He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Chapter 62 Please Remember Me

"call----"

Ai took a deep breath, then shook her head and gave a wry smile.

"I've discovered that you, Anda, might actually have the potential to be a bad woman—"

When a girl as gentle as a lamb strikes you deadly without a trace of expression when you least expect it, and afterwards acts cowardly and harmless as if she lacks common sense.

Like a thorny rose, it is beautiful yet also brings pain. This contrast truly left a deep impression on Ai Yi.

So he blinked, held the little girl in his arms, and let her sit on one of his shoulders. Then he smiled and said, "If you're willing to believe me, perhaps you can tell me more—I'm also deeply mired in this quagmire called Agdewe. Instead of looking pessimistic and preparing to die, why don't you talk to me first?"

Ai pushed the little girl on her shoulder a little further to prevent her from falling off, and continued, "For example, tell me what the Archbishop was doing, why they killed Lily—to wash away the shame you mentioned? That's not realistic. Even a fledgling bird with lost wings was once a fledgling bird. They would be crazy to kill Lily outright."

"What they would have done more likely was to conceal Lily's self-sacrifice to maintain the purity of their faith in Agdewe, but instead they chose the most extreme and foolish option."

Ai tilted her head: "Why?"

He had a premonition that this might be the source of the bishop's sins.

Anda did not answer immediately.

She simply walked over to the wooden table, picked up a sheet of drawing lying flat on it, and presented it to Ai.

The fox narrowed its eyes.

The drawing on the paper is a structural diagram of a wing—the black lead depicts almost every detail with near realism: bones, joints, muscle fibers and periosteum with extreme precision, and feathers and down feathers that are clearly distinguishable.

"What do you mean?" Ai asked.

Anda gently stroked the slightly dented lead marks with her fingertips and said slowly, "These are anatomical diagrams of bird wings—also Lily's research notes."

She laid the blueprint flat on the ground, in a spot where the sun was shining brightly.

"After Lily removed her wings, she was weak for a short time, but she quickly recovered her health—and her condition improved a lot compared to before. At first, we were just happy about this change, but Lily thought about something deeper. She began to study the back wings of the Agdewe people."

She took a deep breath and continued, "Lily said: Agdewe's avian sign—these wings, no matter how you analyze them, don't seem like something that would grow from a human body—they appear to be integrated with the scapula, yet they possess an almost completely independent internal circulation and tissue structure. Rather than organs, this relationship is more like—"

"parasitic."

Ai Yi remained silent, while the little girl on his shoulder hugged his neck tightly, seemingly struggling to breathe.

"Parasitism—" he murmured.

"Yes, parasitism."

Anda nodded solemnly and said, "Apart from its connection to the spine, this wing is not involved in any of the body's other functions. So even the Agdewe people have a hard time controlling it. The bone eagles, trained from a young age, can only perform the most complex wing movements by lowering the already downward-facing wingtips further and inserting them into the ground, or by spreading them upwards—it's like controlling an inanimate object."

As if to prove this point, Anda's wide shepherd's robe billowed and billowed as if blown by the wind, and something seemed to be slightly unfolding on her back—

But this action was quickly stopped.

Anda lowered her eyelids, twirled a strand of hair by her cheek, and said in a slightly weak voice, "I'm sorry—this isn't a suitable place to show this."

-cut----

The fox pouted in disappointment, but didn't say anything more, continuing to listen quietly to the girl's explanation.

"In short—Lily said she got some things wrong. The factors that prevent winged people from flying are not only aerodynamics, but also the wings themselves—they don't actually have the multi-layered skeleton and joints that birds have that allow them to flap freely in the air, nor do they have the structure to control altitude and direction, and they can't even do the action of flying itself."

"So—" Ai said thoughtfully.

"Therefore, according to biology, these wings should be a completely foreign object."

Anda whispered, "But that's the most incomprehensible part."

"The wings of the Agdewe are inherited through bloodline—those born with wings, those who are selected and those who undergo trials, will also inherit their wings when they mate. Furthermore, the completeness of the avian features will gradually increase as the bloodline of the parents approaches the same distance."

Anda's gaze trembled slightly, as if she too was tormented by fear at this moment: "But this makes no sense at all—if it's a parasitic relationship, it shouldn't interact with bloodline purity anymore. After losing her status as a fledgling, Lily devoted almost all her energy to research on wings, but in the end, she didn't make any new discoveries."

'

Ai frowned: This is not "scientific" at all.

—It sounds a bit like something from the mystical side, but we're not in a hurry to make a judgment yet; perhaps we can gather more information first.

So, he paused for a moment, then asked solemnly, "So—what does this have to do with the Archbishop killing Lily—?"

He froze before he could finish his question, and Ai Yi suddenly realized that a living answer seemed to be standing right in front of him.

"Wings—can they grow on different individuals?"

Just as he squinted, a sudden, electric shock-like sensation struck him.

Anda, who was originally wingless, now has wings like a true Agdewe.

Moreover—their wings were golden-red.

"Wings can be transplanted between different individuals, so, so————"

Unaware that his teeth were clenched so tightly they were clicking, an indescribable rage almost filling his vessel—

Sure enough, the moment he realized what was happening, Rhodes was already incredibly angry.

"Those damn bastards"

He finally understood why young children frequently went missing in Agdio —

"The Supreme Bishop."

Or.

"Charon".

He uttered those two names slowly and deliberately from the depths of his throat. Lot's justice surged in the red liquid. When the shape of that evil was revealed, the fire of judgment was already burning in this land.

Lily survived after having her wings removed, thanks to her medical and anatomical knowledge. But in this backward village, the High Priest wouldn't care about the surgical environment or post-operative recovery.

When wings are treated as an object that can be transferred, then people who have wings become a commodity, a disposable item, like crops growing in the ground.

