By Zephyria 
Yeom Cheon-ho, who had barely managed to stay standing by his side, collapsed the moment he stepped down from the podium. Yeom Cheon-ryul only agreed to provide a doctor after Daemo pleaded with him to let Cheon-ho go to a hospital.
However, perhaps because the treatment came too late, Yeom Cheon-ho became unable to feel emotions properly after waking up from the fever. Aside from his acrophobia and his hatred for his father, all other emotions were faint. He simply lived his life treating people based on his previous memories. His desolate and somewhat empty heart was perfectly suited for sharpening his desire for revenge against his father.
Even after the fall, life in the Heavenly Truth Ming Cult was a continuous struggle to survive against his father. He narrowly escaped death several times and was forced to do things he loathed. If not for the help of Daemo and several others, his life would have ended long ago. Ironically, the fall that had pushed him to the brink of death became the very power that allowed him to live by gaining the support of the believers.
Yeom Cheon-ryul’s forced name manifestation experiments continued, but they ended in failure time and again. Whether the subjects were children or adults, the number of those who manifested was only one in a hundred. Since the vast majority suffered and died, disposing of the corpses and cleaning up the aftermath became a chore, and Yeom Cheon-ryul could not proceed further.
He presented a fake flower name bearer before the believers. This time, it was Daemo. Coerced by threats, Daemo had no choice but to have tattoos forcibly engraved on her body and stand before the followers. By putting forward a fake flower name, Yeom Cheon-ryul succeeded in appearing as the truly chosen one, following the first leader.
Daemo, who had to bear unwanted tattoos on her body, was filled with malice. For a while, Yeom Cheon-ryul even had to walk on eggshells around her. The person Daemo kept a close eye on, wanting to hinder Yeom Cheon-ryul in any way possible, was Yeom Cheon-ho. With her help, Yeom Cheon-ho was able to flee abroad.
Despite the hardships of living alone in a foreign country, Yeom Cheon-ho spent his spare time searching for the whereabouts of the three children who had survived with him. Choi Hwan and Moon Gyeon-woo were relatively easy to find. This was thanks to the fact that both had been recognized as a child actor and a prodigy, respectively, from a young age and were exposed in the media.
However, Lee Yeon-rok’s trail was difficult to find. If one had people and money, it would have been easy, but at the time, Yeom Cheon-ho had nothing.
Fortunately, he possessed a knack for growing money. In other words, he had the qualities of an entrepreneur. He invested the living expenses sent by Daemo and the money he saved from part-time jobs. Combined with his ability, the trends of the times, and sheer luck, he became a businessman at a young age and accumulated immense wealth.
Only then was he able to find where the three children, including Yeon-rok, had been staying. No wonder the trail was so hard to follow; Yeon-rok had been staying at an orphanage under the Heavenly Truth Ming Cult all along. That had been the best refuge Daemo could provide. Whether it was because it was hidden in plain sight or because Yeom Cheon-ryul had simply forgotten the children who were mere test subjects, the three children grew up well without any major incidents.
Moon Gyeon-woo left for abroad after finding a sponsor shortly after entering the orphanage, and Choi Hwan was taken by his biological parents, who smelled money as soon as he became a child model. Only Lee Yeon-rok remained alone, growing up there until he became an adult.
Perhaps that was why Yeom Cheon-ho was particularly concerned about Lee Yeon-rok. Was it because he had been living alone since leaving the orphanage? Or was it because he remembered the innocent and soft touch that had once woken him up? Suddenly, he wanted to see him in person. It happened to be time for his return home.
Having made thorough preparations, he returned to Korea. After aggressively buying up shares of the company managed by Yeom Cheon-ryul, he reappeared before his father as a major shareholder. Yeom Cheon-ryul, who had lived almost forgetting his vanished young son, looked at the suddenly appearing son as if he were a divine punishment fallen from the sky.
Having grown up and made a glamorous return to the cult, Yeom Cheon-ho showered money without restraint. He won over the executives, branch managers, and believers of the Heavenly Truth Ming Cult to his side. Yeom Cheon-ryul, the previous leader, was still obsessed with flower names and continued to perform bizarre and cruel rituals. People who were disgusted by this but unable to do anything about it shifted their loyalty to Yeom Cheon-ho.
