The air was already silent, and after the Wood Spirit’s creaking sound, it became even more stagnant.
Angel couldn’t hold his composure any longer, hesitating for a while, he finally said: "Why not let The Sage ask it? It responds, I’ll corroborate, which might appear more credible."
The Sage glanced at the Wood Spirit, which continued to play dead, and sighed gently in his heart: "No need, let you answer instead."
He knew the Wood Spirit too well; the Wood Spirit couldn’t speak coherently in front of so many people.
That Angel managed to make the Wood Spirit utter a "creak" already surprised The Sage. Saying more than that was almost impossible.
After a pause, The Sage added: "Earlier, you told the Wood Spirit to meet ’him.’ Who were you referring to?"
From what Angel said to the Wood Spirit, The Sage had already captured the key point: perhaps the Wood Spirit was willing to leave with Angel because Angel gave the Wood Spirit a promise. And within this promise existed a key figure: him.
Who is this person? Why does the Wood Spirit want to meet him? It even left its most secure comfort zone just to see him.
"About ’him’..." Angel did not answer immediately but instead brought up another matter: "I wonder if The Sage recalls, I previously asked a question: what the true form of the Wood Spirit is."
The Sage: "I remember."
Back then, his answer was: he didn’t know. Because the Wood Spirit never mentioned its true form, The Sage, due to various external factors coupled with the Wood Spirit’s nature, ultimately did not ask. He only speculated, based on the common nature of birth spirits, that it might be something closely related to humans, or perhaps jewelry, weapons, crafts, and so on...
At that time, The Sage thought Angel was inquiring about the Wood Spirit’s form to find the Wood Spirit’s trail in the Hanging Jail Stairway.
But now, Angel brought up this question again, evidently for a different reason.
And precisely what is that reason, after pondering for a moment, The Sage faintly had a guess in his heart...
Angel: "The trajectory of the Wood Spirit after its birth is surely not unfamiliar to The Sage. Does The Sage think, in its path, someone deeply impacting it might make it willing to leave everything behind just to meet him?"
Although Angel was asking a question, both Angel and The Sage knew there was only one answer to this question.
"No."
"It was born in the land prevailed by Ghosteye Witch, hiding and stumbling into the Other-dimensional Space, then under Miss Cicia’s guidance, it came to the Hanging Jail Stairway. During this process, besides encountering Miss Cicia, it did not meet any other communicative beings."
"If Miss Cicia was the one it would mindlessly risk everything to meet, it would have left long ago."
"Therefore, the one it wishes to meet must be someone else."
Angel, having spoken this far, looked at The Sage. He believed The Sage should already have an answer.
As expected, the latter, after a moment of silence, lightly said: "Is it the original owner of its true form it wants to meet?"
"That’s right." Angel had laid out all the hints. If The Sage didn’t guess it, that would indeed be strange.
Angel: "The reason is this simple. I promised to take it to meet the original owner, so it agreed to leave with me."
Despite saying this, The Sage didn’t think the reason could be that simple.
The Wood Spirit’s nature is timid, not foolish. If anyone could coax it out with just a few words, that would be too childish, and it wouldn’t do justice to The Sage’s constant guidance for the Wood Spirit day and night.
Therefore, Angel must have done something else. Firstly, to make the Wood Spirit notice him; secondly, to make the Wood Spirit trust him. And this might be the crux of the problem.
Seeing The Sage still watch him with suspicious eyes, Angel sighed: "That’s why I suggested letting the Wood Spirit speak itself. You would definitely believe its words. My words... would mean revealing everything."
Angel’s last words were spoken softly, as if muttering to himself, but The Sage heard them nonetheless.
Even though Angel was prepared to be exposed, at this moment, he still felt a little uneasy. He did enjoy acting under an alias... as anything done while masked had little to do with him, Angel.
"The reason The Sage distrusts is due to a lack of crucial evidence." Angel pointed to the staff laid upon the table: "This staff is the evidence."
The Sage looked at the staff, and a myriad of thoughts about it flashed through his mind.
He had witnessed Angel refining the staff.
From the outset, he felt the staff seemed somewhat familiar, and later discovered that one of the silver ornaments on the staff’s head resembled the self-made ornament of experiment 6163. This discovery caused some worry for The Sage, fearing that experiment 6163 might have been killed. Consequently, The Sage personally checked through the Magical Energy Array to ensure 6163’s safety and the silver ornament remained with it, only then was he completely reassured.
And now, Angel clearly points out that the staff is the so-called "evidence," forcing The Sage to reassess the staff once more.
The staff’s body, refined from the Wood Spirit’s derivatives, seemed to hold nothing noteworthy.
Could the suspicious part still lie in the staff head?
The Sage focused on the silver ornament, identical to that owned by 6163, which was attractively inscribed with an elegant emblem: a rapier with wings, embedded amidst thorns and roses.
The same emblem, The Sage had also noticed before, on Angel’s gloves.
Back then, The Sage was indeed puzzled why the self-made ornament of experiment 6163 bore an emblem identical to the one on Angel’s gloves, but given Angel’s peculiar actions and a series of coincidences even The Sage couldn’t explain, this matter got lost among the pile of those coincidences and was left behind.
But upon closer reflection now, there’s quite a lot to discuss here.
Experiment 6163’s pursuit of "beauty" is undeniable. It gained its spirit intelligence through "beauty," but could it, having just awakened its intelligence, create such exquisite hollow carvings?
Impossible, such hollow carving is a craft honed over generations. Even with 6163’s exceptional talent in appreciating beauty, it could judge it as beautiful but could not create it.
So where did 6163’s ornament originate, and what is its relation to the ornament on the staff’s head?
The Sage felt a faint connecting line in his mind, linking the various clues, yet he always sensed a missing crucial link.
And the missing crucial link must relate to the Wood Spirit.
Because Angel couldn’t have mentioned the staff without a reason, and the most noteworthy part of the staff is the staff head...
Suddenly, a phrase popped into The Sage’s mind.
—What is the true form of the Wood Spirit?
This was what Angel said at the very beginning, and when the Wise Sovereign heard it, he thought Angel mentioned it to introduce the concept of the ’master of the Wood Spirit’s essence.’