Chapter 1082 Favor
So instead of confining her, the only thing they could do was respect her choices.
They would let her move as she wished, take the lead when she deemed it necessary, while they remained behind her, steady and unwavering, silently supporting her and making sure that no matter what path she chose, she would never be facing it alone.
Zhane chose to remain parked at the side of the road instead of heading straight to the designated location. His car was far too conspicuous as it looked sleek, expensive, and easy to remember at a glance. If the abductors truly belonged to the Northern Faction and caught even a hint of someone tailing their trail, it would immediately alert them and ruin any element of surprise.
And that was a risk he couldn’t afford.
So he waited.
Patiently. Quietly. Watching the time tick by as he waited for his people to arrive so they could move together instead of recklessly walking into an unknown situation alone.
Even if the group at the location turned out to be the Northern Faction but didn’t participate in Dave’s abduction, it would still be an opportunity. An opportunity to capture, interrogate, and pry out information about who plotted against Luke, who ambushed him, and whether they had any knowledge about Dave’s abduction.
Zhane’s gaze darkened slightly at that thought.
As a doctor, he was well aware that there were countless ways to make someone talk without ever crossing the line into outright killing them. Especially now that he had been studying ancient medicine, his knowledge no longer revolved around healing alone. Medicine and poison, after all, were often separated by nothing more than dosage and intent, a subtle shift in ingredients, a slight variation in method.
And he had learned both.
More importantly, he knew the human body intimately.
Every nerve cluster. Every pressure point. Every fragile spot that could inflict unbearable pain while leaving minimal visible evidence. He knew exactly where to press, where to strike, where to apply just enough force to break a person’s resistance without breaking their body beyond recovery.
Methods that wouldn’t leave obvious marks.
Methods that would make a person tremble, beg, and wish for death long before he ever needed to raise his voice.
Cold. Clinical. Precise.
Because to Zhane, extracting information wasn’t about cruelty, it was about efficiency. And if someone had truly laid hands on Luke and orchestrated Dave’s disappearance, then he had no intention of showing them mercy when the time came to make them speak.
Zhane was not inherently brutal.
He wasn’t like Luke, who could switch into something devilish in the blink of an eye when provoked. Zhane, by nature, was composed, restrained, and far more measured in his actions. Violence was never his first instinct.
But that didn’t mean he was incapable of being harsh when the situation demanded it.
There was a quiet ruthlessness buried beneath his calm, the kind that didn’t rely on rage, but on precision and necessity. If lines had to be crossed to protect the people he cared about, he would cross them without hesitation, just without the theatrics others might show.
After all, there was a saying many people liked to repeat: offend anyone if you must, but never offend a doctor.
Because a doctor stood at the thin boundary between life and death.
And in the end, that wasn’t entirely wrong.
A doctor knew how to save a life, but they also knew exactly how fragile that life was, how easily the human body could be pushed to its limits without immediately breaking. Zhane understood pain, endurance, and the body’s tolerance far better than most, and that knowledge alone made him far more dangerous than someone who relied solely on brute force.
Zhane didn’t have to wait long before his forces arrived one after another, moving with quiet efficiency. Once they were all assembled, he stepped out of his car and calmly handed the keys to one of his subordinates, instructing him to stay behind and wait for his return.
He wasn’t careless enough to bring such a conspicuous vehicle any closer to the target.
Instead, he took his assistant and a few trusted subordinates with him, and the few of them transferred into an inconspicuous black armored car, and behind them were four more of such cars before they blended easily with the traffic. From the outside, it looked ordinary, unremarkable, forgettable even, exactly the kind of vehicle that wouldn’t attract unnecessary attention.
They drove straight toward the underground clinic the intermediary had pinpointed.
No sirens.
No warnings.
No hesitation.
The moment they arrived, Zhane gave a single signal.
Then they moved.
Like a blade slicing through silence, he and his people stormed into the clinic in one swift, coordinated advance, catching everyone inside completely off guard. The atmosphere that had been relatively calm moments ago instantly collapsed into stunned chaos.
Many of the Northern Faction members were still in the middle of receiving treatment, their guards lowered, their bodies weakened and bandaged. Others who had been severely injured earlier had already been transferred into the wards to recuperate, lying in recovery with no expectation of an intrusion this sudden or this precise.
They hadn’t even been given the chance to react.
By the time anyone realized what was happening, Zhane and his team were already inside, their presence cold, controlled, and overwhelmingly decisive, as if they had been silently watching all along, only choosing this exact moment to descend.
"Don’t move! Hands on your heads!" Zhane’s subordinate barked the moment he kicked the door open, his assault rifle already raised and aimed steadily at everyone inside the clinic.
The sudden intrusion shattered the atmosphere instantly.
Doctors froze mid-step. Nurses gasped and instinctively backed away, their faces pale with shock and fear as they stared at the armed group that had stormed in without warning. Not a single one of them made any move to resist, their hands trembling slightly as they slowly complied, eyes darting between Zhane and his people.
But their lack of resistance wasn’t entirely born from fear.
They had already been discreetly informed by the intermediary beforehand to cooperate if Zhane arrived. Even if a clash broke out between Zhane’s group and the Northern Faction, the clinic staff were not to get involved or be dragged into the conflict.
After all, this was an underground clinic.
And for places like this, skirmishes between factions were not exactly uncommon.
Still, there existed an unspoken rule among all underground hospitals and clinics: no faction was allowed to cause trouble within their walls. These facilities were the last lifeline for injured fighters, smugglers, mercenaries, and faction members alike. If they destroyed that fragile neutrality, they would be cutting off their own only means of survival when they were wounded.
So even rival factions usually restrained themselves once inside such territory.
However, Zhane was different.
He did not belong to any underground faction, nor was he bound by their internal codes. More importantly, the clinic’s director had already given silent approval for this operation to proceed. That alone meant the director bore no ill will toward Zhane and was willing to turn a blind eye to what was about to unfold.
Even so, Zhane was fully aware of the implications.
What he was doing disrupted the clinic’s operations and, in a way, threatened its livelihood and fragile neutrality. And favors granted in places like this were never free, it was a debt he would inevitably have to repay in the future.
Even so, Zhane did not hesitate.
As long as the director of this underground clinic did not overstep or turn the situation into something excessive, Zhane was more than willing to repay this favor in the future. After all, this single act of cooperation could very well be the difference between life and death for Dave.
And the director understood that perfectly.
News of Young Minister Dave’s abduction had already spread through certain circles in the underground world, and Zhane’s close friendship with him was no secret. Anyone with even a basic grasp of the situation could tell that Zhane wasn’t here to stir trouble for the sake of power or intimidation; he was here to find Dave.
That was precisely why the director chose to allow this disruption.
Yes, it meant offending the Northern Faction to some degree. Yes, it risked upsetting the fragile neutrality the clinic had maintained for years. But the director was not a fool. He was well aware of the undercurrents within the Northern Faction itself, the quiet struggle between the current acting boss and the supposed legitimate leader, both vying for control behind the scenes.
Their leadership was unstable.
Which meant any offense taken today might very well become irrelevant tomorrow if a new leader rose to power and reshuffled allegiances. In a world like theirs, loyalties shifted as quickly as influence.
From a calculated standpoint, siding with Zhane at this moment was not the most dangerous gamble.
In fact, it could even be a profitable one.