The So-Called Chicken Rib

Could it be that he had been wrong all along? The person who had intercepted the mysterious item midway at Silver Palm Island had really been Angel?!

Once Jiebo started thinking along those lines, his mind automatically began picking out details he had once considered unimportant but now found highly suspicious. For instance, during the period when the mysterious space had opened, Angel had indeed never shown himself.

When Angel had appeared, White had received word immediately. Angel himself had claimed that he had gone into seclusion. But why had it been such a coincidence? Why had he entered seclusion precisely when the mysterious space opened, then emerged just after the mysterious item vanished?

After obtaining the mysterious item, Angel had immediately fled, running from Feran Continent to Revelation Continent. That, too, aroused Jiebo's suspicions. Perhaps Angel had not dared test the mysterious item on Feran Continent because he had still been in Lost Song City at the time. Thus, he had endured until reaching Revelation Continent before testing the mysterious item for the first time.

As for Jiebo's earlier assumption—that during Angel's seclusion, he had been testing and recording his new alchemical creation—that was actually, like his previous speculation that Angel had intercepted the mysterious item, a false proposition. Perhaps Angel did not have the habit of keeping detailed records like other alchemists did?

In any case, once Jiebo had a train of thought guiding him, all sorts of imagined scenarios came flooding in. Many reasons he had been unable to understand now seemed capable of fitting together smoothly and coherently in his imagination.

By the end, Jiebo had essentially concluded that there was an extremely high chance Angel had taken the mysterious item. As for the parts he could not make sense of, Jiebo subconsciously ignored them.

Thinking