At noon.
The people in each prison cell eagerly awaited the prison guards to deliver the food. Suddenly, there was a tremor from above, and at the same time, a great deal of noise came from a very distant place. Occasionally, the sound of metal clashing could also be heard, ringing out.
The people in the prison cells were a bit surprised. The soundproofing effect of this prison was extremely good. Since the sound could be heard here from above, it was evident that there must be a huge commotion outside.
"What's going on?" The prisoners were puzzled and asked each other.
A middle-aged leader in one of the prison cells looked uncertain and said, "Most likely, someone is trying to prison break."
"Prison break?" Everyone was shocked and then a bit delighted.
"Great!"
"Maybe we have a chance to rush out."
"They still haven't delivered the food. Haha, I guess they must be in a real mess outside."
Hearing the excited discussions of these prisoners, several leaders who had been in the prison for a long time exchanged glances with each other. Among them was the "Old Jin". He frowned and said, "I heard the prison guards talking a few days ago that recently a senior hunter with a disturbed mental state was imprisoned and locked in the third-floor prison cell. Could the prison break outside be an attempt to rescue that senior hunter?"
"It's possible." Black Scar, who had a good relationship with him, nodded and said, "However, it's almost impossible for these people to break in. The lake full of demonic beasts outside can stop large-scale attacks. If they want to come to the prison to prison break,they can only sneak in along the passage. But there are strict checkpoints along the way. Even if they have bribed the prison guards, it's still extremely difficult."
The other leaders nodded. This wasn't the first time they had seen such a thing, so they weren't as excited as the others. Because they knew that this prison, known as the top prison, was so well-defended that it could definitely be called a war fortress!
Dudian had already woken up, but he was still lying on the ground. Listening to the discussions of the others, his expression was extremely calm.
...
...
On the ground, in the ancient castle of the Thistle Flower Prison.
In a watchtower on the ancient castle, two figures stood there. One of them was tall and imposing, holding a telescope in his hand and looking out at the hundreds of invading figures outside the lake, which was the size of a small army.
"They are well-trained. They must have been planning this for a long time." The imposing middle-aged man put down the telescope and chuckled.
Behind him was a butler wearing a black top hat and sporting a pair of handlebar mustaches. He smiled and said, "It's a pity that they haven't trained their brains well."
"It's not that their brains haven't been trained well, but that the person leading them simply lacks this ability."
The butler in the top hat smiled and said, "They were able to pass through the border fortifications and cross the border defense line we set up to get here. They must have bribed people in the military and our prison. I'll go and root out these greedy little mice later."
The imposing middle-aged man nodded slightly. With eyes like an eagle, he looked down at the entire lake outside the prison and the battlefield by the lake, and said softly, "The heart has a tiger, yet it sniffs the rose."
"Although the rose is beautiful, its stem has thorns." The butler in the top hat smiled and continued the next line.
The imposing middle-aged man nodded and said, "Is my tea brewed?"
"It's waiting for you to enjoy it." The butler said respectfully.
...
...
The prison break outside gradually subsided after a few hours.
Everyone in the prison cells craned their necks and looked forward, hoping that the ones who opened the door would be unfamiliar figures. But when the door opened, it was still the cold faces of the two prison guards. At this point, everyone couldn't help but feel disappointed, knowing that the prison break attempt had failed.
This little episode didn't affect Dudian. In the evening, he continued to jump into the tunnel and carefully dig the soil.
In the blink of an eye, it had been three years since Dudian was imprisoned.
In the sky filled with lead-gray nuclear radiation clouds, black snowflakes fell. They were relatively heavy and pattered down on the ground outside, dyeing the ground black. Many open-air orchards and farms had already put up sheds before the season started to prevent damage from the black snow.
It was so cold that the prisoners in each prison cell huddled together to keep warm.
In the evening, the prison guards came to distribute the food in a hurry. Then they shrank their bodies into their thick cotton-padded jackets and left the prison cells.
The food distributed during the Black Snow Season was a bit more. Dudian also received three pieces of black bread. He ate them slowly. When it was late at night and most people had fallen asleep, he took off his prison uniform and placed it in the dark corner of the back wall, arranging it in a lying-on-the-side position.
After doing this, he pried open the toilet and quietly slid down into the deep pit.
The rough deep pit rubbed against his skin, and it was bone-chillingly cold. He slid all the way down. When passing through the workshop on the second floor, he roughly estimated the height of each floor. When he reached the bottom, he immediately felt the cold lake water seeping through his feet. At this moment, he was already standing at the bottommost layer of the prison.
"This deep pit is about 25 meters high. There is still a torture chamber on the upper layer. The underwater height of the entire prison should be about 35 meters. There are only two layers of prison cells below the workshop. People like senior hunters and the captain of the Tribunal Knights are all imprisoned on the bottommost layer. And the strongest people on the first layer are only imprisoned with junior hunters. That Old Jin is a junior hunter who was imprisoned for a crime."
Dudian bent down and picked up the chisel at the bottom of the lake. This was originally a tool for chiseling the sharp teeth of demonic beasts, and he had swallowed it and brought it out. As a result, the progress of digging the pit was greatly accelerated.
