Chapter 173: 173

As darkness was falling on the information guild, Michelle was lying on the ground in the training field, staring at the sky above her.

“Boss, did you understand it?” she didn’t even look at the boss lady as she asked, her voice as carefree as ever.

“Naturally,” the boss lady said with a satisfied nod. “And just as I thought, it’s very similar to my technique.”

“So, will you explain it to me?” Michelle sat up, stretching her hands above her.

“I already promised that, but now it’s late. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

So Michelle got up and followed the boss lady to a room she could use for the night. In the night, she felt like scouting the information guild with her net of spirit energy, but she resisted. Until she was able to cultivate in the Second Academy in the upper realm, she couldn’t use her spirit energy.

But there was still the possibility of creating the net with her soul energy.

That was something Michelle had already tried when she fought the plant beast in the jungle. But back then, she was interrupted by the raging beasts and monsters that came after smelling her scent, so she didn’t achieve anything.

And there was one more thing Michelle had to consider before trying anything. Though Soul Masters were rare, it wasn’t impossible for someone from the information guild to be one.

So, if she tried to create the net, she could get discovered. And if that angered the boss lady, their future work together could get troublesome.

With a sigh, Michelle decided against scouting the whole guild. She decided to do it just with her room and maybe the hallway. If that was discovered, it wouldn’t be a problem. She could just say she was training. In the end, it wasn’t a lie.

Having decided, Michelle squatted down and placed her palm on the ground, letting her black soul energy, the void, surge into it.

Slowly, a small black thread formed under her palm and started stretching out and splitting, until it crawled all over the room, creating a web.

Finally, Michelle opened her eyes and frowned when she saw the web. It worked just as she wanted, but it was completely black, visible to the naked eye. Something like that couldn’t be used for secret scouting unless the place was completely dark.

Pulling the threads back, Michelle didn’t move from the ground, deep in thought. She was thinking of ways to hide the net.

If she could, she would stab the threads into the ground, but that would dull the senses of the soul energy, and not all surfaces could be stabbed.

So the best way was to make the soul energy invisible.

That made Michelle think back to the time Philip Grace had taught her to use soul energy. He was able to use it as a strong suppressive aura invisible to the naked eye. And when he did it, there were always swords present somewhere. Because swords were his soul leash.

Michelle’s soul leash was Binding Chains, so she summoned them. The golden chain calmly rested on her palm as she inspected it.

It was thick and solid, but not the least bit heavy.

With the chain in her hand, Michelle tried to form a thread of her soul energy on her other hand, but to her surprise, it instantly dissipated into a black mist that quickly seeped into her body.

A frown formed on the plain face created by the disguise mask. So it seemed threads weren’t the right way.

Trying once again, Michelle confirmed that if she tried to form a thread while holding the Binding Chains, it would dissipate. It annoyed her, but she wouldn’t just give up.

Since threads didn’t work, she had to try something else.

But even when she tried the whole night, whatever she created dissipated and the soul energy meekly returned into her body.

By the morning, Michelle was already quite angry, but she didn’t let it affect her thinking. Letting anger cloud one’s judgment wasn’t a good idea, no matter the situation.

After some time, a knock came from the door, so Michelle called them in. A woman entered.

“Boss said I should lead you to her once you are ready.”

Michelle nodded a bit as she stood up from the ground. “You can lead the way…”

As the woman led Michelle through the hallways to the training field, Michelle picked up on something.

“The guild has quite a number of Soul Masters,” she commented, feeling a bit relieved that she wasn’t stupid enough to try to scan the whole information guild with her soul energy.

She said that just as they entered the training fields, so the boss lady heard it.

“They are especially good at gathering information,” she said as Michelle walked to her.

“People usually oppress Soul Masters, but you take them as elite.” A smile spread across Michelle’s lips. The more she interacted with the guild, the more she liked it. She didn’t mind their ruthlessness the city lord told her about. Quite the opposite. She would have acted the same towards traitors.

“You seem to think about them the same as me,” the boss lady said with a smirk.

Michelle stopped a few steps away from the boss lady, keeping a respectful distance. At the moment, she was still disguised as Michael Grayson, and she didn’t know if the boss lady had seen through her, so she didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

“Or…” the boss lady continued. “You don’t only think positively about them, you are one of them.”

That made Michelle’s smile widen. “When did you notice?” she asked. She had two guesses. Either the boss lady noticed it at night when Michelle kept using her soul energy, or the boss lady was sensitive to energies, or something like that, and knew from the start.

“It was quite easy to notice. Whenever you move, your soul energy ripples in your body.” The boss lady said it with a carefree voice, like it wasn’t a big deal, but it made Michelle raise a brow.

“Ripples?” she tilted her head a bit. “How come I’ve never noticed?”

The boss lady shrugged, not knowing the answer. “There can be many reasons. You have to find that out yourself.”

Michelle nodded ever so slightly, knowing what the next thing she would do after leaving the information guild was.

But before that, there was still the deal she had with the boss lady.

“So, what did you see in my Shadow Spirit Steps?”

The boss lady started her explanation. When moving, Michelle didn’t completely straighten her legs, leaving her knees bent very slightly, nearly unnoticeably. That made it so when she walked, she didn’t land the steps on her heels, but leaned them towards the toes, which made her steps much lighter and nearly silent.

At the same time, while walking, she constantly constrained the muscles in her thighs while keeping those in her shins and ankles as relaxed as possible. That even further silenced the movement.

And finally, to speed up the movement, Michelle moved her legs with powerful thrusts, which were basically jumps and leaps started by her ankles.

For a moment, she would contract the muscles in her ankles when she was about to move her leg, and used it to propel herself. Then, she would relax the muscles again to have as little resistance from the surrounding air as possible.

But she only did that when she needed to move fast. Normally, she moved without it, keeping her ankles relaxed.

After listening to the boss lady, Michelle finally understood the things she had done subconsciously while walking or running around. It was never really crucial for her to know in her daily life, but if she wanted to improve the skill, she had to understand it.

A few ideas were already surfacing in Michelle’s mind about how to make the skill better, but first, she was going to learn about the information guild’s skill. She had a feeling it wasn’t just a single skill but a set of skills formed into a complex footwork technique.

She didn’t really plan to learn the technique. Just understanding could help her improve her own technique further than she could think. That way, she wouldn’t need to learn something new, something she wasn’t familiar with, but she could get similar results.

A while later, Michelle was already watching the boss lady demonstrate her own footwork method, which looked really similar to Michelle’s. Inexperienced eyes could have easily mistaken the two. Or even thought they were the same. The differences were very small and few, but they made the footwork essentially different.

Slowly, the boss lady picked up her pace, but Michelle’s eyes could still pick up. Just like Michelle before, the boss lady didn’t put any soul or spirit energy into her legs, so it could be watched closely.

They came to the conclusion that both of them knew of a way to put spirit or soul energy into their footwork, so they didn’t need to teach each other that. They just wanted to see the differences so their techniques could evolve into new ones, more precise ones.

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