If the central district clergy had taken in that much spirit jade as donation, then no priest under that sect would dare, of their own will, to sabotage the Duke’s wedding rites. And wasn’t Eric d’Orléans known throughout the realm as an upright, law-bound young master?
Something about this feels… ominous.
Maybe it would be better to hold the ceremony under another sect’s auspices, even if it meant relocating to a distant cultivation province. Muttering to myself, I grumbled:
“Why does he have so much money anyway? If it’s rotting in his treasury, he could’ve spared a few copper slips for people like us instead of handing it off as ‘donations.’ You think the priests won’t just pocket it amongst themselves?”
As I groused under my breath, Mother stomped my foot, her expression panicked, likely afraid a passing priest might overhear.
“Ow!”
I yelped, and the devout cultivators around us cast sharp glares. Mother, with the most benevolent smile in the world, gently traced a sigil in the air in greeting.
“Mother, honestly. Your acting skills improve by the day. At this rate, shouldn’t we just leave the capital and join a traveling troupe?”
I whispered as I followed her gesture with my own half-hearted sigil. Without breaking her serene façade, Mother moved her lips silently.
“What’s gotten into you lately? Do you really hate the idea of me remarrying that much?”
After speaking, she gave me a sidelong glance. Then, with a sudden shift to seriousness, she murmured:
“The Duke… he does seem a little off, I’ll admit…”
“He does, right?! I knew it!”
With a flicker of hope, I grabbed her hand. But before I could speak further, Philip swatted our hands apart and interrupted.
“What do you mean off? You’re just biased ‘cause you didn’t grow up around wealth. Not all rich cultivators are like that bastard Viold.”
At the name
Viold
, silence instantly fell between the three of us—Mother, Philip, and me.
My father.
The mention alone turned my face stiff and unreadable. That name dredged up images I could no longer distinguish as memory or nightmare.
Damn it…
Philip, finally realizing the shift in atmosphere, awkwardly patted my shoulder.
“I mean, what I was trying to say is—”
“Shut up. Why bring up the dead and spoil everything?”
Mother cut him off with a sharp flick to his shoulder. Philip cleared his throat and stepped back.
Mother then turned her gaze toward me.
In those soft brown eyes of hers, I saw my own reflection.
Ever since we left the Viold Merchant Sect behind, people often said we looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. The same eyes, same hair, even similar mannerisms and speech.
So I never once doubted—never questioned the fact that I was Helena Wedgewood’s daughter. That just as she had protected me, I was bound to protect her in return.
Maybe it’s time to run again—right now. Drop this whole fraudulent wedding plan. Just leave it all behind.
I was on the verge of saying it aloud when Mother opened her mouth.
“The Duke is strange, no doubt. He can be… fake, at times.”
“Exactly! So we—”
“But who isn’t strange in this world? Me, Philip, and even you—my precious girl—we’re all a little weird, aren’t we? Everyone’s got a secret or two tucked away.”
As she spoke, she gently reached over and brushed a loose strand of hair from my lips.
A secret…
At that moment, I found myself wanting to confess—to tell her everything about the pearl hairpin… about what Vivian and Eric had said. My chest tightened.
I shivered, as if a cold gust had passed through me, and wrapped my arms around myself.
Eric had warned that if we ran, the Duke would immediately charge us with the murder of Violrod and hunt us down.
“There’s no escape anyway.”
I clenched my teeth.
Just then, that same priest approached us.
“Now then, shall we head to the prayer chamber? I can explain more in detail there…”
Mother and Philip didn’t hesitate to move toward the prayer chamber. I rose a step behind them, dragging my feet like a cow being led to the slaughter.
But then I stopped in front of a large framed photograph hanging outside the chamber.
It was a group portrait of the high priests of the Central Monastic Sect.
Just a few years ago, there had been a superstition that having your photo taken would suck your soul into the film. That sparked a widespread phobia of cameras among clergy. And now they were taking group portraits? I chuckled at the irony and leaned closer to the photo.
“Wait… what?”
One face suddenly caught my attention—standing out among the sea of similar-looking priests in identical robes.
I’ve seen this guy before. In the papers.
But why? What was the article about?
"Central Sect Priest Andrea... sent his own son to a boarding school..."
The memory returned. A dream, maybe? Philip had shouted, right after the wedding between Mother and the Duke, as he flipped through the newspaper:
"It’s the end of days, I tell you! A priest had a child?! The kid committed assault, snuck into a boarding school?! And the whole sect covered it up? Cursed bastards!”
