A dark atmosphere of grim revolved in the air, Lily stared at the two with a blank look, Kizz startled, the gaze that Lily gave made him apprehensive, it was as if a storm was about to unleash its strength.
The old man noticed it and quickly changed the topic.
"I have my car here, get in and we will bring you to Khan." The old man gestured, indeed, a supercar in today's standard could be seen. Lily went to the car, opened the door and got inside, all without a word to say.
Towards this overbearing attitude of Lily, the two could only sigh as they followed her.
Back at the casino, a commotion transpired among the summoned doctors, the reason was simple, when they proceeded to draw blood from Khan's body, they found that their needles were unable to penetrate his skin.
Towards this, Barhan could only stand there, his lips twitching in annoyance. After about several tens of attempts, the lead doctor sighed and spoke.
"It's no use, sir, I don't know what's going on with this kid's skin, but every needle that I use would end up like this! I even used a specifically polished needle, but at the end, look at it." The doctor's eyes turned towards the syringe on his right hand, the tip of the syringe had a needle that was evidently broken in two.
Barhan frowned, after pondering for a while, he moved towards the doctor and said.
"Tell me where his vein is, I'll try to penetrate it." The doctor gave him a confused look.
"Just tell me where it is and give me a new syringe." Barhan urged, causing the doctor to move and obtain another syringe.
Barhan clutched the syringe on his hand, and with the instructions of the doctor, pointed it at a vein. Barhan grunted, an indiscernible aura enveloped the tip of the needle, with a push, it miraculously penetrated the skin, and drawn blood from Khan's vein.
"Eh?"
The doctor uttered in shock, the scene before him looked ridiculous, but if you think about it, it may be the difference in power between the two, since the doctor looked scrawny, and Barhan looked like a muscle-head.
But the truth was far from that, what actually transpired was that Barhan enveloped the tip of the needle with a small amount of Qi, giving it a huge boost in its piercing power, thus it was able to penetrate Khan's skin.
The doctor then clutched the extracted vial of blood and walked out of the room.
Barhan glanced at the bandaged figure of Khan, though he looked extremely miserable like he was about to die, Barhan knew that there was no risk of further damage to Khan for he already fed him a medicinal pill, the only reason why he called a doctor and bandaged Khan like this was to have an excuse about Khan's huge recovery power.
'Multiple rib fractures, and several other grievous injuries, but the life force in his body is still bursting with vitality, just how the hell did this kid cultivate?' Barhan stood there, a soliloquy running in his mind.
Footsteps at the outside interrupted his thoughts, he turned towards the door and with a mechanical sound, there he saw three figures, one of which he was unfamiliar with.
"Boss, I brought Khan's girlfriend, this is considered as bringing a family member, right?" The old man gave a small smile and spoke with a gentle tone.
Upon hearing the old man's words, Lily furiously blushed, however, her countenance instantly changed when she noticed the wretched figure on the bed.
Surrounded by advanced medical apparatus, Khan even had a huge tube on his neck, if one knew nothing about it, they would think that the young man really was in a critical condition.
Barhan looked at the old man, the old man noticed it and returned a subtle gaze followed by a nod, Kizz at the side had his mouth opened wide as he looked behind Barhan.
Barhan turned and saw that Lily had already approached Khan's bedside and was shaking him hard while continuously complaining.
"You said you're gonna earn money, but what is this?! I still haven't..."
"Khan, wake up, Grandpa is going to be sad if he sees you like this..."
"Khan, wake up, or not I'm going to leave you..."
"Khan, wake up, I know that you're already healed, stop pretending, already!"
"Khan if you don't wake up I'm gonna carry you home, and with a princess carry!"
Khan who was supposed to be "out of commission" miraculously woke up when he heard that Lily would carry him and in a princess carry at that!
'What a joke, if any of my descendants heard of me being carried by a young girl in a princess carry, I would better just kill myself.' Khan's lips twitched and his eyes widened, with a whoosh sound, he sat on the bed, ripping all the weird attachments on his body.
"Yo!" Khan winked with a smile on his face.
"Don't yo me here!" Lily punched his stomach and Khan grunted in pain, but before he could recover, He found himself embraced by Lily. Because of this Khan felt loss. 'What meritorious deeds have I committed in the past that I deserved this?' Khan recovered after a while and returned the embrace with a blank look.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Lily felt his embraced and exploded into a furious blush, noticing that there were other people in the room, she reluctantly pushed Khan away.
The three stared at the two and wore a weird expression on their faces, Barhan coughed to dispel the slightly pinkish atmosphere.
After calming herself down, Lily turned towards the old man and asked.
"You guys better explain everything that happened."
The old man didn't reply, he looked at Khan for a moment and noticing that he nodded, the old man honestly explained about everything.
"Hmmph, I don't care about that rune or whatever, but why did you have to test it on Khan instead of a practice dummy?" Lily snorted, her gaze became unfriendly as she glanced at Barhan.
"Ermm..." Barhan stood there and acted in contrast to his appearance, his face had a look of being wronged, Khan bitterly smiled, tapped on Lily's shoulder and spoke.
