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Chapter 370 Castle Lord
Upon hearing this, everyone was shocked and looked at each other, seemingly trying to find a flaw in themselves that would reveal that they were government officials.

"What makes you say that?" Lu Qing asked calmly and gently.

The man weakly closed his eyes slightly, took a few breaths, and seemed to lack the strength to say much at once.

“You…your magnanimity…is different from those who seized my fortress…” He tried to make his voice clear enough for others to hear, then pleaded, “My lords, please save the people in my fortress…”

Zhu Yu was secretly taken aback by his tone: "You are the master of this Immortal Fortress?"

The man tried to nod, but before he could move, his vision went black, and he painfully closed his eyes. After a moment, he managed a weak "hmm" in his throat: "My name is Jiang Hong, and I am the lord of this Immortal Fortress. If you don't believe me, sir, I can tell you... where... where my land deed is hidden..."

"Don't rush, take a breath, and then tell us slowly what happened." Lu Qing didn't reveal his identity, but he didn't deny it either, and spoke to Jiang Hong very patiently.

Zhu Yu poured some water for Jiang Hong, and Fu Wen helped him sit up on one side and fed him. Jiang Hong was panting and it took him a while to catch his breath before he regained some strength. In this intermittent way, with great effort, he finally managed to explain the matter clearly.

This man named Jiang Hong is just over thirty years old and is the only son in his family. This Fairy Castle is considered the ancestral property of his Jiang family, whose ancestors have made a living by planting flowers and making dyes for generations.

It is precisely because of this that the Jiang family has some ancestral secret recipes that have been passed down.

The land around Xianrenbao is fertile and moist, making it ideal for growing flowers and plants. The villagers in the fort have lived here for generations and are very skilled at growing flowers. In addition, the Jiang family has always treated the villagers in their fort with kindness, so everyone in Xianrenbao has always lived in harmony, peace and tranquility, enjoying a peaceful life.

One day, a mysterious out-of-town merchant arrived at Xianrenbao. He claimed to be a special customer of various noble families and had taken a liking to the fine dyes and silks of Xianrenbao. He had also heard that there was a unique dye here that was extremely rare and expensive elsewhere, and he wanted Jiang Hong to supply it exclusively to his family.

Although Xianrenbao has always been famous for its superior dyes and silk, the Jiang family's exclusive dyes are expensive and never shared with outsiders, so few cloth shop owners are willing to buy them.

After all, such things are too expensive. Apart from wealthy and powerful families who might be willing to spend the money, ordinary people may never be able to use them in their lifetime.

Although the entire Xianrenbao family could live a comfortable life by selling dyes and silk, it was a pity that their ancestral treasures never had the opportunity to be passed on.

The Jiang family was overjoyed and welcomed these distinguished guests in, treating them with great hospitality. They thought they would finally have the opportunity to make their ancestral treasures shine and gain fame. However, they never expected that what they would get in return was a result of inviting trouble into their home.

The so-called distinguished guest, accompanied by his entourage, entered the fortress and first tried to buy the Jiang family's ancestral secret recipe. When refused, he immediately turned hostile.

The Jiang family wanted to see the guests out, but the other party released sleeping gas, knocking them unconscious. When they woke up, they were all imprisoned in the cellar that the family had originally used to store dyes.

The other party pressured Jiang Hong to hand over the secret recipe, but Jiang Hong resolutely refused. The man then gave him a drug, saying that after taking it, he would have to talk about it whether he wanted to or not. Just when Jiang Hong was desperately convinced that his family's secret recipe was about to be exposed, something strange happened—the strange drug did not work on him, and the other party was unable to get the recipe out of him.

The other party was unwilling to give up, so he also gave it to his elderly mother and his wife who had just married him.

Jiang Hong watched as his mother and wife, after taking the strange medicine, soon became listless, as if they had lost their souls. They would tell him everything about the household affairs, big or small, as long as he asked them. No matter how anxiously Jiang Hong tried to stop them, it was to no avail.

However, the Jiang family's secret recipe was passed down orally from generation to generation. In order to prevent it from being revealed to outsiders, it was not even allowed to be written down. Apart from Jiang Hong, the only person who knew the recipe before this was his deceased father.

Jiang Hong's mother and wife knew nothing about the recipe, and no matter how the man questioned them, they couldn't get any information out of them.

In a fit of rage, the man bled his mother and wife dry in front of Jiang Hong.

Jiang Hong was devastated. His family was dead, and he could never tell that evil man the secret recipe. He would rather the recipe be lost forever than utter a word.

After that, the man locked Jiang Hong in the cellar, only feeding him pills periodically to keep him in a half-dead state, neither truly alive nor truly dead. He was kept in a state of constant flux, and from time to time, someone would come to the cellar to torture him, trying to force him to reveal the secret formula.

And so, Jiang Hong didn't know how much time had passed. Finally, the night before, those people had just unlocked the chains that were binding him. They heard what sounded like something, and when they went to investigate, they found that something they valued highly had been stolen. So they hurriedly left and never returned.

Jiang Hong seized this opportunity and desperately tried to climb out of the cellar. Following the direction he remembered, he found the exit and finally pushed open the stone door with all his remaining strength. However, he did not expect that the stone door had turned into a small pond, and he was splashed with water.

Struggling to crawl out, I heard someone chasing after me. Thinking it was that group of bad guys, I desperately hid in the cave in the artificial hill.

The moment Jiang Hong saw the talisman, he thought he had encountered a ghost messenger who had come to take his soul. He was so frightened that he immediately lost all his strength and fainted.

When I woke up again, I was already lying in this room.

As for how long he had been imprisoned, and what had become of the villagers in Xianrenbao and the servants in his own household, Jiang Hong knew nothing.

All he knew was that every now and then those people would arrest a few people and lock them up around a corner away from him, regularly bleeding them to water some kind of precious thing, and occasionally dragging out the corpses of those who had bled to death from the other side of the cellar and dumping them.

Jiang Hong didn't know what they were watering, but he knew that if it was nourished with human blood, it couldn't be anything good.

He held on desperately, wanting to survive, hoping to one day find a chance to escape, report to the authorities, and have them arrest this group of evil people.