Chapter 137: 137

Sitting on the damp ground in the basement, Michelle stared at the ice pillar for a long while. She was wondering how fast the humidity would return if she pulled back the ice element spirit energy she had sent into the pillar. And since all her ice element spirit energy was spent, she decided to test it.

Standing up, she walked over to the pillar and placed her hands on it. Then, she started drawing the spirit energy back into her body through her palms. She controlled the spirit energy within the ice pillar and let it melt down. But the ice that had formed on the pillar stayed in place, still leaving a big, tall ice tube behind.

After recovering most of her spirit energy, Michelle smiled a bit and sat back down.

“What are you planning now?” Alexander Terce asked, his voice lazy and playful.

He was standing just a few steps behind Michelle, his presence nearly unnoticeable. If he hadn’t spoken, Michelle would have forgotten about him. That just showed how scary his powers were. For him to be able to disappear from her thoughts meant he was not only able to conceal his presence to an extreme, but also affect the subconsciousness of others to some extent.

“You are like a ghost…” Michelle muttered as she let her back fall onto the ground behind her, not caring that the muddy water was soaking into her clothes. She was already soaked through from the former humidity, so she still had to change. Some mud and dirt could be overlooked. “I want to observe this place for a while,” Michelle finally said as she moved her purple eyes to look at Alexander through the darkness.

With her dark element, she had no trouble seeing him, but she was wondering about his powers. Their eyes clearly met, and he was staring straight at her. From the start, he hadn’t shown any signs of having trouble seeing in the dark. “Does your power—your energy—have something to do with darkness?” she asked, a slight frown forming between her brows.

“I already told you a frown doesn’t suit you…” Alexander spoke with clear amusement in his voice as he walked over to Michelle and squatted down next to her, pressing his long index finger between her brows to forcefully smooth out the frown. “And yes, my energy does come from something dark. But I won’t tell you the specifics.” He chuckled as he spoke.

Michelle sighed. With Alexander’s finger pressed between her brows, she couldn’t even frown. She could only stare at his handsome face blankly. It looked so devilish in the darkness. His dark blue hair looked black and blended in with the shadows, and his jet-black eyes looked even darker and gloomier. But the amusement dancing within them was like a dangerous flame that shed no light.

Slowly sitting up, she slapped away Alexander’s hand. She wanted to stand up, feeling bored on the ground, but her knees buckled when she shifted her weight. Then something flashed in front of her eyes, and her head started to hurt.

Alexander instantly noticed something was wrong, but before he could react, Michelle’s eyes had already glazed over with ice, and her body went stiff. Her muscles turned so rigid that when Alexander tried to move her, he ended up just lifting her up, so he set her back down.

Losing control of her body, Michelle saw numerous illusions flashing in front of her, but she couldn’t get a proper look at any of them. All she could see was that in all of them was the same person—a young girl in her teens, wearing a scarlet mask over her eyes, her silver hair covered by a scarlet hood. She was dressed in full red: jeans and a shirt. Even the dagger in her gloved hands was red. Naturally, the gloves were red too.

The silver-haired girl in red moved like a blur in the illusions, so Michelle couldn’t catch her. But there was something familiar about her that Michelle couldn’t understand.

Suddenly, the illusions stopped appearing, and only one remained. Michelle found herself standing atop an ice platform, staring at the teenage girl from above. The girl was rushing through the slums of a city in broad daylight, her silver hair and red clothes drawing attention.

And someone was after her.

The girl took a turn but was stopped by a few men, clearly living in the slums. They were all dirty, roughed up from being members of a slum gang.

The teenage girl’s always-relaxed brows creased into a frown as she gripped the red knife under her wide red cloak. Her enemies were after her, so she couldn’t afford to be stopped by the slum guys. She could only get past them with force.

Soon enough, her enemies arrived, but they only saw a few corpses lying on the ground. From the scattered limbs, it was impossible to tell how many people had been killed, but six heads were rolling on the ground.

Standing above the scene, Michelle finally remembered a fragment of forgotten memories. The girl in red clothes was none other than herself on her first mission to kill. Her enemies had ended up catching up to her and hitting her head. She had managed to kill them all, but after that, she collapsed, and members of the assassination organization came to get her. She had suffered a concussion and forgotten the incident.

But Michelle couldn’t understand why she was remembering the situation at that moment. She wanted to think about it more, but she was brought back to the real world, the ice over her eyes disappearing.

Blinking a bit, she lifted her hands to rub her eyes, only to realize her muscles were sore and stiff from being overexerted. She quickly guessed that while she had been in the illusion, her muscles must have remained tense.

“Are you awake?” Alexander’s playful voice fully brought Michelle back, and she turned her head to the side to look at him. She didn’t know why, but as she sat on the ground, her back was against his legs as he leaned on the wall behind him. “What did you see?” Alexander asked with a teasing smile when he saw the slight confusion in Michelle’s eyes.

“Just a forgotten memory…” Michelle said as she tried to stand up. But once again, her knees buckled and she landed back on her butt.

“From your past life?” Alexander asked, raising a brow.

“From my past life…” Michelle confirmed with a slight nod as she tried to stand up again. Only to fail. Again and again.

“Don’t try too hard… Your muscles are quite traumatized…” Alexander bent down slightly to place his hand on Michelle’s shoulder.

He didn’t even have to exert much strength, and Michelle felt like a mountain was pressing her down, making her unable to move.

“Alexander…” She didn’t want to ask, but decided to: “You’re more knowledgeable than me. Do you know why the memory was shown to me now? Was it stimulated by something?”

“Most probably…” Alexander moved his hand from Michelle’s shoulder to her arm and pulled her up, easily forcing her to her feet.

Michelle quickly put her hand on the wall next to Alexander to stabilize herself, but even the muscles in her hands were barely responding, so the moment Alexander let go, she nearly fell again. But Alexander caught her by her arms—somewhat roughly—and kept her on her feet.

“Your memories were either brought back because you’re about to break through, which can solidify your soul a bit. But for your soul to solidify, it needs to be complete first. And without parts of your memories, it can never be complete,” Alexander explained, his voice still playful and his expression teasing. It was like he wasn’t the least bit concerned about what had just happened. “Or your soul reacted to an outside element, maybe even with delay, which brought back your memories.”

“And what could have been such an outside element?” Michelle asked with a slight frown.

“Basically anything…” Alexander shrugged. “It could have been my power, or it could have been the low humidity you caused. Or it could have been a delayed reaction to the high humidity. Even the change in humidity. Also, you could have been affected by the presence of the underground lake.”

Getting such an answer, Michelle frowned again. It was basically the same as getting none, as it was completely useless to her. She couldn’t use it in any meaningful way. All it let her know was that the memory illusion could have been caused by anything—not even narrowing down the spectrum of possibilities.

“Is there a way to find out what caused it?” Michelle asked as she looked at Alexander. Her strength was slowly returning to her muscles, and she no longer had to lean on him as much.

“Of course…” Alexander’s smile widened suspiciously. “Just test out all methods and wait until you have a reaction to something.”

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