7: Chapter 7 He didn't even glance at the murals.

The light in the stone corridor dimmed.

It was not extinguished; it was that the coverage of the holy light from the paladin on the mural had reached its end.

The stone wall ahead sank into a kind of ancient gloom.

Liu Yuyan's footsteps slowed.

Su Chen, walking in front, did not turn his head, nor did he slow down.

His pace was unusually steady; he remembered in his bones exactly which stone brick protruded by half an inch.

The second mural lit up.

It was not the kind of light that slowly emerged.

It was a purple-white bolt of lightning that burst forth violently from the depths of the stone wall.

In the mural, the sky split open, and countless twisted limbs squeezed out from the black fissure.

Directly beneath the crack, a figure draped in a cyan-gray Taoist robe performed a ritual step, holding a hand seal in the left hand and a half-broken talisman sword in the right.

Talisman papers flew out from his sleeves, filling the sky, self-igniting in the air and burning into flowing golden ash.

Heavenly lightning struck down.

The entire stone wall was flooded with purple-white light, and the lightning illuminated the Taoist's face clearly.

It was a young face with blood at the corner of the mouth, but the corner of the mouth was curled upward.

Liu Yuyan stopped.

She reached out, her fingertips touching the stone surface.

It was hot.

Not the lukewarm temperature of the room, but a heat with a distinct source.

It seeped out from the depths of the stone, traveling along her fingertips and into her palm.

That bolt of lightning had struck a thousand years ago, but its lingering resonance had not yet fully dissipated.

Liu Yuyan retracted her hand and walked forward.

The third one.

Above a city filled with smoke and dust, a priest wearing a high crown hovered in mid-air.

With arms spread wide and fingers locked tight, a golden barrier expanded from his palms.

It had a huge arc, filling the upper half of the entire mural.

Beneath the barrier were people, dense crowds of people.

An old man tucked a child into his embrace.

A woman clamped her hand tightly over an infant's mouth to keep it from crying out.

A soldier with a broken leg leaned against a ruined wall, his hand still clutching a dulled blade.

Outside the barrier was a black tide, an all-encompassing blackness, as if the entire sky had melted and was pouring down.

Two lines of blood trickled from the priest's nostrils. The edges of the golden barrier were trembling.

The fourth one.

No magic, no light.

A warrior in heavy armor knelt on one knee on the ground.

The shield face was mostly shattered, leaving only the handle connected to a jagged fragment.

Opposite him—Liu Yuyan could not find the words to describe that thing.

Its body filled the entire upper section of the mural, its shadow swallowing most of the warrior.

The gaps in the armor were full of blood, which flowed down along his knees and pooled into a small puddle on the ground.

But he did not fall.

His knees had smashed into the ground, creating cracks; he held up the broken shield, the fragment facing forward, the blade edge aimed at the sky-covering giant beast.

One person stood blocking in front of everything.

Liu Yuyan did not stop walking.

She dared not stop.

If she stopped again, she was afraid she wouldn't be able to move forward.

The fifth one.

The entire stone wall, from left to right, from top to bottom, was full of figures.

Someone with runes tattooed on their body flew in the sky, a blue storm coalescing between their hands.

Someone manipulated a massive metal structure of interlocking gears, the muzzle spitting out a white-hot beam of light.

Someone was shirtless, fists wrapped in flames, smashing head-on into the carapace of a giant insect covered in compound eyes.

Someone fell.

The people beside them did not stop.

They stepped over their fallen companions and continued to charge forward.

The sky was collapsing. The ground was cracking.

Behind everyone was a line.

Beyond that line, there was nothing left.

No city, no road, no place to retreat.

On this side of the line stood them.

Shoulder to shoulder.

The living, the bleeding, the armless, the one-eyed.

All standing.

Liu Yuyan's throat was choked up.

She could not say a single word. Something in her chest was surging upward, scalding and heavy, crushing her breath into fragments.

She walked to the end of the mural.

The last wall.

The entire stone wall had no battles, no monsters, no blood.

Only a ball of fire.

Golden.

It was not the gold of burning; it was the color of the first light breaking through the horizon when dawn just pierces the darkness of night.

Beneath the fire, countless figures knelt on one knee.

Those with a severed arm, those leaning on crutches, those with half their bodies eroded into charred black by black mist.

Every one of them faced the fire, their backs straight.

There were no faces; the faces of these people on the stone wall had all been intentionally ground away—or rather, they had never been carved on in the first place.

