Chapter 163: 163

In a plain courtyard with trees unusual for the place—poplar trees—a delicate young man, an adolescent boy, was sitting on a stone stool, his hands placed on the table in front of him as he stared at them.

The boy looked around fourteen or fifteen and had long silver hair flowing down his back and deep purple eyes, with a gaze that didn’t suit his age.

Behind the boy stood a man clad in full black, not a millimeter of his skin showing. Even his whole face was covered by a black mask.

The mask was made of hardened cloth and clung to his skin perfectly, so his expression could be partially seen. He was frowning while staring at the boy in front of him.

From the silence between the two, no one could guess their relationship or what had just transpired in the courtyard. A passerby could only see that the situation was dire.

Only if they saw the interaction that had just happened between the two could one know what their relationship was and what was going on.

When learning that Michelle’s soul energy was moving meaningfully within her without her controlling it, the man in black stayed silent for a long while before explaining to her what was going on.

“My Lady, I can’t be sure now, but I’m nearly certain that a foreign soul is hiding within your body,” the man said, his voice dire and serious.

Though he had already seen quite a lot of Michelle since the moment he entered Alexander’s shadow after Alexander and Michelle came to the city, he still couldn’t guess how Michelle would react to such information, so he was cautious, keeping some distance in case Michelle got into a fit of rage.

But Michelle remained calm.

At least on the outside. The only visible change in her was that she clenched her fists and that her face tightened a bit. Barely noticeably.

But her mind was thrown into a rude turmoil which she didn’t like. All trails of her thoughts started parallelly, considering how that would affect her, how a soul could have gotten into her body, what kind of soul it was, what it was doing in her body, whether it was dangerous to leave in her body, or if she had to get rid of it, and if so, how.

“Can you confirm if there really is a soul?” Michelle asked, keeping her voice calm. But if one knew her well enough, they would notice a tingle of coldness in her void and something swirling deep in her eyes. Both things showed that she was forcefully keeping her raging emotions down so she could think rationally.

But there was probably no one who knew her that well. Maybe someone would notice the coldness in her voice or the swirling in her eyes, but they wouldn’t be able to tell what it meant.

The man in black nodded a bit and summoned his energy. Just like when Alexander used his power, it was a small black thread, wriggling around his fingers. “Excuse me for a moment…” The man approached Michelle as more and more black threads appeared around his hands.

Michelle glanced at the black threads and raised a brow. Unlike when she saw Alexander use his power, she didn’t feel any danger from the threads. Though the man was clearly strong, the threads carried no power.

Very soon, something shocking happened. The man in black placed his hands over the top of Michelle’s head, and the black threads started slowly wiggling towards Michelle’s head.

“This will hurt a bit,” the man said.

Shortly after, Michelle felt stinging pain in her head as the threads stabbed into her skin and started digging into her skull.

A frown formed on Michelle’s face, her eyes shutting tightly, and she gritted her teeth. It felt like the thin threads were trying to pry her skull open and get into her brain.

But just after digging a few millimeters into the bones, the pressure from the threads disappeared. Only for a moment.

Right after, Michelle felt the same pressure within her soul, which made her feel even worse, forcing a hiss out of her mouth. The threads were probing the borders of her soul to see if there wasn’t a second soul.

Feeling like her soul was being peeled and stabbed at the same time, Michelle tried her best to control herself so she wouldn’t attack the man in black.

But after a while, she didn’t need to try. As the threads spread further around her soul, she felt her consciousness starting to slip partly, and she couldn’t move. Her body just weakly slumped on the stone table in front of her.

Seeing what was going on, the man in black wasn’t surprised, but that didn’t mean he was happy. The method he was using on Michelle was usually used on prisoners for torture because the way it probed one’s soul was way too cruel.

But for torture, it was also enhanced by a skill or poison which prevented the victim from fainting. The man in black didn’t use that on Michelle and let her faint so she wouldn’t have to bear the pain.

What he didn’t know was that with the density of her soul, which made her have completely black soul energy, Michelle’s brain was fully awake and it was just unable to send signals and orders to the rest of her body. But the receiving and processing parts were perfectly functioning. So she felt the pain the whole time.

Since the man in black thought that Michelle was unconscious and couldn’t feel anything, he sped up the movement of the threads, and within a few minutes, a huge black net was wrapped around Michelle’s soul, keeping it in place and moving over it to sense if another soul wasn’t stuck to it.

When the man confirmed that wasn’t the case, he, leaving the net as it was, added more threads into the soul space and started moving them all around it, searching for another soul.

Though Michelle’s soul was huge and dense, barely able to fit into her body, the soul space had some spare space, as that would always be present. It was like that with all shells which could store souls. No matter how big the soul was, it would always be forcibly shrunk a bit smaller than necessary so some spare space would remain.

And that was what gave the opportunity to parasitic and wandering souls. They could quite easily enter the spare soul space without the original soul noticing and hide there for as long as they liked. Only if they wanted to, or if an outside factor came, would they be noticed by the master.

Luckily for the original souls, the foreign souls—even if parasites—couldn’t directly harm the original soul.

With her brain and consciousness clear, Michelle felt like cussing and screaming. The thin black threads didn’t look the least bit dangerous when she saw them, but the pain they were able to cause her proved completely different. She felt like her soul was about to be ground into dust or minced like meat.

But she had no way to do anything about the pain, just suffer through it, so as the suffering continued, she just cursed in her mind, waiting for the man in black to finish his work.

Unaware of Michelle’s suffering, the man in black controlled the threads to completely fill up the spare space around Michelle’s soul until he found something. Something that was completely out of place and had a similar surface to Michelle’s soul.

Quickly wrapping the black threads around it, the man felt the small thing twitch under the net he created around it.

Having achieved his goal—confirming whether another soul was residing within Michelle’s body—the man in black quickly retracted the threads and looked at Michelle, her body slumped against the stone table. He noticed that the moment the threads left her soul, her whole body went pale.

Seeing that, his eyes widened, a terrible thought surfacing in his mind. As far as he knew, there was no one who was able to stay conscious under the pain of having their soul probed. But it seemed that Michelle was able to do it.

“My Lady?” the man shook Michelle worriedly. He couldn’t imagine what Alexander would do to him if he found out that he had not only failed to protect the girl but also directly harmed her. Death would be too light of a punishment—if not salvation.

At first, Michelle showed no response, but then, her eyes snapped open and she instantly sat up straight. Except the paleness of her whole body, she looked normal. At least at first glance.

But if someone looked closer, they would notice that her pupils were suspiciously narrow and she was biting the inner wall of her mouth. Her face was calm, but the man in black could tell that her thoughts were in disorder. She was far off from the right state of mind.

“My Lady, let me take you to rest!” Without waiting for a response, the man summoned his power, which lifted Michelle off the stone chair and into the air. The man didn’t dare touch her directly, so he just carried her using his power into one of the rooms on the top floor of the tavern and laid her on a bed.

Finally, Michelle’s eyes moved and she looked at the man. She still felt disoriented, but the pain was already gone. All that was left behind was just the memory of it. The moment the man had retracted the threads, the pain disappeared like it never existed. Like it was nothing but a dream. A figment of imagination.

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