"Oh, wait a moment." Suddenly, the elderly man turned around and craned his neck in her direction. "Your auras have already merged, I see. You must have experienced many aggressive inclinations as of late, have you not?"

Seeing him get so close caused Li Meirong to scoot backward, nearly dropping from the chair. The elderly man grabbed her by the wrists just as her chair started to tip, teetering on its back two legs.

"Careful, child," the Elder warned, pulling her forward and adjusting her seat.

He inclined his head, giving Li Meirong a wide, toothy grin, full of sharp teeth. "You may call me Wise Sage."

The elderly man didn't seem even remotely close to what Li Meirong would have imagined a Wise Sage to be.

Nevertheless, addressing the elder in the way he wished to be called wasn't that big of a deal for her.

Feeling slightly shaken by their skin contact, Li Meirong spoke haltingly. "Thank you, Wise Sage. Please tell me, have we met before?"

The elder man's hands on her wrist felt strangely slimy, and the texture of his skin made her shudder involuntarily. His thin, sharp teeth didn't seem like anything that should be peeking out of an old man's smiling mouth.

The Wise Sage regarded Li Meirong with amusement. "You do not know me, silly child. But I know you. I know everything about you. I know about who you were before you even knew who you were!"

His words sounded like a bunch of lies to Li Meirong, falling from his slippery tongue with perfect ease.

Li Meirong pursed her lips in disdain. For a second there, she had thought this person might have some relation to the previous owner of this body. But the more he spoke, the more it seemed clear to her that this "Wise Sage" was a charlatan. She wondered if he was like one of those phony priests from her world, trying to sell fake talismans and snake oil.

The Wise Sage seemed to have noticed Li Meirong's subtle change of expression.

He narrowed his all-knowing eyes and rubbed his beard as he calmly explained. "Child, there is much you do not know. You reside in the lower realm, and your knowledge and exposure has been very limited. I am an immortal from the Heavens who has been blessed with divine omniscience. One could say you are quite lucky, for there are only a few beings in existence who can sit and have a chat with me."

Li Meirong laughed. "The Heavens? You're a fairy from the Heavens?"

To further prove his point, the Sage abruptly disappeared for but a short moment, only to reappear directly beside her. His unusually long fingers tapped rhythmically on the corner of the table as he peered into her lucid eyes.

"You, child, are not originally from this world. You come from a different realm of existence, one which has has been deserted by the gods. It is a place filled with flying machines and small trinkets that can transfer your voice across long distances. You have a history of failed romantic affairs, and you are afraid of commitment due to your childhood emotional neglect. You owned several cats whose names were–"

"Stop! Stop…" Li Meirong froze; the laughter instantly died in her throat.

The fact she was from another world and that her soul had transferred into a different person was a secret she had kept well guarded. Not even her own spirit beasts were aware of this particular knowledge.

Since Li Meirong feared being regarded as an evil apparition that possessed someone else's body, she never revealed her origins to anyone. Yet this old man already knew everything about her, even the embarrassing parts of her past life were somehow known to him.

She stared at the Sage in wide-eyed amazement. "How could you possibly know all this?"

The Wise Sage chuckled. "Oh, this be nothing. I know far more!" He retrieved a folded paper from within his cloak and spread it flat on the table. It was an old ink painting of an ancient-looking tree.

"This here is the secret to your identity. Find this tree, find your roots."