[Crossing] Beacon Fire Dragon Line

〖Once upon a time, I slept on the peak

Time has worn away my handsome figure

The High Night Sky of Ancient Greece

The galloping Sagittarius also stops for me

Just to get a glimpse of my dreams.

……

Diana saw me sleeping

slowly into my arms

Fairy Goddess, Bright Moon

that burning night

There is gold and love.

——Borges "Endimión en Latmos" (Endimión en Latmos)〗Sheng Rui feels that he is walking on a long road.

The place was familiar, but he couldn't remember where it was at the moment.

By the way, this is Spruce Road in Philadelphia, the road he took every day to get to class at the University of Pennsylvania.

Starting from his apartment on 34th Street, walk along the Spruce Road to the west of the University City. On the tree-shaded path between Hamilton Hall and Williams Hall, there stands an inconspicuous carved iron gate. There is a row of hollow Latin characters: INVENIEMUSVIAMAUTFACIEMUS (We will find a way, or make a way.)

Every day when he passed by here, he would stop for a moment in front of this arch to look at this sentence.He was never alone, always accompanied by her - his girlfriend at the time.

The two are family friends. They have known each other since they were young, and they are alumni from elementary school to university.Everyone regarded them as a match made in heaven, and he himself felt that his future wife should only be her, and he couldn't imagine who else he could be.

The streetscape of Philadelphia has become the Trevi Fountain of Rome.Standing in the crowd with an unflipped coin in his hand, he saw the email from her on his mobile phone.

She listed a lot of reasons for breaking up, and the last paragraph is this: "There is a road in front of you, which can lead to a good place, and you go on. To be in that place, it's love. I'm right for you, and you know it. But you're never in love."

What about after that?

He remembered that he left the wishing fountain, what happened after that?

He can't remember.

A pang of anxiety crawled through my heart.It seemed that something important had to be done, and someone important was waiting for him.

The moment the dream receded, a pair of dark green eyes disappeared like a sigh.

……

A snow-white ceiling appeared in the hazy vision.He struggled to turn his eyes to focus, and saw that he was in a room similar to a residential house. The bed was soft and comfortable, and the pillow covers smelled good.He was covered with a thin quilt, and his body was naked.

Pain came from his right hand, and he held it up to his eyes.Hemostatic bandages were wrapped where the index and middle fingers should have been, and gauze was wrapped around the wrist.That night, holding a pin in his left hand, he carved his "dog tag" number crookedly into the skin of his right wrist, which the troops who rescued him used to verify his identity.

A nurse came in to take his temperature.He wanted to speak, but couldn't make a sound for a while.

The nurse knew what he wanted to ask, and replied with a smile: "Don't worry, you are safe now. This is the Bani Di Luca Nursing Home."

When he was unconscious, he was transferred here from the front line in Bologna along with other wounded members of the 85th Division.

... Barney di Luca?

He searched the name of the place in his mind.This seems to be a town in the northwest corner of Tuscany.

Trying to overcome the discomfort in his throat, he uttered a few words in a hoarse voice: "Excuse me, today, what date?"

"Fifteen... Oh, no, it's past midnight. NO.16, April sixteenth."

"...What?!" Sheng Rui bounced off the bed like an electric shock, but his eyes went dark, and he almost passed out again.

"Oh! Don't move!" The nurse yelled in surprise, holding him down in a panic.

"I, the Western Front..."

"Oh, don't worry about that. Your division headquarters sent a notice that your injury is relatively serious and you don't need to go back to the company. After recovering from your injury, you will go to France with the others and take a boat from Le Havre to New York." She smiled, "The war is over, soldier! You can go back to America!"

She said something else, but he didn't hear a word.Regardless of the fact that he was naked, he struggled to sit up and grabbed her hand: "Please, help me. I must go back to the Western Front!"

[21××year]

Before the jump, Xue Yuan checked the equipment one last time.

Because he acted without authorization, without technical support, all calculations had to be done by him alone.He waited for a long time, and finally caught such an opportunity to sneak into the laboratory when it was his turn to be on duty.

