The job change is a bizarre and calamity; the nation begs me to tone it down.

And on that charred humanoid body, golden blood had clearly flowed out.

Unfortunately, the blood had completely congealed, turning into ugly crystals adhering to the surface of the body.

"What... what is this?"

Upon seeing this, Zhang Daoxuan's pupils contracted slightly.

Because at this moment, he could not only see, but also feel, a faint, almost imperceptible aura emanating intermittently from the charred chest.

That aura was like a candle flame that could be extinguished at any moment in a storm.

Struggling, refusing to be annihilated.

At this moment, Zhang Daoxuan stopped in his tracks.

He stood there, motionless, as if all the blood in his body had frozen at that moment, and his body began to tremble violently uncontrollably.

He recognized the straw hat, and he also recognized that familiar aura, which, though extremely faint, still carried a stubborn and unyielding spirit.

"Thump."

The next moment, Zhang Daoxuan's legs went weak and he knelt on the ground. The pebbles pierced his knees, but he felt no pain at all.

"Senior...Wang..."

This time, Zhang Daoxuan finally heard his own voice clearly.

He instinctively reached out his trembling right hand, wanting to touch the broken body, but his hand suddenly stopped in mid-air.

Yes, he was terrified that if he touched it, that fragile "coke" would turn into dust.

Tears, mixed with the blood and grime on his face, slowly streamed down his face, leaving two deep, disheveled lines.

However, his shouts went unanswered.

The charred body lay there quietly, as if it could no longer hear any calls from the world.

……

Consciousness is a mysterious thing. Wang Cang felt his consciousness being gradually extracted from that charred and broken body.

The pain vanished, the explosion vanished, and the whole world fell into a vast, profound silence.

He was like a speck of dust, floating in a void without up, down, left, right, light, or darkness.

He became a spectator, a silent audience member, forced to watch a movie that belonged to him, without a beginning or an end.

In the void, points of light began to flicker and converge.

A sound, coming from afar, becoming clearer and clearer.

It was a summer afternoon, and the cicadas were chirping tirelessly.

The scene in my memory is now frozen in time.

He shrank, so much so that the whole world seemed so big.

The five-year-old boy was squatting by the dusty roadside, aimlessly poking at an ant nest with a small twig.

The scorching sun beat down on the back of his neck, and the air was filled with the smell of dried earth.

There's also the cloyingly sweet scent of honeysuckle that's climbing over the neighbor's wall.

Her mother's voice, as gentle as a summer breeze, came from not far away: "Xiao Cang, come here quickly."

He looked up and saw his mother standing at the gate of their small courtyard, wiping her hands on her apron.

Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her expression held a mixture of excitement and nervousness that he couldn't understand.

He dropped the branch he was holding, shuffled over in his worn-out sandals, kicking up a little cloud of dust with his feet.

Then, he saw that person.

A man stood there in the glaring midday sun, his figure outlined as a blurry silhouette by the intense light.

As Wang Cang's eyes gradually adjusted to the light, the details slowly became clear.

The man was very tall and as strong as an ox, with bulging muscles in his arms and neck.

Several healed scars crisscrossed his face, some pale, others a chilling dark purple.

He was carrying a military green canvas bag with the words "Supreme Command" sprayed on it in white paint, the words of which had faded.

He just stood there, not saying a word, his eyes fixed on the little boy.

Wang Cang stopped and instinctively hid behind his mother, only showing half of his head.

He had seen a photograph of this man, but the photograph was flat and silent, while the man before him was alive and well.

He smelled of dust, sweat, and a... sharpness.

"Xiao Cang..."

His mother bent down, gently nudged his shoulder, and whispered, "Say hello."

The boy peeked out from behind his mother, looking at the man's scarred face and his unblinking eyes, and felt a sudden surge of tension and fear.

"Call me...call me Dad."

Her mother's voice came through again.

The word sounded very unfamiliar to him.

He had practiced in front of the mirror many times, but he couldn't bring himself to call out to the silent, tall stranger in front of him. He opened his mouth, but it felt like something was blocking his throat.

The man remained motionless, simply staring at him, his eyes revealing neither joy nor anger.

For a moment, only the desperate cacophony of cicadas could be heard between heaven and earth.

Finally, Wang Cang mustered all his courage and mumbled something in a voice barely audible.

"……dad."

silence.

Then, the mountain-like man moved.

He slowly squatted down, bringing his scarred face to eye level with the boy's.

As Wang Cang got closer, he realized that the man's eyes were not fierce.

There was a deep, deep weariness in it, and something else... something he couldn't understand at the time, something wet, like water.

A large, calloused hand, rough like sandpaper, reached out and clumsily ruffled his hair.

The man grinned, revealing a somewhat awkward, unskilled smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Why."

His voice was deep and hoarse, as if it rolled out from his chest.

He only said that one word.

But this one word seemed to encapsulate five years of emptiness, five years of longing, and all the unspoken words of the world he couldn't say.

That summer, the word "father" gradually lost its sense of unfamiliarity.

It became the heavy footsteps on the floor in the early morning, the smell of cheap tobacco burning, and the deep voice of someone sitting on the doorstep telling a story at sunset.

His father was a man of few words, and especially disliked talking about his feelings.

But once the conversation turns to the military, to his "Azure Dragon Legion," his words flow like a rusty lock that has been opened with oil.

He would sit on that old, peeling wooden stool and wipe his military boots again and again with a cloth until they were so black they could reflect a person's image.

And that small courtyard, in his narration, became a series of distant and dangerous battlefields.