19: Chapter 19 The light of three hundred years ago has only arrived today.

2:00 PM.

Section Chief Han Zheng's black police car was parked in front of an old residential building in the Chengdong Industrial Zone.

It was six stories high with no elevator, and a third of the white tiles on the exterior wall had fallen off, revealing the grayish cement underneath.

Two bicycles with rusted chains and a box of flattened cardboard were piled at the stairwell entrance.

Wang Hao sat in the passenger seat, and Chen Xiaohui sat in the back, her hand constantly protecting her belly.

"Fifth floor, no elevator, take it slow."

Wang Hao looked back at his wife, got out of the car first, and walked around to the back door to help her out.

Section Chief Han Zheng turned off the engine and followed behind.

The stairwell was even narrower than the outside.

The wall plaster stopped peeling after the third floor; the rest hung there, looking like it could fall at any moment but stubbornly refused to.

On every stair corner, there was a pair of slippers or a mop; the atmosphere of daily life was so thick it drilled into one's nostrils.

Fifth floor.

Wang Hao took out his keys to open the door.

As soon as the door was pushed open, a lively little boy sprang up from the sofa.

"Dad! Mom!"

Six-year-old Huzi rushed over to hug Wang Hao's leg, then threw himself into Chen Xiaohui's arms, nudging his head against her waist; his movements were just like a little animal.

"Where did you go? Grandma called three times—"

Wang Hao scooped his son up and carried him on his shoulder.

"Dad took Mom to the hospital for a check-up; the little brother is very healthy."

"Is it a little brother? I want a little sister!"

"Alright, alright, little sister, little sister."

Section Chief Han Zheng stood at the entrance.

Sixty square meters.

Living room, bedroom, small kitchen.

The sofa cover was washed white but laid flat; on the coffee table, a glass vase held two plastic flowers, one red and one pink, with a thin layer of dust on the petals.

A crayon drawing was stuck on the fridge door—four people, drawn with a red crayon; the smallest one was inside Mom's belly, drawn as a circle with a smiley face inside.

Three pairs of slippers were beside the shoe rack: large, medium, and small.

Section Chief Han Zheng withdrew his gaze.

Ordinary, as ordinary as could be.

The most valuable thing in this home was probably that 32-inch wall-mounted TV.

Maybe Wang Hao really was just a driver picking up orders on the way.

Maybe that passenger really was just a young person taking photos.

Maybe—

The device at his waist beeped.

Short, sharp, every two seconds.

Section Chief Han Zheng's spine stiffened in 0.3 seconds.

His right hand pressed onto the device at his waist, his thumb finding the position of the reading dial.

The needle was jumping.

It was not a weak fluctuation, but a stable, continuous pulse with a clear direction.

The direction—the corner of the living room.

A dilapidated large wooden box.

The mahogany-colored lacquer had peeled off for the most part, revealing the dull texture underneath.

An old bronze lock hung on the front, the lock core worn shiny.

Section Chief Han Zheng turned to look at Wang Hao.

"What is this?"

Wang Hao was just taking Huzi down from his shoulder; he looked over following Section Chief Han Zheng's gaze and paused for a moment.

"Oh, this? Old items passed down from ancestors, bowls, books, copper coins, and whatnot. We brought them along when we moved; there's nothing valuable in there."

Section Chief Han Zheng looked down at the instrument.

The needle was still shaking, and the amplitude was increasing.

"Can you open it?"

Chen Xiaohui rummaged for two minutes and found a brass key from a shoe box on top of the bedroom cabinet.

The sound of the bronze lock opening was exceptionally crisp in the living room.

The lid of the wooden box was lifted.

The smell of old objects surged out—camphor, old paper, and aged wood mixed together.

A few chipped coarse ceramic bowls, a stack of thread-bound books with worm-eaten edges, scattered copper coins, and a bronze ruyi with a broken tassel.

Section Chief Han Zheng put on gloves and looked through them piece by piece.

The instrument did not react to any of the old items.

Bowl, no reaction.

Book, no reaction.

Copper coin, no reaction.

His fingertip touched the bottom of the box.

There was a small wooden box the size of a palm.

It had a mortise and tenon structure with no nails, and the seams were polished shiny.

The instrument went crazy.

The needle jumped directly to full scale.

The pulse alert turned into a continuous whistling sound, piercing enough that Huzi covered his ears.

Section Chief Han Zheng's hand stopped for half a second.

He opened the wooden box.

