When Veronica woke up, the first thing she noticed was a splitting headache pulsing from the left side of her skull. She tried to lift an arm to probe the tender spot, only to realize she couldn’t move. A grunt of pain and confusion escaped her mouth.

  Her bleary eyes struggled to resolve the vague details of her dark environment, where a single, flickering light source cast dancing shadows some distance away.

  As her senses sputtered to life, she became aware that she was not in her bed but lying on a slab of hard, cold stone. The damp chill seeped through her thin nightgown.

  “What the fuck?!” Veronica shrilled, her head whipping around, tone filled with denial. Her comfortable bedroom simply couldn't have transformed into some filthy, damp cave. This wasn't what her world was supposed to look like upon awakening.

  Yet, reality stubbornly refused to change. This was no fading shadow of a dream. Her surroundings were as tangible as the silk sheets she had fallen asleep in, and all her senses screamed that she had, in fact, woken up bound inside a cave.

  Suddenly, Veronica realized there was a person sitting on the ground, shrouded by the deep shadow of an overhanging cavern wall. The torch was positioned some distance away from the figure, and his face—judging by the broad shoulders, this was undoubtedly a man—was likewise hidden. She could only tell he was wearing a mask.

  Just as she was about to demand answers, the light of the torch bounced off the glistening, wet cave walls and was reflected by the stranger’s irises, making them appear like twin red moons in the gloom.

  “A vampire!” Veronica shrieked in panic, her body thrashing against its bonds. The coarse rope bit into her ankles and wrists, refusing to give an inch regardless of how she struggled. She had never seen a vampire, but what else could this be?

  The stranger didn’t respond to her accusation, though Veronica could have sworn she heard him release a deep, weary sigh.

  “Who the fuck are you? You must have a death wish to kidnap me. Do you even understand who I am?!”

  The stream of questions and demands began to flow, as Lady Brightheart wasn't someone who believed anything truly bad could happen to her. She was the daughter of a Baron, a noble of imperial blood. The answers were the least she deserved, and she wanted them right now. And yet, her voice lacked its typical confident arrogance; a piercing high note betrayed the fear coiling in her gut.

  “You seem to misunderstand the role of a captive. Do you need me to enlighten you?” the man asked coldly.

  The voice was muffled, low, and rough—the kind of voice one might hear from a street thug before a knife found your ribs. A sudden, terrible thought occurred to her, and she pulled her knees closer to her chest in a desperate, defensive posture.

  “P… please don’t rape me!” Veronica pleaded, hot tears beginning to stream down her face.

  “Rape?” The man sounded genuinely surprised. “Don't be ridiculous. You own a rather expensive mirror, you must be acutely aware of your below-average looks. Do you really think I’d have gone through all this effort to rape you?” the stranger scoffed, the disgust in his voice a palpable thing.

  On one hand, Veronica was relieved. On the other, she was fuming, her female pride taking a massive hit. Nobody had ever dared to say such a thing to her face. She was keenly conscious of her looks—her flat chest, the pockmarks, the uneven shape of her nose, one eye being slightly larger than the other, yellowing teeth.

  Now, all she could do was swallow the insult like a shard of glass.

  While the stranger terrified her, he did not sound like a simpleton, and this gave Veronica a sliver of hope. Stupid men were easily bought but often difficult to reason with. Since her kidnapper chose to hide his face, his primary goal probably wasn’t to kill her. If he was willing to talk, then maybe a deal could be arranged.

  “I have a lot of spirit crystals. If that’s what you’re after, then we can surely work out an agreement,” she stated, some of her imperial demeanor returning with the newfound confidence.

  “Ah, yes. About that—remove the ownership mark from your ring,” the man said as he stood up, unhurriedly approaching Veronica.

  He wore a blood-red martial robe of a severe military cut, high-collared, with narrow sleeves that wrapped tightly around his muscled arms. It was a much more form-fitting style than was fashionable today. Veronica knew a lot about clothing trends, and she could not recall ever seeing this exact design. She finally saw the stranger’s mask a little better—it was made of dark metal, shaped to resemble a fanged skull. Within its deep sockets, his eyes glowed like two red orbs. Veronica shivered involuntarily, attempting to make herself even smaller.

  A large, pale hand stretched towards her, and she couldn’t help but gasp upon noticing the thick, black fingernails. She instinctively jerked her head back, but the man still brought the ring close to her forehead, stopping a couple of inches away.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” the man said, his red eyes judging her every move from behind the mask.

  Cold sweat began to stream down her back. She had to clench her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering, eventually managing to force out a nod. She had never been in a situation where someone held complete control over her life. It was utterly terrifying.

