm, thanks for helping me tidy up the inventory,” he muttered with a wry smile.

Aside from the shells, there were over thirty thousand Spirit Stones, a small number of talismans, pills, and a few spiritual tools. Most of the tools had been damaged during the clash with Wang Hao. He glanced over them; they weren’t worth the cost of repair, but he decided to keep them anyway. They might serve as raw materials in the future.

The second Storage Bag belonged to the mid-Foundation Establishment cultivator Wang Hao had killed first.

This man’s magical instruments were all intact; after all, he had died before he even had a chance to strike.

Inside, there were fifty thousand Spirit Stones, including over a dozen mid-grade ones. There was also a significant cache of pills and talismans, including six Tier 2 talismans. The most valuable among them was a Tier 2 top-grade Ten Thousand Swords Talisman—a metal-attribute attack talisman widely considered one of the most powerful of its class.

Generally speaking, once cultivators reached Tier 3 (Golden Core), they rarely used talismans in battle.

First, high-power talismans were difficult to craft, and master talisman makers were scarce. Second, the original purpose of talismans was to compensate for a low-level cultivator’s insufficient Qi.

Golden Core cultivators could move mountains and fill seas. Their True Essence was vast and nearly endless, allowing them to fight for days without exhaustion. For them, crafting talismans would be like taking off one’s pants just to fart—completely superfluous.

A casual strike from a Golden Core cultivator was often stronger than a talisman of the same grade, so why bother with the painstaking effort of crafting one?

Talismans beyond the third grade were mostly functional utilities, such as Array-Breaking Talismans, Teleportation Talismans, or Thunder-Summoning Talismans.

There were, of course, high-level cultivators who prepared life-saving measures for their juniors, but these were mostly Talisman Treasures—items sealed with a portion of a magic treasure’s power—rather than talismans in the traditional sense.

By the Nascent Soul stage, methods became even more profound. Carriers were no longer limited to paper, leading to techniques often referred to as “Divine Thunder” or “Divine Swords” rather than talismans.

As for magical instruments, this bag contained three notable pieces.

There was a Tier 2 mid-grade inner armor called the Yellow Fish Armor, crafted from the skin of a fish-type demon beast. Since Wang Hao’s own inner armor had been destroyed in the fight, this was a perfect replacement.

Then there was the Broken Moon Blade, a mid-grade spiritual tool.

Finally, he found a needle-shaped hidden weapon called the White Tip Divine Needle, rated as Tier 2 top-grade. When activated, its energy fluctuations were minimal and almost invisible to the naked eye—a perfect tool for ambushes.

Including the demon beast materials, the total value of this bag was nearly one hundred thousand Spirit Stones.

“These people were clearly veterans at robbery,” Wang Hao mused. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t be this wealthy.”

After examining the loot from the two underlings, Wang Hao felt a surge of anticipation for the wealth of their so-called “Big Brother.”

However, when Wang Hao dumped out the yellow-robed cultivator’s Storage Bag, he frowned. The ground was covered with materials, but where were the magical instruments?

“That’s odd. I saw at least four magical instruments on him during the fight. Could there be another container?”

Wang Hao hurriedly stripped the three corpses and searched them thoroughly. At the time of the kill, he had been in a rush to leave, but now he could be meticulous.

Sure enough, he found something unusual on the yellow-robed man—a silver ring glinting faintly on his finger.

“A Storage Ring?”

It was Wang Hao’s first time seeing such a high-end item in person. He probed it with his Divine Consciousness and confirmed the traces of a soul imprint. Delighted, he immediately began working to break the seal.

A moment later, the seal shattered.

With a loud clatter, a massive pile of items spilled out from the ring, instantly filling the open space of the cave.

“Damn! How many people did this guy rob?”

Staring at the mountain of treasure piled up before him, Wang Hao was utterly shocked. He had to raise his hand and use magic to expand his temporary cave dwelling just to fit everything comfortably.

Wang Hao began the arduous task of categorization: materials in one pile, Spirit Stones in another, magical instruments in a third.

It took him a full hour just to finish sorting.

The materials were mostly demon beast parts, but there were also wood, ore, and various rare substances. Besides raw resources, Wang Hao found many semi-processed components. Recalling that the man had claimed to craft the ape puppets himself, these were likely intended for puppet-making.

A rough estimate suggested that the demon beast materials alone exceeded what Wang Hao and his companions could gather from a month of continuous hunting. Their value was likely no less than two hundred thousand Spirit Stones.

Among the ores, Wang Hao’s eyes lit up. He found exactly what he urgently needed: a Tier 2 mid-grade earth-attribute spiritual material—the Three Talents Stone.

