Chapter 166: 166

Walking downstairs, back to the tavern’s ground floor, Michelle hummed a lazy tune in satisfaction. Back in the room, she had made a deal with Serith. They agreed that they would train together so Serith could control a part of Michelle’s soul energy, so in future fights, Michelle could use double the attacks at a time.

In exchange for that, Michelle promised to never harm Serith’s soul until the monster with the rest of the soul came. Also, Michelle promised to think of a way to mend the two parts of Serith together.

Seeing that Michelle seemed fine compared to what she had seen when Michelle suddenly jumped out the window and when the man in black carried her back in, the old tavern lady smiled a bit. “What did you achieve that made you so happy?” she asked.

When Michelle heard the old tavern lady’s voice, her face brightened into a sweet smile. “I sealed an important deal!” she said, skipping over to the counter and sitting down on a tall chair.

She sat between two men, one dressed in full black, and one dressed plainly, with a distinct scar on his face, both robust and of good builds.

She turned to the man in black. “Before I went to sleep, I forgot to ask you. What’s your name?” Her sweet smile disappeared, replaced by her calm face.

The man in black shook his head. “My Lady, my name’s not important,” he said as he glanced at the glass of ale next to him.

“Then how should I call for you when I need you?” Michelle tilted her head in question.

The man in black turned his gaze from the glass of ale to Michelle. “Just call me Noctis.”

Michelle nodded. “Do you usually work at night?”

Noctis’s head shook from side to side. “No. It’s because I was found by my master on the longest night of the year.”

“Your master… You mean Alexander?” Michelle asked with a raised brow. She didn’t wait for a response and stood up.

“Ma’am, I’ll go get the people I want to put in the basement for a while,” Michelle said before walking out.

Noctis had already paid for his ale, so he just silently disappeared and followed Michelle in the shadows.

Outside the tavern, Michelle summoned Cold Flame and got on his back. He then flapped his wings and flew her to the border of Heavenly Law between the Lower Realm and the Land of Exile.

“Michelle, no one would have thought that you are making a White Vermilion Bird your mount!” Cold Flame said sarcastically as he landed in front of her barrier.

Hearing that, Michelle chuckled a bit and jumped onto the ground. Then, she crossed the barrier using the same method as she did when she entered the Lower Realm.

When Michelle crossed the barrier, Cold Flame flew over too, and Michelle climbed onto his back again. Because her way of crossing the barrier was unusual, she had to get off Cold Flame’s back for a moment. The time she needed to cross the barrier was slightly longer, so if she remained on his back, she would have gotten rudely thrown off.

Once Michelle was back on Cold Flame’s back, he flew high into the sky and flew above the jungle trees, toward the Capital City.

Cold Flame flew very fast, so very quickly, they were above the Sloan family’s mansion, and Cold Flame turned straight toward the ground.

Michelle quickly wrapped her arms around Cold Flame’s neck and tightened her thighs around his back so she wouldn’t fall off. That wasn’t the first time Cold Flame had decided to land like that with her on his back.

A moment later, Cold Flame flapped his wings one last time, and the fall instantly stopped.

He landed on the ground and Michelle jumped off, going into the mansion. It was long deserted, with the only remaining residents being the twelve thousand cultivators in the prison-like labyrinth, their souls trapped within the twelve Soul Seeking Pendants Michelle had.

In the mansion, Michelle glanced at her spatial bracelet as she walked through the labyrinth-like hallways until she reached her goal. Putting some soul energy into the bracelet, she walked through the people and they disappeared one by one. She only stopped walking after the people stopped disappearing.

Then, she knelt down and placed her palms on the ground, slowly creating a net of her soul energy all around the people. It was to check their numbers. Approximately three thousand people disappeared. So that meant she would have to go back and forth three more times to get everyone to the tavern’s basement.

So, for the next few days, Michelle kept flying on Cold Flame’s back between the tavern and the Sloan family’s mansion.

