20: Chapter 20 The Millennium of World Destruction is Coming

The area downstairs from Wang Hao's home was packed with vehicles.

Over a dozen olive-drab off-road vehicles and black police cars were lined up along the wall of the old residential building. The police lights on the roofs were all off, but that row of vehicles itself served as the greatest warning.

Armed personnel had set up three layers of cordon tape at the building entrance, with uniformed and plainclothes officers in equal numbers.

Residents were kept fifty meters away, craning their necks and jostling to peek inside.

"What happened this time?"

"Isn't that old Wang's place on the fifth floor?"

"Old Wang just drives for Didi, what kind of trouble could he get into?"

The fifth floor.

The sixty-square-meter living room was packed with over a dozen people, making it difficult to even turn around.

Three technicians held modified instruments against the walls to scan them, while two others crouched beside a wooden crate, using tweezers to sift through the remaining old items.

The bronze piece and the scroll had already been packed into a special shielded case, escorted by four armed personnel, and had left five minutes ago, bound for the Jingzhou Military Region.

Zhao Guoliang sat on the left side of the sofa.

After arriving at the scene, the fifty-six-year-old department director first glanced at the room full of instruments, then at the ride-hailing driver on the floor whose chest still retained a faint golden glow, and finally at Section Chief Han Zheng.

He was all too familiar with Section Chief Han Zheng's expression—ever since that incident in the Northwest eleven years ago, Section Chief Han Zheng's face had looked exactly like this.

After that incident, Section Chief Han Zheng had lost a full eight jin.

Section Chief Han Zheng sat on the right. A voice recorder and a detector rested on the coffee table, the instrument readings still flickering faintly.

He wanted to smoke and had pulled out his cigarette case halfway when his peripheral vision caught the corner—Chen Xiaohui was huddled by the bedroom door, holding Huzi.

A pregnant woman, a child.

He tucked the cigarettes back.

Wang Hao sat on a folding chair opposite, his hands resting on his knees. The back of his head was still throbbing, as if someone had poured too much into it; his skull couldn't contain it, and it felt as though the seams were about to burst.

Huzi wasn't afraid at all. He was sitting on his mother's lap, his eyes bright as lightbulbs, staring at his dad.

In his six-year-old brain, only one thought was spinning—Dad was glowing just now. Dad is a superhero.

"Wang Hao."

Section Chief Han Zheng spoke. There was no preamble.

"I know you are hiding something."

He stared into Wang Hao's eyes; his speech was half a beat slower than in the interrogation room, but the sense of oppression was heavier.

"But you are the only person present who has truly faced that thing head-on. Not watching from thirty meters away, but standing right in front of it."

He paused for a moment.

"We currently know nothing about all of this. When the golden light poured into your body just now, tell me everything you saw and heard."

Wang Hao kept his head down. His fingers rubbed the worn denim on his knees.

There was a silence of over ten seconds.

He wasn't struggling with whether to speak or not.

The images, sounds, and fragmented information that had poured in with the golden light were clogging his mind, about to overflow; he couldn't digest them himself without letting them out.

What he was struggling with was something else.

The young man who had fallen from the ceiling.

He wouldn't say it. He wouldn't say it even if it killed him.

But the matter of the bronze piece, the scroll, and what he saw in the golden light—these weren't his alone; they had been passed down by his ancestors.

"That was not a monster."

Wang Hao looked up, his voice hoarse but steady.

"It is an Exotic Beast."

The air in the living room seemed to freeze.

Section Chief Han Zheng's back tensed slightly. Zhao Guoliang's fingers dug into the armrests.

"Exotic Beast?"

Zhao Guoliang's brows knit into a tight knot.

"How do you know this term?"

Wang Hao frowned, as if trying to organize a drawer stuffed with scraps of paper.

"When the golden light entered my brain just now, there were some things. Not words, more like images, like a dream, but much clearer than a dream."

He paused and clenched his fists.

"That thing is called an Exotic Beast. There are many types, and the one last night was only the lowest level."

"They invade on a large scale once every millennium."

Zhao Guoliang's first reaction was to stand up.

"Impossible."

He took two steps and then sat back down, fingers supporting his knees, his voice low but firm.

"Five thousand years of civilization, hundreds of millions of words in the Twenty-Four Histories, and not a single stroke has recorded such things. If they came once every millennium, humanity would have gone extinct long ago."

"Director Zhao."

Section Chief Han Zheng interrupted him. His voice wasn't loud, but it suppressed all the noise in the room.

"I saw it with my own eyes. The instruments recorded the entire process. It was not a hallucination, not gas poisoning, and not mass stress reaction."

Zhao Guoliang's lips moved, but he made no sound.

Section Chief Han Zheng turned to Wang Hao.

"Continue."

Wang Hao's voice steadied, as if the fragments in his head were arranging themselves automatically.

"There is an organization that has been fighting these things. From the earliest times to the present, once every millennium, it has never stopped."

His gaze fell on the glass of cold water on the coffee table that no one had touched.

"It is called Kindling."

Section Chief Han Zheng had seen these two words on the bronze piece.

But hearing them from a living person carried a completely different weight.

"You can't find it in the Twenty-Four Histories."

Wang Hao looked up.

"Because after every catastrophe ends, the people of Kindling wipe away all traces. The base is sealed, members go into seclusion, leaving nothing behind."

He paused, his voice dropping half a degree.

"When civilization prospers, Kindling hides. When the apocalypse arrives, Kindling burns."

The eight words landed in the living room.

Zhao Guoliang sat on the sofa without moving. His lips parted and then closed.

Thirty years as a department director, he had seen all kinds of storms.

But at this moment, a part of his brain was refusing to function.

"Those individuals who possess power beyond that of humans—"

Section Chief Han Zheng's voice returned to its cold, hard tone, but underneath it lay something different.

"Are they members of Kindling?"

Wang Hao nodded.

"Yes. But not entirely."

"There are also ordinary people among the members of Kindling. If they don't have power, they use their lives to block it."

Section Chief Han Zheng fell silent.

He remembered the farmer in the short brown tunic amidst the golden light.

Barefoot, throwing his iron hoe to the ground, pulling an iron rod from under the stove and charging into the black rift.

No armor, no runes, no holy light.

Just like this ride-hailing driver sitting in front of him.

"What is the bronze piece?"

Section Chief Han Zheng asked.

"A token of the members. It is also the only thing that can be left behind."

Wang Hao's voice dropped a degree.

"It signifies identity, and also signifies—passing it on. It cannot be broken."

Section Chief Han Zheng's jaw tightened.

"Is there anything else?"

Wang Hao looked up at Section Chief Han Zheng.

The ride-hailing driver's gaze changed at that moment.

It didn't become sharp; it became heavy.

Like someone who had just received something, didn't know how to hold it yet, but had already decided to carry it.

"The Millennium Apocalypse is coming."

The living room was quiet for six seconds.

Zhao Guoliang's expression changed three times during those six seconds.

The final expression settled into one Section Chief Han Zheng had never seen on his face before.

It was the sense of weightlessness felt by someone who had been a decision-maker for thirty years, suddenly discovering that the scope of his decisions had been infinitely expanded.

Section Chief Han Zheng stood up.

He didn't speak immediately.

He walked to the window, turned his back to everyone, took out an encrypted mobile phone, and dialed a number.

The call lasted only a dozen seconds.

The person on the other end said only two words.

Section Chief Han Zheng put the phone back in his pocket and turned around.

"Wang Hao."

His voice returned to a professional rhythm, but when he spoke the next sentence, the underlying tone of his voice was different.

"I now represent The Seventh Division of the country and formally invite you to assist in the investigation as a special consultant. The country will provide full protection for your family."

Wang Hao did not answer immediately.

He turned his head to look at Huzi.

Huzi was riding on Chen Xiaohui's lap, his little hands gesturing, muttering, "Dad glowed, Dad glowed."

He also looked at Chen Xiaohui.

His wife's eyes were red, her lips pursed tightly, her hand protecting her belly, her eyes full of worry.

But she did not shake her head.

Chen Xiaohui never stopped him from making decisions.

From the time he said he wanted to come to Jingzhou to drive for Didi, she had never stopped him.

Wang Hao turned back.

"I'm in."

— —

Western suburbs. Courtyard house.

Su Chen sat on the stone steps of the Torch Base, a notebook spread across his knees, holding half a pencil in his hand.

The ancient tree breathed behind him, golden light flowing from its branches to his feet.

The system panel hung quietly in the corner of his vision, the data refreshing every few seconds.

"Authenticity + 22... + 18... + 31..."

"Current Authenticity: 181"

"Current Points: 1512"

The numbers were still jumping.

Su Chen stared at the line of rising Authenticity, the corners of his mouth curving slightly.

Wang Hao had woken up.

And he was telling others the information he had "seen" in the golden light.

That information was the "Kindling Descendant" that Su Chen had spent 50 points to manifest into the bronze piece and the scroll,

a carefully arranged sequence of images, sounds, and fragmented memories.

Not too much, not too little.

Just enough to make an ordinary person believe that his ancestors were members of Kindling.

Just enough to make him say the keywords "Exotic Beast," "Millennium Catastrophe," and "Kindling" when questioned.

Just enough to make a group of official personnel holding detectors and research reports match these keywords with the data in their hands.

Su Chen wrote a line in his notebook:

"Act Four: Descendant. Effect exceeded expectations."

He leaned back against the stone steps, looking up at the pale golden sky.

A web novel writer who had flopped on three books, sitting under the ancient tree he had created, watching the history he wrote being studied as the truth by a national-level department.

The system panel jumped again.

"Authenticity + 15"

Someone else believed.

Su Chen closed the notebook, his expression shifting from subtle pride back to calm.

It wasn't enough.

One Wang Hao couldn't support the whole picture.

Section Chief Han Zheng would send historians to check how many times the word "Kindling" had appeared in human history.

The result of the search would be zero.

The bronze piece and the scroll could withstand carbon-14 dating, but a single piece of evidence is not enough.

He needed more ruins.

More "unearthed artifacts." More "archaeological discoveries."

Su Chen turned to the next page of the notebook.

"Act Five: Tracing the Source"

There was only one line under the title, not yet expanded:

"When archaeologists around the world start writing history for me—"

The pen tip stopped on the paper.

The virtual imaging of the ruins in the distance was silent under the sky; the dilapidated palaces, collapsed stone pillars, and toppled statues were all 50-point background textures.

But one day, they would become real.