  When the diamond-encrusted ring touched her forehead, she immediately removed the spiritual mark. With her hands bound, she wasn't able to form the seals anyway.

  The stranger slowly retraced his steps and sat back down in a lotus position. Breathing out with relief, she focused on how to resolve her desperate situation.

  “W… what else do you want? You already have all my crystals,” she hesitantly asked.

  What Veronica wanted now was to be free and safe. If crystals could get her out of this damned cave in one piece, she would get as many as was necessary. However, before she could formulate another offer, the man spoke again.

  “I brought you here because I need information. If you lie to me, for each lie you tell, I will cut off one of your fingers. If you continue lying, well, then I will have to get creative,” the man stated, voice carrying a dangerous note.

  Veronica knew that fingers, even whole limbs, could be regrown; her family luckily had access to those rare and expensive pills. This stranger likely knew that as well, which meant he probably didn’t want to push her into a corner by causing irreversible damage. With this thought, her shred of hope grew.

  Even though she was a callous person at heart with little regard for others, often punishing servants for the slightest transgression, she herself was terribly afraid of pain. As long as the information he required didn’t touch on a few sensitive subjects, she decided to tell the truth—though only as much as was necessary. She began to suspect this was some sort of personal grudge, and when things got personal, people became unpredictable. This stranger, while appearing cold and detached, felt like he was withholding a great fury.

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  “I understand,” she nodded. This internal reasoning helped to calm her even further.

  “First question. What is your family’s main source of income?”

  “What… What do you mean? We are in charge of many local villages. As we collect the Empire’s tax, a small portion goes into our coffers. It’s not really a secret,” Veronica rushed to explain, happy she could freely elaborate on this subject.

  “Let me be clear. I will treat half-truths the same as lies,” the red-robed man warned, his voice dropping an octave.

  Veronica nervously shifted her position on the cold stone. “We… ah… we also receive a stipend from the Emperor.”

  “For what?”

  Veronica hesitated but eventually caved under the pressure of that dead, red-eyed stare. “Our family was tasked with obtaining soul furnaces for the Emperor,” she said with apparent resignation.

  Cade lifted an eyebrow, surprised. Internally, he was shocked. Not because of the revelation, but because his life sense told him she wasn’t telling the truth. If this is a lie, what deeper secret does it serve to hide? He decided to continue with his line of questioning, curious what kind of story she had concocted.

  “What does he need them for?”

  “The almighty Emperor is using his powerful soul sense to hold the beasts of the Wild at bay. You probably know it as the Emperor’s Will. However, sustaining it requires incredible amounts of soul qi. The Emperor spends all his time inside several gathering and qi conversion formations, but regrettably, this isn’t enough. Every now and again, he grows weaker, which is when we bring a person to become part of the formation, whose qi rejuvenates his weary soul. We exclusively use condemned criminals for that purpose.” Veronica’s energetic words sounded memorized, painting an almost heroic tale of struggle and sacrifice.

  Under the mask, Cade’s jaw tightened while listening to this nonsense. Even if he couldn’t detect anything through his life sense, King Dong’s confession had already told him enough to establish this was far from the truth. His voracious heart began to pulse faster, responding to his growing irritation.

  “I’ll give you one last chance. Don’t feed me your bullshit. We’ll start with something simple. How many humans have you captured, murdered, and sold so far?” His voice was strained with anger; just asking the question made him relive the night from two years ago.

  “W… what? I would never do that! How dare you!” Veronica exclaimed, attempting to sound righteously indignant.

  The powerful, discordant fluctuations in her life signature suggested she wasn’t just skirting the truth. The Baron’s daughter was lying through her teeth.

  Cade was now livid. Unknowingly to him, the whites of his eyes began to fill with blood. How many parents had died protecting their families during those night raids? How many snatched children became fuel to revive some old monster’s withered cultivation?

  His vision began to acquire a faint red tint. A low growl was born in his throat, turning into a snarl. He pulled out his shortsword.

  “I think I’m going to cut off your arm. I feel like five fingers aren’t enough to teach you anything. And they certainly aren’t enough to quench my rage,” he spat out, unable to control the fury building inside him any longer.

  “What?! No! Please, I’ve told you everything!” Veronica desperately tried to turn things around, unaware that Cade could see through her pretense, and that her lies only served to fuel his fury.

  Thump.

  Something strange began happening inside her own body. Her blood qi churned and roiled in her veins. A wave of nausea washed over her, her mind and body turning sluggish and unresponsive.

  In the next moment, the stranger’s silhouette flickered. A blade flashed in the torchlight, and an all-consuming pain exploded in her shoulder. Endless darkness filled her vision, as her consciousness retreated.