Every time he thought that inside the wall next to this deep pit lived senior hunters like Glary, he felt a bit lucky. Fortunately, his hunter title in the consortium was only junior. If he had been a middle-level hunter, he would have been imprisoned on the second-to-last layer. Although the distance for chiseling the wall would be shorter, the punishments that middle-level hunters received were completely different from those of the people on the first layer.
Dudian heard from Black Scar that on the first layer, they were only pierced with steel nails to disable their arms. The torture suffered on the other two layers was ten times more terrifying than this. Even senior hunters would become completely useless people when they came here!
In the narrow passage, Dudian bent down in a difficult position and reached his hand into the water to chisel the soil.
Before he had chiseled to the bottom of the prison, Dudian had poured water into this deep pit. First, he hoped that the water could soak and soften the soil and rocks. Second, chiseling the wall in the water would greatly reduce the sound and avoid being heard.
Now that the lake water had seeped in, he didn't need to pour water himself. After all, using too much water would inevitably arouse suspicion.
After a while, Dudian chiseled against a hard object along the pipeline. Suddenly, he was overjoyed and immediately accelerated his speed.
Soon, the hard object revealed its appearance. It was a horizontal oval metal. Although only a small part of it was exposed, judging from the oval shape, if this was a pipeline, the diameter was extremely large and could completely accommodate a person.
However, when Dudian saw this oval metal, he wasn't excited but was instead stunned.
He suddenly thought of something he had overlooked. Reinforced concrete hadn't been invented yet. Although the main feces drainage pipeline of this entire prison was buried at the bottom of the lake, due to the extremely strong water pressure it had to withstand, its defensive power was also extremely terrifying.
How could he break through it?
Dudian was silent for a moment and also dug away the soil next to this small piece of oval metal, revealing about half a meter of the oval metal. The curvature was still small, indicating that the diameter of the pipeline itself was so large that he could even stand upright and walk inside it.
He picked up a stone and gently tapped it on the metal pipeline.
After tapping a few times, he immediately pressed his ear to listen.
After hearing the response inside, the last trace of hope on his face faded. As he had guessed, there should be some filling material inside this metal pipeline to regulate the water pressure. Under the filling material, there should be another metal pipeline, and that metal pipeline was the real feces pipeline.
Dudian picked up a relatively hard stone and smashed it down forcefully in the water.
With a bang, the stone hit the metal pipeline, and the echo was extremely faint, as if hitting a steel wall.
Dudian smashed it several times in a row. The stone shattered, but the metal pipeline remained intact without even the slightest small dent.
Dudian angrily punched the metal pipeline. The force of the rebound made his shoulder ache. After a long time, he gradually calmed down. He picked up the chisel and continued to chisel along the side of the pipeline.
"The soil at the bottom of the lake is relatively soft, and the speed of chiseling will be very fast. Moreover, after leaving the prison, there's no need to worry about the impact of the sound. If I dig with all my might, I should be able to dig outside the lake before the death penalty is carried out at the end of the five-year term." Dudian calculated in his heart and continued to dig with all his strength.
Half a month passed.
Dudian considered that there might be prison guards guarding the cesspool at the end of the pipeline. Although this possibility was extremely low, he still chose to dig in the opposite direction. In just half a month, at a depth of four or five meters in the bottom sediment of the lake, Dudian had already chiseled out a horizontal passage three meters long.
He vaguely remembered the scene he had seen in the passageway when he first entered the prison. The prison was in the center of the lake, and the radius of the lake was about 300 meters. Now, his progress was about one meter per day. In just one year, he could chisel out a passage that reached the edge of the lake directly!
The only thing he was worried about was that the sediment at the bottom of the lake would collapse and crush the passage. Fortunately, the feces pipeline could be used as a marker. He was digging a pit four or five meters below the feces pipeline, and the surrounding soil was relatively dry and hard, so the probability of being crushed by the sediment was extremely low.
Moreover, when he was digging the passage, he would place some hard stones inside the passage as beams. Although it was troublesome to get in and out each time, it could add some safety to the passage.
Although digging a passage was the most common way to escape from prison, and most people in the prison could think of this, almost no one could actually do it.
Even the senior hunters at the bottom of the prison couldn't do it. They were closely monitored in turns and had their bodies severely tortured. They were even weaker than Dudian. After all, their titles also brought them enough torture and precautions, and they simply had no chance to take action.
And even if they got the chance, they didn't have the tools. Furthermore, even if they were able to steal tools like Dudian, it would be difficult for them to chisel out a passage hundreds of meters long. After all, dark vision was one of Dudian's demonic mark abilities. Without the ability to see in the dark, it was almost impossible to chisel out a parallel passage with one's eyes closed.
The courage, intelligence, opportunity to obtain tools, and one's own abilities required to escape from prison at the bottom of the lake. Without any one of these, it was difficult to successfully escape from prison.
Bang!
Dudian's short knife stabbed into the rock wall. Suddenly, this section of the rock wall became slippery.