The Archbishop would randomly harvest those "naturally winged" who were not healthy enough and had shorter lifespans, taking them as his followers while they were still able to move. Once they were "approaching their end," he would remove their wings and reuse them until the number of winged beings grew larger and larger.

It could even form a special combat team.

—Tsk.

Ai felt her fist harden.

Incomprehensible stupidity, and ugliness.

To pluck a pair of wings that bring "deformity" and "pain" from the body of the "victim" and then transplant them to another "sufferer"—this is utterly absurd. No one in the entire process can have a good ending; everyone is simultaneously both the perpetrator and the victim.

—Damn it————

Ai held his head, feeling his aversion to stupidity about to flare up. He had long suspected that there were unbearable evils in this village, but he never expected that the form of these evils would be so idiotic!

"Even if I hadn't come here, the outcome was already predetermined."

He said quietly, "The fools will continue to expand their wings until they all evolve into the 'birds' they revere, and then they will all die silently, leaving behind an empty, abandoned village."

Such a process, without any twists or turns and pointing straight to the end, can only be summarized by the word "fate".

"What are you planning to do?"

Ai tried to calm himself down; he was actually just feeling a little nauseous, but he mainly had to take care of Rhodes, who was about to explode. "I'm a little angry right now—you could take this opportunity to ask me for something, and maybe I'll impulsively agree?"

"I----"

Anda moved her lips, but no sound came out. After a moment of silence, she murmured as if in a dream, "I want to know—"

She looked up: "How much time do I have left?"

—Ask me, ask me?

Ai was a little taken aback by the question, but after a brief moment of thought, she quickly realized that Anda already knew some information.

"The deadline is tomorrow—"

He said softly, with a hint of confusion, "I don't understand, how did you know there was such a deadline? Because of me? Or—"

"Because of Gern."

Anda whispered, "Lily told me a lot about her brother, including how Gern escaped—or rather, how Lily helped him escape from here."

No wonder—

Ai thought to herself.

—No wonder a little kid who hasn't even reached adulthood was able to break through the winged beings' numerous obstacles and board that train to Dunling—it would only be possible if the fledgling was secretly paving the way for him.

"Gern".

Anda seemed to have some particular feelings about the name. She bit her lower lip and remembered what Lily had whispered in her ear.

"Anda, you know my brother, right? He's way dumber than you. He's such a waste of his eyesight—no matter how many times I teach him something, he forgets it completely in less than a day. Does that guy's brain not have any wrinkles? Idiot, idiot, idiot!"

This was in the very beginning, when Lily was still very young—as a fledgling, she always seemed carefree, chasing after her desires for the outside world.

Later, she learned more about the kingdom of "Ys" and the wider world that existed beyond Agdewe, which made her suspicious of this place.

"Anda, don't you feel that something is wrong here? Those winged children shouldn't be dying so young, and the infant mortality rate is ridiculously high. Something is wrong."

Lily had been searching for the answer, "Anda."

Lily was acting very strangely that day. Anda tried to hold her in her arms, but she could feel Lily trembling and crying constantly, her body burning hot like a red-hot coal.

"Something's not right—this is wrong, it must be wrong!"

"What have I done—"

"Anda—I really don't understand—"

"She was drugged and then locked up with Gern. The Archbishop wouldn't let a fledgling's bloodline go unpunished; they used the most disgusting methods," Anda said slowly.

From that day on, Lily seemed like a different person. She rarely smiled, and only when he deliberately tried to amuse her would the fledgling laugh and rush into his arms, calling out "Anda" over and over again.

Most of the time, she was negative: "Anda, this place is disgusting."

"Anda—I want to go out, but I really can't, I can't—I'm not going out anymore, can you save me?"

"I've never blamed my brother. I've told him everything. I want to send him away; maybe he wants to go out too. If possible, maybe he can save us—"

"But he hasn't learned the language of Ys yet, he's too slow—can he really manage if he goes out alone?"

"Only this way can things end when he returns—"

As she reminisced, Anda's gaze lingered tenderly on the little girl on Ai's shoulder, then gradually hardened.

"Lily once had hope for her brother—but because of that, she endured six years of despair. He was a complete coward, an idiot, a weakling who refused to face anything—"

In the girl's eyes, which seemed forever soft and harmless, a rare glint of anger flashed, even a hint of resentment.

"However, I ran into him at church this morning, Gern."

Thinking of that guy who had been sitting on the bench all morning, greeting me as I passed by, and saying with a smile, "You must be Lily's old friend, right? Lily used to like you a lot."

He said, "Lily used to insult me—calling me stupid, saying I wasn't even the same species as you, I remember it very clearly—about her request from back then, but it was six years too late."

"Feel sorry."

Anda sighed softly, hiding her emotions deep in her eyes: "Lily also said—if one day her brother really dares to come back here, then he will bring with him the determination to face the end."

She smiled. "So, outsiders, you're ready to end all of this, aren't you?"

Ai nodded—

—Then I can rest assured. Even if I fail, this disgusting place will cease to exist.

Anda clasped her hands tightly and held them in front of her chest.

—Although he had made up his mind countless times, when the end was truly near, the lamb, silent all his life, couldn't help but feel timid, his small body shivering in the sunlight—

"Lily is the first person I remember, but she's all I can remember—no one else can pass on the treasure that belongs to me."

She smiled.

—I have no future.

Before that, I must fulfill Lily's wish and end this trial that has been repeating for hundreds of years.

"So—about my own wishes."

Behind her, a pair of shimmering gold and red wings stretched her long robe out of shape, revealing a grotesque corner—the edge was not the softness of bird wings, but an elegant, narrow, and sharp edge.

The girl with warm white hair whispered in a voice as soft as a lamb's: "Please remember me."