When all the twelve thousand people were in the basement, Michelle took out the Soul Seeking Pendants and divided them into two groups, based on the pattern they had—the sharp and dull tildes (“///” or “~~~”).

Taking up a pendant with sharp tildes, Michelle inserted her soul energy into it, and, just like when she was testing it for the first time in the Archduchy’s annex, it went in completely smoothly, without any resistance.

So she put the pendant back down and turned her attention to the dull tildes. One by one, she started inserting her soul energy into them and dividing them into two groups: one into which it was hard to insert her soul energy, and the other which had some resistance, but it wasn’t difficult to do.

After a while, Michelle had three groups spread out in front of her: a group of six pendants with sharp tildes, and two groups of three pendants with dull tildes. Was it because of probability or was it on purpose?

Michelle remembered what Cold Flame had once told her—that one of his ancestors had succeeded in saving half of the souls trapped in Soul Seeking Pendants. And from the rest, some got scattered and some turned into vengeful ghosts.

“This is getting risky…” Michelle muttered as she picked up a pendant with sharp tildes. There was a high probability that if she broke it, she would have to take care of a thousand angry cultivators who would demand an explanation. But there was also the possibility that things would go differently.

Though it was a small risk, it was there. Michelle wasn’t sure if she wanted to take it. Because, breaking a single wrong pendant meant killing a thousand people. No matter how cold-blooded Michelle was as a former assassin, she couldn’t do something like that. That would be like discarding her whole humanity.

But then, glancing at the twelve thousand soulless bodies in front of her, Michelle frowned a bit.

If she broke the pendants, she would save six thousand. If she didn’t, the bodies would slowly succumb to the wheels of time and die. And their souls would still remain within the pendants—trapped, without any freedom. That seemed like a fate worse than death.

“What to do now?” Michelle mumbled as she stood up, leaving the pendants lying on the ground.

Nyxaroth, who was watching from within Michelle’s body, suddenly came out, took on his human body, and turned to look at Michelle. “What’s the situation?” he asked calmly.

Michelle had no clue why he was asking her something like that when he didn’t seem the least bit interested. But she explained her findings to him nonetheless.

And then, Nyxaroth did something shocking.

“Nyx?!” Before Michelle could react, Nyxaroth had taken hold of a pendant with sharp tildes and shattered it in his hands.

“Why did you do that?” Michelle exclaimed in shock as she looked at the shards of the pendant. From them, small streaks of light left and flew toward the bodies. Each light entered a body, and the body then fell to the ground.

Michelle quickly ran around them to check them, and only sighed in relief when she confirmed that they were asleep. A thousand of the twelve thousand were asleep, all curled up into balls. It looked quite funny.

After confirming that everyone was fine, Michelle turned to stare at Nyxaroth. But he didn’t even give her the chance to question anything. He just turned into a wisp of black mist and went back into her body.

“Nyx, why did you do that?” Michelle still asked.

“You would have never been able to decide!” Nyxaroth’s raspy voice came out of Michelle’s body. “And if you did decide, it would have been to break the pendant. Then, if the souls ended up scattering or turning into vengeful ghosts, you would have ended up blaming yourself.”

“So you decided to do it for me?” Michelle raised a brow.

“Master, though with a dark past, I doubt you have even killed a hundred people, not to mention a thousand. But with my history, thousands are nothing compared to the number I’ve killed. It can’t even be considered the tip of the iceberg.”

Hearing that, Michelle smiled a bit. “Are you trying to reassure me right now?” she asked with a chuckle. She had never expected something like that from Nyxaroth. He had entered into a contract with her unwillingly, and she was satisfied that he never went against her and fulfilled her orders. She didn’t hope he would be proactive enough to help her with something like that.

She had to admit that their relationship had grown quite deep since she had first met him, but she didn’t think it was so deep. It seemed that though Nyxaroth portrayed himself as an ancient disaster, he had a soft heart.

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