60: Chapter 60 Post-War

The world-shaking shockwaves of debris slowly dissipated, and the hideous dark red crack in the sky above Tingen City had mostly closed.

Lead-gray clouds pressed low over the city, and the lingering chill of midnight followed the currents of the Hoi River, snaking into the labyrinthine drainage pipes and silently overflowing onto the entire Iron Cross Street.

The shocking, rapidly growing mold mycelium on the stone walls had been pulverized into fine, grayish-white powder by the violent shockwaves, mixing with the wet mud on the ground and being slowly washed away by the babbling water, leaving behind only a scene of chaotic rubble and broken bricks that silently told the tale of the apocalyptic death battle that had just occurred.

Old Neil sat upright in the pile of rubble outside the Chanis Gate, a broken staff resting across his knees.

His black work robe was torn with several hideous gashes from the shockwaves, and only half a page remained of the Sealed Artifact maintenance log he kept in his chest pocket; the yellowed paper fluttered gently in the cold night wind, making a faint rustling sound.

Daly crouched beside him, her fingertips glowing with a pale white spiritual light as she meticulously examined his chaotic and overdrawn spiritual circuits. After confirming it was merely exhaustion without damage to his origin, she withdrew her spiritual power, took out bandages from her personal first-aid kit, and lowered her head to treat the charred wounds on his fingertips caused by spiritual backlash.

Old Neil allowed her to work, his eyes cast down as he stared at the scattered crystal fragments in his palm. After a long while, his hoarse, aged voice, heavy with unconcealable fatigue and self-reproach, slowly sounded: "I have guarded the Chanis Gate for fifteen years."

"Fifteen years, performing routine checks every single day, I believed I had mastered every rune and every pattern of this door. Yet tonight, it shattered before my eyes three times, and I failed to stop it even once."

Each word was heavy, falling into the silent corridor, leaving only endless helplessness.

Daly did not respond. She quietly wrapped the last layer of bandage, carefully tied the knot, and slowly stood up, walking step by step toward the depths of the corridor—the place where Dunn had fallen just moments ago.

On the stone-tiled floor, the golden embers left behind after the burning of the ashes of the Saint Selena saint still remained. Despite the aftermath of the fierce battle, a faint, almost extinguished glow still shimmered in the brightening daylight.

She stood quietly in place, letting the morning light pour in from the corridor's air vent and cover her entire body. After a long while, she finally lowered her head slowly and looked at the mottled bloodstains on her black gloves.

That was Dunn's blood.

She practiced the art of mediumship and should not have been stained by mortal blood. Yet, in the final moments when Dunn's spirituality completely shattered, she had obsessively and repeatedly tried to stitch together his fragmented and scattered spiritual circuits.

The dark red cursed light of the Snake of Fate shattered the pathways she had barely managed to piece together time and time again, yet she started over each time, refusing to give up. It was only when Old Neil gripped her shoulder tightly and told her in a deep voice that everything had dissipated and there was no life left that she was forced to stop her futile salvation.

Rubbing her fingertips against the cold bloodstains, Daly's lips moved slightly, silently reciting the ancient incantation from Chapter 3, Section 4 of the mediumship arts.

These were the passages she had memorized for years and knew by heart, but it was not until this moment, witnessing the extinction of life with her own eyes, that she truly understood the weight and helplessness between the lines.

A moment later, a slight movement came from the pile of rubble.

Leonard slowly woke up, struggling to stand up while leaning on the short staff at his side, his head still covered in bits of dried mold.

The entire corridor was deathly silent, excessively quiet, without a trace of post-battle chaos, making the earth-shattering bloody battle that had just occurred feel like a hollow nightmare.

His gaze slowly swept over the dazed Old Neil, the motionless Daly, and finally landed on the empty end of the corridor—the figure who would always be the first to be on guard, the one who would always hold the rear, had disappeared completely.

Leonard stood still for a long time, looking down at the short staff in his palm. Dunn's instructions when entrusting this item to him before the battle suddenly echoed clearly in his ears.

"Sealed Artifact 2-105, the side effect is that the user will have the same dream repeatedly within a week, dreaming of the previous holder standing in the mirror."

At that time, Dunn had patted his shoulder, his tone solemn: "Be mentally prepared."

He had once asked who the previous holder was, but Dunn had remained silent.

And at this moment, Leonard finally understood all the answers.

His legs went weak, and he sat back down in the pile of rubble, the short staff resting across his knees, bowing his head in silence. Chaotic memories surged up, all of them filled with the gentle and meticulous daily details of their captain.

