498: Chapter 498 Three Strokes Shatter the Old Nanyang

Anwar placed his fountain pen on the edge of the ink bottle. As he looked up, the golden light from the dome of the Sarawak Parliament Building shone right into the floor-to-ceiling windows of the signing hall's east wing.

Three documents with gold-stamped covers were spread out before him. The top one was the "Sarawak-Sabah Special Autonomy Bill," the middle one was the "Permanent Peace Agreement," and the bottom one was the "Declaration of Withdrawal from the Five Power Defence Arrangements." The covers of all three documents were embossed with the Malaysian national emblem and Myanmar's baobab leaf badge—Anwar's fingers paused for two seconds on the gold-stamped title of the withdrawal declaration.

Sitting on both sides of the oak long table in the signing hall were twelve chieftains from Council of Elders of the Sarawak indigenous peoples, representatives of the tribal leaders of the Sabah Kadazan and Bajau peoples, and Lin Yaxing, a descendant of the Sarawak Hakka Self-Defense Force. Lin Yaxing wore a crisply starched white shirt with buttons polished from coconut shells. A pen was tucked into his left breast pocket—an old Parker 51 left behind by his father, its cap's gilding worn down to show the brass base, and the vague characters "Lanfang Republic" engraved on the pen clip.

When Anwar signed the first document, the nib of his fountain pen scratched a rustling sound across the paper. He finished the last stroke and stood up.

"The "Sarawak-Sabah Special Autonomy Bill" grants Sarawak and Sabah complete autonomy in land, education, language, mineral, and immigration affairs—including the full restoration and expansion of indigenous rights clauses in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement."

He paused for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the indigenous elders at the end of the long table.

"The woodlands, fishing grounds, and hunting grounds that you lost during the colonial era will be reclaimed and placed in trust by the autonomous government starting today. Whichever mountain your ancestors' bones are buried in, that mountain belongs to you."

The oldest of the twelve chieftains stood up, pressing his left hand to his chest while placing a wooden staff carved with a hornbill flat on the table with his right hand.

He said a sentence in Iban. The translator translated in a low voice: "My grandfather died under the guns of the British army."

As he spoke, his totem-tattooed right hand pressed against the hornbill wooden staff, the veins bulging on the back of his hand.

"He waited for a hundred years. I am signing for him."

When Anwar signed the second document, his strokes were noticeably heavier. The fountain pen paused for two seconds at the signature line for the "Federation of Malaysia."

He recalled the scene when he was rescued three months ago in the underground bunker in Putrajaya—Night Owl's special operations team blew open the blast door with directional explosives, and he curled up in a corner, with tear gas shells left behind by Rashid's coup forces at his feet.

The pen fell. Ink seeped into the paper.

The core terms of the peace agreement included Malaysia's formal recognition of the humanitarian nature of Myanmar's military operations in Sabah, the establishment of a permanent joint military coordination mechanism between the two sides to prevent the resurgence of extremist forces, and Malaysia's pledge not to join any military alliance targeting Myanmar. As a reciprocal term, Myanmar promised to reduce its stationed troops in Sabah to the peacekeeping scale under the joint counter-terrorism framework within six months, and to transfer the maritime patrol tasks on Sabah's east coast to the newly established Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia trilateral joint maritime law enforcement force.

When Anwar opened the third document, his fingers lingered on the cover for an extra second. Printed beneath the gold-stamped title of this document was a line of date—1971.

"This treaty signed in 1971 bound Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Britain into a military framework. Fifty-four years."

He did not continue. The pen fell—the final stroke of Anwar's signature was flicked up heavily, pressing a dent into the paper with the pen nib.

The signing of the withdrawal declaration was complete. Shuguang Cloud's pop-up window pushed to the globe in the exact same second: "Malaysia withdraws from the Five Power Defence Arrangements."

At the same moment, Kota Kinabalu International Airport.

The tail cargo door of the seventh C-17 transport plane slowly closed. Inside the cabin were stacked forty-six aluminum coffins draped with the Stars and Stripes. Inside the coffins were the remains of U.S. soldiers recovered from the limestone caves, swamp foxholes, and jungle ambush points of Mount Kinabalu—including Black's corpse, who had fallen backward beneath the command platform, covered by piles of limestone rubble blasted down during Night Owl's assault; and also including Widowmaker's right wrist, the wrist bones crushed by Night Owl that had been barely reset by a military doctor after death, but the bone fragments never healed properly.

Standing on both sides of the runway were twelve Myanmar military police officers and four U.S. Marine Corps honor guards. The military police held captured M4A1 rifles with their muzzles facing the ground. The Marine honor guards wore dress uniforms urgently airlifted from the military attaché office of the Australian Embassy in Malaysia, their cuffs smudged with the Black sealant of the aluminum coffins during the transfer of the remains.

The Marine major leading the team saluted the coffins, his arm moving as stiffly as a prosthetic limb when he raised it. His task was to escort this last plane off—and then his own visa would expire within twenty-four hours.

As the plane taxied, its right wing whipped up the morning mist on the runway. Shortly after taking off, two Myanmar Air Force Jian-10B fighter jets pierced through the clouds, escorting it to the airspace north of Borneo. Suspended under the bellies of the Jian-10Bs were not missiles, but white smoke canisters. The fighter jets drew two parallel lines of white smoke on both sides of the transport plane, which slowly diffused into a thin band of clouds in the morning light.

The transport plane crew heard the fighter pilot's English call over the channel: "Escort element departing. You are clear. Proceed on course."

The captain pressed the communication button: "Copy. Out."

The clouds outside the cockpit thinned. After the white smoke on the runway dissipated, Kota Kinabalu Airport was once again enveloped in tropical sunlight. Outside the barbed wire at the end of the runway, a group of Kadazan children squatted barefoot on the grass, looking up as the airplane's vapor trail dissolved inch by inch in the sky. The oldest girl was holding a broken-legged wooden puppet in her arms, with a smiling face painted on the puppet.

Night Owl finished watching the takeoff footage on the command post tablet and said only two words: "Clear the field."

Naypyidaw Presidential Palace.

Zhang Cheng stood on the teak floor of the third-floor balcony, the tablet screen displaying the takeoff footage of Kota Kinabalu Airport just sent by Li Lanzhi. The footage was filmed by a soaring dragon drone from an altitude of three thousand meters, the silver skin of the C-17 transport plane gleaming with a bluish metallic luster in the morning light. As the plane crossed the coastline, beneath its wings were large, orderly green grids of palm plantations, and further in the distance were the light blue shallow waters of the Sulu Sea.

He placed the tablet on the balcony railing, and beside his hand was a congratulatory message sent by the Long Kingdom. The message used an encrypted channel, and the sender was Zhao Gang.

"The Chief congratulates the signing of the East Malaysia peace agreement. The Long Kingdom is willing to participate in the construction of the joint management mechanism for the Kra Canal—Strait of Malacca. The joint exploration plan for the African Energy Corridor has been sent to your technical team."

Zhang Cheng finished reading and pressed the delete key—the encrypted channel had a self-destruct function after reading. The message shattered into garbled text on the screen and then disappeared.

Li Lanzhi pushed open the glass door of the balcony and walked out, holding two folders in her hands. The first was the system consumption statistical report of this battle, and the second was the tracking briefing on the remaining forces of Council of Elders.