  When Veronica’s senses returned, all she could feel was a dull, throbbing pain in the upper right side of her torso. Opening her eyes, she immediately checked the condition of her arm. There was only an irregular patch of charred, swollen flesh where her shoulder should have been. The arm was gone. She cried out, a raw sound of pure terror.

  “I fed you a few pills that’ll dull the pain. This way we can continue where we left off. If you insist on feeding me lies, I’m just going to kill you and obtain the answers from your brother. Or your father. Slaves. Your family. Tell me everything, including all the terrible shit you’ve pushed to the back of your mind so you can sleep better at night,” Cade said bluntly, unbothered by her theatrics.

  This had an instantaneous effect. Streams of sweat ran down Veronica’s back at the memory of that sharp, short blade biting into her shoulder. Terror had seeped into her soul, and all thoughts of resistance evaporated. Her throat was parched, but she forced the words out anyway.

  “There is an artifact under the Brightheart Castle. A beacon of sorts—at least that’s what we call it. We don’t know who made it or how old it is. It was discovered by the first Emperor around ten thousand years ago. Feeding people to it holds the beasts back from encroaching on the Empire’s territory, but our own criminals aren’t enough to sate it. Since my family branch is located close to Kettle, the Emperor chose Father to take care of this problem,” she explained in a trembling voice, tears flowing freely down her face. “You have to understand that without regular sacrifices, the whole nation would cease to exist, and millions would end up as a meal for the creatures of the Verdant Sea,” she hurriedly added, as if this would somehow make everything alright.

  Cade maintained a calm facade. Many things were now starting to make sense. This certainly explained how the border villages stayed mostly safe without a constant military presence. Furthermore, it explained why the Empire’s borders formed a circle with the capital at its center, as if invisible arms stretched out from the capital, pushing the wilderness away.

  “Why then enslave humans?”

  Veronica’s face turned even paler. She realized there was no justification for their actions on that front. Not willing to experience more pain, she decided to reveal the whole, ugly truth.

  “Neither my father, nor my brother and I, have good aptitudes. We have already slipped to the bottom tier of the Empire’s nobility. If we want to hold onto power, we have to keep raising our cultivation. We can only count on spiritual pills, and the ingredients for those are madly expensive. The pitiful stipend we get might be enough to live comfortably as mortals, but it isn’t nearly enough to thrive in the cultivation world. Father could only trust the two of us to take care of our financial problems. We used middlemen to deal with slave traders and always wore masks when… working.”

  She continued to explain everything in detail, including their schedules and how the exchanges were arranged.

  “You weren’t worried about the Emperor finding out? Or does he not care about his subjects?”

  “If someone ever obtained indisputable evidence of our involvement, the Emperor would have no choice but to punish us. It was a calculated risk. Besides, the Emperor is nearly always in seclusion. Between twenty and thirty thousand people go missing in the Empire every year; a thousand more or less isn’t something easy to notice,” she shrugged.

  It was clear Marius Brightheart had thought everything through. The risk to him personally was very low, while the financial benefits were astounding.

  In the end, the world of cultivation was brutal. Most followed one simple rule: you either stepped on others, or they stepped on you. The Baron had just taken it that much further, all because he couldn’t accept his place in the world, despite all the privileges he was born with.

  Cade would make sure he paid the highest price.

  Regarding the ancient device, he couldn’t think of any solution. Resolving such a thing was far beyond his capabilities. Furthermore, Cade’s family had directly benefited from the beacon’s silent protection for years, even though it had ultimately failed his father. Countless other families had benefited alongside them. It wasn’t hard to understand the imperial logic, where in addition to getting rid of their own criminals, several hundred slaves a year were needed to maintain the barrier protecting millions.

  No wonder the current Emperor and his predecessors considered this an acceptable tradeoff. That this state of affairs stayed unchanged for thousands of years meant one thing: nobody had come up with a better solution. Or maybe they didn’t even try.

  If not for her father’s greed and ambition, in all likelihood, Cade and his mother would have continued living their lives, none the wiser. Maybe he would have joined a sect. Maybe he would have married, had children, and watched his mother laugh as she played with her grandkids in the backyard.

  None of this would ever come true.

  The only thing left for him was to make all three Brighthearts pay a bloody price. Killing them and sending them into the wheel of reincarnation was a fate far too kind.

  Cade set his eyes back on Veronica’s pathetic figure, her nightgown marred with dried blood. He couldn’t help but remember his mother’s own bloodstained gown and the image of Griswold furiously kicking her body like it was a piece of trash.

  There was not a shred of mercy to be found in Cade’s gaze.

  “Tell me everything about your brother.”