Standing in front of the house Lan Shi was inside of, Michael didn't waste any time. He directly went towards the large dark room Lan Shi was held in.
Looking at the scene he had already spotted through his divine sense, he couldn't help but feel disgusted.
Lan Shi was held by four separate ropes, one on each limb, stretched out. It wasn't enough to break anything, but more than enough to let her feel constant pain while having her eyes and mouth bound with a black cloth.
He swiftly cut loose the ropes and caught Lan Shi, who was currently unconscious. Then he left the room without any sound, teleporting himself towards one of the many bedrooms within the estate. The room he was in before simply had a stench that was too nauseating.
A quick look at Lan Shi's condition revealed that, apart from obvious bruises on her arms and legs due to the ropes holding her in place, she seemed ok, yet she didn't wake up.
Wanting to cleanse her of her injuries and discomfort, Michael would give her a pill, but he had none of the needed ingredients.
"I will heal her," Iris said, appearing next to Michael.
"How?"
"Isn't it obvious? I will use my Qi."
Michael was shocked. Well, it was quite obvious that Qi, the energy of life, was something that could be used for these kinds of problems, but how would Iris know how to use it on a human? He himself had no idea how he would heal injuries on another person, simply because he had no experience with the Qi interaction between cultivators.
Nonetheless, he trusted Iris, so stopping her didn't even cross his mind.
Iris herself didn't let Michael's silence disturb her. She had trained her Qi control vigorously while trapped watching Michael mostly fool around.
More importantly though, she had someone she could watch at all times. An advantage that let her understand a lot more about the theoretical interaction of Qi between physical bodies.
She took Lan Shi's hands and injected Qi into Lan Shi's body with slow precision. The Qi ran through Lan Shi's meridians into her Dantian before transforming and travelling outwards towards her outer and inner injuries without any complications.
The Qi aided her natural recovery progress, speeding it up to a point where the improvements could be seen by the naked eye. Soon, the wounds on her wrists and ankles had healed completely.
"Done," Iris said with a somewhat sweaty forehead while vanishing into Michael's head once more. "She will wake up after some time." This feed somehow didn't seem easy, even for her.
Michael, looking at the unconscious Lan Shi, spoke.
"Iris, what did you find out? Why did Lan Rudong plan to do all of this?"
Iris could only sigh, "It's best if you find out for yourself. Head to the main bedroom, then take the book hidden under the floor; there you will find your answer."
Iris had seen the truth directly, and it wasn't a truth she felt comfortable telling. At best she would forget what she saw.
Michael decided to bring the unconscious Lan Shi to Tianfu first before looking further.
He handed Lan Shi over to Tianfu and Kaishi and gave a few instructions before searching for the answers.
He went towards the place Iris had described and found a book.
A black heart was on the cover of the blood-red book.
Opening it, he found several hand-drawn images of young women. Each double page contained one of these pictures and a list full of hobbies, likes, and dislikes. Habits and descriptions, routines, strengths, and weaknesses. It looked like a stalker's logbook.
He flipped through the pages searching, but not hoping for familiar faces like Lan Shi or Tianfu. If these young girls would show up, he would know what kind of person Lan Rudong was.
Surprisingly though, they didn't show up at all. By Iris's tone he had suspected the worst.
Flipping further, empty pages filled the book, untainted but prepared to be filled eventually. Michael thought the book was over, and not really knowing the meaning behind the pages, he was about to ask Iris about their meaning, but then came the last page.
A black heart was drawn at the top of the page, and below it, his house, this house, was drawn from the outside, from above, true to scale.
What made Michael understand and, in turn, disturbed him, though, were the markings around the house. Mostly within the yard, there were tiny gravestones drawn all around.
Like any gravestone, each had a name, a year of birth, and, of course, a year of death.
Recognizing the names, though, as the women who had shown up on the previous pages of the book; realizing that after looking at the years, none of the spans were longer than 17; knowing what had probably happened in the end; and thinking about what might have happened before the end result…
Michael could do nothing but stand in place, blankly looking at the image for an undefined amount of time.
Are humans truly capable of something like that?
"Who is there?" A timid voice suddenly showed up at the door towards Lan Rudong's bedroom.
It was a young girl, in her early teens, dressed in a maid uniform.
Seeing her, Michael's mouth just opened and closed for some time before becoming as serious as maybe never before. The reality had just hit him even harder than some images ever could.
"Hey, little girl, no need to be afraid. I'm a friend. Do you have more friends your age?"
The little girl shook her head innocently. "No, I work here alone. Master Lan hired me for cleaning and is letting me stay here. I'm mostly alone. Right now some scary men are staying here, though. Talking about storing the newest toy. Are you one of them?"
Michael controlled his face to not turn any darker to scare away the timid girl.
"Listen, Lan Rudong will not come back here. I can take you back to your parents, ok?"
The little girl's face turned sad. "But mister, I no longer have parents. They died while trying to help people within the outer city. They said the Ying Yang gang killed them."
Michael's jaw tightened hard enough to hurt. But quickly loosened so as to not scare away the already timid girl.
"How about I introduce you to some new friends? Some older sisters to take care of you?" He needed to burn this house down as soon as possible and arrange a proper burial ground for the girls buried here.