In the past, every time he submitted a patrol log, it was repeatedly returned by Rozanne for rewriting due to his sloppy handwriting. Every single time, Dunn would leave a neat note beside the scrawled handwriting: Patrol complete, records detailed, only the font needs changing.

At the end of the note, there would always be a clumsy, round smiley face sketch.

Those small, gentle traces never appeared in the official archived logs; they were always wiped away by the careful Rozanne, yet Dunn had silently persisted in drawing them day after day for a long time.

At this moment, a sour ache surged in Leonard's heart, and he suddenly longed to receive one more returned log, to see that gentle note and that clumsy smiley face once again.

On the other side, Old Neil leaned on his broken staff, struggling to stand up, and walked slowly toward the backup storage room next to the Potion Room.

Klein's body was placed quietly here. The fatal piercing wound across his chest was the tragic mark left by that death battle. Just moments ago, Daly had checked his neck, and there was no pulse; life had been cut off.

Yet, strangely, hovering over the clotted scabs of his wound was a layer of faint, grayish-white mist, slowly evaporating in the morning light, wisps of it lingering without dissipating.

Old Neil crouched down, staring intently for a moment, shock and gravity rising in his eyes. The fluctuations and structure of this mist were highly consistent with the Sefirah residue recorded in the Nighthawks' top-secret files.

After Klein's heart stopped beating and life ceased, the special spiritual structure hidden within his body and the power of the secret Sealed Artifact had activated on their own, repairing his shattered spiritual circuits from the root in a way that defied cognition.

Throughout the century-long history of the Nighthawks, such a phenomenon was unprecedented.

But fortunately, his body showed no signs of decay, and the wound was no longer worsening, as if he had merely fallen into a long, deep sleep.

Leonard and Lu Li worked together, carefully lifting Klein's body onto the wooden bed against the wall of the storage room—it was originally a makeshift bed for stacking old, discarded sealed charms, but now it had become the place where the young man temporarily rested.

Leonard silently took off his trench coat, folded it carefully, and gently placed it under Klein's neck, his movements extremely soft, fearing to disturb this deathly silence.

As he leaned over, he looked at Klein's calm, pale profile, and the small, fragmented details of the past suddenly flooded his mind.

When Klein first joined the Nighthawks, it was he who had voluntarily split half of his patrol route, telling the newcomer that following an experienced member would result in fewer mistakes and help avoid danger.

In the countless days and nights that followed, this young newcomer was always serious and silent, obediently following him through half the street, stopping politely at the intersection, and completing the rest of the route on his own.

He never complained of being tired, never complained about the boredom of patrols or the tediousness of logs; he was always diligent and reliable, putting one's mind at ease.

After spending months together, working side by side, he had never once noticed Klein's preferences. Every time they took a break to make tea, he only brewed his preferred Marquis Black Tea, and Klein would accept it calmly every time, drinking it quietly without ever showing the slightest displeasure.

He had never asked, and he had never cared.

This belated regret and melancholy weighed heavily on Leonard's heart, suffocatingly painful.

Old Neil spoke up, breaking the stagnant atmosphere, and instructed Lu Li to pull the blackout curtains of the storage room tight, using sealed talisman paper to carefully seal all the door cracks to isolate the room from external light and aura.

Lu Li retrieved a spiritual detection needle and suspended the tip over the center of Klein's forehead.

The next second, the slender tip lit up with a faint yet exceptionally stable silver glow, pulsing gently every ten seconds or so. The rhythm was smooth and regular, indistinguishable from the spiritual fluctuations of an ordinary person in deep sleep.

He informed Old Neil of this strange and comforting discovery.

The two looked at each other, both silent and speechless.

They had no way to peer into the secrets above the gray fog, no way to know what was brewing in that unknown realm. Perhaps there was some Beyonder power silently repairing everything, or perhaps this young Nighthawk, whose story had ended so abruptly, was simply lying dormant, waiting for his return.

At this moment, the only thing they could do was to guard the Chanis Gate, guard Tingen, and guard their sleeping companion.

The sky grew bright, and the morning light pierced through the mist, bathing Tingen.

Rozanne, who had been busy all night, hurried back to Blackthorn Security Company from the northern highland. By dawn, all the civilians evacuated from the northern suburbs had been handed over to the maritime patrol team. She had been up all night and was exhausted both physically and mentally.

The moment she stepped into the breakroom, she saw Leonard squatting in the corner, holding a screwdriver, stubbornly repairing the toaster whose base had been broken by the tremors last night.

