CHAPTER 215: 215

Upon hearing Michelle’s question, Anastasia shook her head. "I was always alone. The place was devoid of any life."

That was completely different compared to what Michelle and Pete had to go through while cultivating. Every third day, they had to stop cultivating and fight two monsters without using any spirit energy.

Giving it a bit more thought, a frown formed on Michelle’s forehead. Without enough combat experience, no matter how powerful Anastasia became, she would be easily overturned by someone of the same rank, and maybe even by someone slightly weaker.

So to prevent that, combat was absolutely necessary.

For a while, the three talked about it until they reached a conclusion. All of them would go into the ice element door, but Michelle would go in first.

Within the space lived bloodsuckers of the ice element, so if someone without the ice element entered, they would attack and kill them. To prevent that, Michelle would have to find the queen of the bloodsuckers and convince her not to attack Pete and Anastasia.

After walking through the door, Michelle was led a bit further before sitting down cross-legged. Then, without closing her eyes, she started cultivating, observing as bloodsuckers crawled out from under the snow and started climbing onto her body.

But Michelle still didn’t move. Instead, she just put more concentration into pulling spirit energy from the surroundings into her body, making it so that all the bloodsuckers near her weren’t enough to eat away the residual spirit energy on her.

Being greedy for spirit energy, the bloodsuckers didn’t like seeing it go to waste, so one of them sent a signal under the snow so more of them would come.

Knowing that the queen wouldn’t appear so easily, Michelle continued forcefully increasing the pace at which she was cultivating, making the bloodsuckers angry that more spirit energy was being left behind on her body.

When, even after a while, the queen didn’t appear, Michelle’s frown deepened as she sped up the flow of spirit energy within her blood. That way she could push herself to cultivate even faster, even though it was seriously pushing her body to its limit.

For a while, the number of bloodsuckers around Michelle remained the same, nothing special happening. But after some time, when Michelle was finding the cultivation speed unsustainable, the snow beneath her shook.

Slowly, from beneath the snow next to her, a huge red worm started crawling out. Unlike the rest of the bloodsuckers, its mouth didn’t have any fangs.

Michelle smiled and continued cultivating at the same rate until the huge worm was completely out of the snow, coming toward her.

Then, she reached out her hand to it, touching what seemed to be its head.

The worm froze. Bloodsuckers were blind creatures, so it didn’t know that Michelle had her eyes open while cultivating. Thus, it didn’t expect her to touch it.

The big worm’s instinct was to go into hiding. Without teeth like the small worms had, it was unable to retaliate.

Michelle was expecting the queen to try to escape, so she quickly lunged at it, wrapping her hands around it. With that, she also stopped cultivating.

The bloodsuckers all over Michelle felt her stop cultivating and started to get off. And when their minds were no longer clouded by the spirit energy they were sucking away, they were able to feel that their queen was in distress.

The next moment, Michelle felt the bloodsuckers all sticking to her legs, their teeth sinking deep into her flesh.

But Michelle wasn’t worried about that. If she was able to convince the queen before the bloodsuckers drained her blood, she would be safe.

Holding the queen bloodsucker, Michelle gently ran her hand along its body, not minding the slimy feeling of the mucus all over the queen’s body.

If it was a normal bloodsucker, she would have been worried about touching it like that, because the mucus was most probably the thing bloodsuckers used to move and sense around easier and to keep themselves warm.

But the queen bloodsucker had a thick layer of it, and it was pumping with spirit energy, so it wouldn’t harm it if Michelle touched it.

"Don’t be scared of me..." Michelle mumbled, but she was guessing that bloodsuckers couldn’t understand human speech.

So she tried to do something else instead. She had to do it quickly, or the queen bloodsucker would escape her and never show itself in front of her again.

Briefly letting go of the queen, Michelle lowered her head to bite down on her wrist, making blood spray around.

