"Lord Sage, I've already rested enough..." The speaker was a green-skinned Pirus dressed in a pitch-black robe.
He stopped halfway through his sentence.
From his perspective, Sage Pika seemed to be frantically hiding something.
"Lord Sage?" He lowered his voice. He had an inexplicable feeling... that perhaps he should not have appeared at this moment?
Sage Pika had already hidden the hairpin.
He had indeed prepared himself to wear the hairpin, but he was not prepared to wear such a glittering ladies' hairpin in front of his own kind.
Especially not on his beard.
If word of this got out through the Pirus, where would he put his face?
Luckily, luckily. The moment he heard footsteps, he immediately turned his back, tore off the hairpin, and hid it in his sleeve.
From the other party's angle, he should not have seen anything he was not meant to see.
The only slightly helpless thing was that he had pulled too hard when tearing off the hairpin, forcibly ripping out more than a dozen beard hairs along with it.
His chin throbbed with pain.
Still, as long as he had not been exposed, Sage Pika felt it was worth it.
He coughed, smoothed out his slightly disheveled beard, then turned around. "Piu, you're here."
Piu hesitated for a moment, then nodded lightly. "Lord Sage, I've recovered."
After a pause, Piu glanced at Angel and the others. "My lord has guests, so I'll return to my room first and come back later to report to you..."
As he spoke, Piu prepared to head back up the stairs.
But before he could move, Sage Pika interrupted him. "It's fine. Come over first. I'll introduce you to some friends."
After hesitating again and again, Piu ultimately nodded. He came down from the stairs and stood