Family Stealing System: your wife, mother, sister, all mine now!
Chapter 29: Good Boy!

Chapter 29: Good Boy!

"Good boy," Kian patted the lean man’s head.

"Thank you sir!" he shouted.

"Your turn?" Kian turned to the fatty.

The broad man’s face had also gone the color of old porridge. But he didn’t resist as Kian patted his head. If he had a tail to wag, he would have definitely showed his dog like loyalty.

Kian smiled.

The moment they learned he was a Stage 5, they did not still try to attack him. That would be courting death.

Instead,they both dropped to their knees in the alley’s dust, foreheads pressing to the cracked stone so fast the scarred one’s nose audibly crunched.

And now, they were good boys.

"Senior! Please forgive this junior’s blindness!" the broad one choked out.

Kian walked past them to the stack of broken cauldrons, shoved a rusted brazier aside, and lowered himself onto an upturned iron pot with a missing handle.

The metal groaned under him. He crossed his legs at the ankle. He pointed at one of them. "You answer my questions from earlier," he said. "Truthfully."

"Yes! Yes, anything!" the scarred one stammered, still pressing his face to the ground.

Kian’s eyes narrowed. "The sect’s rules. Why is everyone acting like they don’t exist? At least, you bunch seem really wanton."

The broad enforcer’s voice was muffled against the stone. "Eh, you really don’t know that?"

Kian glared.

"The sect master is dying, Senior! The Azure Cloud Dragon’s pulse is fading—the elders are already fighting over the treasury. In a month, other sects will start attacking us and we will not be able to protect the sect."

His shoulders trembled. "Anyone with power is grabbing what they can before the chaos breaks. Rules mean nothing when there’s no one left to enforce them."

Kian felt a cold stillness settle in his chest.

What on Earth, no, what in the cultivation world?

He hadn’t expected such a shock.

A month. He’d woken up in this body thinking he had time—time to accumulate, time to maneuver, time to grow strong enough that Hua Shulong would be an afterthought.

’I should leave the sect as soon as possible.’

"Who knows this?" he asked, keeping his voice flat.

The lean one raised his head just enough to speak clearly, a trickle of blood running from his nose to his chin. "Only disciples above Stage Three, Senior. The elders have kept it quiet to prevent mass desertion, but the strong ones all know. We assumed... we assumed you knew."

He hesitated. "Why wouldn’t you?"

Kian uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the blue-white scales of his battle armor flickering dimly under his robe.

"I’ve been in isolation training," he said. The lie came easily. "Completely sealed. Came out just yesterday."

The two men exchanged a look—pure terror mixed with something like awe. A Stage Five cultivator who’d broken through during isolation, emerging to find the sect about to implode.

The broad one swallowed audibly.

"Then Senior is truly fortunate," he whispered. "And truly dangerous. Please spare us."

Kian stood from the cauldron, the metal scraping against the ground. He looked down at the two groveling figures and felt no pity, only calculation.

A dying sect. A power vacuum.

If he wanted to get something from the sect, it would be impossible. Qi Building stage cultivators were nothing to the true powerhouses of the sect. They were like students, and the teachers had long finished PHDs.

"You’ll do something for me," Kian said. "Then you can crawl away."

They nodded so frantically their foreheads left divots in the dust.

"Where is Hua Shulong right now?"

"He is in his cave abode, senior!"

"Does it have a protection array?"

"Yes, senior? It obviously does. It can even kill 9th stage Qi Builders easily."

"What about his mother?"

"Young, um. Not young, that old bastard’s mother? He keeps her in his guest house. These days, he never visits it."

Kian’s eyes shone. "Did he tell you to say that?"

"Eh?"

The lean man’s eyes shook with fear. How did this bastard know? Could he read his thoughts?

Kian chuckled. "So he wants to bait me there. Sadly for him, I am no idiot. Why would I go to a place with Array formations?"

"Eh, senior, that Guest House is a Hugan Villa. Hugan Villas look good but they are Qi hotspots, so they cannot hold array formations."

"Oh?" Kian licked his lips.

So it was not bait, but a challenge.

"Lead the way."

The two men scrambled to their feet, brushing dust from their robes with trembling hands. The broad one took point, his bulk filling the alley’s mouth as he scanned the street beyond for witnesses, while the scarred one fell into step behind Kian like a whipped dog who’d decided its best chance at survival was to heel.

"Does Hua Shulong have any strong backings?"

"Yes, senior. He has some stronger friend. But you don’t have to worry, anyone stronger than stage 5 is currently tied with the sect master’s dying procedure, so he cannot come out. No one at Stage 5 or higher are currently outside other than a few small exceptions..."

Kian smiled at the words.

So, he was not completely safe. But so what?

Kian had always been a gambler. He liked dangerous situations. Not to mention he had a plan if things did go south.

They moved through the outer sect in a tight formation—not fast enough to draw attention, but not slow enough to be caught loitering.

The morning sun had burned off the last of the mist, and the disciples they passed were too absorbed in their own errands to notice the strange trio cutting through the market district.

Kian kept his Qi pulled tight against his body, the battle armor retracted but ready, a layer of potential energy just under his skin. The Hugan Villas, he knew, sat on the eastern ridge where the mountain’s natural Qi vents pushed through the rock in lazy, invisible plumes—prime real estate for cultivation, but impossible to fortify with arrays because the constant Qi flux would unravel any formation within weeks.

"Do you think I can take Hua Shulong?"

"It would be a tough battle, but I believe yes," the fat man said. "Young Master Shulong is a strong 4th stage cultivator, but you are a level above that."

"You still think it is going to be troublesome, huh?"

"Senior, please kill that bastard! I’ve always been scared of him, with all his blood bugs and whatnot."

Kian chuckled.

The villa came into view after twenty minutes of walking: a single-story structure of white stone and dark timber, its roof curved in the traditional Hugan style, a small garden of spirit grasses and a single plum tree visible through the open gate.

No guards. No servants. The silence around the place was complete, the kind of silence that pressed against the eardrums and made the skin on the back of Kian’s neck prickle with instinct.

He stopped at the threshold and let his senses stretch outward, tasting the Qi currents that swirled through the garden—and there, faint but unmistakable, was the signature of someone inside.

’Only one person’s heartbeat?’

"Come, let’s go to an alley and plan some things," Kian said.

The alley they found was narrower than the last—barely a shoulder’s width between crumbling walls—and dead-ended against a moss-slick retaining wall that once held a garden but now held only weeds and a discarded incense burner missing its lid. The two enforcers shuffled in first, glancing back with the nervous energy.

Kian followed, and the lean one opened his mouth to ask what the plan was.

The question never left his throat.

A few minutes later.

Kian stepped out of the alley alone. His robes were clean. His hands were steady. The sun had risen higher now, burning the last coolness from the air, and the villa’s white stone walls gleamed like bleached bone across the empty lane.

Turns out, a cultivator of Kian’s level could bury bodies easily. With Qi protection, he didn’t even get dirty.

No one stopped Kian as he crossed the threshold to the villa. The plum tree in the garden had shed a few blossoms onto the stone path, pale pink petals that crushed under his sandals without resistance.

The front door was unlocked.

Kian pushed it open with two fingers and walked straight inside.

A figure stood inside, and Kian’s eyes widened.