Chapter 6: Elena’s fiancée.

The grand hall already held over a dozen people, some sitting, some lying down. There were both males and females, demons and humans alike. Most of them wore ragged clothes, their faces sallow and thin, bearing traces of fear, numbness, or pain similar to her own.

Like her, they had all been forcibly dragged here. Some were sobbing quietly, some stared blankly into empty space, while others clutched their wounds and groaned in pain.

The two blood clan soldiers tossed Sylvia onto the floor as if throwing away garbage, then turned and left without a care. Their heavy footsteps gradually faded into the distance, mixing with the faint cries coming from elsewhere.

Sylvia was slammed hard onto the cold ground. She could feel that several of her bones had broken. This was bad. She had no money to treat fractures. It was as good as a death sentence with a temporary reprieve.

Sylvia lay sprawled on the icy floor. She laboriously turned her neck and looked at the others who had also been captured. There were many of them. She was not the only one.

What exactly had happened? What could have prompted Ilena’s personal guards to carry out such large-scale arrests?

A wave of chill swept over her. Sylvia vaguely sensed that she was about to be drawn into a major incident.

Aelia… Sophia…

Sylvia thought of her daughters again. The moment she closed her eyes, their terrified faces appeared in her mind, refusing to leave. The bone-deep look in Sophia’s eyes at the very end made her heart tremble even more.

She had to survive. No matter what, she had to live.

So she could see them again, hold them again, and tell them that Mom was okay.

“Click, click, click!”

The sharp sound of high heels striking the cold stone floor approached from afar. Immediately after, an invisible oppressive pressure spread out, instantly enveloping the entire hall.

This was not physical or magical heavy pressure. It was a deterrence that acted directly on the soul, born from the difference in life forms.

The air grew thick and viscous. Breathing became difficult. Sylvia’s heartbeat quickened uncontrollably, as if an invisible hand had seized it and could crush it at any moment.

All the quiet sobbing and groaning in the hall vanished, leaving only an extremely suppressed silence.

Sylvia felt as if her spine had been frozen stiff. She couldn’t bend it. Even the strength to raise her head had been stripped away by the pressure.

She could only follow the oppressive force, pressing her face tightly against the ground and flattening her body as much as possible, even though the movement aggravated the pain in her fractured bones.

Sylvia was doing everything she could to minimize her presence.

“One of my fiancées, Ilena, is currently lying inside, gravely injured and unconscious.”

A lazy female voice rang out. Its tone was pleasant in itself, yet it inspired terror because of its extreme coldness.

The voice was not loud, but it reached everyone’s ears clearly, as if echoing directly inside their minds.

“You all…”

The voice paused for a moment, seemingly scanning every curled-up figure with its gaze.

“Who gave you the courage? Who directly or indirectly harmed my fiancée!”

When Sylvia heard that Ilena was gravely injured, the taut string in her heart unconsciously loosened for a brief moment. So they had brought her here because of the attack on Ilena.

Today, apart from having her blood sucked by Ilena, she had not come into contact with anything suspicious. She was merely a lowly, somewhat attractive container for blood.

Under normal circumstances, once the facts were clarified, someone as obviously unrelated as her—a blood slave—should quickly be cleared of suspicion. Perhaps after a little fright, she would be allowed to leave.

But that was only under normal circumstances. The thought had barely arisen before it was brutally extinguished by another memory.

Ilena had more than once, while in a decent mood after drinking blood, twirled Sylvia’s sweat-dampened silver hair around her fingertip and warned her:

“Little mouse, remember this. Blood slaves usually slit their wrists to offer blood to their masters. The little private transaction between you and me must absolutely, absolutely never be known by my dear fiancée.”

“She is a pure pervert. She has more than a dozen fiancées but has never touched any of them. She treats us like collectible figurines. Her possessiveness is ridiculously strong. Previously, one of her fiancées cheated by drinking another woman’s blood. That fiancée is still nailed to a cross to this day, while the woman she cheated with had her skin peeled off and was slowly ground into minced meat bit by bit.”

At the time, playful light had flickered in Ilena’s eyes as she spoke, making it impossible to tell whether it was a joke or a serious threat.

But Sylvia had never doubted the danger within those words. The complicated relationships among blood clan nobles, especially when it came to exclusivity and power, were often more brutal than the Demon Realm itself.

And now, that fiancée of Ilena was standing right here, radiating terrifying pressure because of Ilena’s severe injury.

If… if she found out that Ilena had not only engaged in private transactions outside the mansion, but that the trading partner was her…

Sylvia’s small body began to tremble violently, unable to control itself. The imagined scene of being skinned, bones crushed, and ground into paste was too vivid. The fear made her shake uncontrollably.

Fortunately, everyone present was trembling right now. Her abnormal terror did not stand out too much.

The lazy yet majestic voice sounded again, carrying a trace of impatience.

“No one is willing to speak? It seems I have been too merciful.”

The magical pressure permeating the air suddenly intensified, almost suffocating.

“Blood magic tracking shows that, apart from the servants and personal guards inside the mansion, the only ones who had close contact with her today are you worthless things.”

“I don’t care who among you is innocent. I only know that my Ilena is injured. I would rather kill ten thousand by mistake than let a single culprit go.”

The moment Ilena’s fiancée finished speaking, a sound like fruit falling to the ground accompanied her words.

Sylvia subconsciously glanced sideways with the corner of her eye.

Right beside her, the middle-aged woman who had been sobbing quietly while clutching her abdominal wound suddenly stiffened. Then—

Her head, starting from the neck, exploded without any warning.

Red, white, crimson, viscous… countless tiny fragments of liquid mixed together and splattered everywhere.

One splatter even flew onto Sylvia’s cheek and arm.

“Ah!”

Sylvia screamed in fright. She had seen death before—in the Demon Realm, death was commonplace.

But she had never witnessed such a close-range, completely unexpected, and brutally cruel way of dying.

Sylvia screamed as her body jerked upward like it had been electrocuted. She scrambled frantically on all fours, desperate to get away from the still-twitching headless corpse and the mess covering the floor.

Death had been only a hair’s breadth away from her just now. If the other party had chosen her instead of that woman, then the one lying dead right now would have been her.

Sylvia had never been this close to death before. Immediately after, she felt the gaze of the owner of that lazy voice lingering on her because of her hurried attempt to escape, as if assessing the next lamb to be slaughtered.