Chapter 379 Blood and Sugar

The longest seven days of my life were spent in a withered orchard when I was thirteen.

Back then, I thought faith was an indestructible bedrock. I didn't yet know that something so invisible and intangible could be so sharp.

Sharp enough to peel apart a person's life with such ease.

The blight in my hometown spread silently like a plague. One by one, the tangerine trees in the orchard lost their green, their leaves curling as if scorched.

My parents had already given up. They sat in the dim house all day, waiting for the same fate that had befallen the other orchard farmers.

But I didn't.

Right beneath the oldest tangerine tree in the orchard, I prayed.

One day, two days, three days...

My knees sank into the dirt. My lips cracked from thirst.

On the fourth day, I heard our neighbors weeping; they had decided to burn their orchard and move away.

On the fifth day, my older brother tried to drag me into the house. He called me crazy, asking why a great and lofty deity would ever lean down to listen to the prayers of lowly people like us.

By the sixth day, I could barely hear my own voice. All that remained in my vision was a sea of withered yellow.

At dusk on the seventh day, as the setting sun soaked the sky, He came.

He was not the gentle, kind woman depicted on the stained-glass windows of the town Church, but a presence as warm as sunlight.

I couldn't see His face, but I could feel His gaze resting upon me—like a mother watching her sleeping child.

"Why do you persist?" His voice asked, drifting through the orchard like a clear breeze.

"Because these trees are my family's life," I answered, my voice hoarse. "I don't believe a god would sit by and watch everything die."

With that, sunlight brushed over the withered tangerine tree. Fresh green sprouted from the dry branches, and the curled leaves unfurled as if new. The scent of tangerine leaves filled the twilight, and tiny white flowers bloomed on the boughs.

When I stumbled home to tell my family of this miracle, they didn't believe me at first—not until they saw the entire orchard restored to life.

That night, sweet juice quenched my parched throat.

But when I went to my neighbor's orchard the next day, hoping for the same miracle, I saw only dead silence.

The blight continued to rage, and more and more orchard farmers prepared to leave.

Miracles, it seemed, only descended where His gaze fell.

I didn't understand back then why such radiant divine grace could be so stingy, sparing only a single drop while leaving the entire land to wither. I only viewed this exception as a supreme honor, attributing it to a divine calling.

That autumn, when the harvested Sugar Tangerines filled our baskets to the brim, I bid farewell to my family and set out on the path to serve the divine. I resolved to dedicate my life and all my devotion to that great existence who had saved my family's lives.

Thirty years passed.

My hair turned gray, and deep creases of age gathered on my face.

I considered myself devoted enough, but sadly, my talent was limited.

Even in the Episcopal District, the place closest to the divine, bathed in the Holy Light of the Mother of All Things, over ten thousand days and nights of devout prayer failed to advance me any further. I only served as a minor steward in a remote corner of the Church.

Of course, I wasn't disappointed.

I had long ago decided to devote my life to that great "Mother." Even if I could only share the most insignificant sliver of Her dazzling light and serve as Her mortal proxy, I was satisfied.

"Cleric Moin, please lead the prayer ritual for the residents of the South District."

I accepted the ornate schedule. The prayers on it were written in gold dust.

At the ritual, wearing a Ceremonial Vestment adorned with silver threads, I led the congregation in a chant. My resonant voice echoed through air thick with the scent of incense and burning candles, masking the faint, lingering stench of rot drifting from the distant slums.

I looked down at the emaciated, shriveled figures sunken from hunger, and at those eyes brimming with hope born of faith. Even though my heart had long grown numb, my stomach still churned.

As I recited the prayers I had repeated countless times, my heart grew ever more dead.

I knew that the cost of this ceremony—just the incense and candles burned so extravagantly and tossed aside, just the exquisite vessels holding simple food—would be enough to feed a village on the kingdom's border for an entire month.

"The robes on the bishops' backs are more precious than the tenant farmers' wheat," I muttered to myself, recalling a scene I had witnessed just a few days prior.

Three mortal proxies of divine authority, bathed in Holy Light—"big shots" who were far closer to the Mother of All Things than I was—had spent an entire morning arguing over the seating arrangement for a sacrificial ritual. At that very same moment, refugees outside the city were shoving and fighting for a single bite of bread.

On countless quiet nights, I knelt in the Church, praying to that silent statue of the Goddess. The only answer I ever received was the cold moonlight spilling from the dome.

Once, I was in charge of allocating a batch of relief supplies to a disaster-stricken parish.

I saw with my own eyes how the food and medicine, originally plentiful on the manifest, were reduced to less than a tenth of their amount by the time they arrived—siphoned off by layers of "procedures" and "management fees."

I grabbed the original manifest and the final receipt, trembling as I barged into the regional bishop's room, desperate to speak up for the disaster victims who no longer even had the strength to pray.

