Chapter 59: 59

For a short while, Michelle observed the servants in the prison-like space beneath the mansion using her ice strings before turning her attention back to Malrik Sloan. She was curious about the content of the letter. She was guessing that it was about her visit to Garric Sloan, but it also could be something different.

Using the ice strings, she inserted her consciousness into the wall behind Malric and stared at the letter. Squatting behind the door, she smiled when she saw the content. “So he isn’t completely stupid…” she thought as she stood up and strode towards the door leading to the dark labyrinth. She couldn’t stay in the lit-up part of the mansion any longer, or Malric would discover her.

In the letter, Garric mentioned her visit, and also stated that she had probably followed the servant to Malrik’s mansion, so he should be careful and watch out. The moment he noticed a trace of her presence, he should send the servant back to Garric’s mansion to inform him.

Not wanting to scare away her prey, Michelle hid in the labyrinth, and started spreading a thin net of her dark element spirit energy to map out the whole labyrinth. After a while, she realized that the doors into the lit-up part of the mansion were the only ones in the labyrinth, with all the numerous hallways being dead-ends.

After having covered the whole mansion in her spirit energy so she could keep a track of it, Michelle slipped out of the building and hid in the mansion. She pulled a thread of her spirit energy to the gate and a bit in front of it, so the moment she came there, she could see what was happening inside. Then, she left and went to Garric’s mansion to meet up with Cold Flame. But to her surprise, Cold Flame was no longer there.

Michelle was about to search for him when she felt her contract with Nyxaroth move as he sent over some information from the middle realm.

The information stated that the Thomas Hillberg that Michelle crippled was just a double, but when he returned with the poisoned and crippled Eleanor and Joseph, their adoptive mother, Thomas’ wife, got so desperate that she got into a fight with the real Thomas, and as her power was a bit higher than Thomas’, she ended up killing him for not protecting her children properly, but after the fight, she herself ended up in come, with little to no chance of waking up. Of course, Thomas’ double wasn’t spared and was thrown into the sect’s prison to rot there.

With their work finished in the middle realm, Snow, Mare and Nyxaroth were returning to Michelle. But that would take a few days, as traveling between realms was difficult, especially since Snow and Mare were clearly under-leveled compared to the middle realm’s people.

After receiving the message, Michelle smiled a bit before returning her attention to Cold Flame. “Flamie?” she asked, using the contract to contact him, but she got no response. “Cold Flame?!” she tried again but to no avail. Frowning a bit, she put her hands down on the ground and started forming a net of spirit energy beneath her, spreading it as far as she could reach. She didn’t care that she was overusing her spirit energy, or that she could harm her spirit veins. She just wanted to find Cold Flame.

If she wanted to, she could get him back to her, by pulling him into the contract space, but she wanted to know where he was. Because if he was just in a situation when he couldn’t react, she didn’t want to disturb him, as that could alert the enemy, but she was also worried that he was in danger. But as he was a Vermilion Bird, and already a fully mature one, she couldn’t think of anyone in the Land of Exile who could endanger him except Alexander Terce and David Elether.

Not caring that her spirit veins were starting to ache from being overused, she continued to spread the ice net as far as she could reach. When the pain was getting unbearable, her eyes snapped open. “Found him…” she smiled, relieved that he was safe. She knew that no one around was powerful enough to harm Cold Flame, but she was still worried about him.

Retracting the net, Michelle stood up and stretched her aching body. She decided not to go after Cold Flame right away and sneaked into Garric’s mansion. She could search the mansion without much worry, if Cold Flame was away, as it meant he followed along when Garrict left.

In the mansion, Michelle wanted to use the net from her ice element spirit energy, but her spirit veins were still aching from being overused, so she could just give up on it and go search through the mansion by herself.

Very quickly, just like in Malrik’s mansion, she found a prison-like space where ghastly pale servants resided. It was dreary and made her skin crawl as she watched the servants operate in the dim light of the damp place. But there was one difference between Malrik’s place and Garric’s place. The amount of ghastly servants in Malrik’s mansion was so big, that one could form an army with the servants. And both the servants in Garrick’s and Malrik’s mansions were clearly cultivators, all under the age of fifteen.

Seeing that, Michelle frowned deeply. The servants looked like soulless shells ready to execute their master’s orders. And with the sheer number of them, Michelle knew that if their master ordered them to kill, she stood no chance in stopping them. Because no matter how powerful she as an individual was, she didn’t have a large scale attack big enough to annihilate or at least immobilize them all at once.

Back when she met the old man who gave her the skill books about killing and annihilation, she went through them, and realized that only after reaching the Spirit rank could she use them, and by then, they would only be able to kill people just a bit stronger than her. Only after she reached the Divine rank could they be considered as tier breaking skills.

With cultivators being rare in the Land of Exile, Michelle couldn’t understand how the Sloan family was able to gather so many young cultivators and why they looked like they were brainwashed. No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t wrap her head around it. She felt like she was missing something. Like she was solving a puzzle, but she was missing the most important piece. Or it could be that she had all the pieces, but the puzzle was too big for her to solve right away, and she just needed time to think about it.

Just as when one’s solving a puzzle, she needed to divide the pieces into the pieces in the corners and edges. Then, separate the pieces by color and put the edges together into a frame. Then, start aligning the pieces by color to the edges. In her thoughts, Michelle was just at the part of separating out the edge pieces, so she could see how big the puzzle was.

After going through the whole mansion, Michelle went after Cold Flame, not even knowing that she would find the last piece of puzzle there.

“Michelle…” Cold Flame nodded at her as she stopped next to him. Garric was in the city park, walking around the artificial lake like he was searching for something.

“When did he start doing that?” Michelle asked with a frown as she observed Garric. His movements were strange and sluggish. He was moving like an old person even though he was thirty or so years old.

“The moment you left, he came here and started searching for something…” Cold Flame spoke. “He had already found a few strange items and put them away.

Hearing that, Michelle lifted a brow. “You didn’t recognize the items?” she was clearly surprised, as since Cold Flame had his ancestors’ memories since ancient times, in his memories, he should have come across most of the things in existence.

Cold Flame stared at Garric for a long while before answering: “I don’t know the items, but they aren’t from around here… Their energy doesn’t belong to the Land of Exile. It has energy from the lower realm. Someone from the lower realm is messing around here, and he’s using the Sloan family for it.”

When his words fell, Michelle frowned. If people from the lower realm were involved, she had to put her guard up. She wasn’t scared of them, but as they all had power equivalent to hers when they came down to the Land of Exile, she had to be careful. Though, with her skill set from her past life, she didn’t have to worry about being weaker than them, there was still the danger of being outnumbered. “What did the items look like?” she asked after a while of silence.

Remembering the items, Cold Flame frowned a bit. “Golden pendants, each with a strange mark on them. They looked ordinary, but the energy they gave off was repulsive ad harsh. Like it was made using a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice?” Michelle raised a brow. “What kind of sacrifice?” she asked curiously. Back in her old world, she knew about ancient sacrifices to gods, but after coming to the world she was in, even in the original hosts memories, she didn’t see anything about sacrifices. Was it just that the Land of Exile didn’t even have sacrifices, or were sacrifices something forbidden that one a few knew about? From Cold Flame’s expression, she was guessing that the second was the case.

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