Seeing those glowing red eyes, Olao immediately backed down. "Alright, alright. If they can’t come, I’ll give you an explanation."
Only then did Adanis lower her brows in satisfaction.
After obtaining Olao’s promise, the air fell into silence. The two people in the oil paintings once again entered a speechless, awkward stare‑off.
After the silence stretched for several minutes, Olao poked half his body out of the frame.
Adanis: "Where are you going?"
"Do you have to control where I go too?" Olao muttered unhappily. "Did I ever control you when you went out before?"
Adanis: "That’s because you had no ability to."
Olao was momentarily at a loss for words. Indeed, he did not have the ability to control Adanis—or rather, he had no way to control her. All of his abilities had dissipated in that accident. In those first years, Olao had fallen into desperate situations multiple times, and it was this junior he had personally brought up—Adanis—who supplied him with Energy so he could pull through.
Only in recent years had Olao slightly stabilized, but compared to Adanis, he was still far inferior.
Moreover, the Qingkong Poetry Room was a shackle bound to his abilities. Once he left here, his strength would only continually decline.
Because of this, not to mention restraining Adanis, simply leaving the Qingkong Poetry Room would consume the vast majority of his Energy.
"...I’m just going to wait at the Door. Maybe they’ll still have a chance to come?" Olao hesitated for a moment, but still spoke honestly.
Adanis also leaned out from the oil painting, and with a light leap, landed gracefully on the floor.
Brushing aside the hair by her ear, Adanis looked up. "Your expectations for them surpass those you’ve ever had for any Noah Clan member in the past."
Olao: "Don’t try to trick me into talking. I’ve said it before, if they can’t make it here, I’ll explain it to you. Right now, I don’t want to say anything."
Adanis: "You don’t want to talk now because you think that once you say it, I will definitely go and stop them, is that it?"
Olao shook his head. "No, I understand your temperament. You wouldn’t do that. Even when it’s a Noah Clan member who failed the trial, you’ve never taken their life."
Adanis: "So you’re indirectly admitting that once the secret is spoken, there’s a chance I might go and stop them?"
This time, Adanis changed her wording. It wasn’t "definitely," but "a chance."
Olao let out a sigh and said helplessly, "Even if I don’t say it, aren’t you already going to stop them? And you even went so far as to use that Infant Spirits from the Otherworld. You know full well how terrifying it is... Forget it, what’s done is done. Once the Infant Spirits is released, it’s released. In itself, that’s a kind of test. A test for them, and for you and me as well."
"If they really can break through the hurdle of the Infant Spirits, I hope you won’t stop them anymore... and won’t stop me either."
Adanis fell silent for a moment and gave no answer.
Olao shook his head and said irritably, "You’ve gone as far as unleashing the Infant Spirits from the Otherworld, and you still won’t let them go?"
"Try thinking about it from another angle. If they can even handle the Infant Spirits from the Otherworld, there’s nothing you can do about them anyway."
Adanis: "There’s no way they can handle that Infant Spirits."
Olao: "Then that settles it. The Infant Spirits is an uncrowned trump card. If even after this trump card is flipped, they can still come, then that’s fate."
This time Adanis still made no statement. She merely stared quietly at Olao, and after a long while, she softly asked, "Suppose they do come. What will you do then?"
Olao was stunned for a moment, then he teased, "What’s wrong, are you losing confidence in that mysterious Infant Spirits from the Otherworld?"
Adanis flicked the hair by her ear, then gracefully rolled her eyes at Olao.
Olao chuckled, his brows settling as he sank into thought for a moment before finally saying, "If they really come, then... I’ll stand on their side."
Adanis: "And then? You stand on their side, and what comes after that?"
Olao: "I don’t know."
"You don’t know?" Adanis frowned. You don’t know, and yet you’re that resolute?
Olao shrugged. "I really don’t know. But I believe fate will arrange something."
"Fate?" Adanis let out a cold laugh and said nothing more.
Olao didn’t mind, only smiling with narrowed eyes. "All these years, this is the first time I’ve been this excited, the first time I’ve had such expectations. Even if I also think the chances aren’t high, can you really bear to let my expectation come to nothing?"
Adanis snorted lightly. "Why wouldn’t I be able to?"
Olao’s face collapsed in distress. "Sigh, you were still a little kid back then, so adorable. How did you become more and more rebellious as you grew up? Ah, if Lord Augustine comes back and sees you like this, he’ll definitely think I didn’t teach you well."
Adanis: "He’s not coming back."
Olao: "Whether Lord Augustine comes back or not, what I mean is, you should behave yourself a little."
Having said that, Olao tried to reach out, wanting to rub her hair like he used to do when Adanis was little. But Adanis stepped back and avoided his hand.
Olao awkwardly withdrew his hand, reminiscing aloud about the Adanis of the past as he turned around and walked out of the room.
Adanis watched Olao’s back. Her gaze, always so sharp, for the first time showed a hint of confusion.
Those questions she did not want to touch, the future she did not want to contemplate, and the possibilities she refused to face, all of a sudden surged up in her heart.
Adanis very much wanted to cast these vexing thoughts aside, but the moment her attention wavered, it was as if a voice began echoing by her ear.
—All these years, this is the first time I’ve looked forward to something like this. Can you really bear to let my expectation come to nothing?
Asking herself honestly, could she bear it?
Adanis already had an answer in her heart, but she did not want to let it show.
"Have I really gone too far?"
The moment reflection rose in her heart, obsession followed right up to her brow.