136: Chapter 136: Farewell, Jinling

The sampans navigated through the narrow, dark, secret waterways.

Stagnant, foul-smelling water slapped against the sides of the boats. A deathly silence hung over the surroundings, broken only by the monotonous splash of oars cutting through the surface.

The people on board huddled together; no one spoke.

They were like a group of specters, fleeing from a massive, living tomb.

An unknown amount of time passed.

Up ahead, a faint, pale light finally pierced through the thick, impenetrable darkness.

A cold river wind, carrying the scent of fishy water, suddenly rushed in.

Their vision suddenly opened up.

They were out.

From the city's rotting intestines, they sailed into the broad chest of the Yangtze River.

It was dawn.

The sky was a hazy, leaden gray, on the verge of breaking into daylight.

The river surface was vast, and the current was gentle.

The early morning river breeze dispersed the nauseating stench from the waterways and cleared some of the thick smoke hanging over the river.

Everyone instinctively turned back to look at the city they had just escaped.

Then, everyone froze.

Time seemed to solidify at this moment.

Against the backdrop of the glimmering dawn, the entire city's skyline was shrouded in a continuous, dark red glow of fire.

Countless thick, black columns of smoke, like the twisted arms of demons, struggled toward the sky, staining the leaden canopy with filth.

The pavilions of the past, the upturned eaves of old, the romance of the Qinhuai, the opulence of the Six Dynasties...

At this moment, they had all turned into a jagged, black silhouette struggling within the flames.

The once prosperous ancient capital had become a massive, silent, burning graveyard.

A middle-aged man standing at the bow of a boat stared blankly into the distance, toward the direction that was once his home.

He did not cry, nor did he shout.

His knees simply gave way, and he knelt on the deck, pressing his forehead hard against the cold wood, his entire body trembling violently and silently.

A young woman covered her mouth tightly, trying not to let out a sound, but tears welled up like broken strings of pearls, soaking her collar.

This oppressive silence was broken by a low whimper, like that of a wounded beast.

It was as if a signal had been given.

In the next second, the fear, grief, and despair suppressed for days and weeks erupted like a bursting dam.

Cries of mourning rose from the fleet of boats.

It wasn't loud wailing.

It was a heartbreaking lament, squeezed from the deepest depths of the chest, suppressed to the extreme.

They wept for their parents, wives, and children who died under the butcher's knife.

They wept for their homes destroyed by the raging fires.

They wept for this scarred and bleeding nation.

The cries merged together, echoing across the empty river like a most sorrowful requiem.

A white-haired elder struggled to stand up from the deck.

He was a classical literature scholar on the list; when he was rescued, he was still clutching several smoke-blackened, thread-bound ancient books.

He stood shakily at the bow, murky old tears sliding down the wrinkles on his face, one by one.

He looked at the burning city, his lips trembling as he began to recite in a raspy, almost chanting tone.

"The nation... is broken... though mountains and rivers remain..."

"The city... in spring... with grass and trees deep..."

It was Du Fu's 'Spring View'.

The sorrowful verses traveled through over a thousand years of time and space, overlapping with the apocalyptic scene before them.

"Moved by the times, flowers are splashed with tears; grieving at parting, birds are startled at heart."

The old scholar's voice became fragmented due to his immense grief.

Several other scholars on the boat followed him, joining in with tearful voices.

"Beacon fires have burned for three months straight; a letter from home is worth ten thousand pieces of gold."

"White hair scratched even shorter, it can hardly hold a hairpin..."

The verses came intermittently in the cold river wind; every word was like a knife, cutting into the hearts of all the survivors.

Chen Xi stood on his small boat, quietly watching all of this.

He did not cry.

The continuous firelight, the heart-wrenching cries, the tragic and desolate verses...

Like a red-hot branding iron, they were seared fiercely and deeply into the innermost depths of his soul.

He knew that this memory would become an indelible part of his life.

This pain would accompany him throughout his life until he turned to ash.

He lowered his head, his hand instinctively tightening around the cold, heavy iron box in his arms.

Inside were the evidences of the Japanese Army's crimes, the diaries of Rabe and Vautrin.

It was the ironclad proof of the suffering this city and this nation were enduring.

(Everything I have done is not just for revenge.)

(But even more... as a memorial for the forgotten.)

In his heart, he made a vow to himself and to those three hundred thousand souls.

(I will make the people of the future remember today forever.)

(Remember your sacrifice.)

(Remember this pain that pierces to the marrow.)

He raised his head, took one last look at the burning horizon, and then resolutely turned away, never looking back.

There were no tears on his face.

There was only a calm, deeper than the river water and colder than the winter wind.