CHAPTER 259: 259

In the arena, Michelle stood opposite Elise. They were on a different platform than the one Michelle fought on before. And it worked differently.

It was a platform solely for sparring, so it completely blocked any annihilation attacks. In other words, Michelle couldn’t use the Nonexistent Hymn and skills like that.

Elise stared at Michelle for a while before lunging forward. She was a master in close combat.

Michelle did the same.

Neither of them were holding a weapon. They agreed that for the first match, they wouldn’t use any weapons or skills—just pure physical fight.

The two crashed together in the middle. Elise sent a punch and Michelle countered it with a kick. Both were forced to dodge to the side.

But the next moment, they were at it again.

Elise aimed for Michelle’s throat, but Michelle put her left arm there for Elise to grab.

At the same time, Michelle sent a punch toward her gut, but Elise blocked it with her free hand.

At the moment, neither of the two was using their full strength. They were trying to gauge each other.

With every attack and strike, the fight escalated. Sometimes, hits landed. It turned impossible to dodge and block everything.

Michelle was at a physical disadvantage, but her speed compensated for it. The only thing it didn’t compensate for was that when she landed a hit on Elise, Elise didn’t recoil as much as Michelle did when she got hit.

But that was fine, because whenever Michelle landed a hit, she was able to land two on the same place.

It wasn’t as effective as Elise’s hits, but it was still impactful enough.

After a good two hours, the fight ended.

Considering it was a sparring match, the amount of bruises the two had was surprising.

But that was because, unlike in normal sparring matches, they used underhanded methods. They had agreed upon it before—a sparring match with their full power.

Coming off the platform, they sat next to each other. They agreed the next match would be with spirit energy—in Michelle’s case, with soul energy—in the evening.

So Michelle left the arena. She had a few hours to spare, and that was just enough time for one try at making poison.

As she walked through the sect, she felt gazes on her. The visible bruises on her face attracted attention.

It most probably made the nearby disciples think she got beaten up by someone else for being cultivation trash. That information had already spread all over the sect.

From the gazes on her, Michelle could feel some showing pity, some brief and indifferent, some scornful, and some clearly mocking—happy that she was beaten up.

But she didn’t care. She just walked back to her room. She wasn’t planning to stay in the sect for a long time, so she had no plans of engaging with most disciples.

In her room, Michelle pulled out her cauldron and once again started preparing the poison. First, she put the Fadewrath Orchid into water and added spirit energy to it. Then, she proceeded to prepare the slimy part. And she didn’t forget to add the Vision Stem to it.

Those two parts could be considered easy. There wasn’t really anything to mess up.

Trouble came when Michelle started mixing the two parts together.

Without the Vision Stem, the consistency of the slimy part was perfect, so when the water evaporated from it, it didn’t cause any trouble, whether it was or wasn’t mixed with the corrosive part.

But with the Vision Stem mixed in, it was a bit thicker. That caused one big problem.

Michelle couldn’t even proceed to evaporating the slimy part because she couldn’t keep it mixed in with the corrosive part.

Being thicker than the corrosive part, it constantly settled down in the cauldron. Michelle tried mixing it in physically and then quickly mending it all together, but it was impossible to do it quickly enough.

Still, Michelle tried the way of speeding through it. With one hand, she kept mixing the concoction, and with the other, she controlled the fire under the cauldron.

The temperature in the room rose up high as liquid evaporated from the cauldron.

At first, Michelle was quite satisfied. Things seemed to go smoothly.

But she really didn’t like that she had to use such a hot flame. It spelled trouble.

And just as she had guessed, when she took the pills out of the cauldron, they were uneven even from the outside. They had a color gradient.

Shattering one in her fist, she checked the inside.

Just like she had worried, the inside too had a color gradient. The dust she had crushed the pill into wasn’t all of the same color.

The colors had already mixed, but it was originally a gradient of all shades of yellow and green—yellow from the Fadewrath Orchid, and green from the Vision Stem.

"Whatever..." Michelle discarded the failed pills and stood up. It took her quite some time, so the time of the next match was approaching.

As she was about to leave the room, Michelle caught her reflection in one of the shards of the broken mirror on the ground. She hadn’t bothered to clean it up after Alexander broke it.

Her bruises were nearly gone. It would definitely catch attention since many had seen her bruised up.

Thinking about it for a moment, Michelle decided not to care about it.

Just that her bruises disappeared wouldn’t cause others to discover she had Spirit Soul Blood. At most, they would suspect she had some kind of medicine.

And since some bruises still stayed behind, they would think the medicine wasn’t all that effective.

So, back in the arena, Michelle stepped on the platform with Elise. Even before reaching the last stair, they had both already gathered enough energy for the first attack.

Once on the platform, they didn’t wait for it to activate.

Instantly, Michelle formed a bow with her soul energy, blazing with Soul Fire, and shot at Elise.

At the same time, Elise formed a bunch of blue swords in front of her. Under her control, one of them flew at Michelle, colliding with her black arrow.

The black arrow swallowed the sword, but right behind the sword was another one.

Once again, the black arrow swallowed it.

But at the same time, Elise controlled three more swords, putting them into motion.

She let another get swallowed, while the two struck at the arrow from the sides.

Michelle smiled a bit when she saw the swords slicing through the arrow. When the swords passed through, the arrow remained intact.

Elise clicked her tongue and jumped to the side, dodging the arrow. Then, she sent the rest of her swords at Michelle. She needed a bit of time to prepare her next skill.

Michelle saw the swords flying at her and summoned her soul leash—the Binding Chains. The golden chains spread out around her, forming a net.

And in between them, Michelle spread her soul energy—black and chilly.

The swords crashed into the soul energy and the Binding Chains, losing their momentum.

Usually, soul energy would have no way of affecting skills created by spirit energy, but Michelle’s soul energy was completely black. It was basically the same as void. And under the control of the Binding Chains, it became a complete void, taking the energy out of the swords.

They fell to the ground and turned into small puddles of water.

When Elise saw it, she was a bit surprised, but she didn’t mind it. It took up some time, so she had enough time to prepare her skill.

Within her hands, she had gathered enough spirit energy. All she needed to do was let it out.

Letting the wall of soul energy and Binding Chains fall, Michelle narrowed her eyes. She could feel the spirit energy violently spinning around—and it was the most violent around Elise.

She was curious about the skill, but she also knew she had to be prepared.

So she decided to do something she hadn’t done before. She was going to fight using shadow essence, even though she had just a speck of it.

Prepared for the skill, Elise lifted her hands up and started pumping her spirit energy out.

The air on the platform turned humid. Elise had water-element spirit energy.

But that wasn’t all. Under the barrier around the platform, a dark cloud started forming.

Elise was determined to end the fight with that attack.

Michelle gathered a small speck of shadow essence on her palm. It was so small that no one could see it.

But with just that, Michelle would counter the cloud.

When the cloud got big enough, it blocked the sun. Its shadow loomed over the platform.

And that was exactly what Michelle needed. In shadows like that, shadow essence was the most potent. And since she already had some gathered on her hand, she could use it to partially command the new shadow essence.

She didn’t doubt it would be hard. She had never done it.

But shadow essence was somehow similar to dark-element spirit energy, and Michelle was proficient in using that.

So she was determined to use the shadow essence.