Crows said evenly, "I am God's envoy. I have no preferences or emotional bias. There are standards for determining whether someone passes the trial."
"Where are these standards?"
"In my mind."
"Doesn't that mean there are no standards, and you just do whatever you please?" The Begonia Salamander wriggled, settling into a more comfortable position on the petals:
"Try feeding that line to someone else. I don't believe a single word of it."
Crows did not argue. He kept his head lowered, preening his feathers with his pointed beak, and asked, "Do you want to take your grandfather's place?"
The Begonia Salamander looked at Crows. Though he did not answer, his eyes already held the answer.
Crows continued, "But as you are now, you're still a long way off."
The Begonia Salamander lifted his mouth as though sighing. "In the past, I would have scoffed at that. But now, I think you might have a point."
A hint of surprise seemed to enter Crows' eyes.
The Begonia Salamander continued, "Enough wasting words with you. I'm leaving. All I did was violate the trial's rules. Under the contract, I'll only be forcibly expelled from here. There's no other punishment."
Crows nodded and said nothing more.
He spread his wings and flew into the Starry Sky, once again merging with the pitch-black crow silhouette within it.
The Begonia Salamander sat alone in a daze for a while longer, then murmured, "You took so much blood crystal from me. You'd better stay alive. Don't you dare die..."
After he pondered alone in the Wasteland for a while longer, the begonia bud closed around the Begonia Salamander, then became a streak of pale green light and shot into the Starry Sky.
In the secretary-general's office in District 2, five people sat around a