"But, but Master Lan told me to keep inside and not talk to strangers. He told me that the world is evil, and I believe him. My parents tried to be nice just to be killed. How do I know that you are not evil?"
Michael couldn't believe it. He couldn't even find words to describe Lan Rudong anymore. His playbook was obvious. Play nice, isolate, entice, convince, and then go for the kill. This girl was under his total control; he didn't even need to let someone watch her. It made Michael sick. But he wasn't ready to tell the girl that her whole life had been a lie. She wouldn't believe him; how could she?
"Any ideas on how to convince her?" Michael asked Iris.
"How should I know? Maybe just kidnap her first and then let her realize it by herself?" Iris said.
"Well, I should've known not to ask you…"
Michael took a deep breath before turning to the girl once more. This whole situation was already way too much for him, but well, he had already started, so he needed to pull through.
"Listen, what I tell you now is nothing but the truth. Lan Rudong is not good. He is not someone to help you out of his own kindness. You see the scary people around him, right? These are the people he belongs to; just because he plays nice doesn't mean he is nice. I know we've only met just now, but please just listen to me and let me take you away from this horrible place and introduce you to some people who really care for you."
"You are lying! Why would I trust you over Master Lan? He has been the only person who was kind to me, who gave me a chance to live. You, on the other hand, just want to take me away. Master Lan taught me about people like you!" The girl started running.
"Shit!"
Michael swiftly caught up with the girl in panic but didn't quite know what to do. In the end, he could only think about Iris's suggestion and simply placed her next to Tianfu inside of the still-active barrier before vanishing back to the house.
Surely they would figure out what to do, right?
Michael had no time to think about it, though, as his expression turned serious once more.
He looked at the book one more time; he made sure to remember the outline of the gravestones perfectly. Only after taking in every name and every birth and death date could he take action.
Scanning the house, he saw a serious number of strong men, mostly guarding Lan Shi's room.
I can't let their filthy bodies ruin the grave of these women. Walking outside, he decided to first probe and then act.
He knocked on the house door from outside.
"We don't accept visitors right now."
"Hello, I'm the father of Lan Shi. I know my daughter is inside; can I see her?" Michael probed for information.
"You are not; I know that," the person on the other side answered.
"You are wrong. I am indeed the father. Let me see my daughter!"
"Stop pretending!" The door flung open, and a muscular man, with some more men behind, stood at the door. "I know you are not the father. You want to know why? Because I killed that weakling, and you are next!"
Michael didn't answer. Instead, he simply grabbed the man and threw him. At some point enough was enough.
No one knew where he would land, but Michael had aimed for a treetop a few miles away so as not to potentially injure innocent bystanders.
The rest of the companions, looking at their colleague thrown away like a conventional ball, didn't dare to move, but Michael wouldn't spare them.
The schadenfreude in their eyes as they heard their partner talk about killing Lan Shi's parents. Michael knew that none of them were innocent. They all knew exactly what had happened in this house. But now Michael knew too.
It seemed like this city was full of garbage, and I need to take some of it out.
One by one the strongmen were thrown out like the garbage bags they were. Dying on top of a random tree.
Michael, though, wasn't done at all. He continued with setting the house on fire, using his cultivation powers. Luckily, fire was one of the elements he had complete control over; cooking and alchemy had helped a lot.
He burned the house with fire so hot that the burnt materials wouldn't even leave any ash behind.
It was a special fire. The absolute fire, as he called it. In the past he had used it a lot for destroying buildings within the Immortal Spirit Farm; having nothing remaining made it easier to rebuild after all.
At the same time, though, he made sure to not damage the soil itself. He had no intention of damaging the bodies buried under the ground; he only intended to finally give their souls some solace.
After finishing up, he set up graves at the positions where the women killed by Lan Rudong were buried.
Using his previous construction skills, he quickly finished the task. Their gravestones were made out of stone and showed their birthdate. Michael also had engraved a real-life picture of each of them into the stone.
He stepped back for a moment and bowed. Silently offering his prayers.
At this moment, he didn't feel like being responsible for the previous situation anymore. Instead, he felt glad that he could prevent the same outcome for Tianfu.
...
"Should we return?"
Iris spoke only after a certain amount of time had passed while keeping quiet during the process before.
She had set up a formation around the house so no one could ever erase the memory of those that died inside.
"Yes." Michael finally said after a few more minutes.
In only a blink of an eye, they arrived back in front of the house, Iris only in Michael's head, of course. The next headache was already waiting inside.
Inside, though, he heard Kaishi, Tianfu, and the little girl from before chatting happily, while Lan Shi was peacefully sleeping on one of the makeshift beds and Iris wasn't in sight. "Wow. Big sister Tianfu, big brother Kaishi, you are so brave! No wonder Uncle Michael took me here."
Apparently, the situation had been sorted out by itself.
"See?" Iris laughed lightly.
"I guess you were right. Maybe I should listen to you more."
None of them continued their conversation. Instead, Michael stayed outside for some time, staying still like a statue in the face of a setting sun and the lively voices from inside. He could finally calm down on a day filled with emotion.
Just as Michael processed most of the events of the day, another thought suddenly crossed his mind.
"I NEVER CAME BACK TO THE ALCHEMY TEST!"