Sitting behind an expensive wooden desk carved with exquisite Holy Marks, the bishop—a man always renowned for his piety and wisdom—merely lifted his eyelids. With a single sentence, he choked off all the indignation in my heart: "Cleric Moin, the massive body of the Church needs to operate, and a little 'lubricant' is necessary."

"You must remember that sometimes, for the sake of the Church and the Goddess, we must focus on the big picture. Individual sacrifices are unavoidable."

At that moment, I looked at the holy portrait on the wall behind him—the Goddess "pitying the world"—and felt a wave of dizziness.

Was the great existence I served truly the same thing as the "Goddess" he spoke of?

I had learned to commune with the Holy Light and channel divine power, but the distance between me and Her seemed to only grow further.

The Goddess had not manifested again in a very long time.

To my horror, I realized that I, too, had long since stopped expecting Her to appear.

This left me terrified and at a loss.

A silent question welled up inside me:

'Why do you tacitly allow all of this?'

'Or... do you simply not care?'

Sometimes, I even wondered if the miracle from when I was thirteen was just a beautiful dream brought on by a high fever.

But the tangerines shipped from my hometown every year—the aroma when peeling the skin and the sweetness of the flesh—reminded me that it had indeed happened.

The place closest to the Goddess seemed to be the place furthest from Her.

When news arrived that my hometown was suffering from the blight once again, I had already built some connections within the Church.

Pulling a few strings, I managed to get the Church to dispatch technicians and the finest Holy Water.

In less than two weeks, the disaster was brought under control.

I decided to return home for a visit.

The carriage rolled down familiar roads flanked by the same familiar orchards, but massive tracts of the surrounding land were now cordoned off by stone walls, bearing wooden signs that read "Private Property."

Occasionally, I saw a few unfamiliar orchard farmers. They were incredibly deferential, addressing me as "My Lord."

The old family estate had been expanded beyond recognition. Its marble pillars glared harshly in the sunlight.

The person who received me was the current head of the family estate—my nephew.

He enthusiastically and proudly recounted how he had weaponized the name of the past "divine miracle" and my connections in the Church to monopolize the vast majority of local orchards, forcing the other farmers to "voluntarily" give up their land and become our family's hired hands.

His words overflowed with a thirst for wealth and power, but completely lacked any reverence for the miracle itself—that tangerine tree which had returned from the dead.

He was exactly like those big shots I had seen sitting in high positions within the Church.

"Thanks to you, Uncle! The moment the Church's Holy Water was sprinkled, the blight immediately receded!" A wide smile piled onto his fat face, so greasy it looked ready to drip. "It wasn't a bad thing, either. Because of this blight, the last few neighboring farmers finally sold their land to us."

I asked him to take me to see the tree of the original miracle.

As a testament to the descent of divine grace, they had built a lavish little shrine for it. It wasn't large, but the furnishings inside were far more expensive and exquisite than those in the town Church.

That old tangerine tree was enclosed atop the altar in the very center of the shrine, looking like one of those meticulously dressed mummies from the western deserts.

I stepped closer for a careful look, only to find its branches completely bare. There wasn't a single leaf, let alone any fruit.

"It hasn't borne fruit for many years," my nephew said. "But that's fine. We used its branches to graft many new trees, so we get a bumper harvest every year." He smiled with pointed meaning.

I reached out and gently stroked the trunk, my mind flashing back to the days and nights I had spent kneeling in prayer beneath it all those years ago.

Suddenly, a dead branch snapped off and fell into my hand. It was very light.

That night, I sat alone in the Church for a very, very long time. For the first time, I skipped the evening service.

The Goddess's gift might have truly been Her blessing at first.

But when it fell to the mortal realm, it became a sweet, seductive "poison apple."

I, my family, and even the entire Church had swallowed it without hesitation—and we withered as a result.

Crash—

A deafening roar that no one else could hear exploded in my heart, much like that dead branch snapping and falling.

My faith in the Goddess remained, but upon returning to the Church, I submitted an application to resign from all my core duties. Amidst a chorus of confusion and predictable, secret delight, I packed my bags, taking only essential Holy Scripture and a few sets of everyday clothes.

I whittled that dead branch into a Wooden Dagger.

It wasn't long—just enough to grip in my hand. Nor was it sharp; in fact, it looked rather crude.

Holding it, I could remember who I used to be.

Sheep Horn Town was a remote little place, and I became the cleric here.

Over the years, I did my best to do everything a cleric should do.

I presided over weddings and funerals for the townsfolk, listened to their troubles, and occasionally healed minor injuries and illnesses.

I helped the farmers improve their farming methods, tended to the sick during outbreaks of disease, and ran literacy classes for the impoverished children who wanted to better themselves.

The tangible, grounding labor, along with the respect and gratitude in the eyes of the townsfolk, gradually cured me of expecting miracles during those unforgettable years.

