"I'll relay the orders at once." Xu Jiuling bowed in acknowledgment.
"Mm." Qing Chen rose from the Black-Gold Throne and descended the dais. "I'll be entering seclusion again for a while. Unless something major happens, do not disturb me."
"Understood."
Qing Chen gave no further instructions, merely ordering the two men to open the underground secret treasury of the Governor-General's Office.
The net profit from five years of smuggling amounted to 5.1 billion. After 800 million was allocated to the Open and Secret Merit Treasury, 4.3 billion remained in the secret treasury.
Qing Chen withdrew four billion at once, leaving only 300 million as operating and emergency funds for the various smuggling routes.
Besides these four billion Low-Grade Spirit Stones, all the demon beast, barbarian cultivator, and demonic cultivator corpses shipped over the years from the Gouwu Sea, the Fifteen Northwestern Provinces, beyond Yanmen Pass, and the Western Regions Kingdoms were packed into dozens of large Storage Magic Treasures.
Among them were great numbers of deep-sea demon beasts that had died in dozens of major battles in the Gouwu Sea, Black Fox Barbarian Cultivators slain by the northwestern Border Army over nearly a decade, and the mutilated remains of demon cultivators, Dharma cultivators, and body cultivators purchased cheaply through various secret trade routes after the protracted war between the Ten Thousand Saints Demon Kingdom and the Southwestern Circuit.
The Demon Lotus Sect had long since become an old hand at handling such things.
The corpses at the Nascent Soul, Dharma Nascent Soul, and fourth-tier Demon King levels were all stored individually in high-rank blood-sealing jade caskets, with Soul-Suppressing Talismans and Spirit-Sealing Magic Seals affixed to their exteriors.
Golden Core and third-tier demon beast corpses were sorted by cultivation technique, bloodline, and physical strength, then refined into blocks of blood-congealing crystal