Chapter 340: 340

After taking off her clothes, Michelle stepped into the water in the tub.

She did not even submerge fully when she felt like something was biting into her bones.

Holding her breath, she sat down, letting the liquid envelope her up to her neck.

Standing nearby, Alexander watched Michelle closely.

“So? How does it feel?” he asked with a slight smile.

But though he was smiling, if one looked closer, they would notice that he was worried about Michelle a bit.

Michelle groaned. “It’s bearable.”

“Though hot…” she added.

Walking over, Alexander dipped his finger into the water, lifting a brow.

“It isn’t really…”

He pulled his finger back, looking down at it for a moment.

Even he could feel the sting of the liquid, though his body had been tempered long ago.

That showed how strong it was.

But that also meant that it would greatly benefit Michelle.

Michelle lifted her gaze to stare at Alexander.

“Of course it isn’t hot for you… You don’t possess ice element spirit energy.”

Alexander nodded. That made sense.

He was a Shadow Master, not a Spirit Master.

In other words, he perceived temperatures like normal people, not like Spirit Masters.

They were differently sensitive to it based on their element.

“Your Everfrost Mantle is still broken?” he suddenly asked.

Michelle nodded.

At the same time, she glanced over at her spatial ring and bracelet placed nearby.

She had taken them off before entering the body-tempering bath so it would not damage them.

With a flicker of her spirit energy, the Everfrost Mantle appeared next to the ring and bracelet.

“It’s quite annoying without it,” she stated.

The last time she had been without the Everfrost Mantle was when she entered the lower realm.

That meant that since then, she did not have to deal with temperatures and was constantly nicely cool.

So she was not used to not having it.

At least not at the moment when it got broken.

Since then, she had gotten used to it a bit and could bear the heat, but it still was not a nice feeling.

Alexander walked over to the mantle and picked it up.

“That shouldn’t be all that hard to fix,” he said after examining it.

Michelle raised a brow.

“You can fix artifacts?” She was fairly surprised.

That was the work of Armament Masters, and those were few and thus respected.

But could a Shadow Master be an Armament Master?

As far as Michelle knew, Armament Masters used spirit energy to fix things.

Even the Everfrost Mantle worked on spirit energy.

So how could Alexander fix it with his shadow essence?

It was a well-known fact that different energies could not affect one another.

Alexander looked over at Michelle and shrugged.

“It’s not all that different. All energies work essentially the same.”

Somehow, Michelle found Alexander’s stance arrogant.

And that annoyed her.

So, without thinking much about it, she submerged completely into the water, as if she forgot about the pain.

But nearly instantly, she regretted doing that.

The tempering effect hit at her skull, nearly knocking her out.

Seeing that, Alexander could guess what Michelle was feeling, making him snicker.

For a few moments, he did not interfere, letting her sink in the consequences, before walking over and reaching his hand into the water.

Grabbing Michelle by her hair, Alexander pulled her head above the water.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Alexander’s voice was amused, even joyful, making Michelle grind her teeth in resentment.

Seeing that, Alexander nearly burst out laughing.

“Now, now… You will break your teeth,” he said as he pressed his thumb to Michelle’s lips, clearly enjoying seeing the state she was in.

And Michelle did not like that, so she retaliated.

Reaching out, she grabbed Alexander’s shoulder and tugged hard.

Alexander tightened his muscles a bit to resist the pull. Knowing Michelle’s power, he was expecting that to be enough.

But he could not have been more wrong.

For some reason, Michelle had much more strength than she was supposed to have, and that little resistance from Alexander’s side could not stop her.

So, just a moment later, Alexander was fully soaked in the water, his skin tingling from the tempering effect.

“You got stronger!” he commented after pulling his head up from underwater.

“You weren’t this strong before,” he added.

His voice was not accusatory, nor surprised. Just stating a fact, with a smile on his face.

Like always.

Michelle also noticed it.

When she tugged at Alexander, she was not expecting to be able to pull him into the tub, even though she very much wished to do it.

That led her to look down at the water.

“It’s probably the tempering effect,” she concluded.

Alexander shook his head as he stood up and got out of the bath.

“Tempering medicine can’t make you stronger. It can only open up your potential. And neither is that a tempering medicine mixed with a strengthening one. That is too dangerous, so no one does it.”

As he spoke, he glanced down at his soaked clothes and started taking them off, not really concerned that Michelle could see it.

Remembering Alexander’s shamelessness when she was about to take off her clothes, Michelle decided to get back at him and shamelessly stared.

“Then it could be because of the Life Stones I absorbed. I never really tested my strength after that.”

Michelle continued thinking about her sudden strength even while shamelessly staring Alexander up and down.

And all the while, she had to bear with the pain from the tempering medicine in the water.

Though, as she had said before, it was not all that bad.

Back in the middle realm, while in Mavreth’s sect, she had taken poisons with worse effects and had grown numb to the pain.

Back then, Michelle had promised Mavreth to take a dose of poison every day to learn to make new poisons, but she might have forgotten about it a bit.

Ah, Mavreth would get angry at her once she met him again.

Still, Michelle was not thinking about that in the least bit.

She would take care of it when the time came.

At the moment, she was considering how others would react to the pain of the tempering medicine.

Knowing that some of her tendencies were inhuman, Michelle sometimes found herself wondering how others, normal human cultivators, would react to the situations she ended up in.

For example, considering the tempering bath she was in, some would be able to bear it, though with difficulty, and to others, it could be the greatest pain they had ever felt.

And to someone like Alexander, who had gone through worse pain and stronger body-tempering, it would be an ignorable tingle.

After what Michelle said about the Life Stones, Alexander froze for a moment, considering it.

“I would have noticed that.”

Michelle did not question that.

She knew just how much attention Alexander paid to her, that it was highly obsessive.

“Then it could be some kind of combination…” Michelle continued thinking.

As she spoke, Alexander just took off his top, making Michelle narrow her eyes ever so slightly.

“Like what you see?” Alexander snickered when he saw Michelle narrow her eyes.

Shamelessly, Michelle nodded. “Very much so! You have a good body.”

Alexander held back a laugh and brought the attention back to Michelle’s strength.

“Considering that you aren’t exactly human, it’s not all that hard to believe that your body would react differently to tempering medicine. But could it really cause your strength to increase?” he was a bit skeptical.

Michelle shrugged. “It’s the only thing that comes to my mind now. Nothing else is really all that different.”

Hearing the last sentence was like hearing a joke.

To say that nothing else was different was complete nonsense.

But considering the fact that all the changes Michelle and Alexander knew about could not have caused that, it somehow made sense.

A nonsense rooted in sense.

What a paradox.

Thinking about that, Alexander had an idea of his own.

“Maybe it’s not caused by a special reaction of the medicine to your body. Maybe it’s exactly the opposite, and your body is for some reason defending against the medicine by increasing your strength explosively.”

Michelle frowned at those words.

If that was the case, things could get troublesome.

Explosive increases of strength could never be good and would definitely cause backlash.

She did not exactly wish for something like that.

So she needed to confirm whether Alexander was right.

And the best way to do that would be to leave the bath, dry herself off, and then check her strength.

If it remained the same, she could return into the tub, but if it dropped, it would mean the tempering medicine was not suitable for her.

Glancing at her spatial ring and bracelet nearby, Michelle had a towel come out of the space, and Alexander handed it to her as she stood up.

And as she did, she was surprised that her head felt a bit light.

But not like she was lightheaded.

It was actually quite comfortable.

Still, Michelle focused on the problem at hand.

Wrapping the towel around her, she stepped out of the bathtub and proceeded to dry herself.

When she was done, it was time to check for any changes in her strength.

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