Chapter 301: 301

When Michelle woke up, her whole body was stiff. That told her she had been asleep for a long time.

Sitting up, she stretched her hands and neck, looking around a bit. She was still in the wooden house, on the soft bed where Alexander had placed her.

Reaching up to touch her shoulder, Michelle winced a bit.

It was no longer covered by Alexander’s shadow essence.

Once he took Michelle to the space, he retracted the shadow essence so the wound could naturally heal without anything obscuring it.

But it didn’t heal. The wound was still there, nearly the same size as before Michelle had fallen asleep.

She had guessed that the Silent Bastard had something on its fangs that prevented healing of wounds, but she didn’t expect it to be all that efficient.

She was sure she had slept for a long time, maybe even over a week. With her healing abilities, a normal wound of such extent should have healed in two days at most. Since it was poisoned, she was expecting it to at least start closing up within about five days.

But it seemed she was wrong.

If she didn’t have her healing abilities, she would have most probably bled out in her sleep. That was an impressive poison. She felt like studying it.

Standing up, Michelle walked out of the wooden house and looked around. Alexander was sitting nearby, doing something.

Shadow essence was coursing around him violently, but he wasn’t cultivating. Neither did it seem like he was training. Michelle couldn’t really tell what it was he was doing, but she wasn’t all that interested.

Alexander sensed Michelle’s presence behind him and retracted his shadow essence. When he turned around to look at her, his eyebrow raised involuntarily.

He didn’t go to check on Michelle while she was asleep, so he wouldn’t wake her up, so he didn’t know her wound had yet to heal. Aware of the extent of the healing abilities that Spirit Soul Blood gave her, he was expecting to only see a hole in her clothes in the place where the wound was.

Not blood and gore.

Seeing the surprise clear on Alexander’s face, Michelle felt some satisfaction wash over her. With how annoyingly composed and calm he always was, it was nice to see him shaken up once in a while.

“How long was I asleep?” Michelle spoke first, not really paying much attention to the wound.

She was planning to take care of it later. And then, she would also try to get a sample of the Silent Bastard’s poison. It could be highly useful if she learned to recreate it.

Alexander retracted his gaze from Michelle’s shoulder. Since she was calm about it, there was no reason for him to make a fuss about it. “Seventeen days,” he answered.

Michelle wasn’t surprised by that. Considering the stiffness of her body, it was understandable.

“What are your plans now?” Alexander stood up. His gaze was constantly pulled to the wound on Michelle’s shoulder.

Since it was still bleeding, she couldn’t exactly go out yet, since the scent would once again enrage the creature that could roar in infrasound. That would just loop everything.

So Michelle probably had to stay in the space until she either found a way to cover up the scent, or until she somehow sped up the process of the healing.

Michelle shrugged. She felt a bit lazy after sleeping so much, and didn’t really want to do anything. “What were you doing?” she remembered how the shadow essence was violently surging around Alexander just a while ago.

Alexander summoned some shadow essence and let it swirl around his forearm. “I’m testing something.”

Michelle narrowed her eyes a bit. Alexander didn’t seem like the type of person to experiment out of boredom. So what was he trying to achieve?

“What are you testing?” she continued asking.

Alexander frowned a bit. “I want to find out how much influence the Heavenly Law has in private spaces. Most assume it’s nonexistent, but those studying the Heavenly Law directly found out it is present even in private spaces and spirit domains. Just the extent of the influence is unknown.”

Michelle lifted a brow. “And how are you planning to find that out?” She was getting quite curious. And not only about the theory, but also about why Alexander was curious about it. It didn’t seem like he needed to know it.

The Heavenly Law wasn’t restraining him in any way, except for the suppression of his power when he went to the lower realms. And that clearly didn’t bother him.

So where was his curiosity coming from?

Alexander controlled the shadow essence around his hand to create a whirlwind. “Using vortexes.”

Michelle raised a brow. “How exactly?” Not having shadow essence for that long, she didn’t see as deep into things as Alexander did. So what was it that vortexes caused that made it possible to use them to explore the Heavenly Law?

Alexander understood that Michelle’s knowledge was limited, so he explained things.

Basically, over the years, the Heavenly Law kept changing. Sometimes it got seemingly stricter, sometimes more lenient.

And a change that had occurred quite some time ago was that vortexes of shadow essence, shadow vortexes, could no longer be created. The Heavenly Law would always scatter them before they fully formed.

But since the Heavenly Law was guessed to have smaller influence in private spaces and spirit domains, they could be used, along with the vortex, to check the extent of the influence.

After listening to Alexander’s explanation, Michelle’s curiosity just grew. Both about the Heavenly Law and the vortexes.

Why was the Heavenly Law changing? And what exactly were the shadow vortexes? Why did the Heavenly Law prevent Shadow Masters from creating them?

And if she found a way to defy the Heavenly Law, which could be possible since she had absorbed the two Life Stones, could she use the shadow vortexes in new skills?

Since the shadow vortexes were usable in the past, there could be a number of skills they were used in back then, some probably recorded in ancient writings and scriptures.

“Teach me how to make those shadow vortexes!” Michelle looked at Alexander as he continued spinning his shadow essence in a whirlwind around his arm.

Alexander stopped the whirlwind around his arm and looked at Michelle. “You have to start by making your shadow essence spin around violently. As if it was completely out of control. That’s the first and easiest step.”

Michelle nodded and summoned her shadow essence.

But when she did so, she suddenly felt extremely light-headed. As if something was pressing on her brain.

Seeing that, Alexander frowned. “You should first treat your injury,” he finally said.

Michelle retracted her shadow essence and sat down on the grass, placing her palm over her still-bleeding shoulder.

The wound was clearly hotter compared to the last time she had touched it. As if it had gotten inflamed.

Michelle’s best guess was that it was caused by the mixture of using her shadow essence and being poisoned by the Silent Bastard.

Reaching into her space, Michelle pulled out something like an antiseptic she had made before and poured a bit of it over her shoulder. It stung a fair bit.

After cleaning the wound, Michelle summoned her spirit energy and poured it into her shoulder, forming a small sensing net within her own body. She wanted to check how exactly the poison prevented the wound from healing.

After just a while, she realized it, and she was genuinely impressed.

Something similar to her sensing net was spread all around her wound and even a bit further. Also, parts of it were spreading through Michelle’s veins deep into her body. One part went around the vein near Michelle’s shadow domain. Another one went to her head.

That combination was most probably what caused Michelle to be light-headed when she used her shadow essence.

But that wasn’t all that impressive.

The impressive part was the net in her wound.

Michelle’s healing abilities were still working perfectly, but whenever a new layer of flesh grew in the wound, the net would cut it off, preventing the wound from healing even a bit.

That was fairly impressive, but also easy to counter. Especially since the net was made of simple poison-element spirit energy.

Surging her spirit energy around it, Michelle chipped at it until the strings of the net snapped at some parts, finally resulting in the net dispersing completely.

When it was gone, Michelle could finally feel the wound starting to heal properly.

Then she summoned her shadow essence once again, to check if she would still feel dizzy.

And she was pleasantly surprised by what she found out, though it was to be expected. She was no longer dizzy and could normally use her shadow essence.

So she decided to proceed with learning from Alexander how to use shadow vortexes, even though it was supposed to be impossible under the influence of the Heavenly Law.

Summoning her shadow essence, she had it spin around violently, making it avoid patterns and move randomly, just like Alexander had told her. That was the first step.

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