Chapter 497: Familiar Faces in a Strange Land (5/10, Autumn Subscription)

Cell No. 2, Cell No. 3, Cell No. 4, Cell No. 5, Cell No. 6, Cell No. 7.

Fang Yue swept through them one cell at a time, momentum like a bamboo splitting.

Yet his expression grew uglier and uglier.

Because after clearing so many cells, he still hadn't found any trace of Lin Ling or Lord Han.

After sweeping through seven cells, a dense, dark mass of tagalongs had piled up behind him.

They all looked at Fang Yue—who had so easily slain the guards and freed the prisoners—as though worshipping a god, filled with awe.

Fang Yue had no mind to spare for these strangers.

He grabbed the white coat by its collar.

"I've swept all seven cells—why haven't I found the person I'm looking for? Are you sure the Underground Stronghold only has these seven cells?"

"C-calm down! Big boss, I'm very sure the Underground Stronghold only has seven cells. If the person you're looking for still hasn't been found… then either they've already been dealt with—turned into corpse materials, or something else—or they're being held in one of the three lords' secret rooms."

"Three lords? Secret rooms?"

"Lord Ox, Lord Horse, and Lord Liao. Their rooms are all built from the same material as the giant iron gate at the stronghold entrance—basically a fortress, unbreakable… unless you have one of those three lords' keys, you can't open their rooms. Brute force won't work."

A key?

Fang Yue hurriedly pulled out the key he'd taken from Liao Guanjia earlier.

"This one?"

Qing Chen froze for a moment: "I-I've never seen it either, so I don't know if it is."

No choice—try it and hope for the best!

With Qing Chen leading the way, they twisted through several turns, and Fang Yue quickly arrived at the door of an isolated large room.

The surrounding walls were solid ore, and the door was indeed made of the exact same material as the iron gate at the entrance.

Fang Yue first tried brute-forcing it twice, but neither the iron door nor the solid ore walls beside it gave way.

Fang Yue aligned the keyhole and took out Liao Guanjia's key.

He inserted it into the keyhole and gave it a twist.

Creak—

The sealed iron door immediately began to tremble slowly.

Fang Yue let go and stepped back two paces. The iron door slowly opened, revealing the situation inside.

It was a very large room, and its main decoration was a wall-mounted display of glass 【human heads】, arranged as if a Hunter were showing off prey after a kill.

"Your key really opened the room… this is Lord Liao's key—Lord Liao's room!"

Qing Chen stared at Fang Yue in shock.

He had received intelligence earlier, knowing that Fang Yue had killed Lord Liao and defeated the Ning Mansion forces on the surface before breaking into the Underground Stronghold.

But both Qing Chen and the people in the Underground Stronghold had been only half-convinced.

Because Lord Liao's strength was so great that ordinary people simply couldn't deal with him.

Only now, seeing Lord Liao's personally guarded room key fall into Fang Yue's hands, did Qing Chen truly confirm that Lord Liao had died at Fang Yue's hands.

The dense mass of prisoners behind them, overhearing the conversation, all cried out in shock one after another.

"Lord Liao the old thief has already been killed by Lord Ye?"

"Justice! Justice! That bastard's reckoning should have come long ago!"

"He deserved it! Lord Ye has righted our wrongs and slain the villain—we're endlessly grateful!"

Those useless prisoners began to clamour.

Fang Yue ignored them. Once inside the room, he had Qing Chen help search for the secret room's entrance mechanism.

The key Fang Yue had obtained only opened Liao Guanjia's room. Though the room held quite a few good things, Fang Yue pocketed some pills, black stones, and the like.

But that was all. The truly valuable items didn't seem to have been kept in the room by Liao Guanjia—they were hidden in the secret room.

After a search, on the wall above Liao Guanjia's bed, one spot the size of a thumb could be pressed in.

Fang Yue pressed it hard…

Rumble rumble rumble!

The ground suddenly shook violently a few times, as though something outside were attacking the entire stronghold.

Just as Fang Yue was puzzling over it, he saw the wall behind the bed slowly split in two, revealing a corridor that led downward.

So the earthquake-like reaction earlier had just been the secret room opening…

That was what Fang Yue thought, but after carefully examining the secret room's door, he realized he was wrong.

The secret room's door was made of ordinary material—it couldn't possibly have made such a huge commotion.

"Big boss, what's wrong? Hurry and go in—maybe the person you're looking for is inside."

Seeing Fang Yue standing still, Qing Chen asked in confusion, then walked straight down.

Fang Yue thought for a moment, glanced back, and saw the dense crowd of people blocking the doorway of Liao Guanjia's room, packed so tight not even water could leak through.

Everyone was looking at Fang Yue with hopeful eyes, hoping he'd quickly leave the room and lead them in their escape.

This made the corner of Fang Yue's mouth twitch slightly.

Releasing them from Lao Long and letting them figure out how to escape and survive was already the limit of what Fang Yue could do.

One person couldn't guarantee that so many would survive.

Not to mention, he hadn't even sorted out his own affairs yet.

No more hesitation—Fang Yue turned and entered the secret room.

Following the staircase down for roughly a hundred-plus meters of descent, he finally reached the bottom.

Looking around, Fang Yue found the secret room wasn't large—just very dim.

"Qing Chen?"

"Over here?"

The moment Qingchen's words fell, with a sharp hiss, the Human Soul lamps around the Underground Secret Chamber all lit up at once.

"Whoa, you're actually willing to burn your Yang Lifespan?"

Qingchen gave a bitter laugh and shook his head: "Big shot, what's being used isn't my Yang Lifespan—it's the Yang Lifespan of that person over there. She's been made into a Yang Lifespan battery."

Fang Yue followed the direction Qingchen was pointing, and his pupils contracted sharply; his whole body went rigid in an instant.

There, on a stone platform resembling a display stand, a woman with a black short sword thrust into her mouth was pinned half-kneeling, her hands and feet pierced through all four limbs by enormous iron nails, firmly nailed to the stone platform.

"Hua Qiuqiu?!"

That's right—this woman half-kneeling on the stone platform was unmistakably Hua Wuye's cousin, the village chief of Mo Cun, Hua Qiuqiu!

Although Fang Yue had never seen Hua Qiuqiu in person, he had seen her portrait back at the Hua Family in Mo Cun.

And since Hua Qiuqiu and Hua Wuye looked quite alike, after a brief moment of stunned silence, Fang Yue recognized her at once.

Without the slightest hesitation, right under Qingchen's startled expression, Fang Yue dashed to Hua Qiuqiu.

"Hua Qiuqiu! Hua Qiuqiu! Hua Qiuqiu!"

Fang Yue shook Hua Qiuqiu, trying to wake her, but a single sentence from Qingchen chilled his heart to the bone.

"It's useless. She's already been made into a 【Human Candle】. She died long ago—what you see now is just a corpse."

A Human Candle is made by killing a person, then pouring Yang Lifespan into them to be used as a giant candle—extremely cruel and inhumane.

And after the Phoenix Organization's 'improvement' and 'optimization,' it now seems to also serve as the master controller for the Human Soul lamps.

(End of this chapter)