The captain's meeting room.
On a huge table, the bronze box had already been opened, releasing the fingers brought back from the ruins. The moment they landed on the tabletop, they wriggled on their own like little insects, piecing themselves together into lines of text.
Yang Ling calmly watched this strange scene.
He spoke:
"You look like you can communicate with people."
"I brought you up from the sea. How do you plan to repay me?"
It seemed to understand human speech.
The scattered fingers, which had been pieced together in complete disorder, began to change. Following some kind of pattern, they crawled rapidly across the tabletop. Gradually, they formed a complete sentence:
"As compensation for bringing me up."
"I can answer one of your questions."
Answer a question?
Yang Ling narrowed his eyes. "So it really can communicate. Answering questions for free? In other words, if a certain price is paid, it can answer questions too?"
He had keenly grasped the key point in those words.
"I've heard of things like this." Jiang Qiao spoke as well. "They can answer some of your questions through a transaction. The price depends on the difficulty of the question."
"But things like this are all very strange."
"Some of them lie."
"Some may not lie to you, but the answer they give is merely the answer they believe to be correct."
"There's no guarantee that it's actually true."
"And some can answer any question. But when asked something beyond their capabilities, they won't tell you they can't answer it. Instead, they'll fabricate a logically consistent answer for you."
"If you aren't careful, you'll be tricked to death on the spot."
There were quite a few strange tales and evil spirits in the Supernatural World that could answer questions. The most common were