Eyes wide, I pointed at Andrea's face in the photo and flagged down a nearby monk.
“Excuse me! This man—he’s Priest Andrea, right?”
The monk smiled gently at my urgency.
“Yes, indeed. A most devout man…”
I didn’t wait for him to finish. My gaze shot to the prayer chamber. I could see the backs of Mother and Philip, pretending to listen intently to the priest.
I didn’t enter. Instead, I quietly backed away and slipped out the temple’s front entrance. Across the street, a wagon driver was loitering with nothing to do.
Without asking permission, I climbed right into his cart.
“To the boarding school under the Central Monastic Sect! Take me there!”
The driver scrunched up his face.
“Eh? It’s lunchtime…”
“I’ll pay double!”
I waved money in the air like,
‘Take it, take it all!’
He brightened up instantly.
“Well, say no more!”
Good thing I’d changed part of the 100,000 gold into coin this morning—just in case. And, well, looks like that ‘just in case’ is happening now.
So much for that wedding fund.
✵
✵
✵
“Absolutely not.”
Eric clenched his jaw at the cold refusal from Priest Andrea, seated across the table.
This wasn’t the same temple where Helena and the Duke’s wedding was set to take place, but one slightly removed—a side sect of the Central Temple. Before Andrea now lay the Princess’s official marriage approval letter, handed over by Eric himself.
The priest, oddly enough, maintained a gentle smile despite his firm tone. Eric forced a strained grin across his stiff face and pointed.
“Can’t you see the date written at the bottom? My—”
He hesitated for the briefest second, then subtly traced a small sigil under the table with his fingers—invoking the Heavenly Vows—before continuing.
“—my beloved fiancée and I received the princess’s blessing
before
the Duke and Lady Helena.”
Andrea’s smile wavered slightly. He had heard the way Eric’s voice trembled when uttering the word
“beloved.”
He gave a soft sigh, eyes filled with pity.
“Oh dear… What a tragic, sorrowful love tale. How did you end up in such a perilous relationship…?”
Though the priest’s reply lacked soul, Eric waited with a thread of hope tightening in his chest. But the priest simply smiled serenely and pushed the marriage permit back across the table toward him.
“But what cannot be, cannot be,” he said gently.
Eric’s expression twisted.
If it can’t be, it can’t be—what’s there to smile about?!
Before he realized it, his hand had drifted toward the sword hanging at his waist—only for him to jerk it back, startled. Using force when negotiations falter… that was a bad habit he had clearly picked up from that lunatic, Imeline.
Gritting his teeth, Eric fought to rein in the bloodthirsty impulse creeping into his thoughts.
A moment later, after steadying his breath, he asked the priest in a careful, coaxing tone.
“I heard that the sect’s conditions worsened last year… In honor of the central temple’s efforts to support the poor, I was thinking of increasing my donation this time…”
As he spoke, he gazed up at the divine mural painted across the prayer room ceiling. Guilt pricked at his chest like thorns.
O Heavenly Dao… consider this a small sacrifice to eliminate greater evil…
He whispered this prayer inwardly, trying to soothe the gnawing shame of attempting bribery.
But despite offering a generous contribution that violated his own conscience, things only worsened.
The priest shouted:
“Heavens! To say such things in this sacred place! Do you take me for someone who would desecrate the rites of a divine bond for coin? I have dedicated two decades of my life to this sect!”
Looking as though he had been gravely insulted, the priest rose, quickly traced a divine sigil, and began chanting a warding scripture under his breath.
To Eric, the muttered prayers sounded like
“Begone, demon!”
—and the guilt struck him like holy water against unclean flesh.
At this point, he could no longer deny it—he was utterly hopeless at negotiation. It was so frustrating that he felt the urge to storm out of the room.
What would Imeline do in this situation?
That bizarre woman would have surely found a solution, no matter how absurd.
Just then, the door to the prayer room creaked open, and Lily entered.
“I bring urgent news…”
“Speak.”
With a grim expression, she bowed her head and whispered:
“Lady Imeline, who was preparing for the wedding tomorrow alongside Lady Helena and Young Master Philip… disappeared four hours ago. What’s more—she is not at the location we were informed she would be.”
Eric’s brow furrowed.
The priest glanced between the two, sensing an unusual atmosphere. Lily looked at him with visible disapproval, then leaned in again toward Eric.
“…Perhaps we should
threaten
this man instead.”
“He’s a priest,” Eric replied sternly.
“Even so…”
Eric waved her off with a calm gesture, doing his best to mask his unease. Lily reluctantly stepped back.
Imeline has vanished?
