Chapter 2698 Teacup’s Test <TOC> Chapter 2700 True Word Book
Translator: SumTLMan
“Even if we don’t drink the tea, I suppose there wouldn’t be any danger, correct?” The Sovereign of Wisdom cast his gaze at Angel.
Hearing the Sovereign of Wisdom’s question, Daus’ eyes widened in disbelief, staring at Angel in utter astonishment.
Angel said with a smile: “Of course, I couldn’t mislead the Sovereign of Wisdom after all.”
Angel’s clear confirmation made Daus exhale repeatedly from his nose, his cheeks flushed with anger: “So you really were messing with me just now?”
Angel wore an innocent look: “No, not at all. These teacups truly were drawn to your particular traits. Serving tea to a guest is a show of courtesy, and if you don’t drink it, it’s an act of discourtesy. Once you show such discourtesy, you’ll be punished by this Teacup Band.”
Daus: “But the Sovereign of Wisdom…”
Angel cut Daus off before he could finish speaking: “Since the punishment originates from the teacups themselves, it’s naturally limited by the teacups’ abilities. If you observed them closely, you’d see they don’t really have any means of attack.”
Daus: “…Then why did you say refusing to drink their tea would lead to bad things, like a loss of combat ability, or a period of bad luck, and so on?”
Angel: “Having your combat ability taken away for one second is still having it taken away, and being unlucky for half a second is still being unlucky.”
Daus inhaled sharply at that answer, feeling a tightness in his chest.
He knew it, Angel was sly and mischievous, always ready to indulge in little pranks whenever the mood struck!
Everyone else who learned the truth merely laughed it off. They could tell Angel had done it on purpose to lighten the mood. Look at the atmosphere now, wasn’t it far better than the chilly tension at the beginning?
As for Daus, he probably felt he’d embarrassed himself and simply couldn’t let go of his annoyance. Yet, on the surface, all he could do was treat it as an inconsequential matter, just like everyone else. That only made him feel all the more stifled inside.
Once the tension had eased somewhat because of this little tea episode, the Sovereign of Wisdom let out a light laugh: “I never expected that once I tested you, you’d test me in return.”
Angel: “If the Sovereign of Wisdom had already seen through the trick, you could have just declined to be tested.”
But the Sovereign of Wisdom shook his head: “No matter. It’s been a long time since anyone dared present me with a challenge. Even if it’s offered by a teacup, it’s rather interesting. Besides, it reminds me of my first mentor, the Man in the Jar.”
“The Man in the Jar… That name sounds a bit strange, conjuring some unpleasant imagery,” Daus muttered.
The Sovereign of Wisdom said: “You’re not wrong. My mentor, the Man in the Jar, was once a captured human priest. His feet were severed, and he was kept in a special jar filled with a preserving liquid that extended his life for a time.”
By “my own kind,” the Sovereign of Wisdom was referring to the Three-Eyed Blue Demons. They were a race of man-eaters, so capturing people and turning them into jar-bound prisoners was, essentially, a way of storing future rations.
“That human priest was decent, he never feared death and even preached among our people. Of course, none of them could understand his words. Only I could. I treated him as a teacher, and he treated me as a student. He never directly taught me knowledge; he would pose questions to guide my thinking. During that time, I can’t recall how many questions I ended up answering.”
Some stories were clearly left out in the Sovereign of Wisdom’s account, how they formed a bond as teacher and student, how they came to trust each other. These details were significant as well, but since the Sovereign of Wisdom was unwilling to share them, no one pressed the point.
“That year, the Month of Blooming Flowers lasted far longer than usual. But no matter how prolonged it was, the Month of Spring Offering eventually arrived.”
He stopped speaking there. As for the Man in the Jar’s fate, he left it unspoken. Yet a man whose feet had been chopped off, sitting in a jar without proper medical care or help from any extraordinary individual, no one needed to ask how that ended.
What made it worse was that the Sovereign of Wisdom, having still been with the Three-Eyed Blue Demons at the time, was only a youngling and had no power to change anything. All he could do was watch the Month of Spring Offering come as always, and on a certain day, his mentor vanished from his life. Somewhere, a fresh mound of soil turned over in a hidden corner.
The Sovereign of Wisdom did not dwell on the past for long. He soon set aside his sorrow, smiling at Angel: “Given that I shared a brief story from my childhood, don’t you want to share something from yours?”
