58: Chapter 58 Everyone's Been Fooled! The Mastermind: The Pawns Are in Position, Ready to Unleash the Big Move!

The military off-road vehicle bumped along the gravel road; every time it rolled over a crater, the people in the cabin swayed with it.

No one spoke.

Wang Hao leaned against the back seat, his right hand buried in his windbreaker pocket, clutching the cold bronze piece.

Three days.

He had turned the monastery ruins upside down.

Every loose brick, every suspicious crack,

He had crouched down, like a clumsy thief with a master key but unable to find the keyhole, pressing the bronze piece against it.

Nothing to show for it.

Professor Zhou had his reading glasses perched on his forehead, a stack of freshly printed monk diaries spread out before him.

He and the two graduate students had barely closed their eyes, and there was only one conclusion—

The murals were real, and the totems were real.

But these were the records of bystanders, not the work of Kindling itself.

A replica; it couldn't open the lock.

Chen Yiming closed his notebook, his voice very soft, but like a sigh in the quiet cabin.

Zhao Xiaohe looked at the scorched earth and broken walls receding outside the window, her lips pressed into a pale line.

Section Chief Han Zheng sat in the passenger seat of the first vehicle, staring ahead.

Fourteen coordinates, thirteen explored, zero discoveries.

Only one left.

As the convoy reached the edge of the buffer zone, it slowed down.

Dense figures appeared on the roadside. Refugees, completely disorganized, scattered on the outskirts of the camp.

Some were rummaging through trash heaps. Some were holding bundles of indistinguishable color, motionless.

Zhao Xiaohe spoke up suddenly, her voice very small.

"Once we leave, will it... start fighting again here?"

No one answered.

Professor Zhou sighed.

"Let's distribute the food we brought."

Section Chief Han Zheng picked up the walkie-talkie and said only three words.

"Stop. Distribute supplies."

The trunk opened.

Compressed biscuits, mineral water, military blankets.

Zhao Xiaohe carried a large bag of biscuits toward the crowd.

A boy stood at the very front, looking about five or six years old, holding a younger girl with his left hand.

He didn't speak, just extended his right hand.

Zhao Xiaohe crouched down and shoved the whole bag of biscuits to him.

The boy took it and looked at her.

In those eyes, there was longing, envy, and something deeper than fear—numbness.

Wang Hao also got out of the car.

He walked up to the boy and crouched down, asking the translator for help.

"Why don't you leave? It's too dangerous here."

The boy lowered his head and looked behind him.

It was a row of rickety shacks, and from the innermost one came an extremely weak moan.

"Dad is still inside. He was hit by a shell."

The boy's voice was thin, without a cry.

"This is our home."

Wang Hao's fist clenched in his pocket, the edge of the bronze piece digging into his palm, painful.

He thought of Huzi.

Fighting over toys in kindergarten, insisting on hearing three stories at night before going to sleep.

But this child stood here, his eyes holding things a five or six-year-old shouldn't have.

"Let's go."

Section Chief Han Zheng's hand patted his shoulder.

Wang Hao stood up, took one last look at the boy, and turned toward the off-road vehicle.

The second he pulled the car door open—

The bronze piece in his pocket suddenly burned hot.

Not the gradual heat of body temperature conduction.

It was a sudden change from ice-cold to searing, like someone had pressed an invisible switch on the bronze surface.

Wang Hao's body froze.

One foot was already lifted into the cabin, the other still planted on the gravel ground.

He jerked his hand out of his pocket.

The bronze piece lay in his palm.

Face up, the two characters "Kindling" were outlined by a faint but clear golden light.

The light wasn't strong; in the sunlight, it was almost covered up.

But Wang Hao's palm could feel a distinct, rhythmic pulse.

Thump.

Thump.

Like an awakening heart.

"Section Chief Han!"

Wang Hao's voice changed, hoarse and urgent.

In the first car, Section Chief Han Zheng had just fastened his seatbelt; upon hearing this shout, he sprang out like a spring.

He rushed to Wang Hao in three steps, his gaze falling on the bronze piece.

He saw it.

Although the golden light was faint, from his angle, he could just capture the delicate halo covering the engraved characters.

"Resonance!"

Section Chief Han Zheng's first reaction was to look back at the monastery ruins three kilometers away.

Impossible, at this distance, the bronze piece had never reacted before.

His second reaction was to look down at the gravel road under his feet, the soil, the craters; there was no structure of any ancient ruins.

"Not right... it's not ruins."

He crouched down, hand pressing on the car door, his brain working at high speed.

"We were in the ruins for three days, and it didn't react at all. Now... on the roadside, it lights up."

And then—

The light went out.

The bronze piece returned from searing to room temperature, the gold disappeared, and the characters returned to a dull bronze-green.

The resonance came quickly and left even faster.

No more than fifteen seconds in total.

Section Chief Han Zheng and Wang Hao both looked at the now-silent bronze piece in his palm.

"It reacted."

Wang Hao's voice was low, like talking to himself.

"Yes, it reacted."

Section Chief Han Zheng stood up, his brows furrowed into a tight knot.

"But why here? There was nothing in the ruins, but in the middle of a group of refugees, it lights up?"

Professor Zhou stood nearby, holding the car door frame, and after hearing Section Chief Han Zheng's account, he remained silent for a long time.

"Perhaps... we have been making a mistake."

His voice was slow.

"We assumed that a Kindling relic must be some kind of physical structure—a stone chamber, an altar, a seal."

"There are no ruins here."

Chen Yiming interrupted.

"If the ruins aren't echoing with the bronze piece, then it's... this land itself? Or..."

"Or it's a person."

Zhao Xiaohe said softly.

Everyone's gaze instantly converged on her face.

Zhao Xiaohe was a little intimidated by the stares, but she bit her lip and continued.

"Back in Qin Province, when Brother Wang Hao approached the stone wall that sealed the anomaly, the bronze piece reacted the strongest. If... if the bronze piece senses not just the buildings left by Kindling, but also... the places Kindling needs to go to?"

Section Chief Han Zheng's brows relaxed a degree, then furrowed back.

"Even so, the fifteen-second reaction is too short to pinpoint a specific direction."

He looked up at the sky.

The sunset was about to sink below the ridgeline, and the horizon was stained with a heavy, dark red.

The ceasefire agreement was only valid while their vehicle carried that flag.

After dark, everything would return to normal.

Section Chief Han Zheng made a decision.

"Withdraw first. Record the latitude and longitude coordinates, the time of the bronze piece's reaction, and the orientation. After returning to the safe zone, I will immediately report to my superiors."

The convoy started again.

Wang Hao sat in the back, holding the bronze piece with both hands, his gaze not leaving it for a second.

It had been hot just now.

It had been hot on this bleeding land.

Professor Zhou was flipping through documents nearby and suddenly whispered a sentence.

"Kindling does not belong to any dynasty, any country... Waking once every thousand years, coming to save the world in times of calamity..."

His hand stopped on the blank page of the notebook, not saying anything further.

Outside the car window, that boy was still standing on the side of the road.

Clutching the bag of compressed biscuits, he didn't leave.

---

The convoy's taillights disappeared at the end of the gravel road.

The kicked-up dust hung in the evening wind, not dispersing for a long time.

Three hundred meters away, at the wreckage of a building with half a wall blown away.

Beneath the collapsed floor of the second floor, the shadows were deep.

Su Chen leaned against the dark side of the broken wall, one foot stepping on broken bricks, holding that old notebook in his hand.

He watched the direction the convoy had left in, then glanced at the system panel on his wrist that only he could see.

The bronze piece's energy fluctuation curve had just returned to zero.

Fifteen seconds.

The fifteen seconds he had given them.

Not too much, not too little.

Enough to make the bronze piece light up once, enough for Wang Hao to shout out, enough for Section Chief Han Zheng to see the golden light, enough for everyone to remember this coordinate.

But not enough for them to pinpoint the direction, not enough for them to make the decision to stay.

So they would withdraw.

Withdraw to the safe zone, report, apply for an extension, redeploy.

Time window—forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

Just right.

Perfectly in sync with the countdown to the D-rank descent.

Su Chen wrote a line in the notebook.

"bronze piece induction test—success. Section Chief Han Zheng's speculation: The bronze piece senses locations rather than ruins. Zhao Xiaohe's supplementary guess: The places Kindling needs to go."

"Perfect."

He turned to the next page.

"Act VI · Heavenly Judgment. Layout progress—"

"Section Chief Han Zheng and his team: Coordinates anchored."

"Henry Bernstein: In a tin shed in the refugee camp three kilometers away."

"Liu Yuyan: Standing by on the periphery."

"Lin Xiaoman: Inside the refugee camp, volunteer status."

All the pieces are in place.

Su Chen closed the notebook and tucked it into his jacket's inner pocket.

He looked down at the broken bricks and soil under his feet.

On this land, there were hundreds of thousands of refugees, two armed forces shooting at each other, a Nobel laureate kneeling in a pool of blood performing surgery, and a Chinese inspection delegation holding a flag to hold back the artillery fire.

And a D-rank invasion about to break through a spatial rift.

And he stood above everyone, invisible to all.

The corners of Su Chen's mouth curved a degree.

Very shallow.

Half a degree shallower than the "Perfect" in his notebook.

Then he turned and walked into the deeper shadows.