Chapter 435: The Gathering of Thieves

The four Envoys of Wind, Cloud, Moon, and Star left the great mountain where the Western Region Sacred Fire Sect was located.

They arrived at the Gobi Desert; deep within the Gobi, there was a Mana He, which produced Western Region jade, and many slave laborers were currently panning for jade there.

The fifth of the Forty-Seven Great Thieves was right here; he practiced arts from the Earthly Fiend Seventy-Two Arts such as "Mountain Opening," "Stone Boiling," and "Ingesting Qi."

He mined jade, boiled it into Nectar, and then ingested it into his belly to transform it into cultivation; he was not of the Han ethnicity but a Western Regioner, his face bearing distinct Western Region features.

The fifth Great Thief saw the four Envoys and immediately became respectful; they were not in the Sacred Fire Sect, but they understood that in the future, when they marched into the Central Plains, they too could join the sect and become Protectors or Dharma Kings... thus, they had long considered themselves high-ranking members of the Sacred Fire Sect and were naturally respectful toward the four Envoys.

By comparison, the Desert Three Demons were not as concerned with the Sacred Fire Sect, merely using it to freeload some Persian techniques and Earthly Fiend Minor Arts, but they died of greed, killed by a Golden-Haired Hou in the Golden Ancient Kingdom.

The four Envoys said to the fifth Great Thief: "The Sect Leader, that venerable elder, has sensed that nearly half of the Forty-Seven Great Thieves have already met with disaster; it must be that someone is targeting them. Firstly, we must warn you to be careful, and secondly, we must ferret him out."

"Thirdly, it is to have us examine whether there are suitable candidates to replace those who were killed; we four Envoys will plant the Sacred Seed of Divine Ability for them on behalf of the Sect Leader."

"But these are not the most important things; the most important is the Buddha Treasure Sarira of the Golden Ancient Kingdom. That treasure is perfectly suited to the fortune of our Sacred Fire Sect and can serve as our sect-protecting treasure."

"The Sect Leader, that venerable elder, is currently practicing a divine art; once completed, he will be invincible under heaven. With this sacred treasure, he will surely be able to enter and rule the Central Plains. This trip requires us to find the fourth, third, and second thieves as well; the eight of us will act together to pluck that Golden Light Sarira."

"Holy Envoy, I already have some clues about the person who killed the other Great Thieves; he is precisely a thug from the Lüzhou Fudi beneath that Golden Light Sarira."

"I fear news of the Sect Leader's plot to seize this treasure has leaked, though they may not necessarily know it is our Western Region Sacred Fire Sect; they likely assume it is the Forty-Seven Great Thieves."

"The low-level Great Thieves know very little about our sect, and the four Envoys have not yet been exposed."

"A Great Thief I contacted has already come to us; he saw the scene of that person's battle from afar. Old Seventeen, come in and pay your respects to the Holy Envoys!"

That seventeenth Great Thief was at the peak of the Innate realm, yet at this moment he dared not be arrogant, only saying: "That person is strangely formidable. Every time he kills a brother, he can refine him into a dried corpse, yet the corpse can still move freely. I saw the ninth Great Thief being besieged to death by him, and even he himself was refined into such a dried corpse."

"That person's appearance: red hair, red eyebrows, his body burning with fire, and his flying sword is also crimson. But the Western Region has never heard of such a character; even the Fire Demon among the Desert Three Demons does not possess such Divine Ability and Daoism."

"This person is precisely the Huogong Toutuo under the command of the Liuli Fudi. That day when the ruins of the Golden Ancient Kingdom emerged, a mysterious person beheaded the ancient Demon God that had been suppressing the Golden Ancient Kingdom, and his body turned into mountains and rivers."

"Later, he relied on this Buddha Treasure Sarira to establish the Lüzhou Fudi."

"But since then, we have only seen a few stray cats and dogs; we have not seen that extremely powerful Sword Immortal who used the sword again. We suspect whether he clashed with that Demon God and damaged his foundation, is in seclusion healing, or has simply died."

