[[[CP|W:571|H:689|A:L]]] (Volume 4 cover. ）

A wolf howl pierced the silence of the night, and several wild beasts made a rustling sound as they swiftly walked through the mountains and forests. The thick fog completely covered the mountains and forests, and even the eyes of the night vision wolf could not see far in this fog.

This is in the depths of the mountains, in the middle of an ancient deep forest like the sea, and the undulating mountains seem to be endless, one after the other. A silver disc hangs in the night, which is a full moon night, and it is it that distinguishes the black of the sky and the earth, so that people can see where the horizon is. However, the surging fog obscured the continuous mountain forest, and it was impossible to see the true face of the mountain, nor what was hidden in the fog.

This is the gold mining area of a small country called Guiniz, which is shrouded in deep mountain fog all year round, and the fog is especially thick on a full moon night.

"Hurry, hurry. A soldier wearing military standard armor was wielding a leather whip like a black snake in his hand, and slammed it on the prisoner with a bamboo basket on his back: "This damn ghost weather, it's foggy again." Hurry up, you lowly prisoners, don't you want to rest?"

A mined mountain is covered with many caves, and prisoners, bare-chested and barefoot, carrying a basket of ore dug out of the mine, walk down the stone path on the mountainside. Walking on the desolate road full of rubble, their feet have been worn out many times, and the scabbed scars are broken and knotted, knotted and broken, and they can no longer tell which is the wound and which is the dirt. Their shoulders have been carved out of a deep groove by the ropes of the bamboo baskets, which have been left by carrying heavy bamboo baskets full of ore for many years.

When a prisoner was tired of walking and wanted to stop and rest for a while, a long leather whip was immediately drawn in his face, pulling his face away from the flesh of his belt.

"What are you doing, do you want to be lazy?" An officer standing on a high place stared down at the prisoner passing by with terrifying eyes, and he also led an ugly and terrifying long-horned demon with a chain by his side: "Don't hurry up, if you don't finish your work today, no one will want to rest." As he spoke, he lashed the prisoner in the face again.

"Ahh The intense pain caused his feet to slip, and he fell halfway up the mountain, and fell headlong on the boulder at the bottom of the mountain, breaking his brain, and dying instantly.

However, no one paid any attention to all this, and the other prisoners did not even look at the dead man, and still walked forward one by one with expressionless faces, as if they had become accustomed to all this, and had long been numb.

Suddenly, there was a commotion among the prisoners at the bottom of the mountain, and one of the prisoners picked up a large stone and smashed to death a soldier who was pumping him, and he shouted: "Brothers, let's rebel, it is better to stay here than to die, there is only one way to die." We're going to fight them, get out!"

His shout was immediately echoed by many of the newly admitted prisoners, who threw down the bamboo baskets on their shoulders. But before they could take action, a terrible scene began.

The officers standing on the hill blew their iron whistles, and one by one, the horned demons who loosened their chains swooped down from the hill and pounced on the group of rebellious prisoners.

Biting and pulling, the prisoners were torn to pieces, and their heads, arms, and stumps flew around. Those red-skinned, athletic, and powerful long-horned demons, like bloody butchers, quickly killed all the more than thirty rebellious prisoners. They smelled the pungent smell of blood, and they stomped on the prisoner's corpse and howled wildly, and the pleasure of killing made their burning blood boil even more.

The officers blew their whistles again, and the horned demons returned to their masters, waiting for the next round of slaughter.

The commotion subsided, and the other prisoners, who had fled far away for fear of being implicated, returned to their places and continued their work. And now the prisoners were different from before, they looked at the piles of corpses from time to time, and their eyes showed hunger, thirst and greed, not sadness, sorrow and pity.

"Sir, sir. A soldier hurried out of a mine and ran up to an officer and reported: "Sir, something strange has been dug up in Mine No. 7. ”

"Strange thing?" said the officer, holding his horned demon, "Go, take me to see it." ”

Walk down Cave 7 until you reach the bottom of the Cave at a depth of several hundred meters. The officer looked at the pile of bones on the ground and asked, "What's going on?"

The soldier said, "That's the strange thing I told you. Originally, I was asking the prisoner to dig deeper into the veins in the direction indicated by the fairy Grom (1), but I didn't expect to dig up these bones, you see. ”

The officer looked at the cave wall by the light of the spar in the mine, and saw a small pit one meter in size and more than half a meter deep dug in the cave wall, and the pit wall was all white bones.

The officer was startled and looked at his soldier in a daze.

"Sir, look closely. The soldier pulled out a few pieces of rubble from the cave wall, revealing a large piece of bone, and he knocked on it, "I found that it was a bone wall, and I examined it, and it was all human bones." ”

"Human bones!" The officer took two steps back, and asked the prisoner miner next to him to remove all the dirt from the cave wall, and sure enough, a wall of bones stood in front of everyone. The officer looked at the countless white bones, even if he had been killing people for many years, he couldn't help but shudder: "This tunnel is also three or four meters large, and I can't see the edge of this bone wall." It's strange that so many human bones are buried here. He thought for a moment and said, "Could it be that this was a battlefield before, and a lot of people were killed and buried here?"

The soldier shook his head and said, "Not really." He took out a map of the mining area and said: "It should be 620 meters deep from here to the ground, and it is impossible for the dead bodies on the battlefield to be buried at such a deep place?

"Yes, what's going on?" the officer asked.

The soldier shook his head as well, indicating that he did not know.

The officer said, "Well, let the prisoners keep digging and see if they can dig through it." Come with me to the village and report this to the Overseer. ”

"Yes. ”

The village mentioned by the officer is on a hill not far from the mining area, and the village is named after the gold mine, called the gold mining village. The gold mining village was founded by the female prisoners who were assigned here, and it sounded like a village, but it was actually a free military prostitute for the army stationed here.

The village was not very large, with a total of 176 female prisoners, and in the middle of the village there was a small palace made entirely of gold, called the 'Golden Palace', where the overseers who guarded the mines lived......

(Note: (1) Grom: In folklore, goblins who live underground and guard the mines, they are industrious and active, holding a mine hoe, and when they gather together, they look like glowing ant colonies. ）