Then, before the queen bloodsucker could even realize it was free, Michelle brought her bleeding wrist to it, letting blood flow into its mouth.

Naturally, the blood didn’t go only into the queen’s mouth but all around. But it couldn’t really be seen on that already red body.

Tasting the blood and feeling it with the sensitive mucus all over its body, the queen sucker stopped struggling against Michelle for a moment.

The next moment, Michelle felt a rumbling wave go past her, making her feel lightheaded.

That made her realize how the bloodsuckers were communicating. They used infrasound to create waves which couldn’t be heard by most creatures.

What the bloodsuckers probably didn’t know because they lived underground most of the time, infrasound waves could cause enough harm to knock a person unconscious. And after prolonged exposure, the person could even die.

After the rumbling wave passed above the snow, Michelle was pleasantly surprised that the bloodsuckers on her legs retracted their teeth from her flesh.

It felt a bit suspicious.

Even if she showed the queen that she had Spirit Soul Blood, Michelle didn’t see it as a good enough reason for the queen to start trusting her.

So did that mean that the queen was planning something?

Seeing as the bloodsuckers still stayed around even though they were no longer biting her, Michelle understood that they were still wary of her. So she turned her head back to the queen, wondering about how to convince them all.

"You said I shouldn’t be scared of you..." Michelle was pulled out of her thoughts by a soft voice. "What did you mean by that?" Though the voice was soft, it carried coldness that could freeze hearts.

Michelle stared at the queen bloodsucker and couldn’t believe that it spoke to her. Did that mean it could control the frequency of the sound it made? And it also had to be intelligent enough to comprehend human speech, otherwise it would have just made incoherent noise.

Seeing that Michelle was in a daze, the queen sent out an infrasound wave, and a bloodsucker bit Michelle’s leg hard, bringing her mind back to reality.

Michelle shook her head a bit to get back to her senses, and then she spoke. "I would like to make a deal with you."

If the queen had a face, it would have probably frowned. "We won’t make a contract with you!" she declared coldly. "Even if you have that special blood!"

Michelle was a bit surprised. She didn’t expect the queen to think that she wanted to make a contract with one of the bloodsuckers. Also, she didn’t expect such a cold opposition to the idea.

All the beasts and monsters she had met which got a whiff of her blood were like they were under a magic spell.

The fact that the queen wasn’t like that just further proved that its intelligence and power were far above anything Michelle had met, if she didn’t count her own beasts.

"I wasn’t going to propose a contract," Michelle shook her head.

"Then what do you want?" the queen’s voice was no longer as chilly, but still cold.

So Michelle started explaining. "I have two friends who aren’t cultivators of the ice element, and I would like them to fight the monsters that appear here. I wanted to ask you if you could not attack them if I brought them here."

The queen gave it a momentary thought before answering. "How can I be sure they won’t attack my children!" She clearly didn’t believe Michelle.

Michelle smiled a bit. "Did you not notice that this place prevents anyone from using spirit energy? This place only allows people to cultivate."

With that, Michelle summoned some spirit energy on the palm of her hand, but it instantly dissipated. "Also, you and your children can hide under the snow while my friends are here," she added.

Michelle’s words convinced the queen that it was safe to not attack Anastasia and Pete, but it still didn’t want to just agree so easily. "What do we get if we listen to your request?"

That made Michelle smile. Finally came the time for negotiations. "The whole time, I’ll be cultivating so you and your children can suck on the residual spirit energy."

The queen wasn’t convinced. "Anyone can come here to cultivate and we could suck the residual spirit energy," it retorted.

Michelle smiled at that. "Was there ever someone who was able to cultivate at such speed that the residual spirit energy was so much even you came out to suck it?"

The queen froze. "Only one person..." it mumbled.

"Do you think you will meet someone like that again in a while?" Michelle’s smile widened.

But the queen still had more to say. "But you had to force yourself to cultivate at such speed. It’s unsustainable in the long term."