392: Chapter 392 The Lighthouse Rises

There were no lights on the coast of Cabo Delgado Province before dawn.

The surges of the Indian Ocean lapped against the abandoned colonial-era breakwater, and the spray splashed with phosphorescence in the darkness—it was the faint, cold light emitted by plankton decomposing in the salt water, like a layer of dying stars buried beneath the sea.

Most of the coconut groves on the shore had been blown down by the 2019 Hurricane, and the remaining trunks lay scattered across the sandy ground, with coral debris brought in by the Hurricane still clinging to their bark.

A wooden fishing boat cut its diesel engine three hundred meters offshore.

There was no catch in the cabin.

Twelve men wore coarse burlap shirts of local fishermen soaked in seawater, with frayed edges at the cuffs and collars where the weave had worn through.

Piled at their feet were twenty waterproof boxes labeled "United Nations World Food Programme"—the labels were fake, and inside were system-produced light assault rifles, two folding-wing reconnaissance drones, twelve portable medical kits, and a Federation of Myanmar flag folded into a square.

João Mutale stood at the bow of the boat.

He was thirty-seven, with the deep brown skin typical of the Makua people and high cheekbones; an old scar ran from his brow bone to his cheekbone—in the memories implanted by the system, this scar came from a shrapnel graze during a government military clearance operation in 2008, when, as a major in the government's 12th Infantry Battalion, he refused to fire on civilians and had his brow bone cracked by a superior officer with a pistol.

The discharge papers cited "health reasons," but the real reason was locked in a steel cabinet in the basement archives of the Ministry of Defense.

He had lived in exile in South Africa for six years, working as a porter at the Cape Town docks, managing a warehouse at a Chinese supermarket in Durban, and working security at an underground casino in Pretoria.

These memory fragments implanted by the system included photos, landlord testimonies, and bank statements, each piece capable of withstanding cross-verification by any intelligence agency.

But at this moment, the João Mutale standing at the bow was one Zhang Cheng had meticulously fine-tuned in the system's customization interface—costing 50,000 points, with the implanted background: a retired major from the Mozambique Liberation Front, whose family had been wiped out by a foreign security company during a land acquisition conflict for a natural gas project in 2017, providing a complete motive for revenge.

The expertise modules selected included guerrilla warfare command, civilian mobilization, native fluency in Portuguese and Swahili, and a complete memory of the terrain in Cabo Delgado Province.

The fishing boat hit the bottom.

The keel scraped against the fine sand with a dull grinding sound.

João was the first to jump off the boat.

The seawater submerged his knees, and the pull of the receding tide was strong, but he did not waver, stepping onto the shore one step at a time along the sandy seabed.

The ten Junior Death Soldiers behind him dispersed silently, establishing a perimeter at the edge of the coconut grove—their movements lacked commands or gestures, as synchronized as the nerve endings separated from the same nervous system.

The abandoned lighthouse stood at the end of the breakwater.

This was a navigational lighthouse built during the Portuguese colonial period, eighteen meters high and made of stone; the outer layer of white lime plaster had peeled away in large patches, revealing the coral stone beneath, which had been eroded into a honeycomb texture by the sea breeze.

The signal light at the top of the tower had long since ceased to shine, half the glass of the lampshade was shattered, and the remaining half was covered in white bird droppings.

The iron door at the base of the tower was rusted shut against the frame, the hinges fused into a single piece.

João drew a dagger from his waist, inserted it into the door gap, and twisted with a flick of his wrist.

The rusted iron bolt let out a screech, snapped in two, and fell into the darkness inside the door.

The door opened, and the air that rushed out carried the smell of mold, sea salt, and the ammonia of bat guano.

The steps of the spiral stone staircase remained, but each one was covered in a layer of fine sand blown in through the door gap by the sea breeze.

He walked up.

The stone stairs made a rhythmic, steady sound under his feet.

The lighthouse control room at the top of the tower was left with only empty junction boxes after the copper wires had been pried away, and a wooden table with three collapsed legs.

The window openings had no glass, and the sea breeze poured in, causing a fragment of a 1973 navigational notice on the wall to flutter rustlingly.

João took a folded Federation of Myanmar flag from the waterproof box.

The flag was made of synthetic fiber, but it felt like cotton—the system had considered visual affinity when displaying it in impoverished areas.

He found the original flagpole base on the wall, inserted the flagpole, and turned the locking bolt.

At 5:03 AM, the sun had not yet risen, and only a very thin cyan line appeared where the sea and sky met.

The flag unfurled for the first time in the wind blowing from the Indian Ocean, with the white five-pointed star on the yellow, green, and red stripes facing directly east.

João took a step back, watching the flag snap in the wind.

He said nothing, simply pulling a small, polished wooden cross from his pocket—it was a keepsake of his "mother" from the system-implanted memories, made of local black wood, roughly carved, with the horizontal and vertical pieces of the cross asymmetrical.

He inserted the cross into a crack in the flagpole base.

In the distance, gunshots came from the direction of the village.

It was single-shot fire from an AK rifle, about two to three kilometers away.

João's ears twitched slightly—the guerrilla warfare expertise module implanted by the system activated an identification thread in his neural circuits: the gunfire came from deterrent shots by militia, the rhythm was loose, it was not an exchange of fire, but intimidation.

He pulled out his satellite phone and pressed the preset code for the encrypted channel.

"The beacon is lit," he said in Portuguese.

On the other end of the line, Zhang Cheng's voice came from seven thousand kilometers away, as clear as if he were sitting across from him.

"Before dawn, Mueda."

Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw, at the same time early in the morning.

Zhang Cheng put down the encrypted phone and turned his gaze to the two guests sitting across the long table.

The Vice Prime Minister of the State Council of the Dragon Kingdom, Wang Mingyuan, sixty-one years old, with graying hair but a straight back and thick finger joints—traces of his time working on an oil drilling team in his youth.

Beside him sat Zhao Gang, and in front of Zhao Gang lay a document printed in Chinese, with the filename marked in size-two bold font: "Mozambique Deep-Sea Natural Gas Joint Development Agreement (Top Secret Draft)."

Li Lanzhi stood at Zhang Cheng's side, holding a tray with three cups of Pu'er tea that had already been steeped for the second round, the color of the tea soup turning from amber to dark brown.

"Mueda is one of the poorest fishing villages in Cabo Delgado Province." Zhang Cheng pointed to Mueda's location on the holographic map with his finger, the satellite imagery displaying a stretch of thatched roofs scattered along the coastline, with dirt roads and the wreckage of fishing boats, overturned by the 2019 Hurricane and never repaired, between the clusters of houses, "but it is very close to a key location—the natural gas exploration point in Block 4 of the Rovuma Basin. The proven reserves of that block are 4.7 trillion cubic feet. France's TotalEnergies withdrew in 2019 due to the security situation, and ExxonMobil also withdrew non-essential personnel last year. Now, the onshore terminal station for that block is only guarded by a platoon of the Mozambique government army—no radar, no drones, no night-vision equipment."

Wang Mingyuan picked up his teacup, didn't drink, but warmed his fingertips with the steam from the rim of the cup.

"This move of yours," he placed the teacup back on the tray, "is sticking a nail right under the noses of the Eagle Sauce Africa Command."

"Africa Command." Zhang Cheng repeated the term, his tone carrying undisguised contempt, "They have one base in Djibouti, two drone airstrips in Niger, and a military cooperation office in Maputo—they can't even scrape together a company-level rapid response force. Their Africa strategy was never built by their own boots on the ground; it relies on bribing local warlords, hiring South African security companies, and splitting profits with the French. This isn't an Iron Curtain; it's a sieve."