Chapter 3 overture

"Tell me, what is happiness?" "Happiness? Happiness is waking up on a bright spring morning and spending the night with a beautiful, passionate, murderous female assassin the night before." "Bah, can't you think of something else?" The goblet lay between his fingers, like a living thing trapped, glowing.The liquid in the cup was the same color as his eyes, rippling lazily in his tired eyes.The surface of the liquid reflected sunlight, showing golden veins on his face. He raised his glass and drank it down, experiencing the feeling of strong wine pouring down his throat: a slight sting, and the sun seemed to sting his eyes.He turned the wine glass, his movements were slow and smooth.He seemed fascinated by the rough bottom and the raw, silky smoothness of the cup.He raised his glass to the sun, squinting his eyes.The glittering light of the glass is like hundreds of small rainbows, two strings of small bubbles spiral up in the thin stem, and the double helix lines shine with golden light under the blue sky.

He slowly put down his wine glass, narrowed his eyes and looked down at the silent city.The line of sight passes through countless roofs, spiers, and tall buildings, and sweeps across clumps of trees—the gray parks scattered everywhere, looking beyond the winding city wall in the distance.Under the cloudless sky, the gray-white wilderness and smoky-blue mountain peaks shone slightly in the hot air. Without taking his eyes off the view, he flung the glass over his shoulder and into the cool hall behind him with a jerk of his arm.The cup fell into the shadows and shattered. "You bastard!" A moment later, someone muttered behind him, his voice was indistinct, as if he was engulfed in something. "I thought the heavy artillery was going to start bombing, almost scared the shit out. Do you want shit all over here??? Damn it! Glass shards in my mouth?? Huh?? I'm bleeding." After a while. "Did you hear that?" The muffled voice raised the volume, "I'm bleeding?? What on earth do you want? Let the floor be full of poop and noble blood?" The sound of scraping and smashing glass rang out , was quiet for a moment, and then said, "You bastard!"

The young man on the balcony no longer overlooked the city, he turned and walked back to the hall, walking unsteadily.The hall is empty and cool, with a millennia-old mosaic floor that has since been covered with a clear scratch-resistant layer to protect the little tiles.In the middle of the hall was a huge, elaborately carved banquet table surrounded by a ring of seats.Scattered along the walls were smaller tables and chairs, as well as low chests of drawers and tall cupboards, all of the same thick, dark wood. Several walls are decorated with murals, most of which are war scenes. Although some faded, they are still exquisite and majestic; the other wall is painted white, and many ancient weapons are hung on it, forming a mandala, spears, swords, Shields, swords, halberds, hammers, flying stones and feathered arrows, hundreds of them.The blades of these weapons were jagged and arranged in a great vortex, like the flying fragments of an explosion, but the shape was incredibly symmetrical.Rusty guns were placed on the sealed fireplace, and the muzzles of the guns faced each other majestically.

There were a dull picture or two hanging on the walls, and a few old tapestries, but there were still many places that were empty.At the top of the hall are triangular windows inlaid with stained glass, and wedge-shaped beams of light cast on the mosaic floor and wooden furniture.The white stone walls were topped by red pillars, holding up the black wooden beams that stretched across the hall, like a huge tent propped up by clumsy fingers. The young man kicked an overturned antique chair upright and sat down on it. "Where did the noble blood come from?" He put one hand on the banquet table, and stroked his scalp with the other hand, as if combing his thick long hair, but in fact his bald head was shaved and shiny.

"Huh?" asked the voice, which seemed to come from under the large table beside the young man. "When did you get involved with those high-class people, you old drunkard?" The young man wiped his eyes with his fists, then spread his palms and rubbed his face. There was no answer for a long time. "Huh?? Once upon a time, a princess bit me." The young man looked up at the roof and snorted softly: "No evidence, no evidence!" He got up again and went to the balcony, took down a pair of binoculars from the railing, and looked into the distance.He made an impatient "tsk-tsk" sound, shook his body, and then stepped back to the window, leaning on the window frame to keep the telescope steady.He kept adjusting the focus, observed for a while, then shook his head, put the telescope back on the window sill, leaned against the wall with his arms folded, and looked towards the city.

The sun baked the brown roofs and rough gable tops like breadcrumbs, and the dust like flour. Then, for a split second, memory takes over the sight.The sunny city turned gray and then dark.He remembered several other castles. (Looking out from the fort, the parade ground is covered with tents, the glass in the window frame shakes. In one of the towers of the Winter Palace, a young girl curls up in a chair. Now things are different, she is dead .) In the hot weather, he shivered and tried to shake off the memory. "And you?" The young man looked back into the hall and asked, "What am I?"

"Have you ever had anything to do with those ?? Huh?? Big guys?" The young man suddenly became serious. "I used to??" He said, then hesitated, "I once knew someone, she?? You can say she was a princess. There was a time when a part of her was in my body." "Again, your what?" "A part of her, in me, was." There was a moment of silence, and then the other party asked politely, "Did you say the wrong thing?" The young man shrugged. "Anyway, it's a weird relationship." He turned and looked at the city again, looking for smoke, people, birds and animals, or anything moving, but the scene in front of him was like a background painted on a curtain.Only the air is moving and the light flickers slightly.He thought to himself, if there is really a stage background curtain, what method should be used to create the same effect?He then decided not to bother.

"See anything?" the man under the table asked loudly. The young man didn't answer, just reached into his clothes and rubbed his chest.He was wearing a shirt underneath and his military jacket was unbuttoned.This coat is worn by a general, but he is not a general. He moved away from the window again, picked up a large jug from a low table against the wall, lifted it over the top, and poured out carefully.With his eyes closed and his face upturned, he wanted to drink to his heart's content, but there was not a drop of water in the jug.The young man sighed, stared at the sailboat decoration on the empty jug, and gently put it back in its original position.

He shook his head and turned around. There were two huge fireplaces in the hall, and he strode toward one of them.He struggled to climb onto the wide mantelpiece, and stood on it, examining the ancient weapons hanging on the wall.It was a huge caliber musket with an ornate stock and an open firing system.He tried to remove the musket, but it was firmly attached to the stone wall.After a few tries, he gave up and jumped back to the ground, staggering as he landed. "What did you find this time?" the voice asked hopefully. Leaving the fireplace, the young man walked cautiously to a corner of the hall where a slender ornate wall cabinet was covered with bottles and jars on the top and on the floor around it.Most of the bottles were empty or broken. After searching for a long time, he found a complete bottle.He carefully sat on the ground, knocked open the mouth of the bottle with the leg of the chair next to him, and downed half the bottle in one gulp.He drank quickly without spilling a drop, and the clothes and mosaic floor were clean.Coughing and splashing, he put the bottle down and kicked it under the closet as he got up.

He went to another corner of the hall, where there was a large pile of clothes and guns.He picked up a gun, untied the cloth belt, sleeves, and ammunition chains that were wrapped around the gun, inspected it, and dropped it again.He slid open several hundred empty magazines, picked up another gun, inspected it, and tossed it aside.Then he found two more guns, one of which was slung over his back, and the other on a box covered with rags.He continued to rummage through the pile of weapons, and when he stopped, he had three guns on his body, and the box was also covered with various small accessories.He swept the contents of the box into a sturdy, oil-stained knapsack, which he dropped on the ground.