Eric recalled the gold cheque he had handed Lily just the night before—one worth 100,000 gold taels.
Four hours… She had enough time to flee beyond several provinces.
He hesitated.
Should I rush out now and arrest Helena while I can?
…
But the thought passed quickly.
No. Wait just a little longer.
He turned back to the priest, collecting himself once more.
“I apologize for my earlier rudeness, Reverend. I cannot say that I had no intention of persuading you—through any means—to approve a forbidden union with the one I love…”
With that, Eric sank to his knees.
Lily looked away, unable to bear the sight.
The priest blinked, caught off guard.
“I truly love her, Reverend… Please… this humble plea…”
As he lied through his teeth, Eric bowed his head, his voice trembling. The priest, misreading the emotion, assumed he was crying—and his gaze softened.
But Eric wasn’t weeping.
He was trembling with disgust—disgust at his own deception, unable to raise his head for the shame.
A sacred union… and I’ve turned it into a tool.
When Erik lifted his head, holding onto a sliver of hope, the priest spoke in a sorrowful tone.
“Disciple… you must have suffered greatly in your heart…”
“Yes… so perhaps… you could…”
Erik looked up, anticipation flickering in his eyes.
At last—
“…It cannot be done. The Divine has clearly decreed the sacredness of matrimony! The Divine is my only father! My sole family!”
Why is this man so inflexible?!
Erik cursed both Emelline and Princess Ella in his heart for claiming that priests were easily swayed by money.
Just then, Lily stepped forward, sensing an opportunity.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to simply apprehend Helena and Philip…?”
That moment, someone burst through the open prayer hall doors.
“F-Father!”
It was a teenage boy with a frightened expression. The priest went pale as chalk.
The boy had looked straight at the priest and called him
Father
.
But… father? Cultivators of the Divine Path are forbidden to marry… aren’t they?
Erik’s confusion barely had time to settle when his gaze was seized by a woman entering right after, grinning triumphantly.
“Hah! I’ve had a hell of a time tracking down this brat hiding away in some so-called boarding school! Why are scoundrels always so quick to run?”
Emelline Wedgewood.
No time to question why the woman who was supposedly in hiding had appeared here, of all places.
Because Emelline was already glaring at Erik like he was some pitiful fool.
“I
knew
this would happen.”
“…You.”
“What are you doing listening to this charlatan’s drivel? I
told
you to just drown him in spirit stones!”
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✵
“F-Father!”
I watched as Andrea’s biological son threw himself into his father’s arms, sobbing, his earlier arrogance from the boarding school completely gone.
Andrea, now ghost-white, shouted furiously.
“You brat! I told you never to come here!”
“That woman grabbed me and started threatening me! Said she’d drag me to the city constables if I didn’t come! She even had a blade…!”
The boy’s voice trembled. I stared down at him, utterly unimpressed.
Priest Andrea, a cleric of the Central Divine Sect… hiding his son in a boarding school. That same son, recently revealed as the culprit behind the armed robbery of a jewel shop.
And I—knowing this brat’s face from my dream of the robbery—felt even more disgusted.
Still a mere outer disciple by age, and already robbing merchants, threatening them with blades, and beating them senseless with his feet.
These villainous scum always know how to hide, don’t they? I nearly coughed up blood digging through every dormitory in that place!
“She’s terrifying!”
The boy pointed at me with a trembling hand and shouted.
“That’s why you should walk the righteous path, you mangy mutt’s son!”
I snapped back with gritted teeth. Andrea’s eyes burned with fury.
“How dare you speak such foul words to someone’s child! That would make me… a mutt?!”
Andrea leapt to his feet in protest. Erik’s face twisted in disbelief.
“Son…?”
Erik muttered. Andrea looked over at him in a panic, dabbing the sweat from his brow.
“N-No, it’s not what it looks like…”
“The hell it isn’t.”
I sneered.
Lily whispered in stunned realization.
“She didn’t run away…”
“Escape…?”
I blinked at Lily’s words, puzzled—then caught sight of the expressions on both Eric and Lily’s faces.
Oh?
Look at these two…
“Wow… so you really thought I ran away?”
Eric scratched at his temple awkwardly, clearly flustered.
So after working hard for four straight hours, they’d already labeled me a fugitive? I glared at Eric, utterly dumbfounded.
“Wait, you
actually
suspected me?”
“N-No, that’s not what I—”
“We’re on the same side…”
“I mean—it’s not—”
My face twisted in disbelief as I burst out, voice raised in outrage:
“Are you
seriously
pulling this on me right now?!”
Chapter 29