“Finally. The Chaos Earth Seal can advance.”

The pile of Spirit Stones amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand, including over forty mid-grade stones and three top-grade ones.

In terms of pills, the prize was a single Foundation Establishment Pill. The rest were common cultivation aids for the Foundation Establishment stage—useful, but not particularly precious.

Then came the magical instruments—dozens of them.

Wang Hao first examined the flying boat. It was called the Sun and Moon Shuttle, a top-grade spiritual tool with incredible speed, capable of traveling ten thousand li per hour. This was faster than a cultivator at Foundation Establishment Perfection; it was comparable to the flight speed of someone who had just formed their Golden Core. Its only drawback was its limited capacity, accommodating at most four people.

The golden alms bowl was called the Blazing Sky Bowl, also a top-grade spiritual tool. It was a heavy-type weapon that overwhelmed opponents with sheer mass. It could also trap demon beasts inside for slow refinement.

The Cloud Wave Shield was a top-grade defensive spiritual tool. When activated, it formed a massive air shield covering a large area, though it was somewhat vulnerable to focused, point-blank attacks.

And then, there was the sword.

It was an aura-glowing blade—the Spirit Severing Sword.

“A low-grade Magic Treasure…” Wang Hao whispered, his heart pounding.

Even the cheapest Magic Treasure cost over two hundred thousand Spirit Stones. Given this man’s illicit wealth, he could certainly afford one. But the question remained: why didn’t he use it?

“If he had summoned this Magic Treasure earlier, I would have been done for.”

A late-Foundation Establishment cultivator’s Qi should be sufficient to briefly activate a low-grade Magic Treasure. Even at ten percent power, it would have been enough to crush Wang Hao instantly.

The remaining instruments were mostly low-grade spiritual tools, with a few Tier 1 items mixed in. Wang Hao wasn’t particularly interested in these; he set them aside, planning to gift them to Wang Wenyan and the others later.

Next, Wang Hao began examining the jade slips left behind. He hoped they would answer his questions regarding the unused weapon. He started directly with those found in the Storage Ring.

After searching for a while, Wang Hao found the answer.

The Spirit Severing Sword required a specific technique to wield effectively. This technique was called the Sun and Moon Rotation Art. According to the description, it was one of the ten great foundational scriptures of the Sun Moon Palace—formerly the number one sect in the South Sea.

From another jade slip, Wang Hao pieced together the man’s identity.

His name was Huang Youcheng. He originally came from a small family clan that had been wiped out forty years ago. His clan members, wife, and children had all died tragically; only he had escaped.

Twisted by grief and rage, his personality drastically changed. He became an evil cultivator, roaming the seas and killing others to enhance his strength and seek revenge.

Twenty years ago, while exploring an ancient cave dwelling left by a Golden Core cultivator, Huang Youcheng obtained the Sun and Moon Rotation Art along with numerous treasures, including the Sun and Moon Shuttle and the Spirit Severing Sword.

However, the Spirit Severing Sword required the matching technique to activate.

The problem was that the Sun and Moon Rotation Art required a specific dual-attribute constitution—Metal and Earth. Huang Youcheng’s spiritual roots did not match these requirements, making the technique—and by extension, the sword—useless baggage for him.

“A dual-attribute technique…” Wang Hao murmured, reading the scripture. “The Sun and Moon Rotation Art combines Metal and Earth attributes. Its attack power is extremely strong, and it provides a solid defense.”

He frowned slightly. “But as an alchemist, I need the Fire attribute more. Furthermore, this scroll only goes up to the late Golden Core stage. It doesn’t reach the Nascent Soul level.”

“According to the notes in these jade slips, the subsequent parts could theoretically be found within the Sun Moon Palace…” Wang Hao shook his head wryly. “But the Sun Moon Palace fell five thousand years ago.”

He knew the history. The Sun Moon Palace was one of the earliest major powers to pioneer the South Sea region. Eventually, disputes over spoils and their tyrannical rule caused public outrage. They were wiped out by a joint force of multiple South Sea factions.

That was the widely accepted version, anyway; the true details were lost to time.

The Golden Core cultivator whose cave Huang found was likely a remnant survivor of the fallen palace who had died in hiding, leaving his legacy for Huang Youcheng to stumble upon millennia later.

Huang Youcheng’s Puppet Arts also originated from this legacy.

There was an ancient jade slip recording a puppet inheritance up to the third grade. Huang had even found two Tier 3 Puppet Beasts in the cave, but they had long since been damaged beyond repair. Given Huang Youcheng’s limited skills, he had been unable to restore them.