Bab 1258: Better this way

It was deathly silent for several minutes as Hao Xuan stood over the guard's corpse thinking of what could have been done differently but, he couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer.

"I should have been more careful...I'm sorry. Maybe if I was here I could have done something to stop it."

At least one innocent death rested on his conscious. If he wasn't out trying to get more demon cores he could have protected Wern if nothing else.

Hao Xuan dragged the guard's corpse to the side of the room and as he was going over to the bed something caught his eye. There was an indentation in the floor in the shape of a broken circle with some symbols on the side.

Hao Xuan knelt down to inspect it in more detail, using the sleeve of his shirt to move the blood, bone, and brain matter out of the way.

"This is a summoning circle..." and as he brushed his fingers along the recesses bits of nail and skin came up every few centimeters.