Chapter 2715 Specialization <TOC> Chapter 2717 Trial’s Rules
Translator: SumTLMan
Seeing Angel’s “feigned bewilderment,” the Sovereign of Wisdom could not be bothered to say more. He simply waved his hand: “Enough, enough, whatever secret you wish to hide, I’ll leave it be. The contract is signed; as long as you keep it, nothing else matters.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom’s “magnanimous” stance only deepened Angel’s confusion.
It wasn’t just Angel, no one understood what the Sovereign of Wisdom meant.
Angel’s true face is unpresentable? All wrapped up tight?
Was the Sovereign of Wisdom speaking of a literal visage, or was it a metaphor, one’s true personality? The latter they might grasp, but the former sounded absurd.
They had all seen Angel’s face; calling it unpresentable was plainly wrong. And if Angel were masking it, well, they were not blind. Apprentices might miss a shapeshifting spell, but formal wizards would not, especially with the Black Count present. Whether Angel showed his true face or a false one was obvious at a glance.
Questions churned in every heart, yet none could speak for Angel; all kept silent.
Within Angel, bubbles of doubt rose one after another. He wanted to ask the reason but feared the Sovereign of Wisdom’s vision might involve “that person.”
While Angel wrestled with whether to inquire, the Sovereign of Wisdom moved on: “The contract stands; I can fulfill it now, or whenever you choose.”
What concerned the Sovereign of Wisdom under the contract, of course, was the reward due once it took effect: revealing details of the past experiment and the truth of the Serpent Coiling Awl.
Angel thought a moment: “Let’s wait until we reach your residence.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom was about to reply when he paused a second or two; then the corner of his mouth curled into a smile: “Even if you asked now, it might be too late.”
Angel blinked: “Huh?”
The Sovereign of Wisdom turned, his gaze slicing through the Opulent Nightmare Domain toward the Hanging Prison Stairs.
“Because your first trial has arrived.”
The First Trial? At those words everyone grew solemn. This trial was entirely different from the bonus condition the Sovereign of Wisdom had set before.
That earlier condition, though compulsory, had never meant to make them die; it had merely used the name of a trial to probe their information.
But this time, the trial he spoke of was unmistakably a blockade from “her.” If the block failed, it would become a assassination attempt.
Thus they had to treat it with utmost seriousness.
“What exactly is this trial?” the Black Count asked.
They had already deduced that Younus’ trial would come at the fork before the Wise One’s Grand Hall, not here; so this was unrelated to Younus.
What they most hoped for, naturally, was that Younus’ three children would test them, for the Sovereign of Wisdom could direct their actions, perhaps even help Angel verify Younus’ limits within the magic formation.
But if it was not One-Eyed Big Treasure and the others, they had to proceed with extreme caution.
The Sovereign of Wisdom did not reply at once; he closed his eyes, as if sensing something.
After about a minute he opened them again. Before he could speak, a cold snort reached their ears.
“Descendants of Noah, turn back now and keep your heads and tails intact. Press on, and you will learn the meaning of… despair.”
It was a woman’s voice, indifferent yet threatening.
They looked at one another, then to Angel. Within Angel’s Opulent Nightmare Domain they could scarcely locate the source, so they relied on him.
Angel raised a finger to his lips, “shh.”
Soon the voice rang out again, this time not aimed at the “outsiders.”
“Sovereign of Wisdom, you know that pride is the original sin.”
He smiled faintly: “I am neither proud nor treacherous. You should see that more clearly than I.”
“Hmph. Abandon your baseless curiosity. The Azure Poem Hall holds nothing you seek.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom fell silent.
Nor did the woman speak again; her words faded, dissolving at last into ripples…
Literal ripples.
“Her voice came from the fountain’s surface outside,” Angel said after a pause: “Now the water’s ripples have vanished, she’s gone.”
“The water surface?” Daus recalled the fountain’s pitch-black, foul water and frowned: “She really doesn’t mind her perch.”
“Even sewage can serve as a mirror’s surface… it was her, wasn’t it?” the Black Count asked, turning to the Sovereign of Wisdom.
His eyes narrowed in a smile: “Congratulations, you guessed right. But no reward.”
“Was that a declaration of war?” Daus said.
“You may call it that,” the Sovereign of Wisdom replied: “or the prelude to the coming trial. Her true aim was to warn me.
“As you heard, she knows I’m in league with you, though she doesn’t yet know how far.”
He shifted his gaze from Angel to the Black Count and the rest.
“Speaking of leagues, I’ve already signed a contract with the ever-secretive Angel, so we stand on the same side, reluctantly,” he said: “What about you? Shouldn’t we also make an accord, witnessed by the True Word Book?”
