Why it never ends

Chapter 927 Burning

Under the cover of firepower from high above, the police were unable to get close for a while, and the men in gray robes turned their horses around and planned to drive away from the road.

Hesta covered Valeria and her female companions and led them into a nearby building, and then she herself jumped out of a window and onto the roof.

"Jane!" Valeria chased to the window. "Where are you going?"

A hail of bullets shattered the wooden windowsill, and flying wood chips scratched her face. Valeria screamed and shrank back to the ground, quickly retreating to a safe position.

Hesta jogged along the rooftop. She could clearly sense that two snipers were following her. Bullets kept smashing rubble and eaves in front of her, behind her, and to her left and right. She raised her hand to take a flying stone from the air, then jumped calmly and threw the stone in her hand towards the sniper point.

"...Damn it, it's a mercury needle!"

The sound of the chasing gunfire stopped, and Hesta jumped off the roof. She had just noticed that in the alley next to the battlefield - a narrow road only one house away from the scene of the gunfight - several children in their teens were running all the way, the youngest of whom looked not much older than eleven. Each of them was holding a beer bottle in their arms, and each of them had a determined look, obviously also a part of this battle.

It seems that the sniper just now is covering these children.

The children quickly dispersed at an intersection and sneaked into different places. A moment later, a carriage suddenly turned here and flew over the steep stone steps.

"Comoros! They are coming!" the man in gray robe on the carriage spoke loudly.

Soon, Hesta heard the familiar scream of the red kestrel again.

The policeman in pursuit slammed on the brakes. He didn't even bother to straighten his police hat before shouting with a nearly broken voice: "Be careful! There's an ambush!"

In response, he was hit by a firebomb thrown from mid-air.

The moment the bottle broke, a fire broke out, and gasoline splashed on the police motorcycles, igniting even bigger flames. The police were forced to abandon their motorcycles, shouting and cursing and slapping the flames on their bodies.

Immediately afterwards, the second carriage came diagonally from another stone road. It leaped over the stone steps in the same posture and landed steadily on the wider road below.

"Be careful!" The girl standing on a high place let out a heart-wrenching cry - not far away, a prone policeman pointed his gun at the gray robe on the carriage.

The trigger clicked and the man in gray robe fell to the ground.

The frightened horse was still running wildly, carrying the silver-white Eternal Tree away. The gray robe that had fallen to the ground turned over several times, and then lay on his back, motionless. Under him, the rushing blood flowed out along the cracks in the bricks and stones.

The young girl jumped off the platform angrily, her face covered with tears. She held a wine bottle in each hand, with the cloth strips on the bottle mouths already on fire.

"Go to hell, you third district bandits—"

Two girls poked their heads out from the platform behind her: "Comoros!"

"Shoot!" An equally angry order came from the police. The bullet hit the girl holding the incendiary bomb and directly shattered the cement table where the children were hiding.

When the second round of shooting began, Hesta dived along with the bullets, and when she was about to brush away these deadly little gadgets, she suddenly changed her mind and turned her attention to the two children who were already close in front of her - she picked up the children and quickly climbed up to a higher roof.

"What flashed past!?" the policeman roared, "Where is the person?"

Before the children could see what was happening, they found themselves being taken to a higher place. The battle on the main road was still going on, and a small number of armed elements had been holding the main firepower of the police here. Now that the gendarmerie was about to arrive, they should also prepare to evacuate. However, the determination of the police to blockade was really unexpected, and they failed to escape successfully after several attempts to break out.

Three of the sixteen members of the team finally escaped. The last gray-robed man had used up all his bullets, lit a Molotov cocktail, and rushed towards the police on the street. A young policeman was unable to dodge and was hugged tightly by the burning gray-robed man. The flames quickly engulfed the two of them, and a shrill scream echoed in the street. The young policeman's companion had to shoot him to end this inhuman suffering as soon as possible.

At the end of the alley, Hesta put the two children down safely. They looked at Hesta, said nothing, and quickly went through the fence of the nearby street park and disappeared behind the shadows of the trees.

On the main street, the military police had already begun to take over order. As all the intersections in front and behind were blocked, nearly a thousand people were crowded on this road.

Hesta returned to the crowd and saw the bodies of the dead gray-robed men lined up in a row. She then noticed that the backs of the brown and black hands of these men were soaked in red potion.

Before this, she heard the police call these people "Red Palm Sangha", a name that did not seem to be appropriate - because the only things dyed red were the backs of their four fingers and their entire thumbs, while the palms were flesh-colored.

"Jane!" Hesta heard Valeria's voice. She turned around and saw a familiar face not far away.

"Great, you're okay! You just - how could you just -"

Several police officers walked past Valeria and went straight to Hesta. They also noticed that Hesta had just climbed out of the window sill alone and disappeared for a while. Before the police spoke, Hesta first showed Eucalyptus her ID. After checking it, the other party asked her why she climbed onto the roof just now. Hesta said frankly that she wanted to find the position of the sniper on the high ground.

"This is simply nonsense, don't do this again!"

"Who are those people?" Hesta asked.

"They are all very dangerous insurgents," the police replied. "They are carrying out subversive activities in the name of monks. If you see such people next time, avoid them. Otherwise, you will die without knowing how you died. You are looking for a sniper point. Do you think you are a mercury needle?"

The police took down Hesta's contact information and address and told her to expect questioning anytime in the next few days.

Hesta did not respond, but simply asked, "Can we go now?"

"Let's go!"

Hesta turned around and saw Valeria still standing there. Her female companions had already lined up at the only exit, leaving Valeria alone, looking at Hesta with a serious look.

"Thank God." Valeria looked a little sad. "If anything happens to you here, it's all my fault..."

Hesta smiled slightly. She glanced at the exit in the distance which was firmly controlled by the gendarmerie. The crowd waiting to leave had already formed a long winding queue.

"We can't go out now anyway, why don't we find a place to sit down?" Hesta pointed to a tea restaurant on the side of the road, "Let's have a drink."

Valeria laughed too.

The two crossed the street and sat down at a small round table facing the street.

"It's really strange. Why do the rebels here want to act in the name of monks?" Hesta whispered, "Do you know their names? I just heard the police say they are called Red--"

“Red Palm Sangha, I know,” Valeria whispered, “a practitioner of radical Buddhism.”