The front doors led into a foyer the size of a watchtower. Its walls were carved with gold-etched murals. At the room’s center was a flat stone dais which held up a marble pedestal. On it sat the massive, half-crumbled bust of an old man—‘Heilong the Valiant,’ read the plaque. To the foyer’s sides, six winding obsidian staircases coiled around each other like a nest of giant, rising serpents. It looks more like an ancient emperor’s tomb than a home. Dorian got a whiff of mystery from this place, as though secrets lay hidden here which needed only a little digging to unearth.

“My ancestor built this place centuries ago,” sniffed Tan. “’Heilong the Valiant’ he may have been, but his taste left something to be desired…. this way!” Tan took Dorian up one of the staircases, through a hallway, to a door made of thick, solid gold inlaid with crescent pink gemstones. “Behold, my chamber!”

The door swung open, and Dorian was blasted by pastel colors. The room was big as a barn, fitted with tall, yawning windows through which natural light gushed in. Gold and pink were the dominant motifs; gold-furred rugs, pink-jeweled chandeliers, mirrors, and window-frames filled the room. Plush fabrics cropped up everywhere: on couches, on chairs, buffing up the walls.

“Woah,” Dorian fake-gasped. Time to turn on the charm! “What impeccable decor! The gold-on-rose theme is inspired, I must say.”

“Why, thank you,” said Tan, preening. “But it’s only the appetizer, my savage friend…”

Tan led Dorian down a seemingly endless array of closets, chattering nonstop, while Dorian nodded and smiled. His plan was simple. First I’ll play a good guest, kiss some ass, and let him do his little show-and-tell. After he warms to me, I’ll pivot to what I want.

Hallways opened into more hallways with more doors with more closets. Dorian saw frills of every color; coats, shirts, tunics, trousers, kits, dresses, cloaks, robes; there were more dead animal parts in Tan’s bedroom than could’ve been produced by an extinction event. Furs and tooth-chained necklaces and jeweled ear-rings galore! Scarves came in Sinkhole-blue and sky-blue and berry-blue.

There’s too much stuff here. Too much for a man to keep track off.

Which gave him an idea. Hmm. He nabbed a gold button off a nearby coat, hiding the act behind his body. Tan didn’t notice. Dorian’s eyes glittered. Hmm…

For the next hour, Dorian’s job was easy. Smile at Tan’s blabbering, which went something like—“This little necklace I purchased from the tailor Thimabul for six thousand Lira! It’s got a one-of-a-kind Drakehorn sapphire, you see…”

To which Dorian would say something like—“Ooh, a most refined choice! The Tribes of Paideia consider sapphire the gem of daring men….”

Tan would flush, they’d move to the next vapid article, and on and on.

All the while, Dorian would discreetly nab a few out-of-the-way jewels out of Tan’s closet when the boy wasn’t looking. A pearl off a necklace here, a ruby off a lapel there, and he was sure Tan wouldn’t miss a burnished-gold earring. In the next hour, Dorian managed to snatch about ten thousand Lira’s worth, more than he’d made all Festival. Listening to the fop blabber was turning out to be the best return-on-investment he’d gotten in this whole run.

“—so I said to him, ‘I’m not the one wearing wyrmskin boots!” laughed Tan.

“Wyrmskin boots? Please,” said Dorian, fake-giggling as he slipped a ring the size of a knuckle into his coat pocket. “He may as well go barefoot.”

“Ha! Exactly right!” Tan snorted as they strolled out of yet another massive closet. He shot Dorian a grin. “I must say, you’ve been a delightful guest.”

Really? All I’ve done is listen, nod, and stroke your ego. As amusing as it was to line his pockets, Dorian did have an agenda to get to. He wasn’t about to spend all day trawling through Tan’s clothes—and the closets seemed to stretch on forever…

“You’re very kind, sir. And you’ve been a most generous host!” said Dorian. Much more generous than you know. Then Dorian cleared his throat and put on a sorry grimace. “I apologize, but as much as a pleasure as it’s been, I fear I may have to leave you here…”

“Oh, don’t be like that!” cried Tan. He shook his head vigorously; the silver buttons on his lapel jingled against each other as he did. “We’ve hardly gotten started! You mustn’t leave now. At least stay for dinner?”