Nameless.

Liu Yuyan's vision blurred.

She did not even know when the tears fell.

No sound, no sobbing.

Water welled out from her eye sockets, slid over her cheekbones, and hit the stone floor, making an extremely faint sound.

She did not know what she was crying for.

She did not recognize anyone in the painting.

She did not know what they were called, where they came from, or if they survived in the end.

But that fire and those kneeling figures—

She wiped her face, and when she pulled her hand back, she found her fingertips were all wet.

Three steps ahead, Su Chen's back had never stopped.

His back was very straight.

His pace was exactly the same as when he came in, not a bit faster, not a bit slower.

He did not look at those murals.

Not even a glance.

Liu Yuyan stared at that back.

She could not describe what kind of posture that was—it was not avoidance, nor was it numbness.

It was more like a person standing in front of their own ancestral grave, not needing to lower their head to read the inscriptions.

Her nasal cavity ached with soreness.

The stone corridor reached its end.

Su Chen took the final step, and Liu Yuyan followed.

Her field of vision exploded open.

A circular plaza.

Dark gray stone steps stacked up in three layers, supporting the altar in the center.

Then she saw that ancient tree.

The dark golden trunk, leafless, its branches reaching toward that golden sky.

It was glowing.

It was breathing.

Visibly so.

The bark contracted and expanded, carrying a rhythm so slow and heavy it was oppressive, sharing the same frequency as the golden light flowing through the cracks of the stone bricks underfoot.

Liu Yuyan's feet were rooted to the ground, unmoving.

It was not that she was frightened.

It was her body telling her—the thing in front of her was not man-made, nor was it anything within the scope of her understanding.

It was alive, and had been alive for a very, very long time.

Around the altar, a dozen stone pillars were scattered.

Broken, shattered, crooked; some were split in half from the middle, some were just stumps remaining at chest height.

The one directly facing the stone corridor was the tallest.

A line of text ran through the pillar, golden light flowing within the grooves of the characters.

"Civilization does not extinguish; the Kindling burns forever."

It was exactly the same as the text on that bronze piece.

But here, it seemed to have grown out from inside the stone.

The golden strokes were embedded in the stone surface, weathered for a thousand years, shining blindingly bright.

On the broken pillars to the left and right, more text was carved.

Oaths.

Line after line of oaths.

About the Kindling, about not asking for a return journey, about using one's body as a shield.

Liu Yuyan did not read every single word; she did not need to.

Every time she scanned a line, her chest was struck, a dull, heavy impact, hitting the same place as the posture of those people in the murals.

She steadied herself against the nearest broken pillar.

Her fingertips pressed against it, the stone surface ice-cold and rough.

But the strokes of the golden characters were hot, the same temperature as the lingering warmth on the murals.

Liu Yuyan's gaze crossed over the ancient tree and cast toward a further place.

In the distance, there were buildings, vast ruins of palaces extending all the way to the skyline.

Collapsed stone pillars, shattered domes, overturned giant statues—the entire expanse of ruins was silent under the pale golden sky.

Liu Yuyan took a step subconsciously.

Her foot hit something.

An invisible wall.

Liu Yuyan's palm pressed against it.

The ruins on the other side were close at hand, yet separated by a distance that could never be crossed.

Those things that were once glorious were all shattered.

Only this altar, one tree, and a few broken pillars remained underfoot.

Su Chen walked up the three-layered stone steps.

He turned around.

The ancient tree's golden light fell onto his shoulders, shattering into fine spots of light, scattering into the folds of his black trench coat.

"Welcome to the Kindling."

The voice was not loud.

But in this vast expanse of ruins, every syllable traveled very far, hitting the distant broken walls and bouncing back, layered upon layer.

"This place is the land where civilization is defended."

Liu Yuyan stood below the altar.

Tear stains were still on her face, but her eyes had refocused.

Those were the eyes of someone who had been a decision-maker for eleven years.

Having been shocked, having been pierced through, she was now starting to understand.

"What exactly is this?"

Liu Yuyan's voice was hoarse, but every word was articulated clearly.

"What exactly are these people opposing?"

"And you—"

She stared at those eyes behind the mask.

"Who are you?"

There was silence for three seconds.

Su Chen slowly raised his right hand.

His fingers hooked onto the edge of the mask.

The bronze mask was peeled away from that face, inch by inch.

The pale golden light shone upon it, and Liu Yuyan saw a—

Young face.