Chapter 227: 227
"You two..." Michelle stared at Noctis and Unlucien. "...reek of blood. Get rid of it!"
The two men got rooted in their place. At first, they expected Michelle to answer the question. Instead, she just told them they smelled of blood.
Or did what she told them mean that she was able to sense them because of the smell of blood? They would never know unless Michelle told them.
So they obediently left to get rid of the metallic stench.
After Noctis and Unlucien left, Michelle sat down on the ground. "Where were you this month while I was in the sect?"
"There’s a cave abundant with spirit energy nearby," Ivona answered as she sat down next to Michelle.
Michelle raised a brow. "Both light and fire element?"
Ivona nodded. "Not only that. All elements were flowing around peacefully."
A frown formed on Michelle’s forehead. "Didn’t the spirit energy of opposing elements clash?"
Usually, when two opposing elements, for example fire and ice, were in one space, they would clash and cause massive explosions. It would result in the spirit energy of the element that was less concentrated in the space being pushed out.
"Come, let me show you..." It was easy for anyone from the group to see that Michelle wanted to go see the cave, so Ivona stood up to lead her there.
Michelle wanted to stand up, but her stomach was still aching. It wasn’t terrible, but standing up hurt the most.
Seeing it, Ivona grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her up. "Now, good?"
When Michelle nodded, the group departed toward the cave.
From the outside, the cave looked ordinary, but Michelle had the feeling that something was wrong. Still, she stepped inside.
The abundance of spirit energy made her frown. She could feel not only her ice and dark elements flowing around, but even the light and fire elements alongside the others.
As the two elements were complete opposites to her own, she shouldn’t have been able to feel them no matter how much of them was present.
Michelle’s suspicion about the cave grew with every moment.
"How deep is the cave?" she suddenly asked.
Kieran shook his head. "We didn’t go in too deep since it was suspicious."
Michelle went silent for a while, lost in thought. "I’m going in deeper!" she finally spoke.
"That could be dangerous," Kieran reminded her. He knew Michelle couldn’t be stopped once she decided, but he at least wanted to remind her.
Michelle turned to glance at the three people and smiled a bit. "You don’t need to-"
She wanted to say they didn’t need to come along, but before she finished speaking, a ball of soul energy hit her abdomen again. "Don’t think about leaving us behind!" Anastasia smiled. Every time she hit Michelle, her mood improved.
Michelle let out a low hiss and put her hand over her belly. Her friend was really ruthless toward her. "Very well, then let’s go."
Walking deeper into the cave, Michelle could feel the flow of the spirit energy getting faster. That caused all the elements around to mix together.
But strangely, no signs of an upcoming explosion appeared. "A place like this shouldn’t exist..." Michelle mumbled.
The further the group went into the cave, the faster and more aggressive the flow got. But the shocking thing was that once they reached the back wall of the cave, nothing was there. Just a plain, empty cave.
Standing in front of the wall, Michelle knocked on it with her fist.
The sound was normal—dull and nearly silent, like when knocking on a rock.
Still, Michelle didn’t believe the wall was all that simple. Taking a dagger out of her spatial ring, she knocked on the wall with the handle.
But the result was basically the same.
At least Michelle could be sure that the wall wasn’t hollow. Even if there was a secret room behind the wall, the wall was thick enough to prevent hollow sounds.
Or maybe there was no secret room and the material of the wall was the problematic thing. It sounded and looked like an ordinary stone, but Michelle doubted that.
Very much, she desired to pump her spirit energy into the wall, but she didn’t.
The spirit energy all around was flowing way too aggressively. Even a small speck of spirit energy she summoned could cause a massive explosion within the cave. The whole group would end up buried alive.
But that didn’t mean Michelle would just leave. She still had her soul energy. That shouldn’t affect spirit energy in any way.
Still... Michelle glanced at the three people behind her. "Step back a bit," she said, placing her hand on the wall.
The three stayed rooted in their spots. "What are you planning this time?" Anastasia summoned soul energy on her palm, a clear threat that she would strike again if Michelle didn’t explain herself.
Having already received enough strikes from Anastasia, Michelle sighed. "I want to pump soul energy into the wall. Spirit energy is too dangerous in a place like this."
"Then I’ll help!" Anastasia didn’t even give Michelle the chance to react and stepped forward to place her hand on the wall.
Michelle stared at her for a moment, knowing there was no convincing her. So she at least glanced back at Kieran and Ivona.
But the two stubbornly remained in place. "Don’t think you can make us leave!" Kieran shook his head.
Seeing the stubborn expressions on their faces, Michelle sighed and turned back to the wall.
"Let’s do it at the same time."
At the count of three, Michelle and Anastasia started pouring their soul energy into the wall.
Michelle spread her soul energy into the shape of a net and drove it deep into the wall.
Feeling that, Anastasia had her soul energy flow around Michelle’s, creating a dark-grey hue around the black net.
At first, nothing happened, but that didn’t stop the two girls. They kept relentlessly pouring in their soul energy, enlarging the net.
Anastasia was the first one to spend all her soul energy and retracted her hands. Michelle went on for a long time. Her soul energy was basically bottomless.
When she had spread the net all around the wall and inside it, Michelle stepped back, forming a thick rope between her and the wall with her soul energy. It was so she could still be connected to the soul energy.
She knew she could control her soul energy even if she was no longer in direct contact with it, but for the next thing, she needed not only control but also her own physical strength.
When Kieran, Ivona, and Anastasia saw Michelle stepping back, they retreated a bit too. It wasn’t that hard to guess what she was about to do.
After getting far enough, Michelle wrapped part of the rope around her forearm and pulled with all her strength. At the same time, she controlled the soul energy to turn into a physical net and go back toward her.
Suddenly being intertwined by ropes, the wall couldn’t hold and fell as the net cut through it. Rocks rolled on the ground as Michelle stared at the rest of the wall in front of her.
Finally, she could see what was wrong. She could understand what was going on.
A Life Stone was peeking out of the wall.
Stepping forward, she coated her hands in soul energy and started pulling off the remaining rocks on the wall. Seeing that, the rest of the group stepped forward and used their hands to do the same.
After a while, a brilliant wall of Life Stones was revealed to their eyes, shining with all kinds of colors.
"Well, this is a surprise..." Michelle stepped back from the wall, sitting down on the ground. She was tired.
"Does this mean the space is safe to cultivate?" Ivona ran her hand along one of the light-element Life Stones.
Michelle stared at the wall. "I’m not really sure. Usually, the spirit energy of Life Stones remains within them. Now that it’s swirling around them, it could be dangerous."
"So, what do we do now?" Anastasia sat next to Michelle. She, too, was completely spent.
Michelle thought about it for a while before summoning Nyxaroth. He was an ancient creature, so there was a chance he had encountered something like that before.
Even before Michelle could ask something, Nyxaroth frowned and blew a wave of dark-element spirit energy into the wall. "What is this disgusting thing?" His voice was dripping with disdain.
Michelle stared at him for a moment before answering. "Life Stones."
"I know that much!" Nyxaroth scoffed. He didn’t like the place. "Why are they gathered like this?"
Michelle shook her head. "We found them like this. They were hidden by a wall we had to tear down."
Nyxaroth’s eyes narrowed, and he started gathering more spirit energy on his hand. "I don’t like this place!" He was just stating the obvious.