Angel: “…” So that was why the Sovereign of Wisdom had suddenly taken an interest in Daus’ comment about the Man in the Jar, he was waiting for this opening.
Since it was Daus who had brought it up, he should be the one you ask, so why are you turning that gaze on me? Angel wanted to feign deafness, but on second thought, they had come here to “negotiate.” After all, a few confidences had to be exchanged. Although they weren’t secrets to the outside world, to an ancient figure like the Sovereign of Wisdom, some things would be new indeed.
With that in mind, Angel finally replied: “What would you like to hear, Sovereign of Wisdom?”
Angel had expected the Sovereign of Wisdom to steer the conversation toward the Wood Spirit, but the Sovereign of Wisdom surprised him by not doing so. Instead, he shifted into a comfortable, almost slouching posture and said: “I spoke about my childhood. Why don’t you tell me about yours?”
Angel rubbed his chin, thinking: “Childhood, huh…”
“What, you don’t remember?” The Sovereign of Wisdom teased when he saw Angel lost in thought.
He didn’t notice that Daus, beside him, was pressing his hand to his forehead, looking utterly at a loss.
Angel: “Oh, I do remember. I’m just not sure which age you’re curious about. Is ‘childhood’ before the age of ten?”
The Sovereign of Wisdom: “Before the age of twenty.”
Now it wasn’t just Daus, every other wizard present also turned away, eyes averted.
“All right. Since you spoke of a mentor from your early years, I’ll share a story of my own mentor.” Angel adopted a reminiscent expression: “He was a very unique ordinary man. From a young age, he was driven to study the world, researching the earth, the air, the light, the constants of physics… Thanks to his teaching, I also grew up with the habit of research.”
Those present had some knowledge of Angel’s past, but this was the first time they had heard about his so-called mentor. The notion of an ordinary individual so enthralled by research prompted a certain admiration. It suddenly became clearer why Angel, so strongly associated with the academic faction, had turned out the way he did. That mentor must have played a major role in shaping him.
“I thought I could learn about the nature of the world from him for as long as I lived. But he fell ill, an illness so severe that even extraordinary healers couldn’t cure it.”
A hint of sorrow crept into Angel’s expression.
In their hearts, everyone murmured: so indeed, just when sentiment runs high, tragedy intrudes.
“That’s what spurred me to embark on the path of the extraordinary, so I could cure his illness.”
With that, Angel ended his story. Much like the Sovereign of Wisdom, he left a generous portion of events unsaid, but the overall shape of the narrative was clear. In some ways, the arcs of Angel and the Sovereign of Wisdom were similar. Both were enlightened by a mentor, setting them on a different course. They simply had slightly different goals.
“In the end, did you manage to cure your mentor’s illness?” the Sovereign of Wisdom asked.
Angel: “I can’t exactly say I cured it, but I can’t say I failed either. All I know is, when I visited him recently, he was positively brimming with energy, designing libraries, acting as a city planner, leading multiple teams on various projects…”
The Sovereign of Wisdom had expected a tragedy, already braced to offer condolences, but Angel’s answer completely overturned his assumptions.
“Your mentor is still alive?” The Sovereign of Wisdom sounded puzzled.
Angel nodded as though it were perfectly natural.
“He’s an ordinary person, though?”
Angel: “Yes, an ordinary man. He looks very old and frail, but in truth he’s only in his forties or fifties.”
This time, everyone fell silent along with the Sovereign of Wisdom.
After a moment, the Sovereign of Wisdom quietly asked: “…How old are you now?”
Finally, the question arrived. It was the one everyone had anticipated ever since the Sovereign of Wisdom asked to hear about Angel’s life before twenty. Because Angel was still around that age.
Angel thought for a moment, then said conservatively: “I’m almost twenty.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom: “…”
He truly didn’t know what to think. A tangle of emotions rose in him. All along, he had deemed Angel of the utmost importance, someone with consummate skill, strategic thinking, and a mysterious background. With such qualities combined, Angel was more crucial than anyone else present.
He needed a resourceful and fearless individual to gain the knowledge he wanted from the ruin site, and Angel certainly seemed the perfect piece on his chessboard.
