Kahn gently carried Sera through the wide doorway, crossing the vast space toward an enormous four-poster bed positioned in the far corner of the room.
The dark wooden frame carved with the same bull imagery that decorated nearly everything else Gorath owned.
He laid her down gently against the thick, embroidered blankets, watching her small frame practically disappear into the sheer size of the mattress.
She remained deeply asleep, her breathing slow and even, entirely unaware of the fact that she was currently resting in the private quarters of the very man who had ordered her blood drained for his son’s benefit.
Kahn had already sent Ter and the rest of the trembling outer disciples away, dumping them in the same underground cells he had been imprisoned in the past.
They were his prisoners now, and not a single one of them was to be let loose again without his direct permission.
He didn’t wanted to leave Sera behind again, feeling like anything could befall her if she was left alone.
He had made that mistake once already tonight, leaving her locked alone in a room while he dealt with the storeroom, and the entire walk back through the compound afterward had gnawed uncomfortably at the edges of his mind.
It didn’t matter that the door had held. It didn’t matter that nothing had actually happened.
The mere possibility of it, the thought of some desperate, grieving disciple slipping into the room while he was away had been enough to convince him that the risk simply wasn’t worth taking again.
Wherever he went next, she would go with him. He would make certain of that for as long as this compound remained a threat.
Kahn settled slowly onto the edge of the massive bed beside her, his gaze drifting across her pale, peaceful face for a long, quiet moment before a small, familiar frown began tugging at the corner of his mouth.
’I still don’t know what bloodline she has,’ he thought, his eyes narrowing slightly as the frustration crept back in, ’or what grade it even is.’
It was a glaring, uncomfortable gap in his understanding, one that had been sitting quietly at the back of his mind ever since Ter had first revealed the existence of a hidden bloodline back in the hallway.
He had pressed the man for details afterward, during the walk toward this very room, but Ter’s answers had only grown vaguer and more frustrated the deeper Kahn tried to dig.
According to Ter, the specifics had never been shared with the inner disciples at all.
They knew only that Seraphina possessed something valuable enough to be worth harvesting, something rare enough that the sect leader himself had decided to personally oversee its extraction rather than trust the task to anyone else.
However the actual nature of the bloodline, its origin, its grade, which ancient lineage it might have descended from, remained locked away behind information only Gorath and his closest elders had ever been trusted with.
Kahn’s jaw tightened as the thought circled back around to the one person who might have actually known the answer.
The elder.
The short man he had executed within seconds of stepping into that medic room, his fist driven straight through the old man’s chest before a single meaningful question could ever be asked.
A low, frustrated breath escaped him.
’I should have asked him something,’ Kahn thought, his gaze drifting toward his own hands, remembering the exact, sickening give of bone and cartilage beneath his knuckles.
’Anything. Where the extraction technique came from. What grade her bloodline actually was. Whether there was some kind of record kept anywhere in this compound.’
The elder had clearly been personally involved in the process, actively drawing blood from her veins like she was nothing more significant than livestock.
If anyone still breathing in this sect had possessed real, detailed knowledge of Sera’s condition, it had been him.
And Kahn had erased that knowledge from existence in less time than it took most cultivators to draw a single proper breath.
He exhaled slowly, running a hand back through his unfamiliar white hair, the frustration settling into something heavier and more complicated than simple regret.
He remembered exactly what had driven him to strike so fast, so absolutely, without a single second wasted on hesitation or interrogation.
He remembered stepping through that doorway and seeing her laid out on that stained mattress, nearly twenty thick iron pins buried into her small, shivering body, her blood draining steadily into a glass bottle while she lay completely unconscious and utterly powerless to stop any of it.
The man had also been threatening to stab her with a knife.
There hadn’t been room for questions in that moment, or for anything except the single, overwhelming need to stop that blade before it ever reached her skin, and to make certain the man responsible for her suffering never drew another breath afterward.
Kahn’s gaze settled back on Sera’s sleeping face, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest beneath the thick blankets.
’If I went back to that exact moment,’ he thought, his expression hardening with quiet, unshakable certainty, ’knowing everything I know now, I’d do the exact same thing. Without thinking twice.’
There was no version of that memory where he imagined himself pausing, negotiating, demanding information first while that knife still hovered inches from his sister’s throat.
Whatever knowledge he had lost the moment his fist crushed through the old man’s ribcage, it hadn’t been worth trading for even a single second of additional risk to her life.
Some information could be recovered later, through other means, other sources, other threats pried loose from whoever else in this compound might still hold pieces of the truth.
Sera’s life, had that blade found its mark even a heartbeat sooner, could never have been recovered at all.
Still, the frustration lingered stubbornly beneath the certainty, an itch he couldn’t quite scratch away. He needed answers eventually.
If her bloodline truly was valuable enough for Gorath to personally travel two provinces away just to secure the means of extracting it, then it was almost certainly valuable enough to draw the attention of other, far more dangerous factions the moment word of its existence inevitably spread beyond these mountain walls.
He couldn’t protect her properly against a threat he didn’t fully understand.
Kahn’s eyes swept slowly across the sect leader’s private chamber again, taking in the packed shelves of scrolls and manuals lining the far wall, the heavy, ornate desk positioned near the meditation platform, drawers still sealed shut beneath its polished surface.
If anyone in this compound had kept records detailing exactly what ran through his sister’s veins, it made sense that they would be kept here, in the private quarters of the man who had planned to steal it.
He rose slowly from the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb Sera’s peaceful sleep, and turned his attention toward the heavy wooden desk waiting patiently across the room.
Whatever answers Gorath had been keeping locked away, Kahn intended to find every single one of them before the man ever set foot back inside these walls.
Kahn had barely taken two steps toward the heavy wooden desk when the familiar, translucent shimmer of the system interface flickered gently into existence directly in front of him, hovering silently in the still air of the grand chamber.
[Location Sign-in detected: Raging Bulls Sect Master’s Chamber]
[Do you wish to sign-in?]
[Yes/No]
A small, faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He hadn’t even needed to search for this one. Of course a room this significant, the private quarters of the man who ruled over the entire sect, would trigger a sign-in trigger.
’Yes.’
The text rearranged itself instantly.
[Sign-in Successful!]
[Reward: Dancing Swordsman Martial Art(Earth-grade)]
Kahn’s brow lifted slightly, a small flicker of genuine interest cutting through his earlier frustration.
Earth grade wasn’t nothing. It sat comfortably above the common, low-tier techniques handed out to outer disciples, the kind of martial art a talented cultivator might spend years properly mastering.
However, the multiplier soon kicked in, and another notification appeared before him.
[1000x Reward Multiplier Activated!]
[New Sign-in Reward: Dancing Shadows Martial Art(Saint-grade)]
Saint grade was an enormous leap from the previous Earth grade reward, truly a thousand times better.
He also understood well enough from his years spent buried in his father’s library that techniques of this caliber were exceptionally rare even among the most powerful sects in the region.
And yet, some greedy, restless part of him couldn’t quite ignore the small pang of disappointment curling beneath the excitement.
’Only a thousand times,’ he thought, almost amused at his own reaction. ’Guess I got spoiled after that first roll.’
He had witnessed firsthand exactly what a 10,000X multiplier could accomplish, which was what he got on his first sign-in, so he regretted a little that he didn’t get it again this time.