"I let him do it."
"Huh? Why did you let him attack you? Are you really trying to kill yourself?"
"Well, We were just testing the power of the rune..."
"..."
It took quite a long time before Khan was able to calm the young woman's raging emotions, and after that, Lily asked to take a look at the rune and to borrow a laptop.
Barhan complied and within a few minutes, everything had arrived.
"Hoooh, you guys really are rich, you even have the latest Evidea model and this Rune Scanner can replicate a hundred percent of the Rune's expected strength..." Lily wholeheartedly praised them, the unremarkable piece of a device on the table was actually quite expensive.
Lily moved towards the laptop and started typing on it, her fingers flew across the keyboard, the rhythm of rapping sounds produced an orchestra that echoed across the room.
Towards this strange occurrence, the group could only stand there, other than Kizz their faces, painted with confusion.
"Ohhh! Miss, you know something about modifying a rune?" Kizz's face became red in excitement, he approached Lily and looked at the screen.
"Yeah, is it really that strange to know something like this?" Lily spoke while her fingers tapped across the keyboard, all kinds of shell commands were executed at a swift pace by Lily.
"It's not strange, more like unusual since I didn't really think that a young woman like you would be interested in such complicated things," Kizz spoke his mind out, however, he froze and bitterly laughed when he found that Lily wasn't even listening to him.
All of Lily's concentration was on the laptop screen in front of her.
Displayed on the screen were several complicated codes, apparently, all of this contributed to the construction of the rune, any mistakes in changing any values in the code could lead to an error.
"Woaaah... Did Khan really make that? The phenomenon outcome is simple, but the process to create that outcome is extremely complicated." Kizz gave a surprised glance towards Khan.
"Yeah, it's really complicated, the foundation of the rune was constructed firmly without any chance of leakage... And the body, it gives concise instruction to the Decipherer and the surrounding mana to write the desired phenomenon." Lily spoke admiration evident in her tone when she looked at Khan, her gaze evidently became gentler.
"Also, here, this is the most complicated part..." Kizz pointed on the screen, Lily's gaze focused towards it and the two continued in their discussion that only them could understand.
"Yeah, at this part, Khan wrote an instruction to converge mana into one point, however, instead of using the normal way, he used a peculiar method, and that is a movement type oscillation magic."
Kizz nodded in response and continued.
"By doing that, the mana would meet at this point, then he manipulated the waves produced by the oscillation magic to converge at a certain point before the enemy and then released all the pent-up energy into one shockwave attack..."
"What a genius..." Kizz uttered, his lips trembling in shock.
The eyes of the two glittered as they looked towards Khan, especially Kizz whose face looked flushed and thirsted for something.
Khan stood there dumbfounded as he listened to the two's conversation.
'How did they deconstructed all the methods that I used in creating that rune?' The intensity of shock that Khan felt didn't differ that much from the two.
"Oh shit, here it comes..."
"Haaah..."
"Eh?" Khan uttered in confusion.
A huge force came crashing down his body, as he saw that Kizz had already embraced his upper body, his face flushed and his eyes gleamed with the thirst that Khan was familiar with. The thirst for knowledge.
"T-t-t-teach me, master!" Before Khan could reply, Kizz had already flown upwards and smacked his forehead on the ground in a majestic diving kowtow.
Lily stood there with a palm on her face, Barhan sighed helplessly while the old dealer acted like as if nothing was happening and was even whistling.
"H-h-hey, what's going on with you?! Back of dude! I don't swing that way!" Khan who had a physique tempered by countless tribulation lightning easily pushed Kizz away and leaped backward in disgust.
"Barhan, what's going on with him?"
Barhan turned towards him with a sympathetic gaze before explaining.
"Do you know why this city is called the City of Wisdom?"
Khan returned a look that indicated that he has no clue about it.
"That's because everyone here is crazy for something..."
Khan's eyes widened in sudden revelation.
"And that is...?"
"Yeah, just like what you thought, they're thirsty for knowledge."
Barhan sighed and didn't speak anymore, although Khan wanted to know the reason why they would become crazy for knowledge, he knew that it would be better to just ask the person himself.
Khan looked at the panting Kizz whom Lily had blocked with her might.
"I'll tell how I made that, but you must first tell me about why people in here are so desperate for knowledge..." Khan spoke in a serious tone, Kizz gritted his teeth and spoke.
"Because of the Knowledge Tower's Annual Debate!"
Thanks to the strange term, Khan stared blankly at first, but it was different for the others, even Lily wore a grim countenance when she heard the term, Barhan had his teeth gritted and the old man's figure trembled.
But instead of feeling discouraged due to the bleak reaction of his companions. Khan wore a determined smile on his face.
'Hmmph, knowledge? When you guys are still learning the ways of this world, I have already ascended the apex, no one is able to defeat me in terms of knowing everything in the world.' Khan arrogantly declared in his mind.
However, what he didn't know was that he was greatly mistaken. For the Debate wasn't something so simple, but of course, Khan had no way of knowing that for now...