Before entering hand-to-hand combat, a wave of flying axes thrown by the pirates had knocked down several defenders in front of Aila. The bloody scene startled Ella. After she clearly realized the meaning of the battlefield, her previous recklessness suddenly disappeared. The pirates following her pressed up from both sides and fought with the defenders.
The narrow passage behind the city gate was originally helpful for the defenders to defend with a smaller number, but now it helped the pirates who charged with Ella. In the narrow terrain, their numerical disadvantage compared to the defenders was greatly reduced, but the bravery of the pirates far exceeded the defenders. Even before the large pirate force from behind pressed forward, this small group of pirates had already pushed the battle line out of the channel!
Ella was stunned and pushed forward by the pirates who kept coming up from behind. What unfolded before her eyes was a one-sided massacre: the infantry of the "Barbarian Alliance" were considered wolves among the sheep in the army of the Seven Hills Empire, but these pirates from the northern tribes were worse than grizzly bears. Strong. They used violent fighting methods to tear apart the defenders' lines, and used even greater strength and fighting skills to easily kill every defender who dared to challenge. The axes in their hands will hit the opponent's raised shield with almost crazy frequency until it is completely shattered. They never seem to know what retreat is, what cowardice is, or what death is. They only know how to chop off the enemy's head, and then, no matter how many wounds there are on their bodies, they will rush to the next target without hesitation. In comparison, the defenders of the Qiqiu Empire only saw their comrades in the front row fell a few times, their morale plummeted, and their front line collapsed.
Not even half a day later, the castle was captured.
——It’s not an army on the same level at all.
Ella finally understood why Hestein dared to station himself in Brusis openly. The pride that the title "Baselisa" brought her was completely shattered. She used to be worried that she didn't have the power to match "Baselisa", but in front of the crumbling army of the Seven Hills Empire, the name "Baselisa" itself had become a shame. She thought with fear: If Hestein was not for plunder, but for conquering the empire's land, would "Baselisa" have now become a synonym for a high-end pet with a crown? At the thought of this, an unprecedented sense of humiliation flooded into her thin chest, ten times more humiliating than the humiliation she had suffered from her uncle!
After that, she desperately searched through the castle, trying to find clues about Mamelkus's crime. It seemed that only this could give her a glimmer of comfort. But despite all her efforts, she could not discover more from Mamelchus' castle.
Dan cursed and found Ella in the castle.
"What were you trying to do to me just now! Do you know how precious the knowledge in your head is? If you keep moving like this, I will chop off your hands and feet and carry you around like a backpack!"
But before grabbing Ella, Dan suddenly noticed something and started to smell hard with his nose:
"I smell the smell of sulfur, the beginning of all metals. Besides me, there is another inheritor of Hermetic skills here!"
He sniffed left and right, and finally put his nose against Mamelkus, who had become a prisoner. Then, he grabbed Mamelkus's clothes and looked up and down:
"I found traces of sulfur and mercury in you, as well as salt, alum, and sand - you are unmistakable, you are an alchemist! Come on, give me everything you know at once! Everything !”
Ella was surprised when she heard Dan's words. Alchemy is explicitly prohibited in the Qiqiu Empire. It’s just that Dan is from another country, this Mamelkus is a noble of the empire!
Mamelkus looked at Ella with confused eyes. He knew that Barcelona was investigating the source of his wealth, and he met her several times. So he would never admit his mistake - although her hair color was different, the woman in front of him was the ruler of the Seven Hills Empire, Ella Cornelius Scipio! But no matter what, he couldn't figure out why Baselisa would hang out with a group of pirates. In order to investigate him, bribe the pirates to act together? Dying your hair to hide your identity? But this group of pirates defeated the First Field Army and plundered Brusis! How could he be a Mamelkus, so Barcelona did not hesitate to pay such a price to play him!
In any case, practicing alchemy cannot be admitted in front of Baselisa. So he shook his head firmly.
But lies meant nothing to Dan.
"You cannot deceive the apprentice of Hermes. Let me see what is inside you."
Dan put his hand on Mamelkus' head, just like when he read Ella's "Jade Record" before, and then closed his eyes and looked up into the void. After a while, he suddenly opened his eyes and walked towards the interior of the castle without saying a word. Ella knew what Dan had discovered and quickly followed him.
"Hey hey hey, clothes, clothes..."
Amy's unintelligible voice sounded behind Ella, and then became farther and farther away.
Dan finally stopped in front of a very ordinary looking wardrobe. He opened the closet and roughly threw the clothes inside to the ground. He saw a strange sculpture in the closet close to the wall: the overall shape was a human hand, with the little finger pointing to the right. On each finger stood a key, Lamp, sun and stars, but a broken knuckle on the thumb, exposing a hole. A fish is carved in the center of the hand.
Dan deliberately tested Ella's alchemy knowledge and asked: "Little girl, do you know what is missing in this hand?"
If you are an ordinary person, you will definitely answer "thumbs up". But Ella's answer was "Crown and fire."
"The hand is missing the crown. The crown, star, sun, lamp, key, fish and flame, these are the seven secret symbols of alchemy. The one corresponding to the thumb is the crown, and the fire should be engraved on the palm. These are The symbol symbolizes the seven substances that are crucial to alchemy. The flame refers to sulfur, the fish refers to mercury, the key refers to salt, the lamp refers to alumite, and the sun refers to sand. But I don’t know about stars and crowns. What does it symbolize?”
Ella answered honestly. It was one of the secrets of alchemy that she had not cracked, and often made her blame herself for her stupidity. But after Dan heard this, his expression was only surprised:
"Little girl, you really shocked me, especially after learning that you don't know the symbols of stars and crowns - because it means you are not an alchemist - yes, alchemy is forbidden in the Kingdom of the Seven Hills, of course you don't It's an alchemist - you have to know that the secrets of these seven symbols are guarded by alchemists with their lives. You are so young, but you have already cracked five of the seven secret symbols!"
Dan took out a white powder from his bag.
"The crown is saltpetre, the king and master of all salts. It is the mill through which everything that passes is ground. And as for the stars—well, I cannot possibly let a man who is not an alchemist know them all."
As he spoke, Dan poured the white powder through the hole of his thumb, and then used the candle in his hand to heat the entire sculpture. After a while, gas came out of the small hole, and after a while, there was a sound of a mechanical spring beating from inside the wall. Dan pushed the wardrobe and a door appeared where the wall should have been, revealing a secret room in front of them.
