Chapter 49 –– The Truth

A few days after the Day in Memoriam, the Holy Monastic called upon the Temple Members for an emergency meeting. He gathered the King, the Lord Commander, the Military General, and several ministers at the Temple to discuss an urgent matter.

After everyone was gathered in the room, the Holy Monastic came barging in and slammed his hand on the table. The loud sound surprised everyone in the room as they did not expected such an action from him. The Holy Monastic looked furious. He was angry at the Temple Members.

After what he just witnessed when he visited Premiere Tianming’s grave on the Day in Memoriam with Haru, he concluded that Haru was the true Premier this whole time. Haru managed to made contact with Premiere Tianming using his Divine State which could only be accessed by a Premier(e).

That being said, that could only mean one thing.

“Haneul is not the Premier.”

The Holy Monastic looked around the room to see their reaction. Oddly, none of was were really that surprised. Their reaction surprised the Holy Monastic even more than the truth that he just discovered himself.

“Wait....you all....knew?”

The Lord Commander sighed. He didn’t know this day was gonna come.

“Why did you all hide this from me?” the Holy Monastic asked.

“In our defence, we all genuinely thought it was him at first, until I found out that he wasn’t. Yet, it was all too late. The public already believed that it was him, so there was no going back. Besides, we have been trying to search for the new Premier for 6 years. We couldn’t let the public know we made a mistake after that” the Lord Commander argued.

“Why didn’t you involve me during the process?”

“So that you’ll prevent us? We know that you will not accept a fake Premier, so we made sure you didn’t know until the very end,” the Military General replied.

The Holy Monastic was deeply hurt and disappointed. The King was just silent, not partaking in the conversation.

“Even you knew about this too, Your Majesty?” the Holy Monastic asked.

“I didn’t have a choice but to give in with the majority. Seeing that the boy was talented in practically almost everything, we thought it was going to be fine. The people were happy, the government was running smoothly, and nobody suspected a thing,” the King answered.

“But....this is all...wrong....”

The Holy Monastic reevaluated the values he believed in his whole life. Now that he discovered the truth, he couldn’t remain silent while people were being deceived about this.

“We’re sorry. We didn’t have a choice,” the Lord Commander said, apologizing on behalf of the Temple Members.

“Well, now you do,” the Holy Monastic replied.

“Huh? What do you mean?” the King asked.

“I found the true Premier.”

The Temple Members were shocked. They never even knew that the true Premier existed.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Haneul's twin brother who happens to be a member of Garuda Squad, Haru.”

After hearing what the Holy Monastic just told him, Haneul got even more perturbed than he originally was.

“If he’s my twin brother.....how come I don’t recognize him?” Haneul asked.

“Because your memories are locked.”

Haneul felt like his world was collapsing. Everything he knew was all false. He felt like he didn’t know who he truly was at all.

“What do you mean?”

The Holy Monastic stepped forward, getting closer to Haneul. He then put his palm on Haneul’s forehead, trying to do something to him.

Suddenly, Haneul saw some visions inside his head.

After Haneul was brought to the Temple by the Lord Commander and the Military General, they used medix sealing to seal his memories of his life before he came to the Temple. They implanted some false memories in his head of him being born and raised in the Temple, hiding the truth from him.

After having discovered that Haneul had developed a fyx skill at a young age that allowed him to command people, the Temple mistook him for the Premier. The Lord Commander later found out that he didn’t have the special innate skill reserved for the Premier(e)s, the ”Absolute Command.” However, it was all too late. Given his talent in fyx and combat skills, the Lord Commander decided that he would make him a Premier.

He helped him perfect his fyx skill to resemble the one suitable for his role, so that nobody could tell a difference, not even Haneul himself. Thus, with the help of the Lord Commander, Haneul developed his true fyx skill, which was “Hypnotic Suggestion.” It worksed similarly like Absolute Command, but with different requirements.

By using chroma sorcery, Haneul basically hypnotised his opponent into doing what he suggested them. The effectiveness of his skill relied on the opponent’s mental strength in resisting the hypnosis. This meant that, the stronger his opponent, the harder it was for Haneul to make his fyx skill work. Also, the more his opponent resisted his hypnosis, the more mental damage Haneul received, giving him headaches in turn. This was also why he couldn’t use it too many times in a day, as it strained a lot of his health.

Although taking into consideration the risks that Haneul had to face for using his fyx skill, one advantage that Haneul’s Hypnotic Suggestion fyx skill had over the Absolute Command was that it worked basically on anyone, regardless of their identity. Meanwhile, the Absolute Command only worked towards Virtue Vault citizens who acknowledge the user’s authority as the Premier(e). In exchange to basically no risk to the user aside from consuming some fyx energy, Absolute Command couldn’t work towards foreigners or citizens who had betrayed the nation.

This also explained why Four–– a citizen who had renounced the Premiere(e)’s authority as she betrayed the nation–– was surprised that Haneul’s fyx skill worked against her, since Absolute Command would have done nothing to her.

Everything in his life had been planned out for Haneul from the moment he was taken to the capital. He was chosen to be the Premier on behalf of his people, by the government who deemed that he was fit for the role, regardless of who he truly was. Haneul was truly the victim in his life story for not having a choice to make in his own life.

After the seal to his memories was unlocked by the Holy Monastic, the memories of his life with Haru back in the monastery returned to him. He recalled all of the memories they had as brothers, before coming to the capital. He also recalled the memory of him giving his lighter to his twin brother for the very last time, before being taken away and separated from him for the next decade.

Haneul broke into tears knowing that he had forgotten all of these precious memories with his twin brother. He did in fact, have a family outside the ones he had at the Temple, a twin brother who had been dreaming of meeting him from a very long time. His twin brother who had been around him recently just to be close to him, working as a Sacred Guard to protect him.