“Alas—I should leave to prepare for the Tournament,” sighed Dorian. “I’m on the verge of a cultivation breakthrough, you see, and I’d like to complete it before the first round tomorrow. I’ll require the use of a cultivation chamber. I would stay for dinner—oh, I’d love to explore the rest of your lovely wardrobe with you!—but I can’t, I’m afraid. I suppose I’ll have to try to rent a cultivation chamber in the city?” He pouted.

“Blast that!” Tan waved his words away with a careless hand. “I’ll lend you a chamber! We have the best cultivation chambers in the whole of the Oasis, I’ll have you know.”

Well, that was easy. “Really?” said Dorian, eyes wide. “You’d do that for me?”

“Of course! It’s no trouble at all,” The boy grinned at him. Then a mischievous glint sparkled his eyes. “I know just the one. Follow me.”

***

Tan led him down two flights of winding stairs, and the halls started to narrow, growing darker, danker, illuminated by pale green lanterns studding the walls. They’d gone underground. They paced down a long, steel-walled tunnel, the clanging of their bootsteps echoing down the endless corridor.

A strange place to put a cultivation room, to be sure. They were heading deep into the heart of the compound, it seemed. Usually, places like these are where clans store what they’d rather keep hidden.

“So? How did you like my humble gemstone collection?” said Tan airily, as though Dorian hadn’t spent the past hour kissing up to it. Dorian was running out of synonyms for “tasteful” and “impressive.”

“A most refined, eclectic set,” said Dorian dryly. Just how long is this corridor?

“Excellent!” laughed Tan. “But let me assure you you’ve not seen anything yet.”

Tan’s flourescent-white teeth glistened in the dim lamplight. Then he paused, a worried look on his face. “Err—I trust you’ll not speak of this to anybody else? My father is far too touchy about letting outsiders visit our inner sanctums.”

Inner sanctums? “Of course not. My lips are sealed.”

“Good. Good!” Tan’s laugh turned nervous. He clutched at an arm, his eyes drifting to the floor. “It’s not very often I make a friend. All the other Young Masters prefer my brother. He’s the strong one, the big one, the better one, the one with all the talent, or—or so they say. He’s the one who bonded with the Spirit Weapon. He’s the one all the Elders dote on. Even the Young Mistresses disdain me, would you believe! At parties they dressed me up and threw me around like a doll! It’s intolerable, simply intolerable!”

“Mhm. Horrific, truly.”

Tan blinked. “Where was I?”

Dorian rolled his eyes. Let’s get back on track. “You were about to describe where we were going?”

“No, no, after that… ah, yes. My difficulty making friends! Yes. I am most pleased I’ve found you, my friend! You are my, Young Master Heilong Tan’s, fifth friend ever!” Tan gave him a warm smile. “And any friend of mine is as precious as any gem, to me—and far rarer, I find.”

“Well, I’m honored.”

Tan preened. “Yes, well… there is one other thing I must mention before we venture further. A warning, perhaps. Let me say again—you must not speak of where I am about to take you to anyone else. We call it the Heilong Chambers. It is where all my family’s closest-guarded secrets remain, from our dens of cultivation, to our weapons-forges, to our Technique libraries, to our treasure vaults…” Tan’s eyes swiveled back and forth as he bit his lip. “The room you seek is there! But you must be discreet about it. Much of the Chambers is blood-coded. If those without our Bloodline so much as touches it, they’ll perish on the spot! Then there are the booby-traps, the kill-rooms, the tiles which fall out from under you—you must be careful. Go only where I say, no farther!”

Dorian nodded, putting on a serious, solemn face. “I will.”

“Very good! Very good…”

They kept striding for a while in silence, their footsteps echoing down the hall. All the while Tan’s hands ate at one another, fidgeting. He cleared his throat. Little beads of sweat glistened on his brow. “Err. That is all to say, I have so few friends to start with! It would be a damned shame if I lost another due to the Chamber.”

“Oh?” Dorian’s eyes flashed in the dark. “Did this friend wander where he wasn’t supposed to?”

“No, nothing of that sort. He followed my instructions to perfection. Only… he spoke about his visit to his maid. Who told the gardener. And before the day was out half the Oasis knew he’d seen the Heilong Family’s treasures! And then my father crippled him in the middle of the street, and forced him to sign a soul-oath never to speak of Heilong family secrets. He hasn’t spoken to me since.”

