55: Chapter 55 A flag held back the guns on both sides

The cargo door of the military transport plane opened, and a wave of heat carrying the smell of diesel and scorched earth rushed in.

The runway was temporary; the asphalt ended halfway through, and the second half was entirely compacted gravel and yellow soil.

On the distant ridgeline, two attack helicopters were patrolling.

The roar of their rotors was mostly drowned out by the diesel generators of an allied military base at the end of the runway.

Section Chief Han Zheng was the first to jump down the ramp.

Three Dongfeng Mengshi bulletproof off-road vehicles were parked by the runway, their bodies painted in standard UN white,

but each had a bright red flag hanging from its front and back.

As the wind blew, the flags snapped taut, fluttering loudly.

Wang Hao emerged from the cabin door, shielding his eyes from the glaring sunlight, and the first thing he saw was those two flags.

Under this sky scorched by artillery fire, they were strikingly, glaringly red.

He couldn't say why, but his throat suddenly felt a bit tight.

The convoy set off.

Professor Zhou, Zhao Xiaohe, and Chen Yiming squeezed into the back seat of the second vehicle.

None of the three spoke.

The low growl of the engine and the loud crashes as the chassis rolled over craters filled every silence.

The highway was shattered like a jigsaw puzzle.

Craters lined up one after another, the largest of which could fit half a car.

On the shoulder of the road lay an overturned pickup truck, burned down to its metal frame,

and in the driver's seat, a charred human silhouette remained, frozen in the posture of clutching the steering wheel.

Zhao Xiaohe turned her head away, not daring to look.

Twenty minutes later, the convoy entered the UN-designated buffer zone.

Refugee camps spread out on both sides of the road.

They weren't tents.

They were shacks cobbled together from blasted billboards, plastic sheeting, and scrap metal,

crookedly crammed together, looking like a gray scar when viewed from the car window.

The ground was a mixture of mud and crushed bricks, which turned into a thick, gray sludge after the rain, sinking to the ankles with every step.

The smell in the air was complex.

Rotting food, untreated waste, disinfectant, and burnt rubber.

Along with another sickly-sweet, nauseating odor wafting from deep within the shacks—the smell of heavily infected wounds.

Wang Hao had seen hard times before.

When he was a child, his family was poor, and they all squeezed into a twelve-square-meter apartment in a tube-shaped building. In winter, the windows were sealed with newspaper, and the coal-briquet stove would go out in the middle of the night.

But that kind of hardship was of an entirely different species compared to what lay before him.

A boy of seven or eight crouched by the roadside.

His left sleeve was empty, tied off in a knot at the elbow.

His right hand clutched half a biscuit he had scavenged from somewhere. He wasn't eating it; he just gripped it so tightly his knuckles were white.

He looked up at the convoy.

There was nothing in his eyes.

Not curiosity, not fear, not hatred.

It was the single breath left after all emotions had been completely exhausted.

Wang Hao's fingers dug into the window frame, chipping a piece of his fingernail.

He opened his mouth twice, but couldn't squeeze out a single word.

In the car behind, Chen Yiming kept his fists resting on his knees. They had been there the whole way, and his knuckles had gone numb from the pressure.

Zhao Xiaohe covered her mouth.

Professor Zhou took off his reading glasses and wiped them slowly, continuing for a long time.

The lenses were already clean to begin with.

---

Ahead.

A checkpoint with half its wall blown away stood in the middle of the road.

Seven or eight armed personnel stood on either side.

The group on the left wore camouflage, while the group on the right wore headscarves. Their gun barrels were pointed at each other, and the air was thick with the smell of gunpowder.

The convoy slowed down.

The driver of the first vehicle had sweaty palms, and his fingers trembled on the steering wheel.

He glanced sideways at Section Chief Han Zheng.

Section Chief Han Zheng sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead.

"Keep a steady speed. Don't stop."

The vehicle moved forward slowly.

On the left, a teenage soldier carrying an RPG was the first to spot the flag on the front of the car.

His shoulders tensed.

The RPG launcher tilted two degrees away, no longer aiming directly at the convoy, but not completely lowered either.

Behind him, a stubbly, middle-aged man smacked the back of his head and barked a low command in the local language.

The boy gritted his teeth and raised the muzzle of the RPG toward the sky.

The armed group on the opposite side saw it too.

Some held their guns steady, while others glanced back at their leader.

The leader stared at the flag for three seconds, pursed his lips, and gave a slight nod.

The gun barrels slowly turned away.

A path just wide enough for the vehicles squeezed open between the gun barrels of the two factions.

There was no firing, and no checking of identification.

In a place where even UN peacekeeping convoys were frequently shot at,

the three vehicles bearing that flag passed through in absolute silence.

In the back seat, Zhao Xiaohe's tears flowed silently down her cheeks.

She wasn't crying for herself.

She was crying for the gazes outside the car window.

The refugees stood in the shadows of their shacks, watching the convoy pass by.

There was something in their eyes that Zhao Xiaohe would never forget in her entire life—

Envy.

Naked, unconcealed envy that practically spilled from their eyes.

They weren't envious of the people inside the cars. They were envious of the flag on the vehicles.

---

The convoy stopped on the outskirts of the ruins.

This place had once been a monastery built in the eleventh century AD.

Only half a stone wall and a collapsed bell tower remained of the main structure. Layers of limestone on the walls had been blasted away by artillery fire, peeling back like the pages of an open book.

The entrance to the ruins lay eight meters below the foundation.

It was an underground corridor dug by monks of that era, its stone walls covered in Latin inscriptions and relief carvings of crosses.

Some of the inscriptions were charred black by fire—aligning perfectly with historical records stating that the "monastery was destroyed by fire."

At the end of the corridor was a domed chapel.

It wasn't large, measuring fifteen meters in both length and width, with the highest point under six meters.

Most of the mosaic on the dome had peeled away, and what remained flickered in the light of the flashlights.

The mosaic depicted a knight clad in silver-white holy armor, raising his sword to strike down at black monsters pouring from a rift in the sky.

Professor Zhou crouched before a fragment of a mural.

The fingertips of his white gloves traced slowly along the cracks in the paint layer.

"Egg tempera technique, typical of twelfth-century Europe. The paint recipe and the composition of the gesso primer are completely different from the ruins in Qin Province."

His hand stopped.

The beam of his flashlight locked onto the bottom right corner of the mural.

A totem on the knight's breastplate.

Flames cradling a star. A three-lobed flame tip with a hexagram embedded in the center.

Professor Zhou looked up at Section Chief Han Zheng, his voice tight.

"It's exactly the same as the totem on that broken pillar in Qin Province."

Spanning ten thousand miles, crossing a thousand years—the exact same totem.

Chen Yiming crouched nearby, his hand holding the camera trembling.

He took seven shots, and every single one was blurry, but he didn't care anymore.

Section Chief Han Zheng stared at the totem for five seconds.

Then he turned to look at Wang Hao.

The meaning in his gaze was clear—your turn.

---

Clutching the bronze piece, Wang Hao felt along the stone walls of the chapel inch by inch.

From north to south, from east to west.

One lap.

Two laps.

Three laps.

Six laps.

The bronze piece remained ice-cold. There was no golden light, no resonance, and no reaction whatsoever.

It was exactly the same as those ruins back home.

Dead silence.

Having finished the six laps, Wang Hao stopped in his tracks.

His arm fell to his side. The bronze piece was clasped in his palm, warmed by his body heat, but that was all.

Professor Zhou walked over to Wang Hao's side, drawing the flashlight beam back from the mural.

"The mural is real. The twelfth-century pigments, craftsmanship, and carbonization marks—these cannot be faked."

He lowered his voice.

"But the presence of the totem doesn't mean this place was a base of the Kindling."

He looked up at the damaged depictions of the knights on the dome.

"It's more like... someone back then witnessed a battle of the Kindling members and recorded what they saw. The mural was painted by an observer, not left behind by the Kindling itself."

Section Chief Han Zheng understood.

An observer, not the participant.

The bronze piece only recognized the Kindling's own ruins, its own formations, and its own seals.

An onlooker's painting, no matter how similar, was not a key.

"Withdraw."

Section Chief Han Zheng called off the search.

The group returned to the surface.

As the sky darkened, a flash of orange-red light flickered on the distant horizon, followed a second or two later by a dull rumble.

Zhao Xiaohe held a self-heating meal box. The rice was so hard it could chip a tooth, but she chewed it anyway.

Her gaze fell beyond the barbed wire fence surrounding the camp—there lay the lights of the refugee camp, a few specks of kerosene lamp light scattered in the darkness, like embers that had been stepped on but were sparking back to life.

She suddenly spoke.

"Section Chief Han, can we stay a few more days? As long as we are here, there won't be any clashes nearby. Those people could at least get a few nights of peaceful sleep."

Section Chief Han Zheng didn't answer immediately.

He looked at Zhao Xiaohe, then at Chen Yiming.

Chen Yiming's lips were pressed tight, his fists resting on his knees, and he remained silent.

Professor Zhou also put down the biscuit in his hand.

Section Chief Han Zheng exhaled.

"Our window is three days. A warship is providing support in nearby waters, and we must withdraw within seventy-two hours. If we overstay, the diplomatic chain reaction will affect the entire region."

He paused.

"It's not that we don't want to stay. It's that staying will only harm more people."

Zhao Xiaohe's tears began to fall.

Chen Yiming stood up abruptly, then sat back down, his fist slamming onto his knee with a dull thud.

Professor Zhou was silent for a long time.

"By coming here, we have already bought them three nights free of artillery fire. Within these three days, some refugees will be able to evacuate the conflict zone."

He looked around at everyone.

"Finding clues to the Kindling's ruins is the greatest thing we can actually achieve."

---

Late at night.

The breathing of the others in the tent gradually grew steady and even, leaving only Wang Hao and Section Chief Han Zheng still awake and sitting.

The flame of the kerosene lamp flickered in the wind. Sporadic gunfire echoed in the distance, making it impossible to tell which side was shooting anymore.

"Brother Han."

"Yeah."

"I only truly understood the Paladin's words about 'humanity' today."

Section Chief Han Zheng turned to look at him.

Clutching the bronze piece, Wang Hao's gaze fell on the horizon outside the tent, which was lit red by artillery fire.

"The Kindling doesn't belong to any nation. Because once it does, some people will inevitably be excluded from the list of those 'to be protected.'"

He swallowed.

"Those refugees, their countries can't protect them. If the Kindling flew the flag of a specific nation, those people holding guns on the other side would treat the Kindling as an enemy."

Section Chief Han Zheng did not reply.

He patted Wang Hao's shoulder, hard.

The distant horizon flashed once more.

An orange-red light, followed three seconds later by a dull rumble.

The tent shook slightly, and the flame of the kerosene lamp tilted for a moment before straightening up again.

Wang Hao pressed the bronze piece to his chest, the metal feeling ice-cold.