# 526
**Chapter 526: Holding Up This Sky**
The young man watched Chen Han’s departing figure, let out a long sigh, and silently followed.
His name was Lu Yu, nineteen years old, a freshly graduated Night Watch rookie from the training camp. Because his final assessment hadn’t gone well, he’d been assigned to Squad 332, stationed in Anta County…
When he first walked into that decrepit forestry station and saw Chen Han strolling out in a heavy coat, the thin frost coating the room, he felt his future turn gray—
a broken town, a broken house, a squad of exactly one.
After he joined, it became two.
Life on the northern frontier was a nightmare for Lu Yu, a southerner born and bred. Only after arriving in Anta County did he learn what “so cold your spit freezes” really meant…
The only things that held the chill at bay were a dodgy radiator and a tiny, cracked stove.
Luckily, Captain Chen Han was a decent man who looked after him, but Lu Yu couldn’t stand the brutal environment. He couldn’t imagine how Chen Han had survived here alone for so long.
Didn’t he ever find it unbearable?
Lu Yu had been with Squad 332 barely six weeks and had already drafted three transfer requests. Before he could submit them, this sudden upheaval shattered every hope.
Wind God, foreign lands, fog, eerie ghost-light…
Lu Yu never dreamed that things an ordinary Night Watch might never encounter in a lifetime would all crash down on him.
Thinking that he was now inside the fog and might never return to Great Xia, he actually missed that tumbledown forestry station—harsh, but at least not life-threatening.
The two of them, a stranger on each back, braved the dark and cold to the underground parking lot beneath a shopping mall.
Several braziers burned, pushing back a corner of darkness and filling the garage with warmth. Beside them lay hundreds of unconscious Anta residents, brows twitching as if trapped in nightmares.
Chen Han set his stranger down by a fire, tucked a blanket over him, and pressed a hand to the man’s forehead.
Burning hot.
Chen Han sighed. After a moment’s hesitation, a faint white light glimmered in his palm.
“Senior Chen Han, you can’t use spiritual energy again!” Lu Yu said urgently. “Your soul was already injured by the astral wind, and you’re running a fever. If you push your Forbidden Ruins any more, your body will collapse.”
“Quiet,” Chen Han said calmly.
He channeled his spiritual power into the Forbidden Ruins. Under that pale glow, the stranger’s pallor faded and the fever cooled.
Chen Han’s Forbidden Ruins was Sequence 389—【Micro-Healing】. As the name implied, it had no offensive use and was mediocre even as a healing ability. Among Night Watch abilities, it was bottom-tier.
If it had been any more useful, he wouldn’t have been relegated to Squad 332.
The light dimmed; Chen Han lifted his hand and tried to stand, only for the world to spin. He toppled toward the brazier.
Lu Yu caught him just in time.
“Senior, are you okay?” Lu Yu asked anxiously.
He touched Chen Han’s forehead and jerked away at the heat. “Why is it so high…”
Chen Han shook his head, cracked lips parting. “I’m fine… Just help me sit a moment.”
Lu Yu eased him down by the fire. Chen Han’s pale face glowed red in the dancing flames. He pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket and lit it from the stove.
Hands trembling, he took a long drag and slowly exhaled.
The tension melted from his features.
“You’re still smoking now?” Lu Yu frowned.
Chen Han smiled and offered him a cigarette. “Not an ordinary smoke—trace amounts of military stimulant, keeps you sharp.”
Lu Yu blinked. “Where’d you get something like that?”
“Left by a senior.”
“Rare these days… a veteran?”
“Mm.”
“What happened to him?”
Chen Han’s hand twitched slightly. “Killed in action.”
Lu Yu said nothing. He held his cigarette to the fire, took a fierce puff, and burst into coughing.
“Tastes awful. Takes getting used to,” Chen Han chuckled.
Lu Yu sighed, cigarette dangling, staring at the flames.
“What’s on your mind?”
Lu Yu hesitated, then shook his head. “Nothing.”
Chen Han glanced at him. “I can guess…
You’re thinking—what the hell kind of lousy luck is this?”
Lu Yu stared.
Chen Han’s eyes reflected the fire. “Why so damned unlucky? Stuck in this dump, suffering every day, then a Wind God shows up and now we’re probably going to die here…”
“Senior, how do you—”
“Because I thought the exact same thing.”
“…”
“How many transfer papers did you draft?”
Lu Yu flinched. “I… I didn’t—”
“Truth.”
“…Three.”
Chen Han nodded, unsurprised.
Lu Yu asked cautiously, “You’re not angry?”
“Angry? At myself, maybe. Months ago I was just like you, desperate to leave. Slap myself if I blame you.”
“Then why did you stay?”
Chen Han was quiet for a moment.
“Someone once said—frontiers need guarding.
He taught me: a Night Watch’s worth isn’t in squad number, city size, or medals… but in the act of guarding.
When you stand in a town ready to give your life and youth for its people, your value is already fulfilled.”
His gaze swept the garage, over the hundreds of sleeping residents.
“When skies are clear, we can chase dreams, blend into society, watch over a forest…
Now the sky has fallen—
we hold it up for them.”
Lu Yu gazed at Chen Han’s fire-lit profile, feeling he understood, yet understood nothing.
A soft sound came from the garage entrance.
Fever-racked Chen Han exploded upright like lightning, Straight Blade flashing into his hand, eyes locked on the darkness.
He was a leopard sensing prey, baring fangs beside the flame.
On the pitch-black street,
a black-cloaked figure walked slowly forward, sword-case on his back.