Tan gulped. No wonder he’s so nervous. “Hmm.”

“But please, don’t be frightened!” He cried, clasping Dorian by the wrists. “You simply must see the Chamber, you must! I’ve brought you here because—why, I feel like a man stranded in a desert among all these uncultured brutes. Only an eye like yours or mine could appreciate the such a marvel as the Heilong Chamber. You ought to see some of the gems—they’re qi-infused, and some were forged from the cores of great Spirit Beasts! They make the rest of the manor look like some wyrmshit Outsider tribe by comparison. My father won’t know a thing. Besides...” His eyes glittered. “I’ve got something to show you I think you’ll quite appreciate.”

“Well…” Dorian pretended to dither. “If they are magnificent as you say, it would be a great shame not to see them. And if the cultivation rooms I need are there, too, that’s all the better! What’s life without a little daring, eh?”

In reality he was growing bored. Enough dallying! This was one of the supposed founding families of the Oasis. It had better not disappoint. If he’d endured this fool for the best part of a half-day and this Chamber ended up being three shoddy technique manuals next to a smattering of shitty gems, he might well murder the long-winded prat.

“Lead the way, my friend!” said Dorian with a smile.

***

Not a minute later, Dorian perked up. There was a prickling at the base of his skull.

The prickling strengthened with each step. It tugged on him, calling from deep in the goblin-green murk down the hallway. A Bloodline Resonance? Much like he’d felt around Tan Heilong’s brother, the older Young Master Heilong—but this was an order of magnitude stronger. Are they keeping an artifact with my Bloodline in their vaults? A relic, perhaps?

Dorian licked his lips. Maybe this trip won’t be a disappointment after all. His uses for a Bloodline relic were legion—not least of all as a subject of study. He hardly knew the first thing about his own Bloodline, only that it had God-level potential, and seemed to have bits and bobs scattered about this plane. Probably the scattered remains of some huge, long-dead Spirit Beast. What was it—the fourth time he’d encountered a Bloodline resonance since he’d stepped foot in this Oasis?

If he finally got his hands on a relic, he could make sense of his bloodline. He could fashion new Skills or elixirs, tailored just to himself. But most important of all, a relic could serve as the basis for his own Spirit Weapon.

He was smiling just thinking about it. That got his blood pumping. A Spirit Weapon made a heaven-and-earth difference. It would instantly vault him to the level of a powerhouse of this Oasis.

And all that wasn’t even considering the fact that he’d need far more relic to progress his Bloodline once he hit the Profound Realm…

With each step the resonance grew stronger. “We’re getting close!” said Tan, humming as he went.

Dorian blinked. It was still growing stronger—by now it felt like a fish on a hook. It wasn’t simply resonating, now; his body felt hot, his veins sticking out against his arms. He had to force his limbs not to tremble. His eyes narrowed. What the hells is this?

They went closer, and closer still, and with each step the aura down the hall leapt in intensity. Dorian’s whole body was tensing up. His heart throbbed like an open wound in his chest. It feels like the aura of that first Bloodline scale. But stronger. Much, much stronger.

A few more steps, and his blood was coursing so fast in his veins he was worried it might seep out of his skin. Something called to this body, this Bloodline, something which roused it to a jittering frenzy. His fingers dug deep into his palms, his hands clenched tight, and still he couldn’t stop the trembling. His whole body was thick with it now, jittering, tap-tapping.

He gnashed his chattering teeth. No. This was not on the same level as the scale he’d ingested—nothing close to it. Dorian got the absurd feeling that he was like a pint of blood traveling down this massive vein of a hallway, back to the pulsing heart which made him.

A door resolved out of the darkness, a great thick slab of jade like the door of a bank vault. Pipes snaked across its surface, circling each other in tightening spirals. They all met at a point at the door’s center, where there lay a single indent bearing a family crest.

That aura leaked out from the door’s edges. The bulk of it was sealed behind the jade. An incredible amount.

This can’t be the work of only one relic which shares my Bloodline. “You feel it, don’t you?” whispered Tan, peering at him with wide, mischievous eyes.

The feeling was suffocating now. Each breath felt like breathing at the bottom of a lake; he gasped down air in gulps.

“What,” croaked Dorian, blinking the redness from his bloodshot eyes, “Is behind that door?”