The next morning, Velin followed Clever to a small military fortress east of the castle.
The fortress had only 1,600 square meters of structures above ground, yet two hundred soldiers were stationed there. Every one of them was Bronze Rank. Though their auras were unstable, as if they had advanced through external means, it was enough to show how much Clever valued this place.
After entering the fortress, Clever did not waste words and opened the passage leading underground.
Seeing this, Velin followed Clever into the dark passageway.
After descending for more than a hundred meters, the three of them arrived at an underground mine.
A prison stood on the left side of the mine.
Under Velin's gaze, several soldiers opened one of the cell doors, dragged out everyone imprisoned inside, and tied them to wooden stakes.
There were men and women among those bound up, but their heads had been shaved, and most of their faces had turned black. It was nearly impossible to distinguish them by appearance alone.
Faced with this sight, Velin said nothing. He clasped his hands behind his back and watched quietly.
Once the twenty people dragged from the cells had been tied up, five soldiers stepped forward with special instruments. They inserted the thin ends into the prisoners' arms and placed the other ends into wooden buckets.
The next moment, the sound of flowing water could be heard.
Blood flowed out through the special instruments, and the faces of those bound to the stakes visibly turned pale.
Three minutes later, just as the blood-drained prisoners were about to die, the soldiers roughly pulled the instruments from their arms, took out red pills from their robes, and stuffed them into the prisoners' mouths before moving on to the next person and repeating the process.
Within