Chapter 169: 169

A middle-aged man was staring at a young boy with a face full of bruises, yet still a smile on that face. Coupled with his purple eyes and silver hair, it made for a creepy image. The boy said he was sixteen, but he looked younger, which caused even more goosebumps to rise on the man’s skin.

“Boy, there are some things you shouldn’t ask about!” the man finally spoke.

But Michelle wouldn’t let a sentence like that stop her. “And you, old man, should broaden your horizons!” she said with a grin, not reacting even when the smile made the bruises on her face hurt more.

She had gone through much worse in both her past and current life, so a few bruises didn’t affect her. Much. Of course, she felt ticked off by the pain, which only drew the smile on her face wider. The angrier she was, the brighter the smile she showed.

A twisted habit she had developed as a hospital doctor.

Back then, she couldn’t curse out her patients no matter how stupid, annoying, or rude they were, so she just learned to smile brightly while remaining steady, not taking a step back when it came to her business or values.

The middle-aged man felt insulted by Michelle’s smile—and even more so by her comment. He knew that outside the city, he wouldn’t be anyone special, but in the city, he was the city lord. He held absolute power within the city walls, and no one dared to disrespect him.

But a young brat from who knows where was telling him to broaden his horizons?

Still, the city lord wasn’t a rash person. He could always beat up the brat after finding out about the girl he was looking for. He had to find her, and the boy was the only clue he had. For some reason, the city lord had a feeling that she was no longer in the tavern.

“Boy, how about we make a deal?” the city lord put on a fake smile, swallowing the insult he felt.

Suddenly, two people with smiles lacking a speck of sincerity were standing against each other. But there was one big difference between the two smiles.

The city lord was trying to make it look like his smile was sincere, but Michelle could see through it easily.

On the other hand, Michelle showed a clear mocking and taunting smile, when in reality, she didn’t feel like mocking anyone. She felt like cursing out the man who punched her in the face. The pain was just so annoying.

But her smile was reflexive and perfectly fit the situation, so the city lord couldn’t see through it and truly thought Michelle was mocking him.

Hearing the city lord’s words, Michelle raised a brow, a smirk tugging on her lips. “What kind of deal?” she asked, her voice harmonic. If her face wasn’t in such a terrible state, the situation could have looked quite charming, especially because of her voice.

“If you tell me all you know about the girl, I’ll make sure you leave this city unharmed and reward you as much as you’d like,” the city lord said with a business smile.

When that offer fell, Michelle’s smile widened, her eyes going cold. “Is that a threat?” she asked, her voice chilling to the bone. But then, her smile returned to normal. “No way, how could that be?!” she grinned. “How could someone as noble as you threaten me so cheaply, by telling me that if I don’t do your bidding, you’ll kill me?”

With each passing moment, the city lord felt angrier and more flustered. He had never been met with a situation where a cultivation cripple would stand up to him like that. All his life, he had only encountered cripples who kept their heads down low and suffered humiliation silently.

“What do you want in exchange for the information?” he asked through gritted teeth. His smile was crumbling at a visible speed.

Michelle shrugged lazily. “Just tell me why you’re searching for the girl,” she said carelessly.

The city lord gritted his teeth, not wanting to tell the truth, but since the brat in front of him seemed to know something, he decided to say some parts that could be leaked without bringing much trouble to him. “She showed off a strange footwork method which is very similar to a method one group uses. I want to find out more about the footwork.”

Hearing that, Michelle was fairly surprised. “What group?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

But the city lord had no plans to answer that.

That made Michelle frown a bit, but she didn’t say anything more. She just reached to her face and deactivated her disguise mask. “Will you tell me now?” she asked coldly, her beautiful face black and blue with bruises. It was quite the sorry sight.

Seeing the young brat transform into a girl, the city lord was shocked. He didn’t expect that the least bit. He expected the two to have some connection, and he did consider that they could have been one person, but from the description he had gotten about the girl, he ruled out that possibility because there was some height difference.

Who would have thought that the brat and the girl were actually the same person?

“How did you do that?” he asked, his eyes wide. He had even forgotten all about the rage he felt toward the young boy. He was just shocked and curious.

But Michelle didn’t feel like satiating his curiosity. “Since I was so kind as to show myself to you, how about you tell me about the group?” she asked, her voice even colder than before.

That coldness surprised the city lord even more. When disguised as a boy, Michelle acted like an ordinary spoiled brat, but once she revealed herself, her demeanor took a 180-degree change.

“I don’t know much about them…” he started speaking after a while, gesturing for Michelle to sit down at the coffee table in the corner of the room. But she shook her head and continued standing, listening to him speak.

What she heard next was quite unexpected.

The city lord explained that he once encountered a group of people who didn’t seem to possess any cultivation, yet they were able to easily massacre a small city full of cultivators. He tried to fight them, but they instantly used a footwork technique similar to Michelle’s to shake him off. He had no way of catching up to them.

After that, he looked into footwork techniques, wanting to find out who the group was, but it was nearly fruitless. He was doing all that searching because in the city where the massacre happened, his family used to live. They all died that day.

It took the city lord a long time to get more information about the group. They were part of an information guild known for their cruelty, especially toward their traitors. They didn’t kill the traitors. They killed the traitors’ whole families and homes, destroying everything they cared about.

At the time of the small city’s massacre, a member betrayed the information guild and sold some confidential documents. As punishment, the city where he was born and raised was brought to ruins, and he was thrown out of the ruins.

For half a year, he wandered the world, alone and guilty, until an assassin from the guild finally finished him off.

Listening to the city lord, Michelle raised a brow. It was indeed an interesting story, but it had nothing to do with her. Still, it was good to know about it. Who knew whether she would never meet someone from the guild? If they saw her footwork and started targeting her because of that, she would have one more troublesome problem on her shoulders.

There were two ways to prevent that. The first was to make it so the information guild would never target her, either by becoming someone they wouldn’t touch or by getting rid of them. The second was to alter her Shadow Spirit Steps so their essence would remain the same, but the members of the guild couldn’t find any similarities to their footwork.

Michelle had a lot of time to consider what she would do, as, at the moment, she had no contact with the information guild and wasn’t planning to have any in the near future. Also, to come to a conclusion, she would need to know more about the guild, so she wouldn’t end up attacking a dangerous organization that could lead to her demise. She wanted to think things through carefully before doing anything.

But there was a problem Michelle had to take care of right away.

How was she supposed to convince the city lord that she had nothing to do with the information guild?

Also, he clearly wanted Michelle to teach him her Shadow Spirit Steps, but she didn’t want to teach that to anyone. That was her own technique, and she didn’t want it to leak outside.

And she doubted an ordinary city lord could have the capabilities to learn her footwork technique. But how to tell him?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep