The first meeting ended in a heavy atmosphere.
After dinner, Haftar arranged for them to rest in a relatively intact two-story building near the command center.
The night fell over the Desert City like ink, replacing the day's bustle with a tense silence.
Gunfire and explosions sporadically echoed from afar, like the groans of a dying beast, further highlighting the vulnerability of this lonely city.
The power supply was intermittent, and the dim emergency lights cast flickering shadows on the walls.
Song Heping was sleepless.
The heavy despair in Haftar's eyes during the day, the alarming red arrows on the map, and the Hunter's icy cost-benefit analysis tangled repeatedly in his mind.
He needed some space, some quiet, to untangle this nearly unsolvable chess match.
Alone, like a lone wolf surveying its territory, he paced silently in this temporary accommodation.
The corridor was deep, the walls cold.
He passed room after room with closed doors, from inside which came the muffled voices or heavy snores of his mercenaries.
He stopped at a slightly ajar door near the staircase corner.
A strip of dim yellow light slipped through the door crack, accompanied by the soft rustle of pages being turned.
So late, someone was flipping through materials?
Intelligence room?
As if led by an inexplicable force, Song Heping gently pushed the door open.
The room was small, an old wooden desk stood by the window, with an old-fashioned kerosene lamp lit on the tabletop, its glass shade stained yellow.
A camouflage jacket was hung over the chair.
Song Heping recognized the military rank on it; it was Haftar's.
But he seemed to not be in the room now.
What caught Song Heping's eye was a book spread open on the desk. In the flickering dim light, its cover was deep blue, with prominent Arabic text printed on it.
Song Heping's pupils suddenly contracted—he had a strong intuition because of its distinctive typography and the length of its title.
He walked closer, his footsteps as light as a cat.
The lamp's glow illuminated the pages.
Seeing the font clearly, Song Heping's eyebrow twitched.
He recognized it was Arabic.
Because over the years he had been in the Middle East and had learned some Arabic writing.
No mistake!
It was Arabic!
The title clearly entered his vision: "On Guerrilla Warfare."
Wow!
There's such a translation?!
Song Heping's heart suddenly thudded, as if struck with a heavy hammer.
In this war-torn, nearly stone-age-blasted Desert City, on the desk of an Arabic veteran general labeled a "warlord" by the Western world, was this book?
This powerful contradiction's impact far surpassed a thousand armies.
He couldn't help but reach out, his fingertips trembling imperceptibly as they gently brushed over the book's rough cover.
The book appeared to have been read countless times, its corners heavily worn.
He carefully opened the front page.
The paper was yellowed, in addition to the printed Arabic script, there was a handwritten annotation in blue ink, long dried, and written with powerful strokes.
Song Heping's gaze was fixed on this line of Arabic text.
The noise from the daytime—Haftar's angry accusations, desperate sighs, Hunter's cold "cost-benefit" analysis, and the suffocating red arrows on the map—suddenly receded like tide.
Only this line remained, in the dim light, shimmering with a wisdom that pierced through time and fog.
Almost subconsciously, he read the annotation on the front page in clear, low Arabic: "To preserve humanity is to preserve land, and both will endure..."
No sooner than he finished speaking!
A deep, hoarse voice filled with incredulous surprise and a strange resonance abruptly sounded from the doorway:
"To preserve land but lose humanity, both will be lost?"
Song Heping turned sharply!
Haftar was standing at the doorway, having apparently heard the words Song Heping just spoke.
His face, carved with worry and fatigue, now interwoven with extreme shock and a near-reverent excitement.
His eyes locked onto Song Heping, and then he swiftly turned his gaze to the open book on the desk, as if recognizing this Eastern mercenary leader for the first time.