"No way!" he said. At this time, there was a low-pitched roar, and I don't know where it came from, and I don't know what it came from.It doesn't come from the sky, but more like it comes from the ground.The person under the table mumbled something. The young man went to the window and put the gun on the floor. He stood there for a moment, looking out. "Hey," said the person under the table again, "can you help me up? I'm under the table." "Callis, what are you doing under the table?" asked the young man, kneeling down to examine the gun.He tapped the indicator, turned the dial, adjusted the gun's settings, squinted to check the crosshairs. "Oh, anyway, you know about this and that." The young man smiled.He walked across the hall to the table, reached out and dragged out a large, red-faced man.The man wore a field marshal's jacket one size too big, his gray hair was cropped short, and he had a prosthetic eye in his face.The big man was lifted up and managed to stand still. He slowly brushed off a piece or two of broken glass from his clothes, and then nodded slowly as a way of expressing his gratitude to the young man. "By the way, what time is it?" he asked. "What? What are you mumbling about?" "I asked the time, what time is it now?" "daytime." "Ha!" The big man nodded, with a smug face, "I knew it was daytime." He watched the young man go back to the window to pack his guns, then moved away from the big table, and walked to another table after a while , that is, the one with the large jug decorated with sailboats. He wobbled up the kettle, turned the kettle over his head, blinked his eyes, opened his mouth to continue, and occasionally wiped his face with his hands and straightened his collar. "Ah," he said, "I feel better now." "You're drunk." The young man straightened his gun and said without raising his head. The old guy pondered for a while. "Are you criticizing me? I don't like this." The big man replied grandly, knocking on the prosthetic eye and blinking his eyelids a few times.He turned around as carefully as possible, facing the mural of the naval battle scene, then aimed at the largest warship in the painting with his prosthetic eye, and clenched his jaw slightly. He threw his head back and coughed lightly.With a whoosh, there was a small explosion. Three meters away from the battleship on the mural, a large vase was blown to pieces and dust flew up. Callis shook his head in disappointment, and tapped the prosthetic eye. "Yeah," he said, "it looks like I'm really drunk." The young man picked up the selected gun and turned to look at the old guy. "If you had both eyes intact, you would be seeing double images by now. Here you go." Said he threw a gun to the old guy.Callis had just reached out a hand to take it when the gun slammed against the wall behind him and fell to the ground with a clatter. Callis blinked and said, "I think it's better for me to be under the table." The young man came over and picked up the gun, checked it again, and handed it to Callis.He made the old man wrap his arms around the musket and dragged him to the pile of clothes and guns. Callis was taller than the young man, and he stared down at the young man with a real eye and a fake eye (the prosthetic eye was actually a miniature pistol).The young man found a few ammunition chains from the weapon pile and hung them on the old guy's shoulders. He thought Callis' eyes were funny, so he made a face and took out a pair of bullets from the pocket of the old guy's field marshal uniform. (actually it was) something like an armored eye patch, and carefully put the eye patch on Callis' gray crew-cut hair. "Oh my God!" Callis gasped, "I'm totally blind now!" The young man quickly adjusted the position of the blindfold. "Sorry, it's reversed." "It's much better now." The old guy straightened his back and took a deep breath. "Where are those bastards?" His voice was still vague, and it made people want to clear their throats. "I can't see them, probably still outside. It rained a lot yesterday, and the visibility is good now." The young man stuffed another gun into Calis's arms. "Mongrel." "Well said, Callis." Several ammunition magazines were stuffed into the old guy's arms again. "Disgusting bastard." "That's right, Callis." "Dog miscellaneous?? Well, I'd better drink two more cups." Callis shook again.He looked down at the guns in his arms, and seemed to be thinking hard about why these guns were there. The young man bent to pick up more guns, but then changed his mind when there was a crashing sound behind him. "Unlucky!" Callis muttered, falling to the ground. The young man went to the wine cupboard, took all the unopened bottles he could find, and went back to where he was.He saw Callis, buried under a mass of guns, boxes, chains, and the remains of banquet chairs, snoring peacefully.He cleaned up the old fellow's pile of rubbish, then unbuttoned a few buttons on his oversized field marshal's uniform and tucked the bottle between his coat and shirt. Callis opened his eyes, looked at it silently for a while, and asked again: "What time did you just say it is now?" The young man buttoned up half of the buttons again and said, "I think it's time to go." "Well, that's fine. I trust you, Zarqawi." Kalis closed his eyes again. The young man called "Zarqawi" by Kalis walked quickly to one end of the banquet table, where the tablecloth was relatively clean.There was a huge, mighty gun in there.He picked up the gun and returned to his equally large but not imposing companion, who was snoring.He grabbed Callis by the collar and dragged him backwards toward the end of the hall, where the door was.He stopped halfway, picked up the bag of weapons he had prepared earlier, and carried it on one shoulder. The young man had dragged Callis halfway down the hall when the old man woke up.With his good eye, he stared at Zarqawi's blurred, upside-down figure. "Hey!" "What's the matter, Callis?" He dragged Callis forward a few meters. Calis looked around the quiet white hall and saw everything around him slipping backwards. "Do you still think they're going to bomb this place?" "Ok." The gray-haired man shook his head. "No!" He took a deep breath and said, "Definitely not!" He shook his head and said again, "Never!" "I feel like it's coming soon." The young man whispered while looking around vigilantly. But there was still silence when they came to the door of the hall, and he kicked the door open.The staircase leading to the apse and courtyard is of emerald green marble inlaid with