Chapter 167: 167

After some time, Michelle stared at the cultivators in front of her. From the twelve thousand, a thousand were already curled up on the ground, sleeping. The rest had their souls still trapped. And, except for the five thousand who had their souls in the same pendants as the pendant Nyxaroth broke, Michelle knew of no way to free them safely.

She glanced at the pendants spread out on the ground and sighed. She couldn’t find anything useful in Rivenaar’s memories, and both Cold Flame and Nyxaroth had already told her what they knew.

“Noctis, do you know something about Soul Seeking Pendants?” Michelle suddenly asked into the darkness.

And the answer was just as she had expected. “No, My Lady. Soul Seeking Pendants are only used here in the lower realm, so I don’t know anything special about them. Just the basic information that you already know.”

Hearing that, Michelle frowned. She didn’t like the situation. She didn’t have any information other than the fact that there was some difference between the resistance the pendants put up when she inserted her soul energy into them.

Michelle wanted to think about it for a while longer, but she heard a slight groan from the crowd in front of her. She quickly put away the pendants in front of her and retreated to the staircase.

One after another, some groaning, some silent, the thousand cultivators started waking up, all confused and groggy. Their muscles were stiff and sore after not being used for a long time.

They looked around, and seeing the stiff, lifeless bodies standing still around them, they got scared, not daring to move an inch.

Michelle was waiting just for that, but she still gave it a few short moments before appearing. Since she couldn’t use spirit energy at the moment, she summoned Cold Flame, and he, in the shape of an eagle-sized bird, nestled on Michelle’s shoulder, bringing forth his blue flame. Like that, the two descended the stairs.

The thousand cultivators all shrunk their necks back in fear when they saw Michelle. She was so beautiful, but the presence she carried was horrifying. Though they couldn’t feel any spirit energy from her, that presence was enough to make them cautious.

And the bird on her shoulder exuded danger and dominance.

That all, coupled with the white-blue flame dancing around, made the atmosphere even more threatening.

As Michelle walked down the stairs, she remained silent, her face coldly calm. With her like that, the cultivators didn’t even dare breathe too loud.

After descending the stairs, Michelle put on a bright smile. It was her signature smile from when she was still the Mute Bloody Queen. She had it on whenever she went on a killing spree. But at the moment, she made an exception. She put the smile on even though she wasn’t going to kill anyone.

Usually, whenever someone saw that smile for the first time, they would be stunned speechless, but with Cold Flame on her arm and the blue fire around her, even with the smile, the atmosphere was dangerous and suffocating.

“Who are you?” a braver person, a young man, spoke up.

Michelle glanced at him and motioned to the staircase behind him. “You are free to leave,” she said lazily.

Those words made the cultivators glance at the staircase. They didn’t believe the situation was that simple. “How did we get here?” the young man kept asking, though he wasn’t really expecting an answer.

With her bright smile still on, Michelle reached into her sleeve and took out a single Soul Seeking Pendant. In front of the eyes of the thousand conscious people, she shattered it with her bare hands.

In an instant, a thousand small lights flew out of the shards and flew to a thousand bodies. The bodies then fell to the ground. Their souls returned, and the bodies fell asleep, curling up.

When the cultivators saw that, they were shocked. But before they could react, Michelle spoke up: “You were in the same state a few hours ago. Your souls were trapped in a pendant, and after I shattered it, your bodies fell asleep for some time. Now that you are awake, you are free to leave.”

The cultivators received another blow. “Why were our souls trapped in a pendant?” a woman spoke up.

Michelle tilted her head and shrugged with a smile. “I don’t know. I just know you were trapped there by a group of people I hate!” She wasn’t planning on telling them that the Sloan family wanted to use them as sacrifices.

Seeing Michelle’s nonchalance, the cultivators were nearly convinced that she was telling the truth. After some more questions, one by one, they started leaving.

It was night outside, but the tavern was still bustling with life. Luckily, before bringing the last batch of people into the tavern, Michelle had told the old tavern lady about it, so she took all the guests to one of the upper floors. It was an unusual floor, basically just a big hall, so after bringing some tables and chairs there, it could be used just like the ground floor before.

So the leaving of the cultivators wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of the city guards, Michelle made sure they left in small groups with some time difference between them. Because of that, the last group ended up leaving at dawn. And just then, the second thousand cultivators started waking up.

So Michelle did the same with them as with the first group.

Then woke up the third group, fourth group, and fifth group. It took a day and a half for them all to leave.

And all the time, Michelle had to think about how to take care of the sixth group. She didn’t have another pendant she could break.

Though there were still another six thousand soulless bodies, she couldn’t break their pendants, as that would turn the souls into vengeful ghosts or scatter them into dark element spirit energy.

Finally, Michelle decided to start the same way.

Just like all the other times, she nonchalantly came down the staircase with Cold Flame on her shoulder, blue fire dancing in a circle around her. “Since you are awake, you can leave now!” she said, without the smile. Only the start was the same; the rest, she would improvise.

Soon after, questions arose from the crowd, but she didn’t answer a single one. And her cold facade made it so no one dared to complain. Her appearance added to her mass of cruel coldness.

Under the blue light of Cold Flame’s fire, her silver hair looked biting cold, and her purple eyes shimmered dangerously, like they were filled with poison. The always-white skin had a blue hue to it, adding to the eerie atmosphere.

When the cultivators gave up on asking questions, Michelle spoke up again. “What I’ll tell you next, you don’t have to believe me,” she said coldly.

Then, she started explaining: “Your souls were trapped in Soul Seeking Pendants by someone I hate. After defeating them, I took the pendants and shattered them. You are now free to leave. But if you want to leave, leave in small groups, so you don’t attract too much attention to this place. I still have more souls to free.”

Naturally, not everyone believed it. Some questioned who it was that trapped their souls in the pendants. Some questioned why she didn’t free the rest of the souls yet. But in the end, all decided to leave, and Michelle was alone with the soulless bodies in the basement again.

Just as she let Cold Flame return to the contract space, Noctis appeared behind her. “My Lady, why did you still make them leave in small groups when the guards have long been around the tavern?” he asked. In his eyes, it seemed pointless.

Michelle glanced at Noctis as she went back to the tavern’s ground floor. “That might be true, but if I sent them out all at once, they would have awoken the city residents. That would cause chaos. From the start, I was expecting the knights to notice it. I just didn’t know when.”

“They were there from the start,” Noctis said.

That made Michelle raise a brow. “From the start?” She refused to believe that she would attract them from the start. That meant they must have been in front of the tavern even before she let the people out.

So they either had to be targeting someone from the tavern, or they had already realized that she was in the tavern. In the end, she did attract quite a lot of attention from the guards when she entered the city through the city gates and bypassed the guards.

The second guess was spot on. The guards had been hiding in the houses around the tavern for a few days already, waiting for the suspicious girl with silver hair and purple eyes to step out so they could apprehend her.

But what Michelle hadn’t guessed was that in one of the houses, the city lord was temporarily staying, waiting for Michelle to be brought in front of him. The guards didn’t have a clue what he wanted from her, but since he asked for it, no one dared to oppose. The city lord’s power was absolute in the city.

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