Si Nan took a few steps back, taking a deep breath to calm down. He wanted to approach to carefully examine the bodies. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of something reflecting in the dim light from the soil near the bodies, a weak glimmer that flashed and disappeared. It was a steel dog tag, still attached to a thin chain. Si Nan picked it up.
For some reason, when his fingertips touched the cold steel, his heart suddenly raced, as if it was about to burst from his throat, until he flipped over the front of the tag.
It was a familiar string of numbers.
Si Nan’s hand began to tremble, his gaze scanning these numbers one by one, as if he suddenly couldn’t recognize the simplest Arabic numerals.
1180610
- Yan Hao.
Si Nan slowly knelt to the ground, his mind blank as if thinking of nothing, yet in an instant, remembering everything.
The B Military District base, two small groups about to part, Yan Hao stepping forward to hug him tightly, turning back with a smile in the railway tunnel.
The riverside during their escape, Yan Hao sitting in the shimmering twilight, mustering the courage to tentatively grasp his hand.
Yan Hao, with a touch of melancholy yet always gentle, always thinking of others, Yan Hao laughing heartily with teammates under the sunlight… ultimately transforming into that figure sobbing and curling up in pain on the rooftop on a windy night.
“I can’t give you the antibodies, can I give you my life instead?”
Si Nan trembled, gripping the tag tightly, its sharp edge cutting into his palm’s flesh, but he felt no pain. He desperately suppressed his hot, choked breathing, arching his body, his fingers digging deep into the blood-soaked soil.
The confrontation was like a bowstring being stretched to its limit, the forest unnaturally quiet.
One kilometer away, in a forest clearing.
The moment the gunshot rang out, Zhou Rong lowered his binoculars, leaping down from a tree, standing up and waving a hand without looking back, ordering: “Gunfire at eleven o’clock, nine hundred meters ahead, pursue.”
Twenty special forces soldiers stood at attention: “Yes!”
——Luo Mou’er!” Sinan shouted sternly: “Come out!”
A sound of movement.
Sinan turned towards the sound, instantly locking his gun’s aim. In a stone crevice not far from the cliff, a round ball suddenly emerged.
