Plotting with You: The Forensic Scientist in Ancient Times!-Chapter 371 - 370: Fortress Lord

Upon hearing these words, everyone was shocked, staring at each other, as if trying to find out what flaw they had revealed for this person to recognize them as government agents.

"What makes you say so?" Lu Qing asked calmly, with a gentle tone.

The person weakly closed his eyes, gasping for breath, as if he didn’t have the strength to speak too much at once.

"Your... your demeanor... is different from those who forcibly occupied my fortress..." He tried to make his voice clear, then pleaded, "Sirs, please save the people in my fortress..."

Zhu Yu was secretly shocked by his words: "Are you actually the Fortress Lord of the Immortal Castle?"

The man tried to nod, but as soon as he moved, his vision darkened. He closed his eyes in pain, paused, and then managed to hum a faint "yes": "My name is Jiang Hong, I am indeed the Fortress Lord of the Immortal Castle. If you don’t believe me, I can tell you... where my deed is hidden..."

"Don’t rush, catch your breath, and then slowly tell us what happened," Lu Qing said patiently to Jiang Hong without revealing his identity or fully distancing himself.

Zhu Yu poured some water for Jiang Hong, and Fu Lu helped him sit up partially to feed him. Jiang Hong, after catching his breath for a while, gathered enough energy to speak intermittently, with great effort, finally clarifying the situation.

This man named Jiang Hong, just past thirty this year, is the only son of his family. The Immortal Castle is a family heritage from the Jiang Family, whose ancestors have been living by planting flowers and making dyes.

Because of this, the Jiang Family has some ancestral secret formulas that have been passed down through generations.

The land around the Immortal Castle is fertile and humid, perfect for planting flowers. The tenants of the fortress have been living there for generations and are excellent at cultivating flowers. With the Jiang Family always treating their fortress tenants kindly, the Immortal Castle has always enjoyed a harmonious and peaceful life.

Until one day, a mysterious out-of-town merchant arrived at the Immortal Castle, claiming to specialize in serving various nobles. He fancied the premium dyes and silks of the Immortal Castle and heard of a unique dye here, hard to find anywhere else, wanting Jiang Hong to supply him exclusively.

Although the Immortal Castle is famous for its excellent dyes and silk, the unique dye of the Jiang Family is rarely bought by fabric shop owners because of its high price and the family’s policy of non-disclosure, handling the dyeing themselves.

After all, the cost is too high, except for wealthy households who might afford it, ordinary people might never use it in their lifetime.

Although selling dyes and silk allows everyone in the Immortal Castle to live a well-off life, it was still regrettable that the treasured heritage had never been shared with the world.

So, the Jiang Family was delighted, welcoming these noble guests eagerly, hoping their ancestral treasures could finally shine and bring fame, but unexpectedly, it brought a disastrous outcome.

The so-called noble guests, after entering the fortress with their "attendants," first proposed buying the Jiang Family’s ancestral secret formula. Being refused, they turned against them.

The Jiang Family tried to see them off, but the other party released confusing smoke, knocking them unconscious. When they woke up, they found themselves imprisoned in the cellar originally used to store dyes.

The other party forced Jiang Hong to hand over the secret formula. Jiang Hong refused firmly, so they forced a kind of drug on him, claiming it would make him speak against his will.

Just as Jiang Hong despaired, thinking his ancestral secret formula would be leaked, a strange thing happened—the drug did not work on him, and they couldn’t extract the formula from him.

Unwilling to give up, they forced the same drug on his elderly mother and newlywed wife.

Jiang Hong watched in agony as his mother and wife, after taking the drug, soon lost their senses, becoming like soulless beings, revealing everything asked by the intruders about their household, no matter how Jiang Hong desperately tried to intervene.

But the Jiang Family’s secret formula is orally passed down from generation to generation. To prevent it from being leaked, it’s not even allowed to be written down. Aside from Jiang Hong, the only person who knew the formula was his deceased father.

Jiang Hong’s mother and wife were unaware of the formula, no matter how the intruders interrogated them.

Out of frustration, the intruders, in front of Jiang Hong, drained his mother and wife’s blood.

Devastated by the loss of his family, Jiang Hong was now even more determined not to reveal the secret formula to the villains, preferring it to be lost forever rather than speaking a word of it.

Afterward, he was locked in the cellar, fed only with elixirs to keep him in a state of limbo, alive but not truly living, with occasional torturers attempting to make him divulge the formula.

In such a state, Jiang Hong lost track of time, until one night, when the captors forgot to lock his chains, distracted by the sound of something they valued being stolen, they left in a hurry and never returned.

Seizing this opportunity, Jiang Hong struggled to climb out of the cellar, and according to his memory, reached the exit, using all his remaining strength to push open the stone door, only to be drenched by water from an unknown pond that had formed above it.

Struggling out of the pond, he heard someone approaching and thought it was the villains, so he desperately hid in an artificial hill cave.

Upon seeing Fu Lu, Jiang Hong thought he had encountered a Yin Cha coming to claim his soul, and fainted out of fear.

When he awoke, he found himself lying in this room.

As for how long he had been imprisoned, what became of the original tenants of the Immortal Castle, or his household servants, Jiang Hong had no idea.

He only knew that periodically, the captors would take some people down, confine them just a turn away from where he was held, regularly bleeding them to nurture some treasured thing, and occasionally dragging their blood-drained bodies out through another cellar entrance.

Though he wasn’t sure what they were nurturing, he knew anything sustained by human blood was undoubtedly malicious.

He held on desperately, hoping to survive, escape one day, and report to the government to have these villains apprehended.