Yet now, Angel stated that he was just a youth of less than twenty winters! The Sovereign of Wisdom felt as though his mind reeled. It wasn’t that he looked down on the young; every person, after all, passes through youth. Still, a mentality so mature seemed improbable in someone of Angel’s age.
Admittedly, Angel did exhibit youthful tendencies, such as that mischievous “teacup’s test” that carried a certain reckless whimsy. But taken as a whole, the Sovereign of Wisdom found it difficult to see him as a mere teenager.
He lingered in that state of confusion for some time, his face losing its composure, a reaction that did not escape Daus’ notice. Daus sighed inwardly. The reason Angel was so widely known throughout the Wizarding World was precisely because his achievements at such a young age seemed near unbelievable.
As for the Sovereign of Wisdom’s state of mind, well, whether it hurt or not, that was his affair. But Angel’s age confirmed another point: he most definitely was not part of the Noah family.
The Sovereign of Wisdom might not have many channels of intelligence in the outside world, but he clearly had some, how else could he have published works such as —Record of Different Postures in Wizard Eye Ghost Fusion—? So he knew something of current events beyond the underground sewers. The line of the Augustines was famously linked to the Noah family, and he was aware of that. Yet, from all he had heard, the present generation of the Noah family possessed no extraordinary talent remotely comparable to Angel. If no standout genius existed, that also meant the ruin site likely hadn’t been activated, so he’d taken no special interest in them.
If not for the fact that a descendant of Noah had come knocking this time, with the Goddess herself requesting that he obstruct them, the Sovereign of Wisdom likely wouldn’t have stirred from his territory at all.
“If you were a child of a wizard family, and if you possessed a talent for magic, they would have trained you from an early age. You would never have had to set out on your own to find the extraordinary path,” the Sovereign of Wisdom reasoned: “Hence, you aren’t from the Noah family.”
This time, Angel did not deny it.
Because once he brought the Wood Spirit out of the Hanging Prison Stairs, it would become impossible to pretend. He understood that the Wood Spirit held immense significance for the Sovereign of Wisdom. If Angel couldn’t explain why the Wood Spirit left with him, there was no way the Sovereign of Wisdom would allow him to leave these sewers. So any further bluff about being a member of the Noah family served no purpose.
He never expected the Wood Spirit to actually remember Sanders, or that Sanders held such a high place in the Wood Spirit’s regard. Otherwise, Angel might have kept doggedly insisting that he was a Noah descendant. Without solid proof, it’s always far harder to disprove a claim than to prove it.
“If I answer your question, Sovereign of Wisdom, then in fairness, will you answer ours next?” Angel asked.
“Are you seeking the necessary conditions, or the state of the ruin site?”
“Both are fine. We can start with the ruin site’s situation.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom did not refuse, he had intended to discuss it anyway.
Angel: “Since you’re so straightforward, let me be direct as well. Yes, I’m not a descendant of the Noah family. I’m just a passerby, you might say, a traveler.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom said: “I believe the first part of what you said. But ‘traveler?’ If a mere passerby can lead a team like yours, then your entire group’s formation is a farce.”
Everyone but Angel silently agreed with him, even Vai, Angel’s starry-eyed admirer. After all, Angel’s familiarity with this entire region far exceeded anyone else’s. Yet despite that, he’d never once revealed a personal objective. He seemed, if anything, to have no real desire or need. Not even Vai could ignore how odd that was.
Yet it was a bit clearer now, at least. Angel had accepted an offer of benefits from the Black Count, openly taking a stake in their cause, at least that meant he stood on the same side, which reassured them somewhat.
Still, they were very curious as to Angel’s true motives for being here. They did not think the Sovereign of Wisdom would be able to pry his real purpose from him, but given the Wise One’s keen powers of observation, perhaps he could find a crack in Angel’s armor, a clue that might reveal why Angel had come.
Alas, their hopes were bound to go unfulfilled.
Angel did have a purpose, of course, but it had little to do with the underground sewers. No matter how you tried to pick apart his defenses, his genuine interest in these depths was not that great.
The only thing that stirred him here was the possibility that “Augustine’s Twin Mirror” might have originated in this place.
If that guess proved correct, he would like to take a look at the ruin site. But as for forcibly taking anything, he honestly had no intention of doing so, at least, not right now.
Chapter 2698 Teacup’s Test <TOC> Chapter 2700 True Word Book