Chapter 60: 60

Before Cold Flame could answer Michelle’s question, her attention once again turned to Garric Sloan, as he put his hands underwater again, and pulled out a small and clearly old box. He opened it and took out a golden pendant. When Michelle saw it, she felt her skin crawl in disgust. “How many did he pull out until now?” she turned to glance at Cold Flame.

Cold Flame glanced at the golden pendant with his brows creased into a frown of disgust. “This is the sixth, and he had only gone around half of the lake until now. If they are scattered all around the lake, there should be twelve of them, so six more.”

Hearing that, Michelle nodded a bit and turned her attention back to Garrick. He had already put away the pendant, so she couldn’t observe it anymore, but judging by his movements, she could see that the pendants were weighing him down. Before he had picked up the pendant, his walking was, though sluggish, but swifter than at the moment. After picking up the pendant, his back bent slightly, nearly unnoticeably, and his movements turned a bit more sluggish. “It”s like the pendant is sucking away his life,” she commented.

When her words fell, Cold Flame’s frown deepened, and he remained coldly silent for a while before finally speaking up: “I know what the pendants are for…”

“What for?” Michelle asked as she tilted her head a bit.

Cold Flame remained silent for a moment before answering. “For trapping souls. If I’m not wrong, the golden pendants are Soul Seeking Pendants which can suck out the souls of cultivators and turn them into mindless puppets. When the pendant has a drop of blood of a non-cultivator or a weak cultivator who hasn’t even reached the Spirit rank dropped on it, a bond will form between the pendant and the person, and the bodies of cultivators whose souls have been sucked into the pendant will turn into mindless servants of the person.”

With a deep frown, Michelle remained silent as she fixed her gaze on Garric. She had many more questions she wanted to ask about sacrifices and the pendants, but at the moment, her mind was dangerously calm, with all unnecessary thought suppressed. All she could think about was to speed up her plans of getting rid of the Sloan Viscounty, but if they were involved with the lower realm, she had to be careful, as she didn’t want to implicate anyone, and she definitely didn’t want anyone to find out that the Archduke was down in the Land of Exile.

“Flamie… What should I know about Soul Seeking Pendants and sacrifices to be able to get rid of the Sloan family?” she asked after a while as she watched Garric put his hands into the swallow part of the artificial take again and took out another small box with a golden pendant. Cold Flame looked at Michelle and saw the dangerous calmness. He sighed a bit and started explaining to her about the Soul Seeking Pendants.

Soul Seeking Pendants were able to store up to a thousand souls, and keep them trapped forever. In higher realms, they were considered evil and disgusting, as they sucked away the soul of anyone who touched them, and the only ones who were unaffected by them were people above the God Rank, or beneath the Spirit rank, which were only babies born sick or trashes with no cultivation. The only chance for someone’s soul to not get sucked into the pendant was if the pendant was already filled to brim with souls.

Listening to the explanation, Michelle frowned. She wasn’t endangered by the Soul Seeking Pendants, since her cultivation was beneath the Spirit rank, but she didn’t know about her spirit beasts, and they were in her plan too.

Cold Flame could see what Michelle was worried about so he quickly reassured her: “Don’t worry, our souls can’t get sucked away since they are already bound to you. As long as you, our contracted master, are immune to the pendants’ powers, we are immune too.”

That cleared some of Michelle’s worries but only some. But the rest of the worries were related to when she was planning to go to the lower realm, so she didn’t think about them at the moment. “Cold Flame, why do you think Garric stored the pendants in boxes underwater?” she asked with a frown. She couldn’t understand that.

But Cold Flame could also only guess. He wasn’t an expert in sacrifices, and Soul Seeking Pendants were also something he could barely find some memories of in the memories of his ancestors, as between all the sacrifice rituals, it was the least used, as basically no one could use it. The only place where it was sometimes heard about was the lower realm where the Vermilion Birds never really went, so they didn’t catch the information.

Seeing that Cold Flame was as clueless as she was, Michelle didn’t say anything and went back to watching as Garric pulled out more small boxes with the golden pendants. Just as Cold Flame had guessed, there was a total of twelve pendants. If all of them were filled with souls, it meant that Garric had twelve thousand souls trapped and he could control twelve thousands puppets.

Just the thought of that made Michelle frown in disgust. She herself could control people with her memory manipulation skill, but she didn’t do it by sucking away their soul, and she didn’t use the skill on a large scale, so Garric’s Soul Seeking Pendants disgusted her.

“Cold Flame, can you tell if the pendants are filled up?” she asked.

Cold Flame frowned a bit and stared at the box which Garric had just pulled out of the water. His light blue eyes narrowed as he observed the pendant that Garric took out of the box. “It’s full…” he said after a while. “And all the others were too…” he added. “They had the same energy density.”

Hearing that, Michelle frowned. “That means we will be dealing with twelve thousand puppets and maybe even more, since this might be just one of more places where he had hid the pendants.”

“What do we do now, Michelle?” Cold Flame glanced at Michelle, knowing that was completely out of her expectations, as she hadn’t expected the Sloan family to be preparing something so large scale.

Michelle frowned a bit, in thought. “First… We have to inform father, David and Alexander since they might be affected by the pendants. We don’t know if Garric or Malrik have empty pendants, and that would be a disaster.”

“Should I stay here and watch him?” Cold Flame asked as he glanced at Garric.

But Michelle shook her head. “No.” She placed her hands on the ground beneath her and formed a small net made out of nearly transparent threads from her ice element spirit energy. “I’ll mark him…” she added as the net slowly formed into the shape of the mark all her contract beasts had on their foreheads when she contracted them. A snake coiled around a rose with the rose’s thorns stabbing the snake.

Seeing that mark made of threads, Cold Flame was shocked. “Michelle, since when could you make Spirit Marks?” he asked with a frown. As far as he knew, it was a skill only those from the heavenly realm could use.

“Alexander taught me while I taught him basic math and physics before I contracted you. You should know about it from my memories.” Michelle explained lazily as if it was nothing. It was quite clear she didn’t know the full power of the skill.

Cold Flame quickly went through Michelle’s memories as he had access to them, and indeed found out that the day when Alexander told her that the merger of the contradictory cultivation methods she made was safe to use and had her own cultivation method, during a break, when she wasn’t teaching him math and physics for a while, he taught her the skill Spirit Mark, saying it could be useful to her.

It wasn’t that omnipotent skill, but it was highly useful for spying or keeping someone in check, but only the most powerful from the heavenly realm knew how to use it.

Once, a God of Gods ranked man from the heavenly realm said that after reaching a certain level, everyone will naturally learn the skill, and that few individuals, if they were taught a bit about the skill, could use the skill without reaching that level. But all that depended solely on the potential of their soul.

And Michelle was one of those who had the potential in their soul. But it wasn’t that surprising since she also had Spirit Soul Blood, and that, too, depended on the soul’s potential, so it was clear that Michelle had a special soul.

Not knowing Cold Flame’s thoughts, Michelle formed the Spirit Mark in her hands and raided her hands in the direction of Garric. The Spirit Mark flew out of her hands and attached itself to the back of Garric’s head without him noticing.

That was the thing that made the Spirit Mark so desirable, even though it wasn’t that special. It was a skill which couldn’t be noticed by the person marked by it, no matter how powerful he was. Because the Spirit Mark carried no spirit energy but soul energy. It was called Spirit Mark only because the caster could connect with it with his spirit energy, but it was cast using soul energy.

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