Angel said, "I asked Miss Xixia rather thoroughly about Wise Sovereign. Wise Sovereign should understand, right?"
The Wise Sovereign said nothing, merely nodding slightly.
"It's good that Wise Sovereign understands. Miss Xixia said all sorts of things, and I was worried some of them might offend you." Angel looked relieved and pleased, but his mind was on something else entirely.
That single nod from the Wise Sovereign made Angel gradually doubt one of the fallback plans he had considered earlier.
The Wise Sovereign should have known perfectly well that Angel had questioned Xixia in such detail about him because their destination was Augustine's legacy site.
And to reach that destination, they naturally had to pass through the hall where he resided. It was only normal to learn about him beforehand.
But before this, Angel had actually had another fallback plan.
—Find another route through the underground waterways, one that did not pass through Wise Sovereign's Hall.
Yet the Wise Sovereign's nod made Angel begin to doubt whether that "fallback" even existed.
Angel could be certain that the underground waterways beneath Abyss City in the Nightmare Realm had other routes that did not require passing through Wise Sovereign's Hall.
But reality was different. Everywhere in reality lay ruins, and the entrances had either mostly vanished or were controlled by the Wandering Merchants organization. Thus, whether such an entrance existed was uncertain to begin with. On top of that, the magical energy arrays in the underground waterways were maintained by the Wise Sovereign. He could completely alter the routes within them, or seal off certain paths entirely.
In other words, that nod from the Wise Sovereign was also a declaration: if they wished to reach their destination, they had no other path to choose from and had to pass through Wise Sovereign's