The black, bulletproof Maybach sliced through the freezing rain of Sancta Lodo like a blade, leaving the derelict warehouse—and the despair and filth it housed—far behind.
Inside the cabin, Victoria knelt submissively by Caspian's knees like a highly trained hound. With a raspy, trembling voice, she spilled the entirety of the massive harvesting matrix to her Sovereign.
"The Crimson Club... it's located beneath the most prosperous financial district right in the city center," Victoria swallowed hard, a morbid clarity gleaming in her eyes following the total collapse of her faith. "It is an open secret among high society. The nominal owner and controlling shareholder is Tyler's father—Mr. Thorne, the apex tycoon of Sancta Lodo. All the top elites, politicians, and even the high priests of the Temple are regulars there."
Elena frowned from the front seat, her fingers flying across her keyboard. "A premier nightclub run by a conglomerate? How does that connect to the bottom-tier blood sacrifice den we just left?"
"It is two sides of the same coin." Caspian leaned back against the hand-stitched leather seat, a light devoid of all warmth flickering in his dark golden eyes. He didn't even need Victoria to explain; his high-dimensional [Genesis Core] had already pieced together the perfect, closed-loop logic. "The warehouse in the slums uses brute force and gang rape to squeeze out the 'despair and depravity' of women. The club in the city center uses legal, carnal performances to harvest the 'fever and lust' of elite men. Yin and Yang. It is a flawlessly engineered, two-way emotional siphon. A very clever method for hoarding wealth and stealing Sovereign Laws."
Half an hour later, the Maybach pulled up to the base of a luxurious skyscraper in the heart of the city.
Relying on Victoria's black-gold VIP card—the ultimate symbol of a top-tier heiress—the trio passed through layers of heavily armed security without a hitch, taking a private elevator deep underground.
The moment the elevator doors parted, a wave of suffocating heat washed over them, a stark contrast to the freezing rain outside.
There was no pungent stench of blood here. Instead, the air was saturated with the intoxicating smoke of Cuban cigars, the rich aroma of vintage Romanée-Conti, and a pure, unadulterated pheromone baked to its absolute limit by the ambient lighting. The dark red velvet carpets swallowed their footsteps, and the massive crystal chandelier suspended from the dome refracted a decadent, mesmerizing glow.
Walking ahead of them, Caspian moved as if treading on flat ground. Dressed in his impeccably tailored obsidian suit, he strolled through the sea of mortal lust like an elegant god of death. Before his absolute, high-dimensional presence, the impeccably dressed elites and tycoons clutching their escorts paled into insignificant, low-res background props.
They took a seat in a semi-open VIP booth on the highest tier, boasting the best view in the house. Victoria expertly knelt on the dark red carpet, lifting a glass of pure malt whiskey with a single ice sphere in both hands. With the utmost subservience, she raised it above her head, offering it to Caspian's fingertips.
At that moment, the lights above the massive circular stage below suddenly dimmed. A single, blood-red spotlight slammed into the center of the stage.
Accompanied by the incredibly sticky, ambiguous lingering notes of a saxophone, Sancta Lodo's hottest sex symbol—Evelyn—slithered onto the cold steel pole like an alluring viper.
Evelyn wore nothing but a few wisps of translucent black lace. Under the crimson spotlight, vast expanses of her snowy, voluptuous skin heaved violently with her breathing, gleaming with a captivating sheen of sweat. She didn't rush to strip. Instead, she traced a crimson-painted index finger slowly up her long inner thigh, teasingly hooking the edge of a taut lace garter belt.
With a light flick and a crisp snap, half of her smooth, fragrant shoulder slipped languidly into view. Fine beads of sweat trailed down her elegant swan-like neck, disappearing into the bottomless, snowy cleavage. This ultimate push-and-pull of forbidden tease, combined with those mesmerizing, water-glossed eyes that seemed capable of stealing souls under the hazy lights, pushed the taboo thrill of 'playing hard to get' to its absolute zenith.
The rhythm of the music suddenly turned wild and aggressively invasive. Like a female panther in heat, Evelyn slid slowly down the pole, crawling provocatively toward the very edge of the stage—where the club's top-tier "front-row spectators" sat.
"That is the 'Abyssal Rule' of the Crimson Club," Victoria whispered by Caspian's leg, her voice tinged with sorrow for her fellow kind. "The VIPs in the front row get to interact with the star up close. Evelyn must use the adult toys from that velvet tray... to pleasure herself right in front of them. The rule is absolute: the spectators cannot touch even an inch of Evelyn's skin, or their hands will be chopped off. However..."
