CHAPTER 204: 204

Michelle followed Alexander through the space rift, her eyes narrowed as she stared at his back. Since she had gotten rid of the Void Plague within him, his aura was constantly changing, growing more and more horrifying.

In the past, she didn’t really notice it because the gaps between their encounters weren’t that big, but after being away from him for a few months, she could feel the pressure around him rise by folds. And that was after his power got suppressed by the Heavenly Law to fit into the lower realm. There was no way of knowing what kind of monster he was in the Heavenly Realm.

"You will stare a hole into my back," Alexander commented with a smile, his voice careless as always.

As he said that, he stepped out of the rift into a place full of white.

Michelle couldn’t really identify what the whiteness was until she stepped out of the rift too. "Well, that’s a lot of snow... Where are we exactly?"

"This place has the most abundant ice element spirit energy in the whole lower realm." The snow crunched softly as Alexander walked over it.

Taking a deep breath, Michelle could feel all her cells sucking in the spirit energy, making her nod in satisfaction. "It really is a good place..." She looked around and all she could see was an endless sea of snow. And not a single footprint within sight.

"It seems no one came here in a long time..." she arched a brow. "Is something wrong with this place?"

Alexander shrugged. "Depends on what you take as wrong."

Michelle narrowed her eyes. "Why do people avoid this place?" she asked.

"They are scared of the monsters living under the snow."

"What monsters?" Michelle tilted her head a bit as she stared at the snow beneath her feet.

"Just some bloodsuckers..." Alexander clearly wasn’t worried. "But they won’t touch you."

That made Michelle frown a bit. "And why is that?"

"Bloodsuckers don’t attack people with the same element as them. So you are safe from them in snowy and always dark places."

"I see..." Michelle sat down in the snow, closing her eyes to cultivate. Since she was in no danger, she wouldn’t waste any time to increase her strength.

But just then, something red wiggled out from beneath the snow and wrapped around her leg. It looked like a snake, but its body was much longer and without any scales.

"That’s a bloodsucker?" Michelle asked.

Alexander nodded. "As I said, you are safe. It won’t harm you."

"Then why did it come out?" Michelle’s curiosity about bloodsuckers grew.

"Reasons are two." Alexander remained calm. "It can’t sense your element from under the snow, so when it was coming out, it was originally planning to kill you. It only changed its mind after it touched you."

He continued: "And second, bloodsuckers have a hard time cultivating because they can’t pull the spirit energy to them. That’s why they don’t attack people and animals of their element. Because they prefer a symbiotic relationship with them."

"What kind of symbiotic relationship?" Michelle asked with a raised brow.

Alexander’s next explanation was quite surprising. Michelle had never heard something like that before.

What he basically said was that whenever someone cultivated, they would be unable to pull all the spirit energy they grasped into their bodies, and it would start swirling around them. And the bloodsuckers could take that spirit energy for themselves.

As for why it was beneficial for the cultivators: once they failed to pull the spirit energy into their body, they wouldn’t be able to do it again for a long time. But the spirit energy would remain nearby their body, obscuring the way for other spirit energy, slowing down their progress. When the bloodsuckers took away this blockage of spirit energy, the cultivation speed of the person would increase a fair bit.

Not too much, but it would be noticeable.

After Alexander’s explanation, Michelle had just one more question. "Why don’t they attack you?" she asked, her gaze still on the red creature wrapped around her leg. It was clearly waiting for her to start cultivating.

To answer Michelle’s question, Alexander didn’t open his mouth. He just exuded some of his pressure and even the bloodsucker on Michelle’s leg quickly crawled away to hide under the snow.

"For even monsters to fear you..." Michelle clicked her tongue. "Just how more inhuman can you get?"

Alexander chuckled. "Go to your cultivation!" he pushed her head down a bit.

Michelle was ticked off, but she didn’t say anything. He showed her a great place for cultivation, so she could tolerate him a bit in exchange.

Closing her eyes, she started cultivating, marveling at the speed.

Meanwhile, Alexander just watched her, observing as bloodsuckers crawled out of the snow and started coiling around her body.

They were like big and long worms with a big opening on one end, full of fangs.

They used this opening to suck to Michelle’s skin, but they didn’t use the fangs, so not a single drop of her blood spilled.

Seeing the amount of bloodsuckers present, Alexander couldn’t help shaking his head. He knew that he was the one who helped Michelle improve her self-made cultivation method, but it wasn’t that good for her cultivation speed to be so high. Her natural talent and comprehension played a big part in it.

For so many bloodsuckers to appear, the residue spirit energy around Michelle must have been equivalent to what another cultivator would be able to suck in at once. That meant she was sucking in at least tenfold of that.

"And you dare call me a monster..." he chuckled, lying into the snow lazily. "I don’t deserve that."

Nearby, two men were standing with their backs towards Michelle and Alexander. Unlucien was horrified when he heard Alexander’s mutters and turned to stare at Noctis. "What is the meaning of this?" he hushed.

Noctis was already somehow used to the way Alexander was acting. "I told you we might finally have a Madam."

Glancing back at Michelle, Unlucien felt a cold shiver run up his spine. "It was to be expected that someone Our Lord would take interest in would be a monstrous being, but how could she be so much worse than him?"

Noctis shrugged. He wasn’t surprised that Unlucien could nearly instantly see what he took a while to realize. Michelle already had the aura of a monster, and her thinking was much more twisted up than that of Alexander. It just wasn’t showing that much yet because she was weak.

"You know, we said it was good that the old fogies would die of fright if they found out about her potential, but even people from the Dark Palace might do so if they interact with her..." Unlucien muttered, imagining what his subordinates would look like if they saw Michelle.

Noctis nodded a bit. "Anyways, whether it’s because Our Lord likes her or because of her potential, we can’t afford to offend her."

"You sound scared..." Unlucien frowned a bit. "That’s not like you... Why is an executive of our Dark Palace scared of a little girl, no matter how great her potential is?"

Noctis remembered when Michelle had paralyzed him in Blue Forest City and frowned. "She indeed is still just a little girl, but even though she is weak, she could outsmart us both now and make us suffer for the rest of our lives."

Subconsciously, he touched the back of his neck, the spot where Michelle had stabbed him with the ice needle to paralyze him.

"What did she do to you?" Unlucien was getting more and more curious by every passing moment.

So Noctis told the story about how Michelle had paralyzed him when he tried to take her away from the plaza where Tenether was.

"It was a disgusting feeling..." he finished, his eyes narrowed in disgust. He couldn’t forget the feeling of being unable to feel his body.

After listening to that, Unlucien once again glanced at the figure sitting calmly in the snow, with bloodsuckers coiled up around her whole body. "How could she even catch you off guard like that?"

Noctis shook his head. "Since I was assigned with guarding her, she was strange. She could exactly pinpoint my location just from my gaze on her when I was concealing myself. She probably went through something that made her sensitive to her own surroundings and the senses of her opponents."

Unlucien sat down in the snow helplessly after hearing that. "If that’s true, she’s not a monster..." he supported his head by his hand. "She’s a warped existence."

There was a good reason as to why Unlucien was saying that. If someone could guess what their opponent could sense, they could use those senses to fool and trick the opponent no matter how much stronger the opponent was.

That was probably what Michelle did when she paralyzed Noctis.

She knew he could hear her complaining, feel her struggling on his shoulder after he picked her up, and see her kicking her legs around to get out of his grasp, so she guessed he wouldn’t notice when she formed a needle from her ice.

Because he wouldn’t think she would do something like that.

His sense of touch, sight, and hearing were telling him she was just helplessly struggling against him.