Chapter 151: 151

“Alexander…” Michelle kept staring at the deepest hole she had dug as she spoke. Her voice was quieter than usual, and she dragged it slowly. “You are a Shadow Master too?” she asked, her back turned to Alexander.

Alexander didn’t answer. His smile just widened.

So Michelle continued: “The power affecting the soil is nearly the same as the power coming from the thread…” She lifted up the shovel she had used for the second digging. The thread of Alexander’s power was still tied around its handle.

Staring at Michelle’s back, Alexander’s black eyes gleamed with something sinister. “What do you want to know?” he asked from behind.

Though Alexander was standing behind Michelle, so she couldn’t see his expression and the glint in his eyes, she could perfectly feel the change in the atmosphere. But she didn’t mind it. “Before, you said that your power comes from darkness. So, can you now tell me about Shadow Masters?” she asked placidly, still fiddling with the shovel in her hand, repetitively trying to stab it into the dirt, but to no avail. But she was expecting that, so she was just doing all that subconsciously while thinking.

Alexander watched Michelle silently for a while longer before opening his mouth to explain the basics about Shadow Masters.

Shadow Masters were people who cultivated shadow essence, which was the root element of darkness and shadows. Without shadow essence, not a millimeter of shade would have existed. Shadow essence was even present in the dark element spirit energy which Michelle was cultivating.

And that brought about two ways for someone to become a Shadow Master. One was for a dark element Spirit Master to stay or cultivate in a place rich with shadow essence for a long time, and once enough shadow essence accumulated within them, their dantian would change a bit so it could store and control it.

But most of the time, Spirit Masters wouldn’t notice it, and even if they did notice it, they wouldn’t know how or want to become Shadow Masters, so they would just continue living as Spirit Masters. And when the altered shadow dantian wasn’t used, it would revert to its original state, and the shadow essence within it would seep out of the carrier’s body. Just like that, they would lose the chance to become Shadow Masters.

Also, from then on, no matter how much they cultivated the dark element spirit energy, the shadow essence would always stay out of their body, so they wouldn’t be able to gain the shadow dantian ever again. The shadow essence would evade entering their body no matter the cost, and if it did end up forced into the body of someone like that, it would cause irreparable damage.

Then, there was a second way to become a Shadow Master. A much simpler method. Basically, some people could be born Shadow Masters, with the altered shadow dantian, and instead of sensing for spirit energy, they would sense for shadow essence.

One advantage of being a Shadow Master was that one didn’t need any specific cultivation method once they were a full-fledged Shadow Master. They would be able to cultivate instinctively.

The only troublesome thing was for someone born as a Spirit Master to become a Shadow Master. Because even if they gained the altered shadow dantian, they wouldn’t yet have the cultivation instinct.

And the period until the dantian reverted to normal was too short to gain the instinct.

So the only way for someone like that to be able to cultivate shadow essence was either to get direct guidance from a Shadow Master, or to realize that their dantian has changed and sense the new abilities it had brought to them. That way, they could slowly reach toward the instincts of Shadow Masters until they attained it.

After Alexander finished explaining, Michelle turned to stare at him, her purple eyes piercing into him. “What about the attacks and skills of Shadow Masters?” she asked.

But Alexander had no intention of giving her a detailed explanation on that. So he just smiled and said: “Everything is fully instinctual for Shadow Masters, so even their skills are individual for them.”

“I see…” Michelle nodded a bit. She didn’t expect Alexander to explain everything to her, so she wasn’t surprised by his vague answer. Lowering her head, she stared at the shovel in her hand before moving her gaze toward the deepest hole she had made.

If she could use her soul or spirit energy, she would have imbued the shovel or at least struck at the hole with it, but she couldn’t, so she felt a little helpless.

Still, that didn’t discourage her. She was determined to investigate the damp, one-way soil, and the lake beneath it. She would find out what exactly the unknown Shadow Master did to make the evaporation so intense.

“No more questions for me?” Alexander asked with a smile when he saw that Michelle was no longer paying him any attention.

When Michelle didn’t respond, clearly lost in thought, he walked over, crouched down next to her, and leaned against her again. This time, Michelle fell over. She was so lost in thought that she couldn’t react fast enough and lost her balance, disgracefully falling on her side.

Moving her purple eyes to the side, she stared at Alexander as he got up with a smirk. “What are you thinking about so hard that you didn’t notice me approaching you so closely?” he asked with a laugh.

Quickly getting back on her feet, Michelle wanted to wipe the dust and dirt off herself, but when she touched her clothes, the wetness made her remember that she was in a humid and damp basement. That made it so her clothes were once again soaked through with water, and all the dirt and mold stuck to her.

“I was thinking of a way to permanently get rid of the humidity…” Michelle muttered as she looked around. At all the holes she had dug. The basement no longer looked like a place where she could free twelve thousand souls so they could return to their bodies. Even the humidity was extreme, but with all the holes, the people would really tear her apart once they woke up.

Just imagining that made Michelle snicker a bit. She was helping them. But they had no way of knowing that since their souls were trapped in the Soul Seeking Pendants. So she was sure they would be angry at her, even if she freed them in a perfect environment, not to mention a basement like the one she was in at the moment.

“And how are you planning to do it?” Alexander kept probing with a smile.

“First I need to get rid of the evaporation!” Michelle said decisively as she let go of the shovel in her hand.

“But you don’t have any means to do that,” Alexander said, as if teasing Michelle.

But Michelle wasn’t moved by his teasing. She stared at the ground beneath her feet, and a smile slowly lifted the corners of her lips. “There are always means to do things… Just the knowledge is lacking.” She had a plan, already turning the gears in her brain.

Seeing the smile on Michelle’s face, Alexander felt a bit strange. He didn’t get the chance to see that smile of hers many times. And he knew that it didn’t spell anything good.

Michelle wasn’t the kind of person to just smile for no reason. And neither did she seem like someone who would be happy enough to smile after thinking of a solution for a problem. She seemed more like someone who would smile after thinking up a twisted plan.

After putting the plan together in her mind, Michelle’s smile widened, and she started preparing to execute it. She started taking out some things from her spatial ring and then closed her eyes, sending her consciousness into her spirit domain.

She still remembered that there, she kept the sealing book she found in the cave where Rivenaar was caged. When she had formed a contract with the book after Rivenaar told her to, she had even gained a contract with Nyxaroth, who was sealed within the book and under its control.

As far as Michelle knew, the book was able to seal basically anything, and though evaporation wasn’t a thing, so it couldn’t be sealed, the cause of it could be sealed to stop it. So there were suddenly two things Michelle could seal. One was to seal the power of the Shadow Master in the soil, or to seal the water in the underground lake.

But there was one problem. Michelle had never tried to use the sealing book for anything, so she had no clue about its usage.

Still, since she had a contract with it, she knew she would be able to master it. She just needed time.

Also, even if Michelle knew how to use the sealing book, both the things to seal she thought of had their own dangers.

Whether she decided to seal away the water or the skill, she didn’t know if the sealing book wouldn’t try to pull them into itself, which could lead to Michelle forming a contract with them. But she had no idea what would happen if she ended up in a contract with something that wasn’t supposed to be contractable. At least under normal circumstances.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep