Family Stealing System: your wife, mother, sister, all mine now!
Chapter 28: Goons

Chapter 28: Goons

Mia took a deep breath, then raised her greatest worry. "Kian, what do you think about my mother’s situation? Are we going to do something about it today?"

Kian nodded. "We definitely are. If I am correct, your brother already knows that we know his assasination plan. So, he must be quickening his plans to kill your mother."

"Perhaps even at this very moment..."

Kian nodded. "Your mother is indeed not safe."

"What do we do? Stupid Jia is not even awake right now, I... What do we do?"

Kian rose to his feet and looked at her weirdly. "Even if Jia was awake, what use would it be in this? She is more useless than Jiao Yin in this matter."

Mia blinked, coming to realization. It was true, in this matter, none of them could help him in any way. Jia was weak, Jiao Yin was weak, and she herself was also weak.

Blushing, Mia looked at her own hand in shame.

Kian smiled at the sight. "Stay here and wait for me. I’ll be out for a while."

Mia wanted to speak, but the moment she blinked, Kian was no longer infront of her. He had vanished. Her eyes widened and she turned to look at Jiao Yin.

A burst of air hit the both of them in their faces.

They both saw the shock in each other’s eyes.

"Kian is really fast," Jiao Yin said.

Mia shook her head in disbelief. "Really, really fast."

Outside, Kian stood in the hallway with the door swinging shut behind him, the faint gust of displaced air still settling around his ankles.

He looked down at his own legs as if they belonged to someone else. The burst had come without thought—one moment he’d decided to move, the next his Qi had surged through the meridians in his thighs and calves and propelled him forward at a speed that made the world blur at the edges.

He had even had qi burst behind him like he farted.

Fuck.

It was nothing like running. Running required muscle and breath, the steady pump of blood. This was something else entirely.

When did he become so strong?

Kian licked his lips.

He flexed his fingers and felt the residual Qi humming under his skin, still eager, still waiting.

At Stage 4, he had learned to pool energy in his palm and shape it into a crude blade. At Stage 5, he would be able to create an entire battle armor for himself.

Making swords was no longer hard.

But this—this was not refinement of an existing skill. This was a new category of movement, Qi applied to his own momentum.

The implications widened in his mind like ripples across still water.

He walked toward the street, looking out over the swan lake. The birds were gliding in lazy circles, their wakes drawing silver lines across the green water.

As he walked out of the house’s protective array and then past people in the street, Kian quickly figured out that he was being watched.

’As I thought, someone is following me.’

The old Kian would be worried, but the current him?

He was eager.

’Does this sect really have no rules? Or are these people just wanton?’

He turned down a side path that wound between two storage halls, then ducked into the narrow alley behind a mortal pill refiner pavilion.

The smell of burnt herbs and copper lingered in the air, and the stone walls were close enough to touch on both sides. A dead end, except for a rusted brazier and a stack of broken cauldrons.

Two men stepped out of the shadows at the alley’s mouth.

The first was built like a doorframe—broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with a cultivator’s aura that felt compressed and heavy. Around Stage 3.

’To think Hua Shulong has such strong goons, I am being mogged.’

The second was leaner, almost gaunt, with a scar that bisected his left eyebrow and curved down to his cheekbone. This one was weaker, merely second stage.

Both wore the grey-brown robes of outer sect enforcers, the kind who handled "disputes" that the official Disciplinary Hall preferred not to notice.

That was interesting.

"Disciple Kian," the broad one said, not a question. "You’ve been hard to reach."

"Have I?" Kian stopped walking and turned to face them fully, his hands loose at his sides. "I’ve been in my residence all morning. You could have knocked."

The scarred one smiled without warmth. "We’re knocking now. Hand over the Hua sisters and this ends quietly."

"No."

The word landed flat and final. The broad one’s jaw tightened. "You don’t understand the situation. The young master Hua Shulong has called them back. They’re his blood. The sect respects blood claims above almost anything else. You’re an outer disciple with no backing. This isn’t a negotiation, you are playing in a field you don’t know."

"I understand perfectly," Kian said. "But here’s the thing—they won’t leave the residence. They don’t want to."

The array formation was keyed to them. As long as they stayed inside, nobody could get through that door unless they open it themselves. Even then, they won’t be able to harm them as the array would move to protect if need be.

Kian leaned against the alley wall, arms crossing. "So you can stand here and threaten me all day, but the sisters aren’t going anywhere. They’re mine. Both."

The two enforcers exchanged a glance. Something flickered between them—amusement, maybe, or contempt.

"You truly are courting it," the lean one said.

"Death? Kek. Let me ask you something," Kian said. "Since you’re being so direct. How are you this brazen? Murder in restaurants, ambushes in broad daylight, enforcers in alleys. Doesn’t the sect have rules? A Disciplinary Hall? Elders who care about disciples killing each other?"

The scarred one let out a short, sharp laugh. It bounced off the alley walls.

"Rules," he repeated, as if tasting the word and finding it bland. "I’ll tell you all about it after you take us to your home."

The lean one didn’t wait for a reply.

His fist came up and forward in a single, practiced motion—no warning, no flourish—Qi flaring along his knuckles in a dull grey shimmer that hardened the strike into something meant to shatter ribs.

Kian’s eyes followed the hand’s movement, but he did not dodge.

The punch landed square on Kian’s chest.

Attacker’s smile lasted only a flicker of a second.

The sound was wrong. Not the wet crunch of breaking bone, not even the meaty thump of flesh absorbing a blow. It was a flat, hollow clang, like someone had struck an anvil wrapped in silk.

Kian didn’t move. His feet stayed planted, his shoulders didn’t rock back, and the smile that spread across his face was slow and genuinely pleased.

The lean man stared at his own fist, still pressed against Kian’s robe, and then at the faint blue-white crackle that now bled through the fabric—a lattice of interlocking scales, Qi forged into something that wasn’t quite metal and wasn’t quite light, clinging to Kian’s skin like a second skeleton.

"Battle armor," he said, almost apologetic. "Stage Five. You are Stage Five."