The Truth of the Grand Holy Church

“Indeed, but that too becomes the driving force for my progress,” Ard said, his voice fearless, his gaze meeting the priest’s without flinching. “If not for a yearning for the unknown, I would never have walked the path of an adventurer. In the past, I had neither the right to choose nor the ability to know the truth, but now, I will not let those things slip from my grasp again. Besides, I am not the kind of person who cannot control his own desires. I know what I should know, and what I shouldn’t.”

“Hehe, it’s been a long time since I’ve met someone as interesting as you, young man. Very well, I’ll tell you about the Gate of the Sanctum.” Reiss instinctively reached for a cigarette, but withered under Sister Seleu’s murderous glare and reluctantly gave up.

“The stone door before you is the Gate of Truth, made with ancient, forgotten technology. It can reflect a person’s true inner thoughts and judge whether you are sincere when you make a promise. If you harbor falsehood in your heart and only agree verbally, the Gate of Truth will not recognize you. You will not be able to witness the reality behind it. In practical terms, it means we can enter this stone door and see it open, but those with ill intentions will only ever see a sealed, unyielding stone wall.”

“Incredible,” Ard breathed, his eyes wide with the genuine excitement of a scholar discovering a lost truth. “To think such technology exists. The Grand Holy Church is truly something else.”

Reiss grumbled, “Well, it’s incredible, alright, but this thing is outrageously expensive. The funds for renovating my own living quarters were eaten up by it. Ah, well. Young man, you’d better be honest in a moment. If you run headfirst into the door, we won’t be helping you peel your face off it.”

“Honestly, you’re not afraid I’ll spread the word about this place? I mean, I’m already here.” Ard paused, a thoughtful, calculating look on his face. “Wait, no. I see. Allowing a sudden visitor like me to come this far proves you don’t care if news of this place leaks. If I were to speak of it, you would simply deny everything. With the prestige of the Grand Holy Church, the word of a humble adventurer like me couldn’t make a ripple. In fact, I’d probably be ostracized by the faithful and, eventually… dealt with.”

“Haha, ‘dealt with’ is a bit much,” Reiss said, clapping Ard on the shoulder with surprising force. “The Grand Holy Church isn’t that dark. At most, we’d investigate your background, and once we confirmed you were no threat, we’d simply erase your memory. Want to know what it feels like to lose your memory?”

“Of course not,” Ard said with a wry smile. “It’s taken me two lifetimes to learn these truths. I couldn’t bear to lose them so easily.”

“A sensible young man,” Reiss said with a nod. “Your reasoning is sound. The Grand Holy Church would never officially acknowledge the existence of this place. Though, for certain organizations and state powers, it’s not exactly a secret. Sometimes, maintaining good relations with them makes our work easier.”

“That’s enough idle chatter,” Sister Seleu interrupted, her voice sharp as sheared ice. “I am opening the Gate of Truth.”

She placed her hand on the cold stone door. A moment later, the same orchid emblem from the silver badge appeared on the stone, but this one was immense, covering nearly the entire surface of the massive gate. It pulsed with a soft, ethereal blue light.

The great stone door swung open slowly, without a sound, revealing a space that looked like a captured piece of the deepest night sky.

Ard stared, mesmerized, unwilling to miss a single detail. But he soon noticed that Yexi, beside him, seemed completely unfazed, not a flicker of surprise or excitement in her expression. Her golden eyes were as calm and still as a frozen lake.

“Yexi,” Ard asked, his voice a whisper. “Have you been here before?”

“No, this is the first time.”

“Then why are you so calm?” Ard asked, astonished. “Aren’t you excited or curious? This is incredible!”

Yexi was silent for a moment, her gaze fixed on the star-dusted darkness ahead. “No. I am merely seeing a fact that has long existed in this world. Emotions like surprise cannot exist without curiosity, and I lost such useless desires long ago. To me, this is just another step in completing my mission.”

“My, my, Yexi is as dull as ever,” Reiss sighed from behind them. “The little Yexi was so much cuter. But I suppose after what she’s been through, it can’t be helped.”

Stare!

The full force of Yexi’s terrifying gaze landed on the priest. Reiss shrugged helplessly, saying no more. But Ard’s curiosity was piqued. What does he mean by ‘little Yexi’? And what did she go through? But he knew Reiss wasn’t going to elaborate, and he certainly couldn’t pry the truth from the man. He turned his attention back to the space within the Gate of Truth.

At the center of the star-filled expanse bloomed a single, luminous orchid, radiating a divine, pulsating light. It was a beacon in the darkness, a singular point of brilliance. The “stars” that filled the space were actually motes of pollen, drifting from the flower as it swayed in a nonexistent breeze. Besides this single flower, the space was empty; not even a statue of the gods the Church supposedly worshipped could be seen.

The great door rumbled shut behind them, sealing them in the celestial chamber. Ard noticed a faint white light now emanating from his own body, a soft, protective aura.

“Lord Ard! Miss Yexi!”

Father Reiss’s voice echoed, and all traces of frivolity and jest were gone from it, replaced by a penetrating authority and dignity that made him seem like a different man entirely. Ard looked over at the priest, whose face was now stern and solemn as a death mask. The nun stood respectfully by his side, her expression equally grave.

