Uno was holding Elara and quickly left the central cave, returning to the core area of the mine. Still, Uno didn't put her down. He held her tightly in his arms.
Elara looked at the disgusting remains of snakes, rats, insects, and beasts all over the ground and didn't feel like stepping on any of it. So she simply let Uno carry her.
Since the bug creature was dead and she had control of the blood orb, those snake-rat puppets had all stopped moving. They no longer attacked the Wei guards and only stared at her with a mix of human, beast, and insect eyes, their chaotic emotions flooding toward her.
Luckily, Elara could cut off this emotional connection whenever she wanted. Otherwise, her mind would never have peace again.
These were all creatures that had long been turned into full puppets by the bug monster. There was no way to reverse it. She could only control them permanently.
Elara looked at how they filled almost the entire space. In her heart, she gave a command. The snake-rat puppets instantly withdrew like a wave and even helped clean up the disgusting bodies on the ground.
Soon, the whole central mine area looked much cleaner and more spacious.
Elara finally patted Uno's arm, signaling for him to put her down.
Uno pressed his lips together. The Wei clan's first iron rule, "The master's command cannot be disobeyed," echoed in his head a few times before he slowly loosened his arms and placed Elara on a flat, clean stone surface.
Once Elara was steady on her feet, she walked toward the Wei guards to check their condition.
Maybe it was because of the blood orb, but when she looked at their bodies now, she could clearly see what was going on inside them.
When the bug monster used the mother parasite earlier, the guards were affected as well. However, they had been outside and a bit far from the monster. Since Uno was the main target, the Wei guards in the core mine area weren't too badly impacted.
Elara could see faint red energy starting to appear inside their bodies.
She used the same method she had used to calm Uno. She touched each of them to suppress the red energy. As they trembled slightly and let out stifled groans, she pushed the energy down.
Then she took out her small knife and medicine pills. She pricked her fingertip and let a drop of blood fall into each pill.
The guards' condition was much better than Uno's. She didn't need to cut herself deeply. Just one drop of blood was enough for them to recover.
After all of them took the pills, Elara used the snake-rat puppets to sense the overall state of the mine.
Then she told the guards to go free the townspeople who had been locked up. As for her, she took Uno and went toward the prison chamber where the two legitimate grandsons of the old man were being kept.
Time went back to just before Uno brought Elara into the bug monster's lair, before she had taken control of the blood orb.
At the deepest part of the mine.
In a hidden and dark prison cave.
Inside two cages only half a meter tall were two boys, one big and one small.
The older one was maybe sixteen or seventeen. The younger one looked much younger. His skinny body looked like he was only seven or eight.
Neither of them had any clothes to cover them. Their exposed skin was covered in bloody wounds and the marks of being bitten by all kinds of parasites.
The older boy curled up his body. The cage was too small, and his growing frame couldn't stretch out at all, so he could only huddle tightly inside. His face was covered by messy hair, eyes shut tight, and he was completely unconscious. Only the faint rise and fall of his chest showed he was still alive.
In the smaller cage next to him was a boy even younger and smaller. He clearly looked more delicate, yet had more chains wrapped around him, as if he were more dangerous and needed extra restraints. The small cage also didn't allow him to stretch, but he wasn't curled up.
Instead, he was pressed against the front of the cage, hands bloodied and gripping the bars, as if trying to pry them open. His body bore even more wounds and bite marks from poisonous insects. Even though he lay motionless, his messy little face still carried a stubborn fierceness.
It was easy to imagine that when awake, he must have been even more aggressive and wild than the older boy. He had probably never stopped trying to break out of the cage. In the dim space, a tall and slender figure suddenly appeared silently in front of the two cages. The shadows hid his face.
His tall body walked slowly to the cages. He looked at the big one, then the small one, and finally stopped in front of the smaller cage. His pale fingers tapped the boy's neck. "Tsk. Already dead, just like I thought."