Her gaze shifted slightly, and a familiar enamel mug sat quietly on the coffee table.

That was Dunn's mug, the black tea she had specifically prepared for him before she rushed to the northern suburbs last night. A full cup, the warmth had faded, not a drop of tea remained, sitting peacefully in its original place.

Rozanne walked up slowly, her fingertips lightly touching the rim of the mug; it felt slightly cool. She clearly felt a fine crack, a new mark caused by the violent tremors last night.

She picked up the mug silently, turned, and walked into the pantry, placing it gently on the top shelf of the cabinet. There, the mugs of all the past deceased and retired captains were neatly arranged—the silent heritage and remembrance of the Tingen Nighthawks.

Closing the cabinet door, she stood at the entrance for a few seconds, suppressing the ache in her eyes, then turned to look at Leonard, who was still obsessively fixing the toaster, and spoke softly: "Forget it if it can't be fixed; I'll just toast them manually from now on."

Leonard's hand holding the screwdriver did not pause, his tone carrying a hint of stubborn seriousness: "No, it must be fixed. Klein said before that the toast made by this machine is crispier than manual toasting."

A simple sentence made the silence in the room even heavier.

At the same time, Daly and two maritime patrol team members carried Dunn's body out from the depths of the corridor.

A heavy dark gray trench coat was gently draped over his face.

That was Dunn's own coat, taken from the coat rack in the office. The corners of the cuffs were still stained with the damp mud and dust unique to Iron Cross Street from their last patrol yesterday evening.

The stretcher carrying the deceased moved slowly through the corridor. Old Neil leaned on his broken staff, slowly stood up, and stood with his head bowed for a long time before the stretcher, mourning in silence.

Leonard stood at the entrance of the breakroom, clutching the screwdriver, quietly watching the slowly moving figure until the stretcher gradually faded into the distance.

Daly escorted the stretcher all the way to the entrance of the company, her cold and steady voice sounding slowly, dissipating in the morning breeze:

"Captain Dunn's heart was fused with the ashes of the Saint Selena saint. When the saint's power erupted just now, it permanently imprinted all of his spiritual characteristics into the outer sealing structure of the Chanis Gate."

"As long as the seal is not destroyed and the order of this place remains, he has never truly left."

"I will apply to the Church to remain in Tingen and maintain the Chanis seal for the rest of my life."

Her tone was calm and waveless, with no discernable emotion, yet it hid an extreme obsession.

"Now, I need to head to Saint Selena Cathedral to hand over the confidential documents left by the captain to the Church's archives."

As her voice faded, she turned and stepped toward the stairs, but her footsteps suddenly paused.

Fragments of the past suddenly surfaced in her mind—once, when she was organizing and archiving anomaly incident records, Dunn had flipped through them one by one, meticulously pointing out the date discrepancies in three files and asking her to re-verify and correct them.

At that time, she felt the captain was too pedantic; a date error of a mere day or two was completely insignificant.

But recalling it now, she finally understood that what is called persistence and what is called duty are always hidden in every meticulous detail.

She suddenly felt an urgent desire to re-verify all the archives, to organize every patrol log, to make all the records of the Tingen team complete and flawless, without leaving a single omission.

Twilight fell, and dusk shrouded Tingen.

The heavy tolling of the bells from Saint Selena Cathedral pierced through the mist, echoing deeply over the entire city, distant and solemn.

Deep within the seal of the Chanis Gate, the golden runes imprinted by the saint's ashes were pulsing with a weak glow at an extremely slow, constant rhythm, flowing quietly.

Beside the ruins of Iron Cross Street, several broken gas street lamps stood askew. Old boatmen returning from the northern suburbs were busy using wooden planks and tarpaulins to build temporary shacks, repairing the desolation left by the battle.

An elderly boatman with white hair picked up a street lamp brass plate that had been shaken off from the debris on the ground. He raised his hand to carefully wipe away the thick dust with his sleeve and solemnly hung it on the door frame of the temporary shack.

The evening breeze blew through the broken streets and alleys. The old man looked at the mottled, shining brass plate and whispered, his words firm:

"The light is out, but the plate is still here."

"Tingen is still the same Tingen."

The remaining glow of the sunset faded away, and the twilight deepened. The city, having survived the catastrophe, was quietly brewing a rebirth amidst the silence.

I've been back in my hometown harvesting wheat these past few days, so updates have been a bit slow. I hope you all understand!