A gentleman’s agreement relies on honor, but invoking True Word magic makes it a contract in all but name.
“The accord can wait,” Daus said: “Shouldn’t we talk about the trial first?”
The Sovereign of Wisdom raised his index finger and shook it lightly: “Your trial won’t arrive that quickly. Even when the first trial stands before you, it doesn’t begin at once. So, there is still time. We can discuss the agreement first, and then the trial.”
If the Sovereign of Wisdom made it clear that he would not talk about the agreement, he would say nothing else.
The Black Count said in a low voice: “What agreement?”
Sovereign of Wisdom: “Unlike with Angel, you only need to write one sentence in the True Word Book: I will not, in any way, whether explicit or implicit, spread to the outside world what happened in Nightfall City.”
This sentence sounds very similar to the third clause in Angel’s earlier contract. Yet compared with Angel’s clause, it is far more lenient. The Sovereign of Wisdom required Angel “not to mention anything about what happened in Nightfall City,” whereas what he now asks of the Black Count and the others is “not to spread outside what happened in Nightfall City.”
One is “mention,” the other “spread.” Mentioning is forbidden even to speak of it; spreading, at least within a certain circle, still allows free discussion.
Moreover: “spread” leaves a larger gray area. If the Black Count relates what happened here to his family and has them sign contracts forbidding dissemination, that can barely count as internal digestion rather than spreading.
From this wording one sees that the Sovereign of Wisdom is more wary of the Savage Grottoes, while he places far fewer restrictions on the descendants of Noah and on wandering wizards.
On reflection, this is normal. Ten thousand years ago the Savage Grottoes was already a colossus; though it has declined now, this is not the Savage Grottoes’ fault alone, but because the whole Southern Region of the Wizarding World is in a withering phase.
Even in decline, the power of the Savage Grottoes can still crush Nightfall City.
The Sovereign of Wisdom fears the Savage Grottoes training its gaze on Nightfall City; for Nightfall City, that would be a calamity sufficient for annihilation. Hence, when facing Angel, the terms he offered were manifestly harsh, because the Savage Grottoes are outsiders.
As for the descendants of Noah, even now a colossus and the peak of wizard families, strictly speaking, the Noah family also originated from Nightfall City. The ruin site they wish to visit was likewise built by Nightfall forebears; in the strictest sense they are not outsiders. Of course, they are not insiders either.
The Sovereign of Wisdom does not demand that the descendants of Noah stand with Nightfall City and aim to revive it. Yet as non-outsiders, at least they must not stand opposite Nightfall City.
That is why he proposes an agreement whose terms are relaxed but not as loose as one might imagine.
As for Daus and Kael… wandering wizards need not be considered.
After saying this, the Sovereign of Wisdom continued: “Once you write this agreement in the True Word Book, when I speak of the ruin site’s situation, I can let the True Word Book witness the whole process.”
Though the Sovereign of Wisdom did not give a direct reward as he did to Angel, the return he offered is still extremely useful.
Letting the True Word Book bear witness means that when speaking of the ruin site the Sovereign of Wisdom cannot lie.
He could use ambiguous words so the book cannot judge true or false, but if something can be stated plainly yet is couched ambiguously, everyone will at once sense that something is wrong.
Without the book’s witness, discerning whether the Sovereign of Wisdom tells truth or falsehood would be difficult, unless someone dared to cast a True Word spell on him throughout… at least, none of them, not even the Black Count, dared.
Thus, by volunteering this return, for them, or rather, for descendants of Noah like the Black Count, the benefit far outweighs the harm.
Only after knowing the ruin site’s real circumstances can they craft better responses. If given false information, they would only trap themselves.
Thinking of this, the Black Count did not hesitate and was first to write his declaration in the True Word Book.
With the Black Count leading, Vai naturally dared not shrink back and at once followed suit.
As for Daus and Kael, they in fact had no need to sign, for this favored the descendants of Noah and was not compulsory for them.
Even so, Daus and Kael did not hesitate; they too wrote their statements in the True Word Book.
In less than half a minute, four identical declarations were added to the book.
It is worth noting that when everyone made this agreement, a small accident occurred.
The accident came from Kael.
The words in the True Word Book are written with each signer’s own energy. When the energy is branded onto the book, the rigorous rules of the True Word Book reveal the appearance of the energy’s source.
This prevents cheating. For instance, if someone secretly used their elemental companion’s energy to write, what appeared would be the elemental creature rather than the person, alerting the others that the signer cheated.
These rules are meaningful, and after so many years their completeness is high. There are even detailed sub-rules to catch cheaters.
For example, the energy must come from oneself, judged by the book’s pheromonal identification. Also, the energy may not come from someone outside the book’s range, preventing identical twins from using each other’s energy to cheat… such details make cheating almost impossible.
