Chapter 78: 78

In the morning, Michelle felt too lazy to get up and remained in bed, her face buried in the pillow. She felt Cold Flame’s gaze on the back of her head as he observed her, clearly still thinking about what she had done during the night. She turned her head to the side a bit and opened one of her eyes to look at you. “Is it still annoying you so much…?” she asked lazily.

Cold Flame stared at her for a moment longer before answering: “No!” He shook his head. “I’m just wondering… Why did it take you so long to realize that you weren’t supposed to push against the twists, but that instead you should have gotten in harmony with the space? Most of the time, you are smart, but yesterday, you were just stupid!”

Hearing Cold Flame’s words, Michelle arched an eyebrow. “Are you insulting your contract master now…?” she propped her head up on the palm of her hand as she finally opened both eyes, with a sneer on her lips.

“Yes!” Cold Flame flapped his wings and flew over to the headboard of the bed, landing there gracefully. “I’m accusing you of stupidity!”

Michelle’s sneer widened, and before Cold Flame could react, he found himself bound by a black chain, with golden streaks on it, dragging him towards Michelle. “Hey! You can’t use your soul energy as you like! That’s dangerous since your soul leash is the binding chain!” he protested.

But Michelle shrugged. “I would have to use it a hundred times with the power equivalent to the power of a Paragon-level Emperor ranker, but now, I am not even using the power equivalent to a Spirit ranker, so I would have to use it around 10 billion times to reach the power equivalent of an Emperor ranker since the difference between a Paragon level of one rank and the Junior level in the rank above it is around 100-fold.” She clearly didn’t care much about the binding chain, since she had it under perfect control.

Soul energy was something that defied the realm restrictions, so if she trained enough, she would be able to use the power equivalent to an Emperor ranker, but she didn’t really want to. She remembered how ruthless the Archduke’s training was, and though she was thankful for it, she didn’t want to repeat it right away, when she had just stopped the day before.

Seeing Michelle’s nonchalance and laziness, Cold Flame knew she had things under control, so he just sighed. “Michelle, get rid of these chains!” he said after a while, not liking being restrained. “Or I’ll take on my full form!”

Michelle knew that Cold Flame’s full form was probably huge and that its bare size would destroy a big part of the mansion, so she temporarily surrendered and retracted her soul energy, the black chains. “Don’t insult your contract master…” she sat up slowly as she spoke, stretching her arms in front of her. Winter was starting, and she always kept all the windows in her room open, so the temperature was perfect for her cold body. Refreshingly cooling.

Winter was the only time of year when she didn’t wear extremely thin clothes. She wore only one layer of clothes, but the clothes were slightly thicker than usual. The difference was like that between clothes that a normal person would wear during the hottest summer and in the middle of spring.

Before Michelle could get out of the bed, someone knocked on the door, making her arch an eyebrow. The presence she felt outside the door belonged neither to the Archduke nor to her beasts. And she didn’t recognize it as belonging to one of the servants she knew. Usually, the servants who served her were the same, so she had already memorized the sound of their footsteps, their presence, and, with some, even the sound of their breathing, but that was only with those who had especially conspicuous breathing.

“Come in!” she said, speaking up a bit, as Cold Flame took on a bigger form, looking like a huge white eagle, and flew over to Michelle’s shoulder. It wasn’t that he or Michelle were worried that someone would ambush them or plot against them, but since someone whose presence neither of them recognized decided to knock on their door, intimidating them a bit definitely wouldn’t do any harm. And if it was just a random servant Michelle didn’t recognize, she didn’t really care if he got scared, as all the servants, except the old butler, were scared of her.

The door creaked open and a person entered, making Michelle raise a brow in surprise. “Why would you come here?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

Seeing the person, Cold Flame transformed back into a small white bird and returned to resting on Michelle’s pillow.

“Since when were Vermilion Birds so lazy?” Alexander Terce asked with a sneer, as he glanced at Cold Flame instead of answering Michelle’s question.

Cold Flame opened his blue eyes to glance at Alexander before closing them again. He was way too lazy to argue with Alexander, especially since Alexander was clearly a sly person, similar to Michelle. And Cod Flame hated dealing with people like that. Having them as friends was good, but arguing with them was hopeless, as they always had a foolproof argument to defend themselves with.

Knowng Cold Flame’s thoughts, Alexander chuckled and walked over to the desk at the side of the room, sitting in a chair next to it before he turned to look at Michelle. “You’re planning to go to the lower realm soon?” he asked with a smirk. “Why not go straight to the upper realm? And don’t tell me you have plans to go to the middle realm too!”

Michelle stared at the infuriatingly handsome person in front of her and arched a brow. “I won’t go to the middle realm!” she said after a moment.

“Then why the lower realm?” Alexander was strangely fixated on Michelle going to the lower realm, making her suspicious.

“I have things to take care of there,” she answered very generally.

Alexander rolled his eyes at her response. “Like I couldn’t figure that out… I want to know what it is that you want to take care of? I doubt it’s only because of the Sloan family. If that was the case, you would have sent your beasts just like you did with the Hilberg family. What is it that you aren’t telling anyone else?”

For a long while, Michelle remained silent, just staring at Alexander. It was highly suspicious that a guy like him, who was himself considered a powerhouse, would be curious about her business in the lower realm. It was as suspicious as a guy like him staying in the Land of Exile for an extended period. At first, she had thought both he and David Elether came for the same reason as the Archduke, the erratic spirit energy in the cave where Rivenaar was locked up, but she was starting to rethink her guess. As far as she knew, neither of the two showed any interest in the cave.

“Why did you come down here?” Instead of answering Alexander’s question, Michelle asked a question of her own, but she wasn’t really expecting an answer. From the few times she had met Alexander, she knew he wasn’t the type of person who would just tell her about his plans or reasons for no reason. Just like she didn’t want to tell him about the strange human-like creature clad in black that said it would wait for her in the lower realm, he had no reason to tell her about his things.

Knowing that if he asked anything more, Michelle would just be stubborn, Alexander chuckled, and, just like when he had first met Michelle, he immobilized her with his spirit energy. Being above the rank of Emperor, the realm restrictions were weaker on him than on others, so restraining Michelle was nothing hard for him.

Being immobilized again, Michelle’s eyes flashed red as she watched Alexander stand up from her desk and walk over to her. He walked past her and stood behind her.

After placing his head on the back of her head, Michelle felt something hot come from his hand and frowned. But before she could think anything more about the sensation, it disappeared along with Alexander’s presence in the room and the pressure he was putting on her. Michelle quickly turned around and saw an empty place where he had just stood.

“This bastard…” Michelle cursed under her breath as she touched the back of her head. The feeling of helplessness against his power only fueled her desire to get stronger and once again awoke her rage towards him, which had recently subsided after he had helped her improve her cultivation method. Once again, she wanted to beat him up until his own mother couldn’t recognize him.

Cold Flame opened his eyes lazily and looked at his fuming contract master. “Michelle, I can bet that before you have enough power to beat him up, your rage will cool down and come back a few times,” he said with a smile.

Hearing that, Michelle frowned a bit and sighed, quickly calming down, her eyes returning to their original purple state. “You might be right, but I still hate him!”

“You’ve never liked him,” Cold Flame stated matter-of-factly.

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