Many red-robed cultivators who had already charged inside vanished together with the azure palace amid a colossal fireball.
The air was thick with a scorched stench that stung the nose and mouth, the distinctive smell of Purple Niter Firestone. Nangong Xiaoyan knew that Kunlun's Second Ring Island contained a vein of Purple Niter Firestone. Kunlun's Artifact Division had built a warehouse directly above that vein, where more than a dozen Artifact Division disciples mined Purple Niter Firestone each day—a crystal the size of an egg, translucent and faintly violet.
Like Explosive Flame Stone, Purple Niter Firestone naturally contained intense fire-niter energy. A touch of fire essence or a violent impact would trigger a fierce explosion, making it prime material for many fire-element thunder talismans and fire-element magical treasures.
The violent blast that had utterly destroyed the entire azure palace had clearly been caused by this Purple Niter Firestone. Such terrifying explosive power could only mean that when Ming Shiqi returned to First Ring Island, he had already ordered people to bring over the Purple Niter Firestone from the Artifact Division's warehouse on Second Ring Island. In other words, Ming Shiqi had been prepared to abandon this Medicine Division warehouse from that very moment.
If they could not have it themselves, they absolutely would not leave it for the enemy.
A formation of nearly a hundred Sword Division disciples, who had been guarding the several Artifact Division warehouses containing magical treasures, took the items handed out by Kunlun disciples from within and, led by a gray-robed Kunlun disciple, swept down through the air.
Against the blood-stained night, the things in their hands looked like purple-black short rods, each around three feet long. Yet when they were still over a hundred zhang away from the red-robed men fighting amid that cluster of