I had to admit, it was a major blow.
The more confident the Black Doctor sounded, the stiffer Amber's face grew.
As the first high-ranking Transcendent on record to enter the Gate of Freedom, his words carried some weight.
The most obvious conclusion to draw was that Akasha hadn't come in after him.
Having lost the hope of reaching freedom, Amber suddenly seemed to have little hope of finding anyone, either.
"We have to be rigorous in our reasoning. Isn't it possible Akasha came here even earlier? You analyzed that yourself."
But the blow wasn't quite devastating yet.
The next moment, Great Fortune Ming King spoke up, offering rare words of comfort—and sound reasoning.
"Heh... An outsider?"
Amber said nothing, but the Black Doctor seemed happy enough to chat. He looked at Fu Qian and asked for confirmation.
"An outsider."
Fu Qian was just as candid, and nodded.
"No wonder. Otherwise, you should've ended up in this pool of muck like the rest of us."
The Black Doctor looked even happier, almost bouncing with excitement.
Still, he was no fool. One sentence was enough to show how clearheaded he was.
They'd already touched on the question of where people first appeared. Because Fu Qian was an outsider, the cauldron had no "True Self" for him.
That was why his first stop after entering the gate had been Yuan Fang's apartment.
By contrast, both the Ram-headed Demon and the crystal being's Nascent Soul, Amber, had immediately connected to their "True Selves" in the cauldron.
If the Black Doctor had really been holed up here all this time, it would've been easy for him to notice that he was different.
Judging by the way he'd asked, he seemed somewhat unfamiliar with Fu Qian as a person. He probably hadn't taken part in