"Baiyun Chanshi, that Arhat among men, rarely mentions the events of that day. However, the Sarira is a supreme Buddhist treasure, yet he did not covet it, instead building a Buddha grotto at the Golden Ancient Kingdom ruins and establishing a Daochang... perhaps that powerful Sword Immortal is still there, who knows."

"Now that the Sword Immortal has not appeared, it is this Huogong Toutuo who has appeared. Although he has become much stronger in a short time, it is clearly not something he cultivated himself. Could it be that he was guided by that powerful Sword Immortal?" "Regardless of the rest, if he killed our people, he must wait to be killed," the Huiyue Shi said coldly. "No matter how strong that powerful Sword Immortal is, once our Sect Leader emerges from seclusion, he will surely be like a clay chicken or a pottery dog."

The fifth Great Thief nodded, agreeing with this statement, and subsequently summoned the fourth, third, and second Great Thieves together.

The fourth Great Thief was a Lama who usually cultivated in Lama Cheng. His Daoism originated from the same source as the Longevity Sect's Xifu Zhi Shu. Now, within his body, he had already bound three powerful Ghost Gods and Demon Gods, all of whom had become his Protector Diamonds, utilizing arts from the Earthly Fiend arts such as "Light Generation," "Communicating with the Profound," "Guiding," "Corpse Severance," and "Dismemberment."

The three powerful Ghost Gods were each powerful local deities of the Western Region within the Dharma Realm, their folklore circulating among the mouths and ears of the Western Region people; they were famous Fierce Gods and Evil Gods.

Because he had bound the three Ghost Gods, the abbot of the Lama temple had already decided to pass on the temple-protecting classics and Divine Ability to him, allowing him to listen directly to the classics from Dainichi Nyorai and receive the head-touching blessing from a Bodhisattva; this was an incomparably supreme honor.

Therefore, he actually did not want to have any more contact with the Forty-Seven Great Thieves, but he had no choice but to come.

The third Great Thief was an old woman with a grassland face. She was the shaman of the grassland tribe's royal tent and the great-grandmother of the contemporary Lord of the Grassland. She held the inheritance of Shamanism and ancient witchcraft curses, practicing arts from the Earthly Fiend Seventy-Two Arts such as "Borrowing Wind, Buyu, Praying for Clear Skies, Praying for Rain..." She wanted to use the power of the Sacred Fire Sect to eventually rule the water- and soil-rich lands of the northern Central Plains; plus, these Earthly Fiend arts were indeed very practical, so she was relatively cooperative.

The second Great Thief appeared as a Central Plains cultivator. He was a disgraced disciple of the Kunlun Sect of the Western Region, and his aura was the most profound. His cooperation with the Sacred Fire Sect was purely to plot for the inheritance of the Kunlun Sect.

As an ancient great sect, the Kunlun Sect was gradually withering. The Kunlun Sect was the Daoist lineage of the Primordial, practicing the path of Innate natural deities, which was completely different from the acquired Incense Divine Path or the Immortal path.

The Innate natural Divine Path held a noble status and immense strength; every move was blessed by heaven and earth.

The Western path of "igniting divine fire to become a god" was different from the Incense God, yet similar to the Innate Quanshen natural Divine Path. He plotted for this because he also wanted to use the Sacred Fire Sect to achieve the status of "Dairi Shensheng" in this world.

These people gathered together and immediately went to find Huogong Toutuo.

In order to become famous and stabilize the grafted fortune, Huogong Toutuo was not hiding himself at all at this time.

Thus, his Calamity arrived; the third Great Thief used the art of Heavenly Secrets to lock onto him and kept closing in with a surrounding formation to ensure he would not run away.

By the time he collided with the Envoys of Wind and Cloud, others had already blocked his path from the other six directions, forming an Eight Trigrams trapping array.

Of course, this trapping array could turn into a killing array at any moment.

Although Huogong Toutuo was complaining bitterly in his heart, he did not flee immediately. For one thing, after refining many Great Thieves, his Golden Core already contained more than thirty types of Earthly Fiend Minor Arts; although some were duplicated and merged, his cultivation had already skyrocketed.

Furthermore, he still had a sword mark left by Xu Jia in his hand, so he was not panicked.

(End of chapter)