Chapter 561 — The Man of Many Secrets

Gao Yang's gaze froze for an instant, but beneath his calm face, his heart had already given a start.

Amid the sudden surge of hypotheses and conjectures, he temporarily suppressed every possibility that came to mind and looked levelly into the eyes of the senior agent before him: "Do you know what we found there?"

"You found..." Meiheng Pernia said softly, then leaned her upper body forward and brought her face close to Gao Yang—

Those bewitching pale-violet eyes had at some point become a pair of vertical slits, fine scales faintly emerging on either side of her eyes, and amid a surge of power that was there and yet not there, her voice reached Gao Yang's ear—

"Traces of dragons. Is that not so?"

Gao Yang looked quite calmly at Meiheng's face, now faintly draconic, and the latter, after holding that posture for two seconds, quickly returned to normal and withdrew to her original position, while Betty's voice came from beyond the door the very next second: "Master! I've brought the tea!"

"Set it down here," the atmosphere in the study had in an instant become no different from the ordinary; Gao Yang had the little maid place the tray of refreshments on the table, then nodded gently. "Go and rest for now—and do not let anyone come to the study for the time being."

"Ah—right away!!"

Betty obediently shut the door and left the room, and after a brief silence Meheng?Penia broke it with a soft laugh: "I'd have thought my eyes and scales might at least startle you a little."

Gao Yang spread his hands. "Frankly speaking—I've got a scaled one here too, and counting scales alone she might well have more than you, so nonhuman physiological features don't shock me much anymore."

The answer was rather beyond what Meheng had expected; she paused a moment, then said with a trace of helplessness: "...That siren lady, yes. You really do gather a great many... very wondrous people here."

Gao Yang was now striving to maintain the calmest, most unruffled bearing, but in truth countless thoughts were already racing through his mind, and the first to surface was an association with that dragon he had witnessed from satellite view—

Meheng?Penia, this senior agent of the Mithril Vault—she must be that dragon!!

Then the wound on her leg...

Could it be that this dragon lady's way of shaking off satellite tracking every time is simply to crash...

Every clue in Gao Yang's head seemed in an instant to link together, but he guessed that Meheng?Penia probably did not know the truth of his identity as a "satellite spirit"; the dragon lady likely knew only that he had once led a party to scout the southern Dark Mountains and discovered the impact crater—which meant he could not let slip the information point of "crashing," nor show that he had known in advance the dragon was active in the southern Dark Mountains...

He cautiously weighed the part where the two sides' intelligence was unequal, and from Meheng?Penia's act of voluntarily revealing her identity he judged her motives and purpose; amid this weighing and judging he spoke cautiously: "Wondrous? ...A siren and a dragon are rather more than merely 'wondrous' to humans. I'm very fortunate to have the chance to know members of two legendary races at once. I'm curious—what does a dragon... a dragon bearing the title of 'senior agent of the Mithril Vault' actually want to do in the human world?"

"There's no need for such vigilance; dragons bear no ill will toward the human world," Meheng said. "But before we go on with this topic, I'd like to get back a few things I carelessly lost—priceless property of the Mithril Vault. I know they are in your hands now; I can sense their aura."

After Meheng revealed her identity, Gao Yang had guessed she would bring up those rings. He casually took the box of mithril rings from a compartment beneath his desk and set it on the table: "You mean these rings?"

"Yes—could you give them back to me?"

"Then we'll have to have a proper talk," Gao Yang said, placing his hand on the box and leaning slightly back against the chair. "Let's begin with the relationship between the Mithril Vault and dragons—are you an exception among the senior agents?"

Meheng did not answer at once, but regarded Gao Yang's eyes with considerable amusement: "You're quite composed when facing a true dragon."

"Ever since I crawled out of my coffin I've already faced the most astonishing situations a person can," Gao Yang said with a faint smile. "Dragons really don't surprise me much."