Soon, Ter brought him to a small wooden door located on the second storey of the main sect building.
The air here was much cleaner than the damp tunnels below, but the quietness of the hallway only added to the immense tension that followed Kahn’s every single step.
The sect building normally had two storeys as well as a massive, dark underground area where the lower levels were used entirely as a prison sector.
The first floor was typically reserved for the outer disciples and general administrative duties, while this second floor housed the more private quarters of the higher-ranking members.
Kahn kept his sharp eyes scanning the surroundings, his grip never faltering as they reached the end of the final hallway.
Ter stood shakily in front of the small door, his breath coming in short, painful rasps as he weakly raised his uninjured left hand, pointing his trembling finger directly at the wooden handle as he said, "Here... is where she is."
His voice was barely a whisper, completely drained of the arrogant tone he had used just minutes before, his entire body shaking from the intense pain of his shattered wrist.
Kahn didn’t show a single shred of emotion on his face upon reaching the destination, and he said in a flat, bone-chilling tone, "Open it."
The command was absolute, carrying a dangerous weight that made it clear he would tolerate no further delays or hesitation when it came to his younger sister.
Ter desperately wanted to make some sort of excuse to stall for time, hoping to find a way out of the situation or alert the hidden elders within the floor.
But as he looked back at Kahn, the terrifying emptiness in his dark eyes sent a violent shiver straight through his spine, and he heavily gulped down his saliva in pure dread.
There was no mercy, and no hesitation in that gaze—just a vast, chilling void that promised immediate death if he didn’t comply.
It was exactly like he was a completely small, helpless ant standing directly in front of a massive, reality-tearing black hole, and he could feel that he was already helplessly getting sucked into it, with no way left to escape his doom.
Every single survival instinct he possessed told him that trying to deceive the white-haired man right now would result in his head being thoroughly crushed against the wooden wall before he could even finish a sentence.
He reluctantly reached out his shaking hand and opened the door, completely accepting that his fate from now on was entirely in Kahn’s hands.
He pushed the heavy wood inward, revealing the interior of the private chamber, his heart hammering wildly against his ribs as he braced himself for the chaotic storm that was about to unfold.
As he opened it, a short old man with long white hair and a matching thick white beard turned around from a large table in the center of the room, looking toward the entrance with an expression of mild annoyance.
Seeing the blue robes of the inner disciple, the elderly man began speaking in a calm, authoritative voice, saying, "Ter? What could bring you—"
The old man hadn’t even completed his words before Kahn suddenly delivered a brutal, explosive kick directly to Ter’s back from behind.
The force of the strike sent the inner disciple flying forward through the threshold, causing the man to fall heavily to the hard ground of the chamber, groaning in agony as he skidded across the floorboards.
Kahn entered the room instead, stepping completely over the groveling form of his former overseer without a single glance.
He stood tall in the center of the doorway, his snow-white hair swaying slightly as his piercing gaze swept across the entire interior of the private quarters.
What he saw inside the room made his blood run completely cold.
Lying on a small, unadorned wooden bed in the corner of the room was a beautiful girl with long, tangled black hair that spilled wildly across the stained pillow.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow, erratic movements, and she was breathing heavily with her eyes tightly closed as if locked in a perpetual, agonizing nightmare.
The natural vibrance she once possessed had been completely stripped away, leaving her looking fragile and thoroughly broken beneath the flickering lanterns of the private chamber.
There were almost twenty thick pins ruthlessly stabbed into her small body, piercing her arms, legs, and torso with enough precision to avoid killing her instantly.
Each single pin was directly connected to a small, flexible transparent tube that kept draining her dark red blood away from her veins, pulse by pulse.
The sheer cruelty of the sight was staggering, as the vital fluid was being actively siphoned out of her flesh while she lay completely helpless and unconscious on the mattress.
The small transparent tubes snaked downward from her shivering limbs, channeling the continuous flow of stolen blood directly into a large brown glass bottle that hung securely at the far side of the room.
The dark liquid trickled into the container with a steady, rhythmic dripping sound that echoed horribly in the quiet space, marking the literal drainage of her life force.
The bottle was already half-full, showing that this horrific extraction process had been going on for a considerable amount of time before Kahn arrived.
The entire grotesque medical setup was shockingly similar to the standard medical ’drip’ usually administered to sick patients in modern hospitals back on Earth.
However, instead of introducing healing nutrients or clean fluids into her system, the exact reverse was happening here.
There were far more than just one single tube forcefully injected into the girl’s trembling body, and instead of saving her, they were all maliciously draining every single drop of blood out of her to harvest her lineage.
The poor girl’s face was completely, starkly pale and sickly, devoid of any healthy color or warmth, looking almost like a corpse that had been carved out of cold marble.
Her small body kept shivering violently and uncontrollably every few seconds, a natural reaction to the severe blood loss and the intense cold that was rapidly setting into her tissues as the fluid was drained out of her non-stop.