Chapter 603 – Luwen’s Memories

After restocking and tidying up the shop, Mo Lan returned to the Candy Coin exchange. She worked on producing more magical candy with Culinary Magic while sorting through Luwen’s memories.

Luwen hailed from a place called Kenna Town on the western border of the Yala Empire. He was the youngest son of the town’s herbalist shop owner.

He also had an older brother named Owen, eight years his senior. The two brothers were extremely close.

During the baptism, Owen received the blessing of the God of Light and entered the Temple Preparatory Acolyte Class, becoming the most promising young man in Kenna Town.

Luwen had always been proud of his brother and wanted to become someone just like him.

They had been a very happy family—until Owen, after several years of study, received the second blessing and became a true Acolyte.

The Temple sent a generous reward of treasure to their family, but Owen himself never came home.

The Temple only said that Owen’s talent was exceptional, that he had caught the eye of a bishop and been sent to the bishop’s cathedral for advanced training. He temporarily couldn’t return home, but the regional Temple would take good care of his family.

Everyone else was endlessly envious that their family had produced an Acolyte favored by a bishop. Life kept getting better and better. Even their parents swelled with pride over their accomplished eldest son. Only Luwen was furious.

Because his brother had promised him—once he became an Acolyte, he would definitely come home and show Luwen his divine arts.

His brother had never once broken a promise. Because of this, Owen’s absence cast a shadow over Luwen’s heart. He resolved to enter the Temple, become an Acolyte himself, and then go to the main city to find his brother and ask him why.

Later, sure enough, he too received the blessing of the God of Light during the baptism and entered the Temple Preparatory Acolyte Class.

Less than a year after joining the Acolyte class, his parents were killed by bandits while out purchasing herbs. Their bodies were left unrecognizable.

Temple knights wiped out the bandits. By the time Luwen received the news, all he saw were his parents’ belongings and the severed head of the bandit leader.

He kept his composure at the time, but quietly began to suspect the Temple.

Because the bandit leader the Temple had named as the killer had actually once had his life saved by medicine his parents provided. His parents had even occasionally purchased stolen herbs and other goods from the bandits at low prices—though few outsiders knew about this.

That bandit leader could never have been the one to murder his parents.

From then on, he played the part of a dutiful Preparatory Acolyte while secretly investigating the truth behind his parents’ deaths.

Hard work pays off. A year later, he finally learned the truth from one of the bandits who had narrowly survived.

It was the Temple’s people who had killed his parents. The bandits had been slaughtered by the Temple and set up as convenient “culprits” for public consumption.

Only then did Luwen realize that the Temple was not the beacon of light he and his brother had once admired. The darkness behind the Temple exceeded anything he could have imagined.

Later, he also noticed that every classmate in the Acolyte class who received the second blessing and became a true Acolyte was transferred away from this Temple to somewhere else.

The Acolytes stationed at the Temple were all unfamiliar faces to the locals, and none of them ever mentioned their hometowns.

Luwen was not an especially brave person. After learning that some great conspiracy likely lurked behind the Temple, he was actually terrified. He didn’t dare confront the Temple head-on, nor did he dare undergo the second blessing and infiltrate from within. He was afraid he would end up like those Acolytes—forgetting his hometown, forgetting his family, forgetting his hatred, becoming someone whose heart held nothing but the Temple.

So he seized an opportunity and fled into the mountain forests.

His reasoning was simple: since the Temple was corrupt, he would seek out its former superiors—the Angels who had been expelled from the God of Light’s divine hierarchy—and have them overthrow the Temple and avenge him.

As it turned out, he had vastly overestimated his own abilities.

After barely managing to cross through the mountain forests and reach the Sacred Mountains, he collapsed from hunger beneath a tree.

An hour later, the angel Miliel—who had just cultivated her own “Sprite envoy” and was using it to secretly slip through the Gate of Heaven to explore the lower realm—came upon the dying Luwen.

At that time, Miliel was still a young angel who had never been exposed to the power of faith and had only mastered a small amount of holy light.

Moreover, because her parents had low light-vein resonance, she was merely a single-winged, motley-feathered angel. Among angels her age, she was not only discriminated against but had virtually no friends.

Having suffered considerable malice from her own kind, she lacked the typical angelic arrogance—that sense of regarding other races as insects beneath her notice.

Though Luwen looked rather wretched, his thick mane of golden hair made Miliel—with her motley-feathered wings—feel self-conscious by comparison. She not only saved Luwen but became his friend, accompanying him all the way to the Holy City.

Every day, Luwen went to pray outside the Gate of Heaven, exposing the Temple’s atrocities to any angel who would listen. Finally, Miliel couldn’t hold back any longer and told him the truth.

Only high-ranking angels had the power to leave the Sacred Mountains and go destroy the Temple.

But an angel could only advance to high-ranking status after being exposed to the power of faith and obtaining a faith halo.

And the faith halo was forged from an angel’s emotions.

Once an angel possessed a faith halo, their eyes held no more feeling—only calculation.

The believers under the Yala Empire’s Temple were no longer numerous enough for any high-ranking angel—one capable of broadcasting faith at the Well of the Sky—to bother taking action.

Luwen’s vengeance would never find an angelic champion.

Luwen felt that the possibility of growing powerful enough on his own to topple the Temple was essentially zero. He fell into deep despair.

Luwen was Miliel’s very first friend, and she cared deeply about his feelings. She racked her brain trying to think of a way to help him.

In the end, she even took the initiative to reveal her true identity to him, offering to form a divine covenant with him. She would share a portion of the source of her angelic power with him through the bond of divine favor, granting him a lifespan as long as hers and the ability to use holy light magic.

However, this would mean he would become her most devout follower. And just like her, he would lose normal emotions, becoming entirely centered around her.

Luwen refused. He had been unwilling to risk losing his memories by accepting the Temple’s second blessing back then, and now he was equally unwilling to sacrifice his emotions for revenge, becoming Miliel’s follower.

He told Miliel: “Without emotions, without memories—that wouldn’t truly be me anymore.”

Miliel had never thought there was anything wrong with forging a faith halo from emotions and absorbing the power of faith to strengthen oneself. She had even once wished that she could hurry up and become a high-ranking angel—if she had no emotions, she wouldn’t feel hurt by others’ ridicule anymore.

But Luwen’s words gave her pause.

If she became a high-ranking angel and lost her emotions, would she still be herself? Would she still be able to be friends with Luwen the way she was now?

It wasn’t until she witnessed a pair of low-ranking angels who had been deeply in love—who, after becoming high-ranking angels, parted ways simply because their light-vein resonance wasn’t high enough, each finding a different angel to breed offspring with—that she finally understood: emotions truly were something precious.