In the elder hall, Michelle was standing in the middle, clearly avoiding answering the questions.

But after the chaos she had caused the last time she had been called to the elders (some were still recovering from their wounds and thus weren’t present), the elders didn’t really dare push her to answer.

Instead, they started giving her more difficult questions in hope that she would mess up and reveal something she didn’t want to say.

But the elders weren’t even halfway through their questions when a servant barged in, covered in blood.

"Family Head, Andrew Ostrich somehow got out of the dungeon! He is killing everyone he meets."

The elders were all shocked to hear that.

There had been very few cases of someone breaking out of the dungeon, and even when someone did, they tried to silently disappear from the family residence.

Also, there were even fewer people who managed to escape the solitary confinement cell since their spirit energy was suppressed there.

Just how did Andrew manage to do that?

But they would never get the answer; Michelle would make sure of that.

"This meeting will be postponed. Ana, go to your room and don’t come out until we send someone for you," Jonathan decided.

Then, he led some elders with him to take care of Andrew.

The fact that the servant rushed in meant that the guards were helpless around him.

And that was understandable since Andrew was a trained killer; he could take on cultivators levels higher than him.

But among the elders, some were a whole rank and several levels higher than him, so they should be able to deal with him.

Michelle obediently went to her room, waiting for the last part of the plan where she would participate as Ana Ostrich.

A moment later, she saw Andrew rushing towards her, the Life Stone in his hand, covered in blood.

Michelle quickly popped a singular pill into her mouth, then her work was done.

Andrew was shaking, incoherent sounds leaving his mouth, but his mind was still clearly set on killing Ana Ostrich; he was to fix the mistake he had made.

The elders were trying to track Andrew, and based on the corpses and bloodstains, it wasn’t hard.

They arrived at Michelle’s courtyard only to see something gruesome.

Andrew was forcing something that looked like a spirit stone into Ana’s (Michelle’s) mouth as she struggled against him.

Of course, Michelle’s struggle was feigned.

Andrew (from the elders’ point of view) overpowered Michelle with a simple punch into her stomach and then forced her to swallow the stone before kicking her aside.

The elders rushed at him to restrain him, but he was strong, taking them quite a while.

In the meantime, one of the elders went to check on Ana.

Normally, they would be pleased if she died, but at the moment, they needed information from her.

They needed to know how she survived the Spirit Onslaught room.

They couldn’t let her die.

But checking Ana, the elder realized her situation was hopeless.

What Andrew forced down her throat couldn’t have been an ordinary spirit stone; it had to be a Life Stone.

Her spirit energy (the bit that he could feel she had) was in utter turmoil, thrashing against her body from the inside.

At the same time, poison-element spirit energy was spreading throughout her body.

Her skin turned blue-grayish and she started gagging like she was drowning.

Her lips started turning purple, and when the elder checked, her fingertips were in the same state.

Though checking her hands proved to be difficult, because Ana (Michelle) was constantly shuddering while grasping at her neck in what seemed to be a desperate attempt to breathe.

A moment later, Vincent ran in.

"Ana!" he rushed over to Michelle, picking her up from the ground.

"Breathe! Please, don’t die!" he shouted, shaking the girl in his arms.

"Vincent..." the elder stood up, placing his hand on Vincent’s shoulder.

"She can’t be saved," his face showed some pity.

Vincent lifted his gaze from Ana to look at the elder, his eyes turning bloodshot.

"No!" he shook his head and turned back down to his dying daughter.

Before Ana (Michelle) stopped breathing, Jonathan and the rest were able to knock Andrew out and restrain him.

When Ana drew her last breath, Vincent closed her eyes, tears breaking free.

Holding her in his arms, he stood up and turned towards the unconscious Andrew.

"Father," he addressed Jonathan.

"If that bastard doesn’t die, I’ll break my promise even if it ruins my name," his voice was filled with burning rage mixed with grief that made tears stain his face.

With that said, he turned around and carried Ana out of the courtyard.

Jonathan watched his son leave until he got out of view.

Then, he ordered for Andrew to be locked up until further decisions were made.

The matter at hand was Ana’s death.

Outside the courtyard, once out of sight, Vincent walked faster, going to his own courtyard.

There, he put Michelle down and popped a pill into her mouth.

Quickly, color returned to her face and her breathing returned, making Vincent sigh in relief.

Though she told him the pill she ate to pretend death couldn’t kill her, he was still worried about it.

When Michelle woke up, Vincent took out of his spatial ring the corpse of his actual daughter and left Michelle to finish things up.

For things to not be suspicious, Ana’s corpse needed to be dressed in the clothes Michelle had been wearing while staging as Ana and pretending to die.

So, Michelle took the corpse with her into the room.

There, she changed into a set of clean clothes and took off her disguise mask.

Then, she put her old clothes on the corpse and took it back out.

Seeing the body of his real daughter, Vincent had difficulty standing straight.

When he had to pretend grief when Michelle faked death, he remembered the moment he found his daughter dead in the lake, and that made the emotions genuine, so he was already tipped toward grief.

So, seeing his daughter’s corpse twisted something wretched inside him, making him unable to hold back his tears.

He collapsed next to his daughter’s body, shaking from the emotions.

"I failed you, my daughter... Your father failed you..." he repeated.

Watching Vincent, Michelle felt someone approaching, so she hastily concealed herself.

A moment later, Jonathan entered the courtyard.

"Vincent, let the morgue staff take your daughter’s body," he spoke quite calmly.

Things then went quite smoothly.

Ana’s body was buried the next day in the family graveyard.

Vincent could barely watch it.

After that, he spoke with the elders, making sure Andrew was killed.

He argued with the fact that he could clearly escape the solitary confinement and was insane.

Leaving a person like that alive was like creating trouble for the days to come.

Under Vincent’s not-so-kind persuasion, the elders agreed to have Andrew killed.

Vincent demanded the same death his daughter had (which to the elders was eating a Life Stone, which caused drowning symptoms), but the elders deemed that too cruel.

But after another argument with Vincent, they agreed to have Andrew drowned in the very lake where Vincent had found the real Ana dead.

All that was happening was being closely watched by Michelle.

Initially, she had summoned a clone of herself to stay in the Ostrich family, because Vincent wanted her to leave.

But in reality, Michelle couldn’t make a clone stay around for long enough to go through Vincent’s whole following plan.

In reality, the one who left was the clone, and Michelle stayed.

But Vincent thought the opposite was the case.

And Michelle was quite glad she stayed.

The rest of the plan wasn’t as interesting as killing Andrew, but Michelle was constantly doing something.

Also, she enjoyed her second nature of being constantly hidden in the shadows and doing secret work.

She blocked Tobias’ flow of information, even going as far as killing his spies.

She poisoned some of the elders with slow-acting poison, so they wouldn’t notice right away but would slowly get sick.

Naturally, along with the elders, she poisoned their accomplices and such.

Quickly, the family realized something was going on and started investigating.

Healers were working even through the nights while spies were everywhere.

To make sure everything was going smoothly, Michelle dropped clues for the spies that Tobias was tied to the poisoning.

Slowly, the clues escalated to make it seem that he was the mastermind.

In one of the days Michelle was messing around (professionally called dropping fake clues), the children from the Academy returned because it was holiday.

When they found out what had happened while they were gone, all were shocked.

And two were even sad.

One was Leonard Ostrich.

He had come to quite like Ana Ostrich because she was always kind to his little sister Amelia.

And the second one was a bit surprising even for Michelle.

Andrew Ostrich Junior (Andy) actually went to Ana’s grave, staying for a long time.

Seeing it, Michelle smiled.

The boy wasn’t stupid.

He must have realized when Michelle appeared with Alexander in the Academy that it was a plot of hers, so he decided to no longer go against her.

That was why her last months in the Academy were so peaceful.

And since they were fellow disciples of Antony Julians, they encountered each other a lot.

He must have also come to have a positive view of Ana Ostrich.

Another slightly surprising thing about him was that he wasn’t the least bit fazed that his father had been punished by death for killing Ana.

It was like he was expecting his father to eventually get himself killed and had already come to terms with it a long time ago.

Andy Ostrich wasn’t really fond of his father; Andrew Ostrich.