52: Chapter 52 The so-called torch is nothing more than choosing to watch over the abyss even after seeing it clearly.

Late night.

Torch Base.

The ancient tree's golden light pulsed, its rhythmic breathing echoing across the empty altar plaza like the heartbeat of a slumbering giant.

Su Chen leaned against the ancient tree, his mask resting on the stone steps, revealing a face of twenty-five.

A notebook lay open beside him, filled with dense writing.

Liu Yuyan crossed the stone corridor.

Her footsteps remained steady as she entered the altar plaza.

"Chairman. Professor Henry Bernstein has boarded his return flight and is expected to arrive in Zurich at 6:00 AM local time tomorrow. I confirmed before takeoff that the Sun Family has not arranged for anyone to follow him."

"Mhm." Su Chen lifted his head slightly.

Without the mask on his face, his gaze lacked that abyssal depth of the "Millennial Flame Keeper," revealing more of the demeanor expected of a young man, though it remained deep and unreadable.

"Did you say that sentence?"

"Transmitted word for word."

"His reaction?"

Liu Yuyan paused for a moment.

"He said 'I am willing.' He said it very quickly, almost blurted out."

Su Chen tapped his fingers lightly on the edge of the notebook.

"How fast?"

"Fast enough that I felt he hadn't used his brain."

The corners of Liu Yuyan's mouth twitched.

"So I said the second half of the sentence as well."

Su Chen looked at her.

Liu Yuyan lowered her head slightly.

"I felt he needed a wall."

"Why?"

"Because the 'I am willing' he blurted out was too light."

Liu Yuyan's voice dropped by half a degree.

"It wasn't that the weight wasn't enough, but that he himself wasn't sure how much weight that willingness could support. He needed to be pushed—not pushed toward the answer, but pushed toward doubt."

"Only if he has doubted, struggled, and finally chosen to stand upon that 'willingness' can it be real."

Su Chen listened, remaining silent for three seconds.

Then, his upper body leaned forward slightly.

"You are more suited for this task than I anticipated."

Seven words.

Liu Yuyan's spine tightened abruptly, and her breathing skipped a beat.

The person before her—the Millennial Flame Keeper, Chairman of Kindling—had told her, "You are more suited than I anticipated."

Not "well done."

Not "passing."

It was "more suited."

The weight of these words made her eyes burn instantly.

Liu Yuyan suppressed her emotions and brought the topic back on track.

"Chairman, is it possible for Professor Henry Bernstein... to become a member of Kindling?"

Su Chen did not answer immediately.

He stood up, walked to the front of the ancient tree, and placed his palm against the dark golden trunk, his fingertips tracing the rough texture of the bark.

He stood with his back to Liu Yuyan.

"Yuyan."

His voice was not loud, but it carried far across the empty altar plaza.

"What conditions do you think a member of Kindling needs to meet to join?"

Liu Yuyan was stunned.

She thought about it seriously for two seconds.

"Extraordinary talent? Combat power? Or... some kind of special bloodline inheritance?"

Su Chen shook his head.

He turned around and leaned against the ancient tree.

Golden light seeped from the trunk into his shoulders and back, casting a faint halo on the fabric of his trench coat.

"Throughout the history of the Kindling organization, there have been all kinds of people."

His speaking speed slowed down, not like a conversation, but more like leafing through a very thick book that only he could read.

"There were farmers carrying hoes—a thousand years ago, an old man who had farmed his whole life and never left his village until he was sixty. On the day the apocalyptic catastrophe descended, he picked up the shovel in the corner and stood before the rift."

"There were wealthy merchants who calculated with abacuses—who took all their assets to buy supplies, sent food to the Kindling front lines, and went hungry themselves until they couldn't walk."

"There were emperors sitting high on dragon thrones—who took off their robes, put on armor, and stood in front of ten thousand armies."

"And there were children who had nothing—barefoot, with a bronze piece hanging around their necks, running into the fire."

He looked at Liu Yuyan.

"Extraordinary talent is not a condition."

"Combat power is not a condition."

"Bloodline inheritance is not a condition."

His hand left the trunk of the ancient tree, the residual warmth of the golden light still on his fingertips.

"Soul and will—that is the key to the eternal burning of the Kindling inheritance."

"It is whether a person, after seeing the abyss clearly, is still willing to stand before it."

"It is whether they know they will die, yet still choose to leave their back to the people behind them."

Su Chen's voice settled over the altar plaza.

"This is why Kindling does not belong to any dynasty, any nation, or any sect—"

"Because Kindling does not choose people."

"Kindling only chooses souls."

As the words fell.

The ancient tree moved.

Those golden new leaves, formed by the will of predecessors, lit up slowly, emitting an active resonance.

Golden light seeped from the leaves, flowed along the branches to the roots, and then spread from the cracks in the stone tiles.

The oath on the broken columns lit up as well.

"Civilization shall not be extinguished, Kindling shall burn forever."

Those eight words floated in the golden light, as if countless silent whispers were coming from the depths of a thousand years.

Liu Yuyan watched this scene, a series of faces flashing through her mind.

Elena, in the inheritance, holding an iron rod to block the way in front of the elderly and children.

Wang Hao, the taxi driver, using the front of his car to smash through a steel beam wall.

Lin Xiaoman, the coder, running desperately behind the keyboard, just to be qualified to stand on that line.

She withdrew her gaze from the golden leaves of the ancient tree and finally landed it on Su Chen.

Golden light struck his profile.

A young silhouette, but what lay beneath those eyes was still a bottomless deep well.

Soul and will.

She thought she had already understood what the Chairman was doing: weaving an organization, recruiting members, cultivating combat power.

A complete chess game, in which she played the knight and the treasurer.

But tonight she finally understood that what she had understood was only the placement of pieces on the chessboard.

What the Chairman was truly doing was defining the value of the "chess piece."

Not ranking by power, not ranking by background.

Wang Hao is a driver, Lin Xiaoman is a homebody, Henry is a Nobel laureate—in front of Kindling, their labels were all torn off.

Kindling only looks at one thing.

Whether your soul is bright enough.

Liu Yuyan's fists clenched.

She had thought she was close enough to the Chairman, but now she realized that the distance between them was not a gap in ability, but a chasm in vision.

Greatness.

These two words floated up from the bottom of her heart, heavy enough to bend her usually straight spine.

But it only bent for a second.

The next second, her back straightened again, straighter than before.

Not enough?

Then chase.

Chase until it is enough.

...

Meanwhile.

Thirty thousand feet in the air.

Henry Bernstein leaned back in his business class seat.

Outside the window was the pitch-black night sky and the lights of the city in the distance.

The bronze piece lay quietly in his palm.

His thumb rubbed the engraved characters "Kindling" in circles.

In his mind, Liu Yuyan's words played over and over again.

"To trade ten, or even twenty years of your life for a medicine that can cure any disease—would you be willing?"

He said he was willing.

At twenty-eight in a refugee camp in Africa, he knelt in a pool of blood, facing the swaying surgical lamp on the tent ceiling, and said the exact same words.

He was twenty-eight that year.

This year, he is sixty-two.

Thirty-four years have passed.

Had he forgotten?

No.

But he knew clearly that what he had traded his life for would be used by others to make money, turned into weapons, and ruined by others.

What Liu Yuyan asked was not whether he could afford the price.

She asked—after you have paid the price, can you bear for your price to be ruined?

Henry closed his eyes.

He tightened his grip on the bronze piece, the metal warmed by his hand.

The last sentence Liu Yuyan said popped up again.

"Go to the battlefield and be a field doctor. Everything has its own destiny."

Battlefield.

Which battlefield?

There are too many battlefields globally.

The Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe... places with constant gunfire, everywhere there are wounded people in need of doctors.

If he really went, what could he find?

But he was unwilling.

If he didn't go, he would never know what the "Kindling" on that bronze piece was.

Never know where the power to heal Liu Hongde came from.

Forever trapped on the dividing line between the "known" and the "unknown," until death.

He flipped the bronze piece over. The back had no characters.

The bare bronze surface reflected his own reflection, blurry.

Perhaps the answer is not on the bronze piece. It is on the road.