onyx.He walked slowly down the stairs, weapons and bottles clanging and guns bouncing on the steps.He dragged Callis down step by step, knocking the big man's heels hard enough. The old fellow groaned every time he went down a step, and once murmured, "Don't be so rough, girl." At this the young man stopped and looked up, and Callis was snoring again, the corners of his mouth curled up. Salivating.The young man shook his head and continued to move forward. On the third flight down, Zarqawi paused on the landing, had a drink, and left Kalis snoring on the floor.After taking two sips, he felt that his strength had recovered and he was able to continue going downstairs.Kalis was still licking his lips, and just as Zarqawi grabbed the old guy's collar, he heard a whistling sound that grew louder and deeper.He fell to the ground, pulling half of Callis to cover himself. The impact of the shell was very close, and the high windows shattered one after another, and some plaster also fell. They fell leisurely in wedge-shaped beams of sunlight, and sprinkled all over the steps. "Callis!" He grabbed the old guy by the collar and jumped backwards down the steps. "Callis!" he yelled at the top of his voice, dragging him to the edge of the platform, nearly falling over. "Callis! You sleepy old bastard! Wake up!" The cannonball fell from the sky again, the whistling sound pierced the air, and the power of the explosion shook the entire palace.A window above their heads was blown into the hall, and broken glass and plaster rained down the stairwell.Zarqawi bent forward, still dragging Kalis in his hands.He staggered, cursing as he ran down another flight of stairs. "Callis!" he roared, stumbling past the empty alcoves and bucolic murals. "Your old ass is going to explode, Callis, wake up!" He ran down another flight of stairs to the landing, where the remaining bottles clashed violently, and the giant gun scratched much of the paneling.Then there was another scream of falling shells.For a moment, the world was spinning, the steps under his feet jumped up, the glass windows shattered above his head, dust was flying, and the surroundings were gray and white.He stood up staggeringly, and found that Kalis was sitting upright on the ground, cleaning the lime lumps from his body, and rubbing the good eye from time to time.Another shell exploded, this time at a much greater distance. Callis looked miserable. He waved a hand in the flying dust and said, "This is not fog, and that is not thunder, is it?" "Yes!" he exclaimed, getting up and leaping down the steps. Callis coughed and staggered after him. When they came to the yard, the intensity of the bombardment increased.As soon as he ran out of the palace gate, a shell landed not far to his left.He jumped into the halftrack and tried to start it.At this time, the shells had blown off the roof of the main hall of the palace.Slate and ceramic tiles smashed into the courtyard one after another, shattering into countless small pieces when they hit the ground, sending up clouds of smoke.He shielded his head with one hand and fumbled for the helmet in the passenger seat.At this time, a huge rock fell from the sky, smashed a shocking dent on the hood of the convertible car, and then bounced to the side, and another cloud of dust was flying. "Damn luck!" he cursed, finally finding the helmet and snapping it on to his head. "Nasty dog??" Callis stumbled in the dust before he could finish, barely reaching the halftrack.Cursing, he got up and got into the car.Another shell came and flew into the house on the left. Dust from the explosion obscured the outline of the building, but a wedge of sunlight shone through the chaotic courtyard, framing the shadow of the palace. "I thought they were going to bomb the Capitol," Callis said calmly, looking out into the yard, where a truck was burning. "Now I know, they didn't bomb there!" The young man slammed his fist on the starter and roared at it. "You won." Callis sighed, looking confused. "What were we betting about?" "Who cares about that?" Zarqawi growled, kicking somewhere under the dashboard and the halftrack's engine reluctantly revived. Callis shook his head to shake the crumbs of the tiles from his hair, and his companion fastened the helmet and handed him the other.Callis was relieved, took the helmet and started to fan his face, the helmet patted his heart lightly, as if cheering him on. Then he stretched out a hand and looked at the warm red liquid above, in disbelief. The engine stalled.Callis heard his companions swearing loudly and slamming on the starter.Amidst the whistling of shells, the engine hummed intermittently. Callis looked down at the seat beneath him, and there was another thunderous explosion, then billows of gray smoke, and the halftrack trembled. Callis's seat has been dyed a bright red. "Medical soldier!" he yelled at the top of his throat. "what happened again?" "Medicine!" Callis yelled over another explosion.He stretched out his red-stained palm and said in a trembling voice: "Zarqawi, I was shot!" His good eye was full of fear, and his hand was shaking. The young man was extremely annoyed, and slapped the old man's palm aside. "That's wine! Idiot!" He leaned forward, pulled a bottle of wine from Callis's jacket, and threw it into his lap. Callis looked down, surprised and delighted. "Oh, that's it." He checked the inside of his coat and carefully picked out a few pieces of broken glass. "I'm still surprised, why don't I suddenly feel that the clothes are fat." He murmured. The engine started suddenly, and the shaking of the ground and flying dust finally angered it.The explosion in the garden threw dust of brown dirt and fragments of statues over the fence and into the yard, and there was a crash and crash all around them. He struggled with the gear lever until the drive snapped into engagement and the car nearly threw them both out.They rushed out of the yard and onto the dusty road outside.A few seconds later, the hall collapsed. It was hit more than ten times by heavy artillery, and it was already riddled with holes and could hardly support it.The main hall fell to the courtyard, and the courtyard and the surrounding area were full of broken wood, tumbling stones, and more dust waves spilled everywhere. Callis scratched his head, muttering into the helmet filled with his motion sickness vomit. "A bunch of bastards!" he cursed. "Well said, Callis." "Disgusting bastard." "That's right, Callis." The halftrack turned a corner and sped away.Ahead is a desert.