Chapter 533: Infiltration
The Auctioneer’s Guildhall did not care for glamour. It was function over all else. The chimneys, for example, were explained to him as mana radiation that led into a furnace. Instant death. Dasha did not wish to try his head through that entry point, nor the front entrance. So as they agreed, they were going for the magic vent at the leftside.
A curved wall of stained stone and corroded pipes running alongside an alley that smelled like rotting sulfur. The wall genuinely didn’t look like much and was contained in a tight alleyway. What neighboured the Auctioneer’s Guildhall, pressing down on them, was a storage facility owned by the Chinese Sect. It was why infiltration was not wise. It was stuck between a rock and a hard place, so to speak.
The moment Dasha stepped into the alley, he felt it.
Subtle resistance.
A spatial spell. Something that caused light and sound to behave strangely, enough to confuse an untrained infiltrator. They were vents here, oh yes, but there was one that was hidden. He suspected most of the Chinese Cultivators and guards that patrolled their storage facility didn’t see it.
Not Dasha.
"I see it," Dasha told his enslaved thief. "Now go."
The thief was back in fresh gear and looking the part of a courier. He had led the way with hunched shoulders and a trembling hand carrying the "offering": an obsidian sculpture shaped like a scarab beetle and cited as a relic of a forgotten god. Dasha had sculpted it the night before, lacing the core with enough magical essence to pass for genuine.
As for Dasha himself, he slowed his heart to a complete stop. From what the thief told him, the golems could not see. Their judgements were based on sound and Qi. Hiding his Qi was simple enough. Hiding his heartbeat was not. To compensate, he had his healing at full throttle.
’I estimate I only have five minutes. Five minutes to go inside and investigate what I can.’
Three life-threatening, well-worth minutes. The vent was circular, steel-rimmed, wide enough for a crouched adult. The thief-courier tapped the vent with his tethered ring.
The vent glowed. The other vents joined in on the glowing and the wall split apart. Dasha kept looking around. He suspected that anyone looking from the inside in couldn’t see the hole.