The Sterne family's private collection museum didn't look like a museum from the outside.The two-story building stood in a quiet corner of the western district with a pale stone facade that wasn't trying to attract attention. No large sign, no promotional banners, nothing inviting passersby to stop and take notice. Just a brass plaque beside the main entrance, no bigger than a thick book, with three words cleanly engraved: Sterne Private Collection.But a small queue had already formed at the door.Caelan stood three people from the back, leaning on his cane with the posture of someone for whom the cane was more than an accessory. In front of him, a mother with two small children who couldn't stay still for more than ten seconds. Behind him, a pair of students with cameras large enough to suggest they had come with intentions beyond just documenting memories.No one glanced at him twice.At the entrance, three guards stood in a formation that looked relaxed but wasn't really. One ins

It was three minutes to midnight.During the past five hours in that bathroom stall, Caelan hadn't just been waiting.His senses had spread long before midnight, moving through every corridor, every room, every corner of the museum now empty of visitors but not empty of guards.Two people were patrolling inside. He had already read their pattern across the first four rounds: every twenty minutes, starting from the west wing, moving clockwise, finishing at the same point where they began.Five minutes ago, the last round had ended. Fifteen minutes remaining before the next one began.Caelan opened his eyes.He started with the disguise.The gray mustache and beard were pulled from his face in one clean motion and laid in his left palm. The glasses. The cardigan. The plaid shirt. Folded and gathered in both hands that had already begun to feel warm at the surface.He concentrated his spiritual energy in both palms. Not gradually, but with pressure that rose directly to its peak. The tem

A conclusion that didn't come from speculation. Edvard Sterne wasn't someone unfamiliar with the world beneath the surface visible to most people. His own son was a cultivator standing under a major sect, a sect whose name didn't need to be said out loud for its weight to be known in the right circles.And his son, with all his years of training and everything he had achieved along that path, couldn't touch the sword.Edvard still remembered it clearly. When the sword had first arrived from the auction house, his son had tried to lift it, and in the first second his qi flowed toward the sword's handle, something from within the sword responded in a way that wasn't acceptance.Rejection.Hard, sudden, scorching the qi pathway in his son's hand until the skin blistered in the area that hadn't made direct contact with the sword but had merely become a channel for the energy forced back. One second of contact, and his son couldn't properly close his right hand for two days afterward.The

The Grandeur welcomed Caelan the same way it did every night. A quiet lobby, lighting that was never too bright or too dim, night staff who already knew his face and didn't need to ask anything.Caelan stepped into the elevator.The Presidential Suite door closed behind him.He stood in the middle of the room for a few seconds, doing nothing except listening to the silence of the building at this late hour, then exhaled.Not the breath of someone tired. The breath of someone who had just finished something planned with great care and found that the result hadn't deviated from what was expected.The plan had gone perfectly.He knew very well that the theft that night wouldn't pass without consequences. Edvard Sterne was not someone who would nod and accept the loss of a hundred and twenty million dollars, even if money of equal value was already on the floor of his museum. And with the way of thinking possessed by one of the most influential figures in Velmont, Edvard wouldn't need lon

Serena didn't blink.Then one corner of her lips lifted, very slightly."Love can come back." Her voice didn't lose its footing. "As long as you give me the chance to prove it."Caelan didn't respond.Silence filled the room for a few seconds. Not the uncomfortable silence of two people who didn't know what to say, but the silence of one person who was already finished and another who wasn't yet ready to accept that.Then a second knock.Caelan shifted his eyes to the door. "It seems there's a patient." He looked at Serena. "Could you leave this room?"Serena's expression moved. Irritated, but held back. She stood in a way that tried to look casual without fully succeeding. "Fine. I'll come back later."She walked to the door, put her hand on the handle, and opened it.And when she saw who was on the other side, she was surprised.At the doorway, Elara Crest was standing in a way that didn't need to declare anything about herself because everything that needed to be said was already c