Chapter 99: The Patriarch’s Decree, and a Sudden Fortune!
After subduing the ninja squad, Ye Tian sent word to Tang Wanyue and had the Cleaners cease their assault.
After that, he took Ito Mi and strolled around the rear of the encampment.
As for why he was merely strolling, it was because he had no right to lay a hand on any of these assets.
“Such a miser, Tang,” Ye Tian muttered, hands clasped behind his back as he patrolled the camp, watching the black-clad men and the Northern Campaign Army moving to and fro. A flicker of displeasure rose in him.
“I’m standing right here. You said that so loudly on purpose, didn’t you? Just to make sure I heard you?” Tang Wanyue said with an amused smile.
“But those are the rules. I can’t do anything about it. All of the Ito family’s visible assets within the Dragon Nation have to be seized and turned over to the state first, according to the law. There’s no way any of it can be given to you.”
Just moments ago, the two of them had disagreed over what should be done with Ito Sasuke’s property.
Ye Tian believed that since he had worked hard and made great contributions, he ought to take at least half. Tang Wanyue, however, insisted that spoils of war had to be confiscated, and at most he could be rewarded according to merit with a promotion to major general.
“What good is a major general rank to me? It’ll only get in the way.”
“You ingrate. You get the benefit and still act put out? How many people would kill for that major general post? My father even fought specially to secure it for you!”
Too lazy to argue further, Tang Wanyue waved a hand and went off to deal with her own affairs.
That left Ye Tian standing there with a look of deep resentment.
“How dull. I worked my tail off for half a day and all I got was a hollow title. Might as well have done it for nothing!”
“Hee-hee, Master, I never knew you could be this adorable,” Ye Xiaomei said, unable to hold back a laugh.
The former Ito Mi had already been forcibly renamed by Ye Tian. She no longer bore the Ito surname and now followed his own surname, having been formally entered into the Ye family registry.
There was no longer any such person as the number one genius of the Eastern Isles. Only Ye Xiaomei, captain of the Ye family’s servant guards, remained.
“Fine. I just finished naming you, and now you’re already taking advantage of me,” Ye Tian said helplessly, rubbing his nose.
Ye Xiaomei did not rise to the bait. Seeing that no one else was nearby, she suddenly leaned in with a mysterious air.
“Master, actually Ito Sasuke had a hidden vault. It’s by the river outside this camp. That is where his real wealth is!”
“You should have said so earlier!”
Hearing this earth-shattering good news, Ye Tian’s voice rose a couple of notches before he broke into a sly grin. “Come on, take me there.”
As a joke?
There was a saying: a man without windfall never grows rich, and a horse without nighttime grass never fattens.
No matter how gifted or brilliant a person might be, without opportunity to support him, it was difficult in the end to become truly strong.
One had to keep finding hidden opportunities, again and again and again.
Only then could one continue to grow.
No doubt, within the treasure vault of such a grand patriarch of an Eastern Isles noble house, Ito Sasuke must have kept something extraordinary.
Ye Xiaomei expertly led Ye Tian around the crowd and brought him to a pile of rocks by the riverbank.
Then she pushed the stones aside, revealing a metal door beneath.
Seeing that there were no signs it had been disturbed, she let out a breath of relief and said, “That old fox was suspicious to a fault. If he didn’t carry his valuables with him, he couldn’t rest easy, but he also didn’t want anyone else to see them. So he simply had a hidden chamber built nearby and then killed the craftsmen who constructed it.”
“Truly perverse, don’t you think, Master?”
“I’m not interested in hearing your story. I just want to know how you found out about this place,” Ye Tian replied, deliberately refusing to continue the exchange, and looked at her sidelong.
Ye Xiaomei still bore the imprint of the soul-binding technique, so he had no fear that she might harm him.
After all, once the master died, the servant would die with him.
Finding the topic boring, Ye Xiaomei stopped teasing him and said plainly, “He only told his son, Ito Shin.”
“Unfortunately, his son was a complete fool, the sort who spent all day thinking only about women. So I disguised myself as a pretty girl from the Dragon Nation, and in no time I had the truth out of him.”
After hearing that, two words surfaced in Ye Tian’s mind.
A prodigal son.
“And just now, while you were killing Ito Sasuke, Master, I slipped over and picked the key off his body,” Ye Xiaomei said playfully in awkward Dragon Nation speech.
“Good. Open it quickly!”
At once the two of them opened the metal door and followed the steep staircase down into a cellar.
When the lights came on, countless rare treasures flooded into view.
“My goodness. If Ito Sasuke had lived in ancient times in our Dragon Nation, he’d have been a super-corrupt official on the same level as He Shen at the very least,” Ye Tian exclaimed as he looked over the endless wealth.
Ito Sasuke was absurd beyond belief. Gold ingots as large as forearms were piled everywhere, stacked carelessly, while precious gemstones filled more than a dozen crates, as though they had been bought wholesale.
One had to know that the quality of these gemstones, if taken outside, would be enough for any single piece to go up for auction.
Even more ridiculous was the weapon hanging casually on the screen in the center of the vault: a rather familiar saber. Yet its exact name escaped Ye Tian for the moment.
“Master, who is He Shen?”
Ignoring Ye Xiaomei, Ye Tian’s attention had been caught by a ring enshrined on a pedestal.
It was an alloy ring of unknown material, set with an oval green gem. Its appearance was not especially attractive, yet an eerie fluctuation emanated from it.
It was similar to internal energy, but not quite. One could not easily put it into words.
“What do you think is different about this thing?” Ye Tian asked as he took the ring and tossed it into Ye Xiaomei’s hand.
“No feeling at all. It seems like just an ordinary ring.”
Hearing that, Ye Tian kept shaking his head.
It seemed not everyone could sense its oddity.
Could there be some old master living inside this ring?
He could not help but think of those novels where the protagonist acquires a special ring, only for the soul of an old master to appear inside and help the hero cheat his way to the top.
After examining it for a long while, aside from its peculiar aura, the object showed no other strangeness. Ye Tian ultimately decided to put it away and wear it on the middle finger of his right hand.
At that moment, a Heaven-Piercing Guide Token hung from his right thumb, and a huge gemstone ring sat on his middle finger. The sight looked especially odd.
“Master, isn’t it strange to wear so many things?”
“Not strange. Good things should naturally be carried on one’s person,” Ye Tian said vaguely, then turned his gaze to a bronze cauldron in the corner.
The cauldron was over two meters tall and about one and a half meters wide, with three legs and three handles. Countless rare beasts and strange creatures were etched across its surface, and one could tell at a glance that it was a priceless treasure.
Soon, he found relevant information about the bronze cauldron in Ye Changsheng’s memories.
The Purple-Gold Cauldron.
A renowned alchemical vessel from the Tang Dynasty, a coveted treasure dreamed of by the outer elixir school of Daoism, fought over by countless people before being judged inauspicious by the emperor of Tang and cast into the sea.
He had never expected that such a treasure would actually be recovered by people from the Eastern Isles and preserved so well.
Running his fingers over the cauldron’s patterns, Ye Tian could not help feeling a surge of excitement.
With this, a plan buried deep in his heart could finally be put into motion.
This Ito Sasuke really was a treasure chest of wonders!