There were two things.

A bronze piece.

It was the size of a thumb's nail, the edges were severely worn, and the surface glowed with dark copper green.

Two characters were carved on the front—Kindling.

A pattern was carved on the back: fire supporting stars, a palm holding fire, the tip of the flame split into three petals, with a six-pointed star embedded in the middle.

A scroll of yellowed silk.

The wooden shafts at both ends were worn into a patina, and it was tied in the middle with a faded red string.

The two items lit up the moment the wooden box was opened.

Golden light.

It was not reflection, not fluorescence.

It was a scorching, pure gold bursting from within.

The light rushed out of the wooden box and hit Section Chief Han Zheng's face.

His pupils were filled with gold.

Huzi jumped up from the sofa: "Light! Mom! It's glowing!"

Wang Hao froze in place.

He exchanged a look with Chen Xiaohui, whose face was full of shock.

These things had been passed down from his ancestors to him; he had touched them from childhood, and he had even played with that bronze piece as a child.

It had never glowed.

Never.

The golden light left the wooden box, rose to the very center of the ceiling—then spread out.

It was like a screen woven from light.

In this sixty-square-meter living room, a memory that did not belong to this era unfolded.

The first scene.

Dusk.

A man wearing short brown clothes squatted on a field ridge, clutching an iron hoe in his hand.

His face was that of a farmer—dark, thin, with wrinkles deep enough to trap grains.

Behind him were a few acres of thin fields, the fence was crooked, and chickens were scratching for food in the yard.

He was as ordinary a person as could be.

Then the sky split.

Black cracks tore open from the clouds, and things were falling out of the cracks.

They were not rain, but living, twisted things with low-frequency hissing.

The man stood up.

He threw the iron hoe on the ground and pulled an iron rod wrapped in three layers of cloth from under the stove.

He unwrapped the cloth, and a bronze piece was embedded at the end of the iron rod.

It was the size of a thumb's nail.

Two characters were carved on the surface—Kindling.

It was exactly the same as the one in the wooden box.

The man gripped the iron rod and rushed out.

He had no armor, no runes, and no holy light on his body.

Barefoot on the mud, with his pant legs rolled up to his knees, his running posture was no different from working in the fields.

But the bronze piece on the iron rod lit up.

Golden light exploded from that small piece of bronze, pouring into the man's arm along the iron rod.

His body was glowing.

It was not the heroism of standing in the center of the light, but the exhaustion of an oil lamp turned to the maximum.

He rushed under the black crack.

The scene switched.

The same bronze piece.

Different hands were holding it.

A woman's hands, with thick knuckles and calluses from years of weaving.

She sewed the bronze piece into the lining of a cotton jacket, standing on the city wall with the market behind her burned into ruins.

An old man's hands, with veins bulging and age spots on the skin.

He pressed the bronze piece under his pillow, then walked out the door with a cane, walking into the torrential rain.

There were shadows moving in the heavy rain.

A child's hands.

A seven or eight-year-old boy, barefoot, wearing a necklace made of the bronze piece, running in the opposite direction in the burning village.

He was not fleeing.

Everyone else was running out, only he was rushing in.

Generation after generation.

The bronze piece passed from this hand to that hand, sliding from this era into the next.

Not a single person wore armor.

Not a single person held a staff.

They were all ordinary people.

Farmers, weavers, blacksmiths, donkey cart drivers.

They didn't know what would happen when they took the bronze piece, but they knew what they had to do.

In every generation, some did not return.

The bronze piece was picked up by descendants from the ruins, wiped clean, wrapped up, and put into the wooden box.

Waiting for the next time.

The scene switched again.

The man in brown clothes returned.

Not him personally.

It was a long shot of the last scene.

On the ridge at dusk, a figure fell into the mud.

The iron hoe was still stuck in the soil nearby, and no one went to pull it out.

The chickens in the yard were still scratching for food.

The fence was still crooked.

The bronze piece fell by his hand, stained with mud and blood.

A woman ran out of the house and threw herself on him.

There was no wailing, only shoulders heaving.

In the distance, the crack disappeared, and the sky closed.

As if nothing had happened.

The light curtain paused here for two seconds.

Wang Hao stood in his own living room.

Tears fell, he didn't know when.

He couldn't speak.

He wasn't shocked by the heroism of a hero.

But he was pierced by the man in short brown clothes—the ordinary person who, like him, farmed, worked, and lived.

