Family Stealing System: your wife, mother, sister, all mine now!
Chapter 17: Answer

Chapter 17: Answer

"100,000 spirit stones."

Dead silence settled inside the crime scene. The random waiter, Kian, Hua Mia, and Hua Jia were all surprised. Just as Kian was about to reply, an insect left the corps’ body and pierced into the waiter’s skull.

The waiter fell limp on the floor.

Then, a bloody insect floated out of it.

Kian watched the scene, not knowing how to react. The bug, bloody and dripping, suddenly expanded into a human shape. In the first second, it looked like a blood-made human, in the second, it looked like a young man with red eyes and rosy lips.

The young man and Kian looked at each other, each squinting.

"Hua Shulong," Kian said.

"100,000 spirit stones. I will give it to you right now. In return, leave the girls to me. Do not butt in on my business from now on. Deal, or no deal?"

They looked at each other for a long moment.

Then, Kian sighed and walked to Hua Jia’s side.

"What are you going to do?" the young girl asked calmly. "We won’t hold it against you. That’s a serious amount of money we can’t even imagine."

Kian wrapped his hand around the girl, pulling her into his arms.

His hand slid from her shoulder to the nape of her neck, fingers threading through the short hair she’d tied back that morning, and he pulled her forward. Her lips were dry, slightly chapped, and they met his with a resistance that lasted maybe half a heartbeat before she pressed back, her breath catching against his mouth.

Her hands came up, one landing flat on his chest, the other fisting in the fabric of his new indigo robe, and she held him there, tongue brushing his lower lip like she was testing whether this was real.

Behind them, Hua Mia made a sound that was half shock and half fear. She didn’t finish, but her voice cracked into something almost akin to laughter.

Hua Shulong’s lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, the blood-construct face shimmering like heat haze. "Well," he said, his voice carrying amusement that felt like a knife wrapped in silk, "I guess that answers the price question."

He took a step back, the bloody insect already dissolving at the edges, the waiter’s corpse crumpling where it had fallen. "You will not live to regret this."

His body vanished into blood drops that fell across the floor.

The kiss broke with a wet sound, Hua Jia’s face flushed to the roots of her hair. She didn’t let go of his robe, her knuckles white where she gripped it.

Kian kept his hand on her neck, thumb tracing the line of her jaw, and met her gaze without blinking.

"He-He is gone!" she said.

Kian kissed her again.

The second kiss was shorter, softer, his thumb still pressed against the hinge of her jaw. When he pulled back, her eyes stayed closed for a beat longer than necessary, and when they opened they were wet at the corners.

"Kian! He is gone, don’t!" Hua Mia said, almost worried for her sister.

Hua Jia shook her head. "It’s okay, sis."

Kian blinked. "Really?"

"Yeah, it’s fine."

Kian kissed her again.

Hua Mia stood beside them, one hand pressed to her mouth, the other gripping the edge of the table like she needed the anchor.

Her gaze swept the bodies — the waiter crumpled near the stairs, Crooked Nose sprawled across the floorboards with three knife wounds weeping into the wood grain, the two flunkies lying in their own cooling blood.

And her sister and Kian were pressed against each other, kissing.

Kian broke the kiss, looking at Jia with a smile. "Told you you are mine."

"Who said I became yours?" Jia said, rubbing her lips clean with her sleeves. "I just let you do that because I wanted to annoy my brother. Nothing more."

"You let me do it even after he was gone."

"That, I let you do because you didn’t abandon us. Anyone else who got offered that kind of money would have abandoned us without a thought."

"Oh, then I should be given more, right?"

"No, no, that’s enough."

Kian smiled, clearly seeing the girl’s blush. He rubbed her head. "Don’t worry, I won’t tease you more right now."

Hua Jia sighed in relief.

Kian turned from Jia to survey the room. The waiter was still crumpled near the stairs, blood pooling under his head in a dark halo. Crooked Nose lay face-down, the three knife wounds in his back still wet.

The two flunkies hadn’t moved since they’d dropped. The smell of copper and braised bamboo shoots mixed in the air, and somewhere on the first floor, a customer laughed without knowing what had just happened above them.

"Have to do something about this," Kian said, already moving toward the stairs. He held both of the girls by their hands.

But right as he was about to move, his path was blocked by the fat owner of the shop. "Quite the ruckus you’ve made, Young Master. A lot of the customers who were dining in other alcoves noticed the commotion."

"Can you clean it up?"

"That’s my boss you just killed."

"Can you?"

"For someone who can kill even my boss, of course! But I don’t want to offend sir Hua Shulong."

"Don’t worry, he won’t live for long."

"I can hide the bodies for a week, if by then, you can kill Shulong." The waiter smiled knowingly. "Otherwise..."

Kian walked past him with the girls. "You have a deal."

They stepped out of the Jade Garden Pavilion into the afternoon sun, and the warmth hit Kian’s face like a slap. The river glittered below the railing, oblivious to the bodies stacked behind them.

Thankfully, none of them were bloody.

Then, he took a deep breath and noticed where he was.

Hua Jia’s hand was still in his, her palm clammy, and she hadn’t pulled away yet. Hua Mia walked on his other side, close enough that her sleeve brushed his elbow, her breathing shallow and uneven.

"One week," Hua Jia said quietly. Her voice was flat, not scared exactly, but stripped of its usual bite. "You just promised to kill my brother in one week."

Kian kept walking, his grip on her hand steady. "I know what I said. More than that, we should be worried about your mother. There is a chance that bastard kills her sooner now."

They passed a stall selling paper talismans and a group of disciples laughing over skewered meat.

No one looked at them twice.

The sect went on breathing around them, loud and ordinary, while a blood bug had evaporated somewhere in the distance and three corpses cooled in a private dining room.

This was the reality of the cultivation world.

Dreaming of immortality today, dying tommorow.

Kian only shed a single tear as goodbye to his innocence. Then, he licked his lips and walked forward with the girls in tow.

He didn’t stop until they were back home.

The moment he reached home, he took Jia into his arms and pushed her onto the bed.

The girl looked up at him as he towered over her.