The man straightened up. His sharp hearing caught the distant roar of inner force clashing. He glanced toward the direction where Elara and Uno were hiding. "They've started fighting. Time is running out. Fine, I'll pick you. You're dead, and using a child's body has its own advantages."
He reached into the small box placed between the two cages. Inside were poisonous pills made with venomous insects. A normal person would become a puppet after swallowing just one. Even someone with inner force could only resist three before completely losing consciousness.
The man picked up one blood-scented pill and examined it. Then he frowned. "So little potency. It probably won't even soak into my meridians before the poison turns on me and eats me from the inside out."
He seemed a little annoyed. He had followed Elara all the way from the capital of the Plumera Kingdom to Marigold County, and now to this place. Because Uno and others had always been by her side, he couldn't just snatch her away. That would conflict with his real goal.
He still had to confirm if she was really the Phoenix Star. He had to verify whether the Phoenix Seal was with her, and whether she had discovered the secret inside. The best way to investigate all that was to get close to her quietly, gain her trust, and then search for answers bit by bit.
He had been following Elara for so long, and only today in this mine did he finally get the perfect opportunity to approach her silently. But the poison in these pills was too weak. Even if he used a child's body, the venom had to work properly. Otherwise, how could he take the boy's place and get close to her?
With that thought, the man suddenly grabbed a whole handful of the pills. He started chewing them one after another like snacks. "Even if they're weak, eating enough should make it work. Hopefully these bugs aren't all trash. Not bad, the taste is decent."
He sat beside the small cage and kept eating until the box was almost empty. Finally, he gave a small burp. After suppressing his inner force, the weak venom started slowly seeping into his body.
The insects, excited by their rare opportunity, began to stir. They gradually grew stronger inside him. He covered his firm stomach and burped again, continuing to suppress his power until the insects fully adapted.
Once his body gave off the same scent as the boy's, the scent of a puppet controlled by venomous insects, he lazily got up and moved back to the small cage. His slender fingers knocked on the lock, and the strong chain opened on its own.
He yawned and stretched. His tall frame gave a few cracking sounds. Then, as if shrinking, his towering body quickly shortened and thinned. In the blink of an eye, he had transformed into a scrawny seven or eight-year-old boy identical to the one in the cage.
After shrinking down, he looked at his small body with satisfaction. He opened the cage and easily removed the chains that had bound the real boy. Holding the child by the back of the neck, he lifted him like trash and tossed him toward the dark river nearby.
The boy's body flew over ten meters and landed with a splash. The current carried him away quickly. The man, now in the child's form, rubbed his face. When he lowered his hand, his features had changed to resemble the dead boy.
He pulled out a bronze mirror from who knows where and studied himself, adjusting his hair to match the boy's messy look. After confirming everything was perfect, he strolled back into the cage, locked the door from the inside, and chained himself up again.
He lay back lazily and suppressed his inner force completely. He let the poison work on him until his thoughts grew fuzzy. The insects continued to spread within him as he closed his eyes and waited quietly for someone to come and "rescue" him.
While he waited confidently for his target to show up, deep in the dark river.
Even with his god-like senses, he didn't notice that the boy he had thrown away suddenly opened his eyes. Though his chest had stopped rising and falling before, and he had seemed truly dead, the river had carried him several kilometers away. Now, his eyes opened suddenly.
Those wolf-like eyes glowed fiercely in the dark water. They were far too savage for any nine-year-old child. But he was never an ordinary child. He had been taken by wolves at birth and later trained as a slave.
He had learned survival skills at a very young age, skills most people never learn. Sharpen your claws. Hide silently. Then strike when your enemy isn't watching and tear out their throat. Just like the mother wolf once taught him.
The boy held back the sharp pain in his chest and his cough. When the water slammed him into a stone wall, bones cracking, he gritted his teeth and crawled slowly out of the river. Through the pain, he suddenly felt something stir inside him.
An invisible force spilled out from his mind, urgently pushing him to find someone, to satisfy a sudden and growing desire inside him.