The man's face had no detailed features, but Wang Hao saw his hands.

Rough, calloused hands.

Just like his own hands that had been steering for eight years.

Huzi didn't cry or fuss, leaning against his mother's leg, looking up with his little face, his eyes reflecting the golden light filling the room.

Chen Xiaohui held her son in one hand and protected her belly with the other.

She couldn't understand every detail in those pictures.

But she understood the back of the woman throwing herself on the man.

The images in the light curtain dissipated.

Only one image remained at the end.

Not a giant tree.

Not a battlefield.

It was that bronze piece.

It was lying quietly in a wooden box.

The wooden box was placed at the very bottom of a large wooden box, pressed by coarse ceramic bowls and old books.

The layout was exactly the same as the wooden box in front of him.

Then the sound came.

Not a chorus of thousands.

It was one person's voice, a man's voice.

Hoarse, low, with an accent.

It was like the last sentence said to the wooden box before leaving.

"Pass it on."

It paused for a beat.

Another voice followed.

A woman's, older, lighter, as thin as a thread.

"Pass it on."

Then the third, fourth, fifth.

Different voices, different ages, different eras.

The same sentence.

"Pass it on."

"Pass it on."

"Pass it on."

One voice layered over another, from far to near, from ancient to present.

In the end, all voices merged into one, filling this sixty-square-meter living room.

The golden light suddenly retracted.

It all poured into Wang Hao's body.

He didn't have time to make a sound.

His body leaned back, his knees softened, and he fell straight backward.

Section Chief Han Zheng reacted extremely quickly, lunging forward, his right hand supporting the back of his head.

Wang Hao's eyes were closed.

His expression was not pain, not fear.

It was like he saw something in a very, very far place.

"Wang Hao!"

Chen Xiaohui rushed over.

Huzi was scared to tears, hugging his father's arm and not letting go.

Section Chief Han Zheng checked the carotid artery with two fingers.

Pulse steady, breathing even.

It was not a faint, but as if he were asleep.

But his chest was glowing.

A very faint golden light was leaking out from under his clothes, like a lamp lit in his heart.

Section Chief Han Zheng half-squatted on the ground, supporting the back of a ride-hailing driver's head.

The voice recorder was spinning, and the instrument's readings were still jumping out.

The sunlight outside the window shone in, falling on the spread-out scroll and the old items on the floor.

He looked down at the ball of golden light on Wang Hao's chest.

Then he looked up at the bronze piece in the wooden box.

It matched the energy frequency band in the test report.

It matched the waveform remaining in the factory ruins last night.

It matched that transcendent individual.

Section Chief Han Zheng's lips moved.

Forty-two years.

Seventy-three files.

The words "Believe only in evidence" were engraved in his bones.

But at this moment, the evidence was in his hands.

It was in his arms.

It was in the golden light he witnessed with his own eyes, recorded completely by the instrument, and every second of which was crushing his forty-two years of cognition.

He laid Wang Hao flat on the floor and stood up.

He synchronized the backup of the voice recorder and instrument data to the encrypted USB drive, his movements fast and steady.

The bronze piece in the wooden box had returned to its dull copper-green color.

Like an ordinary old object.

But Section Chief Han Zheng knew that three minutes ago, it almost burned him to ash.

He dialed the encrypted frequency phone.

The other side picked up.

For the first two seconds, Section Chief Han Zheng did not speak.

"Director Zhao."

His voice was rough, like it had been ground.

"Send another team. Not an investigation team—a historian."

"I need someone to tell me how many times the words 'Kindling' have appeared in human history."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

Then a voice asked, "Section Chief Han, what exactly did you see?"

Section Chief Han Zheng looked down.

Wang Hao sleeping on the floor.

Chen Xiaohui trembling while holding her son.

The faint, almost invisible warm afterglow still remaining on the ceiling.

"I saw—"

He paused.

"A group of farmers."

There was no response on the other end of the phone.

Section Chief Han Zheng took the phone away from his ear and pressed it back before hanging up.

"They are blocking something for us. They have been blocking it for a long time."

The phone hung up.

Section Chief Han Zheng stood by the window.

Outside the window was the grayish skyline of the Chengdong Industrial Zone, a few pieces of undried clothes hanging on the clothesline, and in the distance, someone was calling their child home for dinner downstairs.

He looked down at the detector on his waist.

The reading had returned to zero.

The green indicator light was flashing quietly.

But his hands had not yet completely steadied.