Until then, Yeom Cheon-ryul held the upper hand. That was until a true flower name manifested in Yeom Cheon-ho.
As soon as his flower name began to manifest, Yeom Cheon-ho informed everyone in detail. Enduring the discomfort, he presented the areas that were painful to the touch to the believers while he was in the process of manifestation. Many people witnessed the flower name blurring the moment someone else’s touch reached it.
After that proof, the Heavenly Truth Ming Cult split completely. Anyone could see that Yeom Cheon-ho possessed leadership and charisma that surpassed Yeom Cheon-ryul, and now he possessed the condition of a flower name as well. Yeom Cheon-ho created a new sect called the Hwamyeong Cult. Many believers followed him.
Only after establishing a power truly equal to his father’s could Yeom Cheon-ho finally look into who his flower name bearers were. As time passed and the shape of the flower name gradually became perfect, he finally found people with a high matching rate, and Yeom Cheon-ho saw familiar names.
Lee Yeon-rok, Moon Gyeon-woo, Choi Hwan.
‘The flower name manifestation experiment had succeeded.’
The joy he should have felt was faint, almost imperceptible. Yeom Cheon-ho took preemptive action to ensure Yeom Cheon-ryul could not do anything.
He couldn’t hide the identities of his flower name bearers themselves. Instead, he planted people in the name matching center to prevent information leaks as much as possible. He then built a house like a fortress. He brought his most fatal weaknesses into that house and assigned bodyguards to them. This was because he knew all too well that Yeom Cheon-ryul would undoubtedly stretch his clutches toward his partners.
Upon closer inspection, each of the three had different risk factors. In Moon Gyeon-woo’s case, the problem was his lover. For Lee Yeon-rok, it was his workplace and ex-lover, and for Choi Hwan, it was his acquaintances and family.
While pondering how to deal with these risk factors, Yeom Cheon-ho also worried. How could he make his name partners accept his identity with as little repulsion as possible?
The Heavenly Truth Ming Cult was a pseudo-religion that had already caused social controversy. Currently, the Hwamyeong Cult had not caused enough trouble to make headlines in the social section, but since its roots were in the Heavenly Truth Ming Cult, there was a great deal of room for repulsion. In particular, one doctrine that he had no choice but to keep was the problem.
Rituals, and the sharing of sacrificial food.
Yeom Cheon-ryul had slaughtered live animals in front of the believers and placed them on the ritual table. This shocking and intense act, conversely, induced faith and solidarity among the believers. In the Heavenly Truth Ming Cult, such rituals occurred once a week. Therefore, the Hwamyeong Cult also had to adopt part of that custom.
It was easy to change the slaughtering of live animals to the butchering of already dead animals. Many believers felt repulsion at the act of killing something live before their eyes. However, it couldn’t be removed entirely. What the believers wanted was the sacrificial offering distributed directly by the High Lord, the leader. It could be called a form of sharing the sacrificial food. Given the nature of the current religion, it would not be an exaggeration to call it the central act of cohesion.
Thus, every Wednesday, Yeom Cheon-ho had to preach directly to the believers and then show the process of processing the dead offerings. That wasn’t all.
Depending on the situation, he sometimes had to do this at home. In such cases, he mainly used fresh fish. Tuna, yellowtail, or whatever was appropriate. Yeom Cheon-ho often thought that he was closer to a livestock and fisheries dealer than a cult leader. Additionally, he had to have video calls with believers who wept exaggeratedly to show their loyalty.
This series of religious rituals was essential for Yeom Cheon-ho as the leader, but it was highly likely to be received negatively by his flower name bearers. After careful consideration of how to solve this, Yeom Cheon-ho gave an order to his loyal aide, Kim Jeong-seong.
“Prepare a workshop on the second floor.”
“In this house, specifically?”
“We can’t hide it forever, can we?”
Managing both a company and a religion, Yeom Cheon-ho knew how to handle human psychology well.
One of those methods was to let a person ‘choose’ of their own volition. Yeom Cheon-ho piqued the curiosity and interest of the three, wanting them to dig for information about him by their own will, and to feel that they had chosen to become entangled in his affairs. On the other hand, he also wanted to test what kind of people each of the three were.