His only assistant is Chi Caifan.She had never been exposed to this job, and Xue Yuan spent a lot of time training her.

"Keep the link connection open, and don't interrupt it. After confirming the 'return' signal from me, start the recovery process. Remember to move quickly, because the flow of time on both sides is different. You hesitate for a second , I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Every time he said a sentence, Chi Caifan repeated it, like a primary school student taking an exam for the first time.

It takes a long time for the jump chamber to start.The two of them stared at the progress of reading the article, chatting one after another.

"How is he now?"

"That question doesn't make sense. For us, he's out of time and all the states are superimposed."

"Not in time... that's some kind of eternity."

"you can say it this way."

"Then tell me, where did my brother's soul go?"

"God knows." Xue Yuan muttered, "It might also be somewhere outside of time."

"So can it be said that whether it's dead people or lost things, they haven't disappeared and will come back one day?"

"It's all said, only God knows. You like to ask strange questions like Hans, and he asked me similar things."

"Because Ivan looks very mature, as if he knows everything." Chi Caifan laughed.After a pause, she said softly, "Ivan, thank you. Without you, I might not have the courage to do this." She shook her head, "You know, what is my biggest regret all this time? I love him so much, love him so much... but I never dare to do anything for him."

Xue Yuan was silent for a while, then raised his head and smiled, "It may be strange to say that, but—"

The electronic voice sounded: "The transition procedure is ready."

He cut off the conversation and walked into the jump cabin.The metal door slowly closed in front of his eyes.

"The target sector has been locked."

"The value reading is normal."

"The 10-second countdown of the transition procedure."

"The jump program is started."

It might be weird to say that, but I really envy him.

If a person has been loved deeply, he has a certain divinity.He is eternal, the favorite of the gods.Regardless of his own fate, and whether he knows it or not.

[In the early morning of April 1945, 4, Berlin]

These days, Qi Han is like a dog that has lost its master.

On the appointed day, instead of Sheng Rui, he waited for the bad news from Greta.

The moment he heard the news, the world before his eyes suddenly turned back to black and white.

Whatever expectations he had for the future, they would never come true again.

He was holding the one euro coin with Sheng Rui's name engraved in his hand.Sheng Rui's "dog tag" was left in the 84th Division to register death information, and Greta managed to get this weird coin over.

There is also a letter written in Chinese.There were only a few short sentences in the letter, explaining to Qi Han why he wanted to join the U.S. military.At the end it reads: "If one day you come back to Rome, please wait for me here. No matter what time, no matter where you are, I will find you and rush to your side."

But now, he will never come to him again.Never again.

In the distant horizon, the setting sun of the Third Reich faded away its last afterglow.

There are only a few hours left before the final Soviet offensive.To the east, the 1st Belarusian Front Army is gathering, and more than 8000 artillery pieces are approaching the city.

The darkness is like boundless loneliness, spreading wantonly on the earth.A crescent moon sinks silently to the west, silently staring at the lonely city that is still sleeping soundly.

In Borges' poem, the sleeping Endymion wakes up after many years, and the times have changed, and things have changed.He is alone, abandoned by God, struggling to find the tender lover in his memory, but only the indifferent moonlight responds to him.

When everything returns to nothingness, even time does not know where to go, his once handsome figure will eventually decay and decay, but in his damaged memory, there will be an eternal fragment: that burning night, there is gold and love.

At four o'clock in the morning on April 1945, 4 (note), on the Oder River-Nice River at the junction of Germany and Poland, tens of thousands of guns were fired.Along with thousands of signal flares, 16 searchlights were suddenly turned on, and the bright electric light dispelled the last night before dawn.

The last battle in the European battlefield of World War II, the Battle of Berlin, officially started.

The author has something to say: Note: Four o'clock in the morning is daylight saving time (Germany entered daylight saving time since April 1945 in 4), and Berlin standard time is three o'clock in the morning.Some other sources say five o'clock, which is according to Moscow Standard Time.Because this is from Qi Han's perspective, the local time shall prevail.Let me explain it in particular, so as not to cause confusion when you see the time difference in other materials~~^_^