Yet some always itch to exploit loopholes.
And loopholes can indeed be exploited.
Only that such methods generally need time to set up. Hence, the Sovereign of Wisdom is not worried about anyone cheating.
What he does not know is… that Angel, who signed the strictest contract, actually cheated.
Angel himself is unsure whether it counts as cheating, for the contract is indeed engraved in his mental space. Yet the energy’s form displays a being of the Nightmare Plane.
If the cheating succeeds, Angel’s binding eases; if it fails, Angel does not mind, the contract itself is not that powerful.
This time Kael’s accident likewise concerned the energy’s outward manifestation.
Unlike Angel, whose energy manifested as the golden-haired “Shava,” when Kael poured his energy into the True Word Book, at first everything was fine.
The figure displayed by the book was indeed Kael, and moreover it showed him engaged in academic research, the background clearly his home in the Sandworm Market.
At that moment nothing seemed amiss; even Daus, who knew Kael best, noticed nothing wrong.
But when Kael’s image gradually faded, the Black Count suddenly gave a soft “Hm?”
Everyone followed the direction of the Black Count’s “nostrils” and saw that behind Kael there was another figure. This was no shadow but a real “person,” shrouded in dim light so that his features could not be seen.
Yet his attire was strikingly similar to Kael’s.
The silhouette flickered into being for but a heartbeat, then vanished as the image itself dissolved.
Yet everyone had seen the figure with perfect clarity.
The crowd turned puzzled eyes toward Kael, and Kael himself looked no less bewildered.
“I, I don’t know. Who is he??”
A thread of fear flashed in Kael’s eyes as he sought help from the others.
Kael was only an apprentice; it was easy to tell when he lied. This time he spoke the truth, he genuinely had no idea who the phantom was, and his terror was real.
Faced with Kael’s plea, the gathering was equally perplexed. First they looked to the Black Count, and when the Black Count plainly declared ignorance they shifted their gaze to the Sovereign of Wisdom.
True to his title, the Sovereign of Wisdom offered two possibilities with effortless calm.
Both, he said, were only possibilities, not certainties. Which it actually was, or whether another explanation existed, he could not yet decide.
The first possibility was autonomous split of personality. Unlike ordinary split personality, each persona governs itself without a master coordinator, yielding the rare pairing of an outer persona and an inner persona.
Its hallmark is that Angel can, through the Gate of Dreams, pull either persona into the Wilderness of Dreams. In ordinary split personality, entering the Wilderness would not create two distinct “people”; it would still be a single split-minded individual.
The dual personalities Frost created with the Dark Sonata are precisely such independently split personas.
Yet a dual persona born of the Dark Sonata always spawns a supremely malevolent persona, an amalgam of every negative impulse.
Under normal conditions of independent split, the outer and inner personas may differ in temperament, yet a vicious persona does not necessarily appear.
The second possibility was that one body housed two souls.
Strictly speaking, a primary soul shared the vessel with a fragmentary auxiliary soul, bluntly, soul residue.
Consider a simple example.
Within the Eternal Night Kingdom’s wizard organization Twilight’s Edge there once lived a renowned wizard, nicknamed “Little Demon” Grak.
Grak, wielding overwhelming power, acted lawlessly and wantonly. Later he plunged into a colossal trap and charged into Sleepless City beneath the Dome.
Hounded by countless Nightmare Plane monsters, Grak finally perished.
Yet “dead” was not entirely accurate, for with Sanders’ aid he possessed the corpse of a recently deceased human youth.
From then on Grak took the name “Spivey” and apprenticed himself to Flora. The “Little Demon” of the Twilight’s Edge vanished, and the Savage Grottoes gained a prodigious apprentice.
Spivey’s case matches the Sovereign of Wisdom’s example.
If Spivey infused the True Word Book with energy, the projection would show Spivey himself and, lurking behind, a shadowy figure, none other than the soul residue of the youth who had originally owned the body.
Such residue seldom forms its own persona, yet it subtly influences the temperament of the primary soul.
Thus Spivey is now far more restrained than before; his reckless, heaven-defying nature has turned inward. This is not because he decided to bide his time at the start of cultivation; rather, it is likely the native soul’s remnant reshaping his character.
Even so, the influence is not strong enough to alter the dominant persona’s essence, so the situation usually needs no intervention.
Moreover, once Spivey ascends again to the realm of formal wizard, the soul’s baptism will naturally purge the residue.
In other words, if Kael fits the second scenario, the Sovereign of Wisdom suspects that a fragmentary auxiliary soul also lingers within Kael’s body.
Chapter 2715 Specialization <TOC> Chapter 2717 Trial’s Rules