Chapter 116: 116

After constantly sparring and fighting monsters in the jungle for over five months, Michelle, Anastasia, and Ivona returned to the Archduchy. They were guessing that Kieran was about to reach the threshold of Spirit rank. Once he did so, they were planning to take care of the Ostrich family before leaving the Land of Exile.

They told their plans to the Archduke, and he originally wanted to tag along with them, but he understood that to grow, they couldn’t have someone like him by their side, so he said that after they went to the lower realm, he would, too, leave, but he would head straight to the upper realm where he would wait for them.

A few days later, Kieran emerged from his room, unable to cultivate any further. He went to talk to Michelle, Ivona, and Anastasia about their future plans with the Ostrich family, and they decided to act at midnight the next day. But for that, they needed to start preparing straight away.

And since the Ostrich family was scattered around quite a lot in their territory, which was just behind the Capital City, they split into two groups. Kieran and Anastasia went to the East, while Ivona and Michelle went up North.

Also, Michelle left Snow with Kieran and Anastasia so he could contact her if something happened. She didn’t choose her for a specific reason, but she had reasons why she didn’t send Nyxaroth or Cold Flame, so she just randomly chose between Snow and Mare.

She didn’t send Nyxaroth because he resided within her body, so he could better notice any anomalies, both within her body and in the happenings around her, since he was an ancient being. Cold Flame was a no-go because he was the fastest of her beasts, so if something happened with Kieran and Anastasia, he could get Michelle and Ivona to them within a short span of time. That left only Mare and Snow, so Michelle let them decide on their own.

From the Archduchy, Kieran and Anastasia, with Nyxaroth, left first to the South, and when Snow contacted Michelle that they were at the furthermost corner of the territory, Michelle and Ivona set off, too, going North.

There, they split again, and Michelle left Mare with Ivona. The northern part of the Ostrich territory had a denser population since it wasn’t homogeneous, and the North was closer to the Capital City, so the girls had to split up, unlike Kieran and Anastasia, who could stay together to achieve their goal.

The whole morning and noon, the four ran around the Ostrich territory and left messages for the cultivators of the Ostrich family to gather in the main house by evening to discuss something important.

They could easily discern the cultivators, as in the whole Land of Exile, no one had reached the threshold of Spirit rank in the last few hundred years, but the Ostrich family had numerous cultivators like that since they were from outside the Land of Exile. And Michelle and the rest needed all these people to be in the Ostrich mansion all at once to carry out their plan.

Once the sun reached its highest point, Michelle sent a message to Mare and Snow to notify the others that they should gather at the central mansion of the Ostrich family. They would start the preparations needed there.

All of them being cultivators, they reached the central mansion within an hour when they weren’t in a hurry, long before the first cultivators returned after being falsely alarmed by Michelle and the rest.

“Will we start the second part now?” Snow asked excitedly. The whole day, she was just tagging behind Kieran and Anastasia, so she was bored. But as far as she knew, Michelle had some work for her and the rest of the beasts to do until evening. She was hoping it was something exciting and thrilling.

Michelle summoned all her beasts from the contract space and quickly explained to them the plan she, Kieran, Anastasia, and Ivona came up with. Hearing it, Snow’s excitement skyrocketed, Mare raised a brow, Cold Flame flapped his wings, ready to carry out his part of the plan, and even Nyxaroth was intrigued. Everyone liked the plan, because every single one of Michelle’s beasts liked destruction.

Deep in the night, the Ostrich mansion was buzzing with life and anxiety. No one knew who the message to gather was from, but it carried the aura of the family’s elders in the Land of Exile. But they all denied sending out such a message. So it meant that either a new elder was about to come down from one of the realms, or they were up against an enemy who could perfectly replicate the aura of their elders and even mass-produce it to create enough messages to gather everyone in the mansion.

But who would do that? Did someone in the Land of Exile exist who would want all their enemies gathered in one place, when all of them were suppressed to the threshold of Spirit rank, and the one who sent the message was most probably suppressed too? Or was he from the heavenly realm and thus not as suppressed?

If that was the case, why would someone from the heavenly realm be targeting them? They weren’t aware of ever angering someone from the heavenly realm.

Still, all those who were in the Land of Exile were just low rankers back in the higher realms, so they had no way of knowing if the Ostrich family in the upper realms didn’t have connections in the heavenly realm. Or if they didn’t anger anyone there. Most of them didn’t even know about the existence of the heavenly realm since they were mostly from the lower realm, and since the heavenly realm never really meddled in the affairs of the realms beneath it, the lower realm was mostly clueless about its existence. Only the powerhouses knew that above the middle and upper realm was something more.

What no one from the present cultivators knew was that the Ostrich family had no connection to the heavenly realm, and they didn’t even anger anyone from there. They just ended up being unlucky enough to be after the Soul Seeking Pendants, which Michelle got from the Sloan family, so she was going to get rid of them. They clearly had no good intentions with the pendants, and she was even guessing that the higher-ups of the family knew the real use of the pendants, but were withholding the information from those in the Land of Exile so they wouldn’t use the pendants to rebel.

Waiting for the moon to reach the highest point, Michelle, Ivona, Anastasia, and Kieran observed from the shadows, concealed by Nyxaroth, how the cultivators and elders started slowly panicking in the mansion. Some were already thinking about leaving, but the highest elder was dead set on everyone staying together, as that would make it harder for the enemy to harm them if someone was really after them. A logical move, but he didn’t know who he was up against.

After giving everyone a disguise mask, Michelle put on her own, changing her appearance to look like a plain girl dressed in haggard and dirty clothes, her face dirty and her hands scarred.

Then, she contacted her beasts and told them to proceed as she and the others went into one of the streets, prepared to put on a show. Nyxaroth left them and went to join Snow and the rest.

Soon, the people in the Ostrich family heard a ruckus outside, and when a guard went to check, he saw a huge fox, snake, and bird rushing after a group of young people, begging to be let into the mansion. “Save us! Let us in!” the four unfortunate souls grabbed him by his clothes, begging and crying.

The guard wanted to let them in, but then a black mist appeared around the four and completely hid them from his gaze. For a while, some shouting and crying could be heard, but slowly, it got muffled before the sound completely disappeared alongside the mist, leaving behind just a pile of black ash which was blown apart by the wind.

Unlike usual, the wind didn’t blow alongside the walls of the Ostrich mansion but into the gate and the garden, bringing the ashes in.

Through the wide-open gates, the guard wasn’t the only one who saw the black mist kill the four unfortunate souls, and all who saw it instantly panicked. What was it that could instantly kill a small group of cultivators, not even leaving their bones behind? If that was their enemy, they doubted they could survive. The mist just came and went, without any sound.

But before they could even calm down from what they saw, they realized that the three huge beasts were still rushing towards the mansion, their eyes widening in terror. Were they up against a beast tamer? And were the four who died at their doorstep a warning for them? But what did they do wrong? Everyone was horrified, not even noticing that four shadows had sneaked into the mansion, enveloped by black mist, so they could blend into the shadows.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep