67: Chapter 67 Amidst the Ruins, the Hand of the Flame Reaches Out to Him

As night fell, Section Chief Han Zheng's convoy delivered the last batch of survivors to the temporary shelter.

Three rows of military green tents, two diesel generators, and one hundred and twenty blankets.

This was all the resources the Chinese inspection team could mobilize.

Wang Hao stood at the edge of the shelter, clutching the bronze piece.

The golden light had extinguished, and the bronze surface had returned to its dull, icy state, but he had never loosened his grip.

Section Chief Han Zheng walked over and offered him a cigarette, but Wang Hao shook his head.

The two stood side by side, watching the refugees wrapped in blankets, neither speaking.

In the distance, the sound of helicopter rotors drifted over in waves, like the slow breathing of some giant beast.

Section Chief Han Zheng spoke, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.

"I have to go back and write my report."

Wang Hao nodded.

"What about you? What are you thinking about?" Section Chief Han Zheng turned his head to look at him.

Wang Hao squeezed the bronze piece, not letting go.

"I'll help move some things."

Section Chief Han Zheng didn't try to persuade him otherwise. He patted his shoulder and turned to walk toward the convoy.

At four in the morning, the engines of the three off-road vehicles started simultaneously.

Professor Zhou sat in the back row of the second vehicle with a laptop spread across his knees, the blue light of the screen illuminating his wrinkled face.

High-definition photos of the murals flipped by one after another; for each one, he had noted the serial number, estimated age, and the position of the totem of spark.

Chen Yiming was beside him, whispering the memos from the voice recorder.

"...12th-century egg tempera technique, the pigment formula is completely different from the ruins in Qin Province, but the totem of spark is consistent. Preliminary conclusion: a unified organizational identifier across civilizations and regions..."

Zhao Xiaohe leaned against the car window, not asleep.

Her eyes were closed, but her eyelashes were trembling.

Her mind was filled with that boy who drew houses with mud.

Wang Hao sat in the third vehicle, the bronze piece pressed against his chest pocket.

He had his eyes closed, but anyone could tell he wasn't asleep; his lips were pressed too tightly together.

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

The vehicle jolted along the gravel road riddled with craters, each bump slamming his shoulder against the car door.

He didn't adjust his posture.

His mind was too crowded, so much so that thoughts were colliding with each other.

The image of the sky splitting open.

The five seconds when the two fire dragons incinerated the exotic beast.

The back of the silver-armored paladin holding up a shield to block the D-rank mental shock.

The man who walked down from the firmament stepping on stairs of flame, lifting his hand.

And—the sound of thirty-seven refugees kneeling on the floor of the carriage and kowtowing.

Section Chief Han Zheng took a notebook from his pocket and flipped to a blank page.

The car was too bumpy, and the pen tip scratched crooked words onto the paper.

He wrote one line, then crossed it out.

He wrote a second line, then crossed it out.

Finally, only four words remained—

"Humanity is too weak."

The pen tip poked a hole through the period.

He closed the notebook, leaned back into the seat, and closed his eyes.

The next morning.

On the east side of the shelter, in the shadow of a half-collapsed brick wall.

Henry Bernstein bit the end of the medical tape with his teeth, pressed the gauze with his right hand, and wrapped it twice around the patient's forearm with his left.

The movements were precise, but slow.

His sixty-two-year-old body had finally started to strike after five consecutive days of high-intensity surgery.

The muscle groups in his shoulder blades spasmed every thirty seconds, and his fine motor control in his fingers had dropped by at least forty percent.

He needed an assistant.

But Isaac was gone.

Henry tore the tape and checked the tightness of the bandage.

The next patient had already been carried over—a penetrating wound to the left shoulder, requiring debridement.

He picked up the tweezers.

His hand shook.

A hand reached out from the side and took the roll of gauze.

Henry turned his head.

Lin Xiaoman was crouching beside him, her gray hoodie so dirty its original color was unrecognizable, the bloodstains on her knees dried into dark brown crusts.

She had already torn off a piece of tape, the length just right.

Henry froze for a second.

He didn't ask, just continued working.

The tweezers probed into the wound, extracting the first fragment.

Lin Xiaoman handed him gauze, he pressed to stop the bleeding, and she tore the tape.

Iodophor, cotton balls, suture thread—every item appeared at his hand the second before he needed it.

The tacit understanding was unlike that of a first-time collaboration.

Seven patients, one morning.

The last person was bandaged, and Henry sat on an ammunition crate.

Sunlight streamed through the bullet holes in the wall, painting several circular patches of light on the ground.

He took off his glasses to wipe the lenses.

The gold-rimmed frame with one broken leg sat crookedly on the bridge of his nose, and the bloodstains on the lenses could no longer be wiped clean.

Lin Xiaoman handed him a bottle of water and sat down beside him.

Two minutes of silence passed.

"Professor, what do you plan to do next?"

Henry unscrewed the water bottle and took a sip. The astringent taste of disinfectant tablets.

He pulled that photo from his shirt pocket.

Isaac's wife and son, smiling in some sunny courtyard.

He looked at it for two seconds, then put it back.

"I've done everything I could."

His voice was hoarse, each word carrying the texture of grit.

"But what I want to do—modern medicine cannot achieve."

He turned to look at Lin Xiaoman.

Beneath the broken-legged glasses, there was something in those blue-gray eyes that had been shattered and rebuilt.

It wasn't confusion, but clarity.

"Perhaps it is time to go to China."

Lin Xiaoman tilted her head, the corners of her mouth moved slightly, but she didn't respond.

"The answer you are looking for is with me."

The voice came from behind.

It wasn't loud, the tone flat, as if stating a law of physics.

Henry's spine stiffened instantly.

He turned around.

Backlit.

The silhouette of a black trench coat was outlined in a golden rim by the morning light.

The cracks on the bronze half-face mask cast intersecting shadows in the light, so ancient they didn't belong to any known civilization.

Those eyes.

Henry had seen many people's eyes.

Politicians', tycoons', dying patients', mothers who had just lost their children.

Beneath every pair, something was pressed down—desire, fear, despair, anger.

Beneath this pair of eyes, there was nothing.

The attitude itself was the content.

This was true emptiness.

Henry's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Who are you?"

Henry stood up, his voice steadier than he had expected.

"What is Kindling? That authority akin to a god... what exactly is it?"

Su Chen didn't answer immediately.

He looked at Henry for three seconds.

"I was the one who treated Elder Liu."

Henry's pupils contracted by a millimeter.

"And this power is not something an ordinary person can master."

Su Chen's voice had no inflection, each word sounding as if it had been peeled off a stone tablet.

"The message Liu Yuyan brought you—surely you already have the answer."

Henry's hand reached into his pocket, his fingertips touching the edge of the bronze piece.

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

He was willing.

That day he had blurted it out, and now he was still willing.

"If you want to know everything, then come with me."

Su Chen made a gesture of invitation.

Henry took a step.

Then he stopped and turned to look at Lin Xiaoman.

"It's just..."

He frowned.

"If this girl learns all this, will it be bad for her? Should we let her leave first?"

Su Chen shook his head.

"No need. She is coming too."

Henry was stunned.

Lin Xiaoman jumped down from the ammunition crate and trotted to Su Chen's side.

Her entire demeanor changed in an instant, adding a layer of relaxation that only appears when "going home."

"President, you finally came to pick me up!"

Her voice was soft, with a coquettish lilt at the end.

"This trip was awful; I missed my keyboard!"

Henry's expression froze.

President.

She called him President.

Henry's brain began to run at high speed.

Lin Xiaoman appearing in the refugee camp—not a coincidence.

She "happened" to organize the survivors to evacuate during the shelling—not instinct.

From beginning to end, this girl who looked like a high school student was one of Kindling's people.

Henry Bernstein, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, a global authority on tumor immunology, with sixty-two years of life experience, had been deceived under his very nose for five whole days by a five-foot-tall loli.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Su Chen watched his expression, the corners of his mouth behind the mask curving slightly.

"Let's go, Professor Henry."

He raised his right hand, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and snapped them lightly.

The air wrinkled.

Three figures vanished from the ruins.

The half-drunk bottle of water on the ammunition crate wobbled twice, the ripples on the water surface spreading out in circles before returning to calm.

Sunlight streamed through the bullet holes, shining on the empty space beneath the brick wall.

Nothing was left behind.