Lin Mu sat in the quiet of the Central Hall, the chamber now emptied of its former owners.
The remnants of battle and assassination were absent here, for he had ensured that the sect had been struck down without alarms or resistance. It was this silence that allowed him to focus.
The strike team and reinforcements busied themselves with vaults, libraries, and offices, but Lin Mu's task was different. He was not looking for surface-level spoils or scattered treasures.
He sought the hidden roots of the sect, the deeper veins of information that only the highest echelons would keep close at hand.
On the polished stone floor before him lay the body of the Patriarch of the Hidden Cave Sect.
Even in death, the man carried an aura of dignity and menace, but it no longer mattered. His existence had ended the moment Lin Mu's cut through his defenses in silence. What remained now was only a vessel, and within it the traces of all he had owned.
