The stone wall flipped slowly as Tachibana along with Koyuki walked into the treasury through a secret door.
"It's mostly empty…" Tachibana pointed out the obvious as they looked at the Treasury which only had a small pile of money stored in steel cupboards.
"I don't remember us being this poor…" Koyuki argued as she looked around for something they might've missed.
"Is there any other secret room in the Treasury where they could've hidden the money?"
"No…"
Tachibana leisurely walked to an expensive-looking golden chair and sat down on it.
"I guess then we just wait here until Yamato-sensei and the rest of my team arrive here looking for you."
Koyuki still couldn't believe the mostly empty treasury but she sat down on a similar chair too.
For the first half hour, Tachibana passed the time speaking with Koyuki, but when they ran out of topics and words, he walked up to some of the shelves and began studying the scrolls stored in them.
"Hmm…these scrolls are old…do you recognise any of them?" Tachibana asked out of curiosity. "They contain various designs of random inventions…this one here is of a disposable sword that cuts using vibration and this other one is of a steam train."
Koyuki walked up to Tachibana and looked at the scrolls along with him.
"My father used to design all these. He said the future of the Land of Snow was buried in such trinkets."
"Trinkets? I hardly think they're useless. They'd probably sell for a lot in the shinobi world. Even the other Daimyos would pay a lot to have a steam train in their land. Imagine being able to move around the country in a matter of hours instead of days or even weeks."
Koyuki frowned when she heard that but she didn't say anything else.
Tachibana left her with those scrolls he'd just opened and started scanning around through the other scrolls. They all gave him a decent idea about Koyuki's dad.
'He was an inventor…'
'He's made quite a lot of things and studied a lot of natural phenomena. But what takes the cake is his work on combining chakra with machinery.'
There were several chakra-tech machines designed in the scrolls that Tachibana studied. There were several types of items but most could be divided as combat items vs utility items.
There were the standard flashbangs, grenades and such, but what caught Tachibana's eyes were the jutsu bombs.
Jutsu bombs looked simple since they essentially performed a simple task. Once set alight and exploded, the bombs would explode into the jutsu that was condensed into it.
But they were deceptively difficult to make.
One had to first know how to perform the jutsu they wanted to compress and then a complex sealing array was used to compress the entire jutsu into an ice pearl so that it could be activated at any time.
'Did he rediscover the Uzumaki sealing technique for making jutsu scrolls?'
'This was probably how those giant ice spike bombs were made when they were dropped from the blimp.'
Other than scrolls on jutsu bombs, there were other things like storage scrolls that could store liquid items by automatically freezing them using Ice Release, a seal that could be used to enhance chakra control for specific jutsus which came at the cost of disallowing you from using other jutsu.
Tachibana felt like he'd stepped into a vast gold mine of knowledge and wisdom.
Inspecting various scrolls, Tachibana eventually came across the scroll that explained the chakra armours in detail.
'I guess Doto based his chakra armour on these designs?'
'Then maybe he really discovered or invented a way to turn the Land of Snow into the Land of Spring?'
'No…that still seems a bit too farfetched.'
Tachibana studied the scroll for a while and although much of the sealing techniques used in it went over his head, he did understand one of the key points in it.
'The chakra extractor is detachable…and it's quite easy to do.'
'It's probably so easy because the chakra extractors might break from overuse or other malfunctions which probably requires them to be replaced by low-level technicians.'
'If I can remove the chakra extractors from the two chakra armours and then activate the pink shield on them I can use them as portable shields…'
Tachibana immediately extracted one of the chakra armours and began to work on separating the chakra extractor in it.
It took him half an hour on the first try but he eventually got it out.
"What are you doing?" Koyuki asked with confusion since to her it appeared that Tachibana was destroying perfectly good armours.
"Look!" Tachibana said excitedly as he used the chakra that had already been filled into it by its previous owner to activate a pink shield around himself.
"Oh? That's interesting…" Koyuki nodded.
"Interesting!? With this, I can probably take on Nadare on my own."
"Are we going to fight him now?" Koyuki asked with worry.
"No. Why would I fight him alone when I just have to wait for Yamato-sensei to show up."
Koyuki nodded and went back to strolling around the treasury, searching for random things from her childhood.
Eventually, she came to a stop in front of three large mirrors.
"My father used to spend most of his time working on these mirrors…I faintly remember he used to say that these mirrors were going to change the future of the Land of Snow." Koyuki said unprompted causing Tachibana to shift his attention to her from the armour.
Tachibana walked to Koyuki and peered at the mirrors with a frown.
"What's this?"
"I dunno. I only remember looking at it whenever I visited him in his workshop." Koyuki explained calmly.
"Hmm…A mirror? The future of the Land of Snow?" Tachibana said with wonder as his fingers traced the seals on the mirrors.
'Heating seals…? Absorption seals? Why would simple heating seals make this the future of the Land of Snow?'
"What was it solar cooker that could heat and make instant ramen in it or something?" Tachibana asked more so as a joke but something suddenly caught his eye.
"The seals on the floor…!"
Noticing Tachibana's sudden startled expression, Koyuki looked at him with a slight frown.
"I know my dad might've been crazy but he was still my father…it's not funny to make fun of dead peop-"
"I know! I know! I'm not making fun of your dad!! I was just pointing out why he thought this would revolutionise the Land Of Snow."
"Huh? What?"
"Look at the seals on the floor!!! Don't they remind you of something?!"
Koyuki looked at the seals that looked more like hieroglyphs to her than anything else, "I can't understand them."
"No! Not the seals themselves! Look at how they are arranged!"
Koyuki paid attention to the structure of the seals again and after a few seconds, her eyes widened.
"The castle! They're arranged in the shape of the castle!"
"Yes! I'm practically sure he had something ridiculous planned to heat the entire valley the castle is built above!"
"...." Koyuki and Tachibana fell silent after that. Neither believed that Koyuki's dad actually had something backing up his claims and now they didn't know how to react.
"What do you think?" Koyuki asked softly.
"I think the Hex Crystal key isn't just a key…it is probably some important component of the entire system that unlocks or kickstarts this madness."
"So Doto only wants good for the people of the Land of Snow?", Koyuki asked with an unwilling expression.
"I…I don't know. Maybe he thinks the key leads to gold or something? Since the treasury is mostly empty? Perhaps he spent most of his funds to make the chakra armours and now lacks money?"
Koyuki frowned and then Tachibana spoke, "Let me divine about it."