Chapter 238: 238

“So, what did you find out?” Mavreth didn’t even let Michelle say a word when she came to his office. He just straight up asked her about her findings.

Michelle placed the bottle with poison on Mavreth’s table. “I don’t know all the ingredients, but the main ingredient is the bodies of the Shadow Slimes. The poison works upon contact with the victim’s skin after being mixed with water.”

Not waiting for Mavreth to tell her to sit down, Michelle lazily plopped onto a chair. “The effects are weak against Shadow Masters because Shadow Slimes, too, are Shadow Masters.”

“As for Soul and Spirit Masters, the effect would probably be non-fatal if they don’t have the poison element. The poison would get through their skin and enter the spirit veins.”

“In the spirit veins, it would block the flow of spirit energy, preventing the cultivator from using any skills, making them vulnerable. With Soul Masters, it probably works similarly.”

After listening to Michelle, Mavreth was quite satisfied with Michelle’s results. “You experimented with it on your body?”

A nod came from Michelle. “That was the fastest way.”

Mavreth shook his head slightly. “Isn’t that gambling with your health?” Unlike usual, he wasn’t smiling under his hood.

Michelle didn’t know whether he was just acting like that, or if he really was being serious, but it made her feel strange. “I knew I could cure myself if something happened.”

“So you knew it wouldn’t instantly kill you before you took it?” Mavreth continued asking.

Michelle shook her head, leaning back on the chair. She firmly believed she didn’t do anything wrong. “I didn’t know that.” She was calm even though Mavreth was acting strangely.

She doubted he was acting like that out of worry. Or because he didn’t like the way she dealt with things. If that was the case, he would have never taken her as a disciple.

Mavreth stared at Michelle’s face for a while. Then, he waved his hand lightly. A small black cauldron appeared in front of him on the table.

“This is my gift to you as your master. You will learn new brewing techniques with it.” As if nothing had happened just a moment ago, Mavreth’s demeanor returned to normal.

Michelle felt a bit puzzled by the sudden change. But she understood that Mavreth was probably testing her with that cold attitude. Standing up, she came over to take the cauldron. “Disciple thanks master!” she bowed her head a bit.

She had never seen that kind of cauldron, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t thankful for it. She could feel that it was far from ordinary.

Seeing how Michelle was looking at the cauldron, Mavreth stood up. “What do you know about normal cauldrons?”

Michelle shrugged. She had never really studied or cared about the structure of cauldrons. So she could just state the basics. “They can absorb spirit or soul energy, need fire to heat them up, and are usually much bigger.”

Mavreth nodded. “How much smaller is this one compared to the smallest cauldron you have seen up until now?”

Michelle thought about it for a moment. Since waking up in the world, she hadn’t gotten in contact with that many cauldrons.

The biggest ones she had seen were back in the Land of Exile, and they were basically huge furnaces. And the smallest one was given to her by Philip Grace when he found out she could brew pills and potions.

Even at the moment, Michelle had it in her spatial ring.

“About one-eighth the size…” Michelle said after thinking about it for a while. The cauldron Mavreth gave her was merely the size of her two palms.

The one she had gotten from her father was around the size that she could place it on her lap when she was sitting cross-legged. Of course, she had never done that. Cauldrons weren’t meant to be placed on one’s lap.

“This cauldron is meant for making small amounts of pills and elixirs by absorbing the surrounding spirit energy. It’s suitable for you since you can’t use your own spirit energy at the moment. To control it, you would need either soul energy or shadow essence. Since you have both, it shouldn’t be a problem for you.” Mavreth summoned some dark element spirit energy in his hand and let it flow around as it wanted.

The cauldron in Michelle’s hands vibrated a bit before the spirit energy in the room started moving. All of it was drawn toward it.

Michelle lifted a brow. “Why did it start absorbing spirit energy only now?” she tilted her head.

Mavreth retracted his spirit energy and the cauldron stopped working. “We are near the lower realm, so the spirit energy here is quite sparse. Also, just on the border of the lower realm are all the cultivation spaces. They are absorbing a lot of spirit energy on their own, making it thinner even here. So there’s not enough spirit energy for the cauldron to suck in.”

That meant when Mavreth summoned his spirit energy, it was suddenly enough for the cauldron, so it started working.

“Will it always suck in spirit energy as long as there’s enough in the surroundings?” Michelle asked, a bit worried that it would attract others’ attention.

Mavreth shook his head. “There’s a limit to how much it can absorb. But if you put it in your spatial ring, where spirit energy can’t be stored, all the spirit energy it had absorbed will rush out.”

A curve appeared on Michelle’s lips. “That can be exploited!” She smiled.

Mavreth liked the way Michelle was thinking. He had really taken in a good disciple. “Everything can be exploited. But it will also be troublesome when you take the cauldron out again. Before using it, you will have to wait for it to fill up with enough spirit energy.”

“Well…” Michelle gave it a momentary thought. “What if I put it in a space that can store living things? Those spaces have spirit energy inside.”

“That could work…” Mavreth glanced at the bracelet on Michelle’s hand. “Were you able to reform the space as you wished?”

“Mostly… I already have a few foxes in there.”

Under the hood, Mavreth narrowed his eyes, his gaze locked on the bracelet. The next moment, Michelle felt movement in the bracelet. Mavreth was probing it. “Why do you have so many beast eggs in there?”

Thinking back to the auction when Michelle bought them, she shrugged. “I bought them on a whim.”

“They all seem quite useless…” Mavreth clearly showed his disdain.

“Is it because they are weak?” Michelle didn’t think Mavreth would be the kind of person who would dislike creatures just because they were weak.

As expected, Mavreth shook his head. “If they ever hatch, they will never be able to grow to their full size. They will be stuck as pups.”

Michelle was surprised. “Why is that?”

Mavreth retracted his gaze from the bracelet. “Even though the eggs belong to weak creatures, which take up to two years to hatch at most, those eggs are over a hundred years old and still alive. That means their growth has stopped.”

“Doesn’t that mean they will never hatch?” Michelle frowned.

“No,” Mavreth flicked his hand and a pendant appeared on his palm. “As long as they are constantly stimulated by active spirit energy, they will hatch. For the next few days or weeks, they will grow rapidly, but it will stop before they reach adulthood.”

Looking at the pendant, Michelle could feel some restless spirit energy within it. “That can be used to make the spirit energy in the space active?”

In spatial bracelets and the normal world, spirit energy was mostly still, only moving passively—in other words, horizontally. The only way for spirit energy to move differently was if it was put in motion by something else.

It seemed the pendant Mavreth was holding was capable of that. The restless spirit energy within it would work as an activator for the spirit energy around it. But first, it would need to be pushed out of the pendant.

Michelle was getting curious about how the pendant worked.

“Put that in your space and crush it with a spirit energy attack. Once it breaks, the restless spirit energy within it will spread out and put the spirit energy around into active motion.” Mavreth started explaining.

“But it has a downside. It lasts about a month, and during that time, it’s impossible for anyone to cultivate in the space.”

Michelle nodded in understanding. For cultivators, active spirit energy was treated as skill energy. They couldn’t absorb it into their spirit veins. So if the whole space got filled with active spirit energy, no one could cultivate there. Even the beasts after they hatched.

But Michelle didn’t mind. She never planned to use the space for cultivation. As for the beasts, a month without cultivation wouldn’t do them any harm. Especially since they would stop growing quickly, remaining young.

Mavreth threw the pendant at Michelle. “After you crush it in the space, your first lesson will start.”

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