Victoria shivered slightly. "The spectators can say anything—the most vulgar, degrading words imaginable—and make any obscene gestures from their seats. This stark contrast between 'absolute visual possession' and 'absolute physical untouchability' drives the desires of those men into total madness."
True to her words, Evelyn crawled to the edge of the stage and picked up an exquisitely crafted vibrator from a black velvet tray. She tilted her head up, aiming a face that was a perfect blend of innocence and pure debauchery at a silver-haired, suited older man sitting dead center in the front row.
It was none other than Tyler's father, the apex tycoon of Sancta Lodo—Old Mr. Thorne.
"Spread them, bitch... let me see just how cheap you are!" Old Thorne loosened his expensive silk tie, his eyes bloodshot and terrifying. Though he couldn't touch the stunner, his lower body was already thrusting uncontrollably in sheer excitement as he spewed filthy words that starkly contrasted his usual refined public image.
Evelyn obediently complied. Under the crimson light, before the eyes of all the gathered elites, she slowly parted her long, snowy legs, pressing the toy against her hidden depths, barely concealed by the black lace. She twisted her waist to the rhythm of Old Thorne's vulgar commands, letting out whimpers that were sweet enough to melt bone, staring seductively at the old tycoon who was mere inches away yet could never touch her.
The crowd below erupted in bestial, frenzied roars. The concentration of hormones in the theater reached a lethal flashpoint.
However, amidst this fanaticism that could ignite the entire underground city, Caspian sat high in his VIP booth, gently swirling his whiskey, his gaze deadlier and colder than a ten-thousand-year glacier.
In his high-dimensional vision, this highly erotic interaction was no pornographic performance.
A brilliant array mechanism, Caspian evaluated coldly in his mind. Restricting physical touch was designed to maximize the "starvation of the unattainable."
Under the decryption of the [Genesis Core], Evelyn wasn't a human being; she was a high-powered extraction pump. With every obscene movement she made, and with every crazed slur Old Thorne spat, thick, pale-red mist—invisible to the naked eye—was continuously being siphoned from the men below. It was their foundational lifeforce and the rawest essence of their souls' desires.
The red mist being extracted from Old Thorne was the thickest of all. This tycoon, who arrogantly believed he controlled the world's wealth, was willingly being drained of his lifespan in the midst of this ultimate visual humiliation and physical tease. And hidden within Evelyn's micro-expressions was an emptiness she didn't even realize she had—her soul had long been ground to dust, leaving only a marionette manipulated by the laws of the array.
The grand show reached its final climax.
Old Thorne had completely descended into madness, roaring a command for Evelyn to perform an incredibly explicit, backward-bending, leg-spreading pose.
Evelyn threw her swan-like neck back, her flawless body bending into a taut bow at the edge of the stage. The extreme stretch fully exposed the deepest skin of her inner thigh to the special UV ambient lighting at the stage's edge.
In that fleeting fraction of a second, Caspian's sharp gaze locked onto that hidden patch of snow-white skin.
There, under the special light, a small area of skin shimmered with the faint, deep-purple glow of Sovereign Laws. It was an incredibly complex, hidden tattoo that usually remained submerged beneath the flesh, only manifesting when the array's lifeforce extraction reached its absolute peak.
Caspian's fingers, holding the whiskey glass, paused almost imperceptibly.
The background of the mark was the shattered scythe wrapped in chains—the insignia of his past life's [Shadow Court]. But resting directly above the scythe, seamlessly integrated into the design, was a thorny rose woven in gold thread.
It was the family crest of the Thorne Conglomerate!
This wasn't passive exploitation. They weren't just simple puppets. Tyler's family—the secular conglomerate that summoned wind and rain in Sancta Lodo—had not only colluded with the Temple, but had directly reached their filthy hands into the legacy of his past life. They had melted down the Sovereign's scythe and forged it into their own family's money tree to squeeze out lifespans.
"Elena." Caspian set his glass down. The cold glass base tapped against the table with a crisp clink, yet it sounded like the death knell of a massive empire.
"Here," Elena's equally cold voice replied through the earpiece.
"Map out the entire underground structural blueprint of this building. And..."
Caspian withdrew his gaze, slowly and methodically standing up, using one hand to straighten his obsidian silk tie. Since he had found the master holding the thread, there was no need to play the bored spectator anymore.
His dark golden eyes reflected Old Thorne below, who was still panting wildly like a feral beast. A lethally elegant, spine-chilling smile curved Caspian's lips.
"Prepare a bottle of our best Romanée-Conti," the Sovereign's voice was deep and silky, as if casually discussing a light dinner party. "Since we have arrived at another family's legitimate enterprise, as a return gift..."
"I should at least buy old Mr. Thorne a good drink."