Ard realized the gravity of the situation and answered with equal solemnity, “Present.”

“Present,” Yexi echoed, her voice flat and emotionless.

“In the presence of the Orchid of Love, I, Reiss, a priest of the Grand Holy Church, will now question you. Please answer truthfully. If you encounter a question that offends, you may choose to remain silent, but you must not speak a single word of falsehood.”

“Understood.”

“Understood.”

“First question. Miss Yexi, was the letter I read written by the hand of the current head of the Trefle family?”

“Yes.”

“Second question. On the way here, did anyone else open or tamper with the letter or its contents?”

“No.”

Ard raised an eyebrow. Yexi had been asleep for most of the journey, yet she answered with such absolute certainty. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. When she had leaned against his shoulder so defenselessly, looking so fragile, it had taken all his willpower not to act on the thoughts that had crossed his mind. It seemed now that if he had dared to make a move, he would have been a dead man.

“Third question. Have the purpose of this trip and the contents of the letter been disclosed to any other person?”

“No.”

“Fourth question. Lord Ard, was there any falsehood in what you told the Marquis?”

“No.”

“Fifth question. From where did you obtain your information, and is it credible?”

“It is credible.” Ard spoke only those two words, his lips a firm line, remaining silent on the first part of the question.

Reiss didn’t press, moving on immediately. “Sixth question. Have you had any collusion with the heretical cult?”

“No.”

“The questioning is concluded.” Reiss let out a long breath, a semblance of a smile returning to his face. “It is a great relief that neither of you spoke any falsehoods.”

Ard looked up. They had only asked a few simple questions, yet they were certain they hadn’t lied. And…

“Aren’t you going to investigate the source?” Ard couldn’t very well say his information came from a past life, not knowing how the Grand Holy Church would react, so he had chosen to remain silent.

Reiss shook his head. “There’s no need. Too many people have secrets they don’t wish to share. We only need to know that your actions are born of good intentions. Prying too deeply often leads to tragedy. That is a lesson the Grand Holy Church has learned from its long and bloody history.”

Ard looked thoughtfully at the central orchid. “The legends say that the Orchid of Love has the power to see through falsehood. Is that legend true?”

Reiss also turned his gaze to the flower, a flicker of genuine reverence in his eyes. “It is both true and false. The ornamental orchids grown in greenhouses for public viewing do not have this ability.”

Ard sighed. “So the Grand Holy Church’s Orchid of Love can. How miraculous.”

“Miracles are directly linked to funding, you know. But for the object of our faith, no expense is too great,” Reiss said with a cynical smirk.

“Faith in the Orchid of Love? That’s a little different from the faith in the gods of the Grand Holy Church that I’ve heard about.”

Reiss grumbled, “It can’t be helped. People always prefer to believe in omnipotent gods and place their hopes in them. If we told them the Grand Holy Church’s faith is in a flower, we probably wouldn’t get a single coin in donations. It’s better to rely on oneself than on the gods anyway. Why would the lofty gods care about us insignificant mortals?”

“Blooming in darkness, scattering holiness in filth. Growing in the abyss, yet never yielding to the dark. Bringing light, yet never using it for oneself. The great Orchid of Love, possessing the most beautiful face yet not competing with other flowers, possessing the noblest form yet only growing in the most dangerous of places. Guiding the lost, giving hope to the desperate, giving courage to the struggling. I remembered that correctly, didn’t I?”

Ard was reciting the first page of the Grand Holy Church’s scripture, titled “The Orchid of Love, Hope and Courage.” In his past life, many had wondered why the Church put this page first, with some speculating it was a metaphor for the gods’ virtues being like the Orchid of Love.

“Clap, clap, clap. Not bad, young man. I thought young people these days weren’t interested in such stuffy texts. Well, that’s about the only useful part of the scripture. The rest of the praise for the gods was just copied from other religions. We call it ’embracing all rivers’, haha,” Reiss laughed. “Compared to the gods you can’t see or touch, the Orchid of Love that blooms in this turbid world is at least something you can see and touch.”

“…” Just copied it? Ard felt that was a bit too perfunctory, but then again, it wasn’t their true faith.

“Oh, we have a result.”

The petals of the swaying Orchid of Love in the center began to bloom wider. A brilliant blue light flashed, and a crystal-clear blue crystal, humming with power, floated above the flower.

Seleu respectfully took it and handed it to Reiss.

Ard blinked. “What is this?”

Seleu said calmly, “The questioning witnessed by the Orchid of Love is transmitted directly to the Grand Holy Church’s headquarters. There, it is reviewed, judged, and a course of action is decided.”

“Transmitting the information to the main branch is Seleu-chan’s job. She’s been communicating with them this whole time. Otherwise, she would have interrupted us with her spear long ago,” Reiss added.

“Father Reiss, the next time you blab these secrets to an outsider, I will knock you unconscious before transmitting any information,” Seleu said, her voice dangerously low.

“It’s a well-known secret! Come on, don’t look at me with such scary eyes. I know, I know. It’s just that it’s rare to see such an interesting young man in this backwater place, so I got a little excited,” Reiss said, trying to placate her.

Ard deadpanned, “Hey, if Yexi had said that, I might have gotten excited. Hearing it from an old man just makes me want to vomit.”