Chapter 201: 201

Within the Sloan residence, Michelle grabbed the family head by his jaw, forced his mouth open, and shoved a pill into it. The pill nearly instantly dissolved and he swallowed it.

“Don’t worry! It won’t kill you!” she said with a cold smile, dragging the almighty Spirit Saint by his hair over the tiled floor to a pillar supporting one of the buildings.

The next moment, the family head was bound to the pillar by thick chains.

“What do you want? And who are you?” the man desperately shouted when he realized he could speak again.

Michelle’s smile spread. “He’s chatty…” she hummed.

“That’s nice, isn’t it?” Ivona tilted her head a bit.

“Yeah,” Michelle nodded. “He will be easier to break.”

Kieran and Anastasia stepped back a bit.

“We will leave the torture to you,” Kieran spoke with undisguised disgust.

“You can go search the residence for more artifacts!” Michelle suggested carelessly, already stepping toward the Sloan family head.

“That’s bullying!” Anastasia chuckled. Finding artifacts in the huge Sloan residence was basically impossible.

But she didn’t reject the suggestion and dragged Kieran by his sleeve to get away from the scene. Torture was something Michelle was good at, and since Ivona was similar to her, she would probably excel at it too.

Kieran and she could avoid it and go do something else. They were unneeded at the scene and didn’t want to see it. To them, it was just repulsive.

When Kieran and Anastasia left, Michelle exchanged a look with Ivona. Ivona had never tortured anyone physically, but when she was still in the Land of Exile, many young ladies broke down after speaking with her. Manipulation and emotional torture were things in which she excelled.

Michelle was good at that too, but she was also perfect at using physical torture, so she wanted to combine the two.

The start of the torture had already been discussed beforehand. Like cheap villains from lousy books, Ivona would explain what they did to the Sloan family, to enrage but also terrify him. The whole time, Michelle would be tightening the chains around him.

Then, Ivona would start naming the demands.

So, Ivona started.

“Family head, how could you be so foolish? How could you believe everyone so easily?” her voice was laced with mocking laughter as she spoke.

The family head instantly recognized her voice.

“Aren’t you the sect disciple? Why are you here again after leaving with your companions?”

Ivona continued:

“How naive of you, family head, to not realize everything was just a trap!” she chuckled. “This whole time, we were a group of four people without that much power, and we were able to screw you over big time.”

As Ivona spoke, Michelle tightened the chains, making the family head gasp a bit. The grip was extremely uncomfortable.

“Release me!” he started shouting, trying to summon his spirit energy to blow the chains away. But for some reason, his spirit veins were blocked and he couldn’t use his power. He was like a cultivationless cripple.

That was one of the effects of Mare’s venom modified by Michelle. And it was amplified by the pill Michelle gave the family head before binding him.

It was not only meant to make him able to talk, but to completely block his spirit energy—to make him completely powerless against Michelle and Ivona’s torture.

“Do you know that even the poisoning of your daughter was our work?” Ivona smiled happily as she continued speaking. “While Michelle distracted your experts every day on the rooftops, Anastasia snuck into the residence to gather information, map it out, and poison your only daughter.”

Michelle tightened the chains further as Ivona went on:

“For three days, we left you alone, so you could go into a state of panic. Then, I appeared as a savior. But do you know what’s the funniest? Except for my so-called Junior Brother, none of our group has a clue about medicine or poisons. She just taught us all how to press our fingers to someone’s wrist to feel whether a pulse was there.”

The family head was seething. So the people he thought were his saviors were actually nothing more than a group of con artists around one poison master, all aiming to bring down the Sloan family.

“I’ll have you all skinned alive and fed to the wolves outside!” he shouted, blinded by rage.

Hearing that, Michelle chuckled coldly, and Ivona burst into unconcealed mocking laughter.

“How can you do that in your state?” she walked over and landed a tight slap across the man’s face. “You can’t even defend yourself from weak little me!”

The family head no longer wanted to hear anything. All he wished for was to kill Ivona and Michelle.

But Ivona continued. She talked about how they hid the poisonous pouches all over the residence. About the pouches they brought to the banquet. And even about how the so-called antidote Michelle gave to the family head was actually a catalyst for the poison from the pouches.

And when Ivona explained the symptoms that followed the poisoning, the family head broke. He was about to start shouting again, when something hit him. A thick chain struck his chest like a whip. And the chains that were already binding him tightened further.

Cracking sounds filled the air, and earth-splitting cries left the man’s mouth. His ribs were being mercilessly crushed by Michelle.

When the pain finally subsided after a long time, the family head gasped for breath.

“What do you want from me now…? Why are you telling me all this…?”

That was when Michelle whipped him with a chain again, hitting even his face.

And Ivona spoke again.

“It’s simple, actually!” her voice was suddenly sweet and kind, sounding almost innocent.

But the pain all over the family head’s body reminded him of her true nature.

Ivona went on.

“You know, it’s quite suspicious how you—the Sloan family—have so many growing artifacts. And what’s even more suspicious is that you sent them all to the Land of Exile. Why is that?”

The Sloan family head remained silent, as if the information was top secret.

When the silence went on for three seconds, something suddenly stabbed him in the stomach, followed by a “Whoops.” Michelle had formed spears from her soul energy and had just used one.

“I didn’t mean to!” she said with a careless laugh. “Old man, you might want to answer, or I might just slip up again.”

At first, the family head wanted to retort that such little pain wouldn’t make him open his mouth, but a moment later, he felt something strange where the spear had stabbed him. It was like all his blood and flesh were being pulled into the spear.

It was natural. Michelle’s soul energy was completely black. It was the same as void. And void pulled things in. So when a thing made out of void was stabbed into someone, it would start pulling their blood in.

“When you’re prepared to speak, I’ll get the spear out!” Michelle said with a chuckle, preparing another spear.

And, well, she slipped again. The second black spear stabbed the man in his thigh.

“Whoops, I’m sorry!” There was no remorse in her voice. Just cynical sweetness, sickening to the stomach.

Even Ivona didn’t want to listen to that and threw a ball of light at Michelle.

“You sound sick!”

Michelle dodged the ball easily, and it exploded on the wall behind her.

“I’ll stop now!” she said, her voice back to normal.

She turned back to the family head.

“Spill the beans already! I myself get sick of that sweet voice!” Her voice was suddenly so cold, the family head felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice over him.

But he still remained silent.

That annoyed Michelle. She grabbed another spear and stabbed it into the man’s shoulder.

“I have more spears, if you wish to feel them!” her voice was a cold hiss.

Ivona watched from the side as the black spears sucked back all the blood that spilled from the wounds. It didn’t look as gruesome as it sounded. With no blood and flesh flowing around, no nasty smell reached too far.

Since the family head was very uncooperative, Michelle decided to step up her game. Reaching with her hand into her spirit domain, she pulled out her sickle, a dark glint growing in her eyes.

The next moment, she used the blunt side of the blade to repetitively hit the family head until he was black and blue. When she was done with that, she went to use the sharp tip. With slow, deliberate movement, she cut over the bruises, making long, thin, and shallow wounds.

When all the bruises were covered by a net of cuts, she returned to the first one and cut into it again, making it deeper—but just a tiny little bit.

And once all the cuts were deepened, she proceeded to do it again. And again and again. Until the cuts were so deep one could see the man’s bones.

Watching it from the side, Ivona raised a brow. Well, that was ruthless and gruesome.

The whole time, the man was screaming and shouting, even though he was clearly trying to hold back.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep