The Energy fluctuations of the True Words Tome were as stable as ever; after the word "No" appeared, it showed no sign of fading. This meant that Angel had once again told the truth.
He had never seen the man on the emblem, much less had any deep contact with him.
The Black Earl and the others were taken aback for a moment. They had truly been following the Wise Sovereign’s line of reasoning earlier, assuming that Angel probably had someone "behind" him. But now it seemed they had wronged Angel after all.
The Wise Sovereign, however, showed a look of suspicion and surprise. His brows knitted slightly as he fell into contemplation once more.
Had he guessed wrong again this time? Had Angel really never come into contact with Olao?
Then that was strange. Where had Angel acquired so much intelligence, and why was Adanis paying such close attention to Angel?
The Wise Sovereign racked his brain and came up with nothing, while Angel simply stared expressionlessly at that word "No" on the True Words Tome.
The others assumed Angel’s expression signaled displeasure; after all, the Wise Sovereign had suddenly tossed out an extra question, and the degree of targeted probing was frankly excessive.
In reality, Angel had long anticipated that there would be questions specifically aimed at him. The reason he continued to fix his gaze on the word "No" was that this answer of his was in fact not entirely aligned with his true inner conviction.
The Wise Sovereign’s question was: "Have you ever seen and come into contact with the male depicted on the emblem?"
The emphasis lay on "seen" and "come into contact." If taken in isolation, as to the former, Angel could straightforwardly answer "No," because he had indeed never seen the man from the emblem.
But as for the latter, things became harder to pin down. The term "contact" was extremely broad and vague. For instance, merely exchanging a few words would count, even if you only said a single sentence—that was still contact.
Moreover, "contact" could also be understood as "meeting" or "encountering," implying that even one‑sided contact counted as contact. In other words, even if you never spoke to the other party and only passed each other by, that could still be considered contact.
Angel was quite certain the Wise Sovereign had chosen this word deliberately, precisely to broaden the scope of the question.
So, had Angel ever come into contact with the man on the emblem?
Answer: yes.
This was the answer in Angel’s heart, because he believed that the man who had once possessed the colossal one‑horned whale in the Void was precisely the man from the emblem.
The most crucial piece of evidence lay in the words the other had spoken before leaving—
"You must come to the Legacy Land... I have waited too long."
The surface meaning of this sentence was simple and straightforward, needing no explanation. Its implied meaning, however, was that the man speaking to Angel was actually in the Legacy Land.
Based on the Wise Sovereign’s earlier explanation, one could infer that there were no outsiders in the Legacy Land, only Adanis and... the man from the Mirror Demon God’s emblem.
Which brought the problem back around: during that duel, Angel had conversed with a man who was very likely in the Legacy Land, and the only man in the Legacy Land was the one from the emblem.
From this angle, there was no doubt that Angel had indeed come into contact with him.
Yet another problem arose here: all of the above was Angel’s own conjecture. Conjecture merely wraps the "unknown" in a layer of self‑assured interpretation.
The skin is, in the end, just skin. What truly matters is the body beneath the skin—the True Body... that is to say, the truth.
The truth was something Angel did not actually know.
Even if his conjecture had a ninety‑nine percent likelihood of being correct, there still remained some tiny possibility that it was wrong. After all, he had never actually seen the person who spoke with him, and that man had never explicitly told Angel that he was the one on the emblem.
From this vantage point, Angel could very well consider that he had not contacted the other party.
What he had come into contact with was an unknown man; who this man was, he could not be sure.
This touched on the issue of "inner conviction"—in other words, everything depended on Angel’s personal view.
And Angel’s view inclined toward the former: he himself felt that, for this question of the Wise Sovereign’s, he ought to answer "Yes," not "No."
With a ninety‑nine percent probability that it was the man on the emblem, Angel, as a rational person, found it difficult to ignore such a high probability in favor of that almost negligible sliver of unknown possibility.
Yet—
Angel still wrote "No" without the slightest hesitation. The reason he did so was that he wanted to see how the True Words Tome would react.
Because his inner conviction and his given answer were in conflict, under normal circumstances the True Words Tome should have responded strongly.
However, the True Words Tome remained completely still, directly recognizing "No" as the correct answer.
This gave rise to doubt in Angel’s heart.
In his view, there were two possible explanations for the True Words Tome’s complete lack of reaction. The first was exactly as he had previously speculated: even if a conjecture had a ninety‑nine percent chance of being right, it was still just conjecture, not truth. And the Tome’s judgment was based on "absolute" truth, not on free, subjective conviction.
The second possibility, however, was related to that one in the Nightmare Realm.
The Energy Angel injected into the True Words Tome actually came from the continuous overflow of Power of the Nightmare Realm from the green Patterns on his right hand. Strictly speaking, this power—or rather, this aura—was not something Angel had cultivated himself.
Thus, there was a certain possibility that the one who had actually signed the True Words Tome was not Angel, but the true owner of this right hand—that being from the Nightmare Realm.
If that were the case, then it was only natural that the True Words Tome would not react, for that one from the Nightmare Realm had indeed never come into contact in reality with the man depicted in the Mirror Demon God’s emblem.
Between these two possibilities, Angel currently had no way of determining which one was true. Unless the Wise Sovereign posed another precise question, and Angel answered that question with a deliberate lie; if the True Words Tome still did not react, then it would confirm that it was related to that one from the Nightmare Realm. If the Tome did react, then it would be the opposite.
However, Angel could not possibly go to the Wise Sovereign of his own accord and ask him to run such a test. He could only wait to see if, after his contemplation, the Wise Sovereign would have any further questions.
This bout of contemplation by the Wise Sovereign did not last very long. It was not that he had reached Enlightenment quickly, but that he simply could not figure it out at all... and since he could not for the moment, he simply put it aside.
Back when they first signed the True Words Tome contract, the Wise Sovereign had already stated that he would not dig too deeply into Angel’s affairs. Since this round of probing had yielded no results, he might as well drop it.
Once he gave up on thinking, the Wise Sovereign immediately felt much lighter.
Angel’s age was not even a fraction of his own, and yet, for reasons he could not quite explain, whenever he faced Angel he always had the illusion of staring at an impossibly complex formula. He would think he had understood it, solved it, seen it through—only to be slapped in the face the next second, discovering that his entire line of reasoning from start to finish had been wrong. Then he would overturn everything and begin deducing anew. When he finally derived another answer and believed he had fully grasped it, the True Words Tome would once again slap him in the face. This made the Wise Sovereign feel deeply ill at ease.
All these years, for someone famed for his wisdom, this was the first time he’d felt the frustration of not being able to see through something.
Choosing to give up instead brought with it a sense of release.