—

The townsfolk respected me. No one knew my past; they just treated me as an ordinary, aging cleric transferred here from the big city.

Occasionally, on quiet nights, I would take out that Wooden Dagger and reflect on my life.

I remembered what I had seen with my own eyes: how pure faith was corrupted by the poison apple, and how it managed to survive in a plain, simple life.

I started writing essays to record my thoughts on faith and life. I didn't expect anyone to read them; they were just a way to organize my mind.

I continued to lead the services and preach the doctrines. The townsfolk all said I was truly devout, a mortal practitioner of the Goddess's teachings.

But only I knew that when I led them in chanting prayers aloud, my heart was a void.

Everything I did was less about serving the Goddess and more about finding a reason for my existence over the past half of my life. I was trying to rely on my own strength to plant a little Glimmer of humanity into the cracks of faith's fortress.

My devotion had long since turned away from the divine altar, shifting toward the human hearts behind it.

The turning point occurred late one night when no one was around.

I was strolling through the garden behind the Church. The night sky was clear, and the air was still.

Suddenly, a pink light rose from within the Church.

Light and slow.

It landed in the palm of the Goddess, which was cradling a rosebud.

It was a Pink Gemstone the size of a thumb, resembling a dandelion seed.

I took it back to my room and placed it on my desk.

It was beautiful, indescribably beautiful, as if it shifted according to the viewer's state of mind.

I had originally planned to report this to the Church, but for some inexplicable reason, I suppressed the news and kept it.

After some time passed, I noticed a change in the town's residents.

The blacksmith no longer argued over a few coins of wages; the orchard owners were willing to give tangerines to poor children without asking for anything in return; even the notoriously stingy innkeeper began giving free food to vagrants.

I gradually realized something.

The people undergoing these changes were all devout believers who frequented the Church for services, and they were the townsfolk who interacted most with me while I carried the gemstone.

I conducted an experiment. I invited a few ordinary, less-than-devout residents to the Church and deliberately let them see the crystal on me.

A few days later, they underwent the same change. Their desire for material wealth diminished significantly.

At the same time, as the number of affected people gradually increased, the gemstone seed in my hand grew ever more radiant, as if it were absorbing some formless substance to take root and sprout.

I returned the seed to the place where I had found it—the palm of the Goddess.

This allowed every townsman who came to pray at the Church to silently feel its influence amid their prayers.

The changes in Sheep Horn Town became increasingly obvious.

Arguments dwindled, and mutual aid increased. The entire town displayed a harmony I had never seen anywhere else.

Even the town sheriff and a street vagabond could converse equally and amicably, without a shred of prejudice.

It was like a scene out of my dreams.

Involuntarily, I recalled the blight in my hometown thirty years ago, and that "stingy" miracle the Goddess had sent down.

Perhaps this gemstone, this power capable of directly altering human hearts and weakening greed, was the true divine gift?

Was it the ultimate answer the great Goddess had given me, after silently guiding me through everything I had experienced?

I continued to fulfill my duties as a cleric in Sheep Horn Town, but secretly, I began to study the crystal's properties more systematically. I distributed the multiplied crystals to the "devout" believers, controlling the sphere of influence.

Naturally, the changes in the small town drew the attention of surrounding areas. Some people discovered clues, but upon coming into contact with the crystal, most of them were assimilated by it, choosing to stay rather than leave.

"It doesn't selectively save a few, but fundamentally changes human nature, eliminating injustice and greed."

"This is a true miracle."

Occasionally, late at night, as I gripped that Wooden Dagger whittled from the dead branch of the tangerine tree, a question would surface in my mind:

'Is this salvation—which strips away people's right to choose through external force—truly more just than the unfairness in the natural order?'

I had witnessed the filth in the Church with my own eyes, and I had seen how greed could destroy a person's life.

If this Pink Gemstone could bring about a fairer world, then it was just.

Outside the window, there weren't many lights in Sheep Horn Town, yet it was brighter than ever before.

The Goddess gave me a miracle that saved a few, and the crystal might just give me a chance to save the many.

This time, I wouldn't disappoint Her again.

The night was dead silent. The pink beam of light shooting straight into the vault of heaven quietly faded.

Covered in crystals, the aged, mutilated corpse lay quietly on the cold ground.

The dagger made from a dead branch was tied tightly at his waist, and the Ceremonial Vestment had been shredded into tatters.

A small, orange-red Sugar Tangerine rested in a pool of blood.

—

The force field energy erupting all around hadn't caused much damage to it as a vessel. However, because it was thrown too forcefully, a small section of its peel was crushed, exposing the fragile flesh inside.

Mixing the stench of blood with the scent of citrus, crystal-clear juice slowly dripped down, blending into the spreading blood beneath it.

The mixture of blood and sugar flowed silently through the cracks in the stone slabs, reflecting the altar ahead—and that Goddess statue made of pink crystal.