Sentinel Ni Ji, returning from the contaminated zone, ran into Commander Luther of the Royal Guard in the White Tower.

Luther, seeing Ni Ji, was very happy, striding towards him.

“You’ve conquered another contaminated zone. You’re so capable, you’ve brought me so much honor.”

“I’ve already submitted a report to commend you. In the next few days, the Minister of Military Affairs will personally award you a medal, and I’ll also get your rank promoted.”

Luther put an arm around Ni Ji’s shoulder, patting him repeatedly, looking delighted.

“Haha, promotion and a raise, are you happy? You have to treat us tonight.”

Ni Ji’s attitude towards him, just like before, was neither overly familiar nor distant.

His voice calm and gentle, like the surface of a still lake.

“It is all thanks to the Commander’s support. Then, tonight, I’ll treat you, Vice-commander Ji, and our brothers to drinks.”

Hearing Ji Xuan’s name, the hand enthusiastically patting Ni Ji’s shoulder froze in mid-air, and Luther’s expression stiffened.

Ni Ji’s eyes, like dark stones at the bottom of a cold pool, flickered, glancing at the commander beside him.

That confident and heroic commander was gone, Luther’s face a mixture of fear and bewilderment, he opened and closed his mouth several times, wordlessly.

But this was the White Tower, and everything was bathed in holy light.

He only froze for a moment, then mumbled, “Ji Xuan… Ji Xuan, he had something to do, and temporarily left.”

Ni Ji nodded, didn’t ask any further questions, as if he didn’t care about the matter at all.

At night, in the capital, in a quiet and private tavern far from the White Tower,

Several officers of the Royal Guard gathered to celebrate Ni Ji’s promotion and commendation.

Ni Ji was usually cold and aloof, he didn’t enjoy lively gatherings. This time, he had been promoted and was treating them, it was a good opportunity to get close to him, so many people came.

At the table, everyone raised their glasses to congratulate him. Ni Ji was also very straightforward, accepting every toast.

After a few rounds, the atmosphere warmed up.

The sentinels toasted each other, talking freely, gradually losing their inhibitions.

“Ni… Ni Ji, brother, this is the first time I’ve had drinks with you, you, you’re more straightforward and generous than you look.”

“Captain Ni usually doesn’t talk much, only at the wine table do we see his true character. From now on, we’re brothers.”

“Captain Ni is treating tonight, I have to eat more, Boss, another dozen beers!”

“It’s a pity Vice-captain Ji isn’t here, he didn’t get to drink with Captain Ni.”

Someone mentioned Ji Xuan.

Ni Ji casually chimed in. “Yes, Vice-captain Ji is always so thoughtful, I also wanted to have a drink with him. What a pity.”

The topic quickly shifted to Ji Xuan.

Although he was the vice-captain, Ji Xuan was usually low-key, considerate, never taking credit for himself, always fighting for benefits for the lower-ranking sentinels.

He was very popular in the Royal Guard, from top to bottom.

“When I first joined, I was still a rookie, I didn’t know anything, I was tricked into making a big mistake. It was Vice-captain Ji who took the blame for me, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here drinking with you today.”

“Last winter, we couldn’t collect enough money at the outpost, my brothers didn’t even have enough winter uniforms, and we still had to go to the northern border. It was the vice-captain, humbling himself before that fat pig, the Minister of Finance, who managed to get us a sum of money, I remember this.”

“Yeah, Vice-captain Ji’s a good person.”

“It’s a pity he’s not here today.”

“Next time, we have to make him drink with us.”

Ji Xuan, Ji Xuan, Vice-captain Ji…

Luther was incredibly drunk tonight, he usually had a good alcohol tolerance, and knew his limits, he rarely drank himself into this state.

He didn’t know why, but tonight, he felt very heavy in his heart, and had unknowingly drunk too much.

His head on the table, his eyes red, the Commander started talking nonsense, murmuring about his past.

He talked about how he and Ji Xuan had grown up together.

He talked about how they both had difficult lives when they were young.

He had had a younger sister. Ji Xuan had had a twin brother.

His sister had starved to death during the time when the contaminated zone expanded.

Ji Xuan’s twin brother had been discovered to be a Guide, forcefully taken back to the capital.

“You know? Tho- those bastards from the capital, they forcefully induced his bonding heat, forcing him to submit to a Sentinel,” Luther slurred.

He had already forgotten that he himself was now one of those “bastards” from the capital.

“Ji Xuan was hiding at my place at that time, we, through a crack in the door, watched them push his brother into the car.”

“Later… later I heard that his brother committed a serious crime, and died a terrible, terrible death, heh…”

“What crime did he commit? He was only avenging himself.”

Luther, in a stall of the tavern’s restroom, was throwing up violently, his head in the toilet.

The drunken sentinels outside were still yelling and making a fuss.

The lights in the restroom were dim, and it was empty, no one else there.

The lively chatter came in waves, sounding distant, like a dream.

Luther sat in the small stall, his back against the wall. He felt very cold, as if having lost something important, he just couldn’t remember.

The alcohol made his mind a mess.

No, his mind had been in this muddled state for many years now.

As if a slender, white finger had reached in, stirring his brains into a pulp. Making him no longer able to think with proper emotions.

Luther heard the sound of light footsteps.

Those footsteps stopped outside the stall.

Outside the crack in the door, a pair of black military boots – most of the Sentinels who had come to drink tonight were wearing these boots.

Those boots stopped there, not knocking, nor coming in to help him.

Luther squinted, only seeing a dark shadow, its shape elongated by the pale light in the restroom.

A cold voice came,

“Do you still remember how you got that scar?”

That voice, low and hoarse, like a nightmare from the deepest depths of his soul.

Goosebumps rose all over Luther’s body, and he was too shocked to speak.

Those were words Ji Xuan had said, a conversation only between him and Ji Xuan.

Yet Ji Xuan couldn’t be here, Ji Xuan had made a mistake, he was a criminal, he had seen with his own eyes him becoming a prisoner of Her Majesty.

Who was the person outside?

Luther struggled to stand up, but his body was limp, his legs kicking uselessly on the ground, unable to exert any strength.

The alcohol had completely numbed his nerves.

A kind of incense was burning in the corner of the restroom, it made his limbs weak, his head buzzing.

Who was it, who was outside?

“You’ve completely forgotten, haven’t you? Forgotten how everyone died, forgotten how you got that scar!”

The voice from the other side of the wall came again.

Like ice water poured over his head, like the questions of those departed souls, a wake-up call, a rebuke to his soul.

“I… I haven’t forgotten,” Luther trembled, closed his eyes, tears rolling down his scarred cheeks. “I’ll never forget.”

“Where is Ji Xuan?” The voice outside the door asked urgently, in a low voice.

Luther opened his mouth, but didn’t speak.

He wiped the vomit and tears from his face, took out a pen from his chest pocket and a piece of scrap paper from his other pocket.

Lying on the ground, his trembling hand drew a simple map on the small piece of paper, marking it with a few words.

His arm trembled as he wrote, the words crooked.

Tears and sweat dripped onto the paper. He carefully and clumsily wiped them away.

With his head covered in sweat, he pushed the small piece of paper along the floor, out through the crack in the door.

Having done just this one small thing, he felt as exhausted as if he had just fought a desperate battle against some enormous force in his mind, he collapsed powerlessly in the small stall.

The hazy scent of incense continued. The exhausted commander completely lost consciousness.

By the time he woke up the next day, his mind would be completely muddled. He wouldn’t remember anything from tonight.

Outside, a black-gloved hand picked up the piece of paper from the floor and put it in a pocket.

This drinking party was very enjoyable, a success.

Not only was Commander Luther down, having passed out in the restroom, the host, Ni Ji, was also dead drunk, and had to be carried home by a few of his colleagues.

The sentinels who took Ni Ji home put the drunk Ni Ji on his bed.

Looking around Ni Ji’s residence, other than a bed, a wardrobe, and some simple training equipment, there wasn’t a single extraneous item in the small room, it was very clean, one could see everything at a glance.

The sentinels couldn’t help but admire Captain Ni’s discipline and self-control.

The powerful Captain Ni really was dead drunk this time.

He lay on the bed, his face flushed, motionless.

“Captain Ni’s this drunk, he probably won’t be able to get up tomorrow, right?”

“He made such a big contribution, he was promoted and got a raise, of course he’s happy.”

“It’s okay, isn’t the Commander also drunk?”

The sentinels quietly closed the door, the sound of their footsteps gradually fading away.

In the dark room, Ni Ji, lying on the bed, suddenly opened his eyes.

His eyes, as cold as an icy spring on a snowy mountain, not a trace of drunkenness in them.

He quietly sat up, silently walked to the balcony, pushed the door open, and peeked out through the crack.

The sentinels’ footsteps were already several blocks away, very faint, gradually disappearing.

The street was silent in the dead of night, the world enveloped in thick darkness.

Ni Ji, in black, his hand on the balcony railing, lightly and nimbly jumped down, landing on the balcony of the room below.

The building below looked the same as his, old, narrow, and inconspicuous.

But the security measures inside were much higher than those of the small room upstairs.

Two security doors, a high-yield self-destruct device inside, requiring an iris scan to unlock.

Ni Ji opened the door and slipped in.

The layout of the apartment was the same as the one upstairs, but inside were all kinds of old weapons brought back from contaminated zones.

The rarest, most advanced, highly destructive weapons of all types neatly lined the shelves on the entire wall.

The anti-gravity gun from the Land of No Eyes, white phosphorus bombs from the Golden Tree Contaminated Zone, electromagnetic cannons, pulse guns, grenades, and explosives.

An eye opened on a long, completely black blade, glanced at Ni Ji, then closed again.

This was Ni Ji’s arsenal, the “granary” stocked by this Sentinel who had been in and out of contaminated zones hundreds of times, the Avenger’s private armory.

Ni Ji walked to a square table, sat down, picked up a brand new personal terminal on the table, and activated its virtual screen.

On the unregistered personal terminal, there was an email signed “Beacon”.

The email was sent at the moment Ji Xuan was summoned by the Queen.

Vice-Captain Ji, having received the summons, calmly arranged everything, erased all traces,

Then he had gone to the palace at the top of the White Tower, disappearing into the White Tower’s depths.

In this pre-prepared email, many secrets were carefully recorded, including the words Ni Ji had said to Luther outside the bathroom.

Ni Ji opened the email from “Beacon” and read it from the beginning again.

At the end of the email, Ji Xuan in the video took off his glasses, smiled at the person outside the screen, and said,

“If, one day, I disappear in the White Tower, I hope you can pass on this faint beacon.”

The image froze there, Ji Xuan’s expression gentle, his smile calm.

In the darkness, the faint light from the virtual screen shone on Ni Ji’s face. He silently watched the video in the email, carefully memorizing everything.

A communication request flickered below the virtual screen.

Ni Ji tapped it, and a virtual conference window popped up, four or five figures with their faces hidden appearing around him.

Everyone was silent, looking at Ni Ji, the atmosphere heavy.

Some of these people were far away in border outposts, some nearby, in the capital.

Despite the distance, at this moment, because of Ji Xuan, they were all filled with the same grief and indignation.

“I’ve got the position,” Ni Ji said calmly, “Operation Save Beacon officially begins.”

A few exchanged glances, and one hesitantly spoke, “It’s too dangerous for you to go personally. If something were to happen to you…”

That person’s code name was Spore, his voice sounded very familiar.

He hadn’t been called this before. He almost had his body parasitized by spores in the Golden Tree Contaminated Zone, hence the code name.

Back then, that sentinel captain, nicknamed Big Sickle, had been Ji Xuan’s close friend.

To test Ni Ji, he had pretended not to know him, putting on a hostile appearance.

Later, Big Sickle had been saved by Ni Ji in the contaminated zone.

Ni Ji then formally joined their team. The two became partners, despite the distance between them, with a shared goal.

Ni Ji interrupted him, “If I fail, you will take my place. Lead everyone and wait.”

Spore opened his mouth, wanting to object, but he knew that right now, Ni Ji was the most familiar with the situation inside the White Tower, and also the most suitable warrior for this.

Finally, he could only say in a deep voice, “Then be very careful. We’ve already left the outpost, ready to provide support at any time.”

“We wish you all the best. Avenger.”

“You must come back safely, partner.”

The virtual conference ended, his companions’ figures disappearing.

In the quiet little house, Ni Ji stood up.

“Wow, so it’s finally time for the main event?” The dagger at his waist said excitedly.

“I’m not taking you this time.” Ni Ji took off the bone-white dagger and placed it on the shelf.

“Ah! Hey! Why? What the hell?! I want blood, take me with you, give me blood!”

Ni Ji ignored its complaints, carefully choosing his weapons from the well-stocked shelves.

“You’re too conspicuous, you’ll expose my identity.”

“No matter what, you have to take me! I’m sure to drink my fill this time,” the abandoned dagger raged. “You fickle, unfaithful bastard, you use then abandon people, bah, I hope that Kraken dumps you…sob…”

The Sentinel in the darkness grabbed the babbling hilt.