"Locke, I may have fallen to your hands today, but that doesn't mean I will lose to you in the future. Thirty years east of the river, thirty years to the west—don't underestimate a struggling middle aged man!"
That day, the moment Locke entered the tent, the knight commander's defiant voice rang out.
A short while ago, Locke had inserted a fabricated scene into the knight commander's sixteen-year-old memory, making him believe he had truly lived through that experience.
Other memories were somewhat hazy, but that line—the knight considered it the essence of his life, etched deeply into his mind.
So, upon seeing Locke, he shouted it aloud without hesitation.
Locke looked at him with a gaze of pity, sighed, and shook his head. Without acknowledging the commander's loud proclamations, he took his seat, merging his soul with the ultimate laws and entering the Heavenly-Human Unity state to comprehend them.
For a long time, Locke had been puzzled by how the Radiant Temple had managed to grow in just over a century to the point of controlling forty percent of the Frost and Snow Empire's territory.
It wasn't until he studied the knight commander's soul, refining his understanding of soul manipulation and memory, that the truth became clear.
The Radiant Temple was indeed founded just over a century ago.
But the Temple's Pope had not arrived in the Wakanda Plane only a century ago.
When the Pope first arrived, he had been extremely low-profile—so much so that aside from Emperor Celes of the Frost and Snow Empire, no one even knew a new deity-level presence had appeared in the Wakanda Plane.
Observing the Pope for some time, Celes saw that he was just a lower-tier deity and posed no threat to his collection of faith. He ignored him.
What Celes didn't know was that over the past century, the Radiant Temple Pope had disseminated the method for finding women with pure souls to the empire's upper echelons.
He explained that by sacrificing enough pure souls, even ascension to godhood was possible.
Because Celes had established a unified empire, the Wakanda Plane had seen little war. To gather enough faith, he encouraged population growth.
With a population exceeding thirty billion, even rare women with pure souls numbered more than thirty, gradually collected by the empire's elite.
At first, the Pope freely granted strength boosts to those who performed the sacrifices.
But once the upper echelons tasted power, desiring to break through to the Sanctuary stage via pure soul sacrifices, the Pope revealed his true nature.
To ascend to the Sanctuary stage, one had to join the Radiant Temple, pledge loyalty to the God of Light Augusta, and dedicate one's faith.
In this way, elite members who had been stuck at peak Ninth Order for centuries, or who held enough pure souls to reach the Sanctuary, all threw themselves into the Radiant Temple, seeking immense power and eternal life.
It is said that in that year, Emperor Celes nearly uprooted the Radiant Temple in a fit of rage.
Only when the Pope swore to the Supreme God that the empire's collected faith would never decrease—and would grow each year—did Celes spare his life.
From the knight commander's memories, Locke learned his real name: Fieobo Aura.
The Aura family had been a noble line in the Frost and Snow Empire for over a thousand years.
Fieobo Aura was a distant branch member, largely ignored, with low cultivation talent and frequently bullied by relatives.
At seventy, Fieobo received a family assignment: locate a woman capable of making a pearl glow and warm.
Present her to the family, and one would receive extensive support, even gaining direct succession rights.
Fortune smiled upon him. Soon, he found such a woman.
But Fieobo did not present her to the family. He imprisoned her in his household basement, continuing his search for other women while secretly investigating their true worth.
He believed the woman's value must far exceed the family's rewards for the family to expend such effort.
After seven years, Fieobo discovered the women's true purpose.
One day, he secretly left with the woman and began his journey.
Through this, he advanced from a Sixth-Order warrior to an Eighth-Order warrior.
His status in the family improved, but as a distant relative, some Seventh-Order mainline warriors still disregarded him.
Over a century ago, when the Aura family found a woman with a pure soul, they formally left the Frost and Snow Empire to join the Radiant Temple.
In return, the Temple Pope performed a sacrificial ritual, elevating the family head to a Sanctuary-level strength.
Thus, the Aura family became a Sanctuary-level lineage under the Radiant Temple.
In the following century, Fieobo, through extraordinary luck, found and secretly sacrificed two more women with pure souls, ascending to the Sanctuary stage and becoming the second Sanctuary of the Aura family.
However, his rise exposed his secret: he hadn't offered the first pure soul to the family. He faced severe backlash, verbally and socially attacked by relatives.
Enraged, Fieobo killed many who insulted him, making the family truly understand the saying: "Sanctuaries must not be insulted."
Eventually, Fieobo was defeated by the family head and expelled, losing the Aura surname.
This was why he later collaborated with other Sanctuaries, ambushing and killing the previous Fifth Legion commander of the Frost and Snow Empire, regaining a countship under the Radiant Temple.
(End of Chapter)
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