At the sight of that license plate, the steel pipe in Xu Wenqiang's hand fell to the ground with a clang.
Although he ran with the underworld, he knew what that license plate meant.
It belonged to Great Xia's unshakable anchor.
It represented the supreme authority guarding the nation's gates!
Bang!
The car door slowly opened.
The first thing to emerge was a foot in a black cloth shoe.
An old man in an old-style naval uniform stepped out.
His silver hair was meticulously combed. Though wrinkles covered his face, his back remained ramrod straight, like a lighthouse that would never fall.
Xu Anbang.
The navy's first commander, one of the Twin Pillars of the Dragon Kingdom!
He carried neither a cane nor a weapon. Instead, he tightly gripped a brass military bugle polished bright with use.
The bugle was covered in dents, clearly tempered by countless battles.
Elder Xu came to a stop. Without a word, he turned sideways and gave someone inside the car a crisp military salute.
Everyone held their breath.
Who could be sitting inside that car to command such respect from a man who was himself a national treasure?
A large, rough hand gripped the doorframe.
Then a tall, powerfully built figure stepped out.
He was an old man even older than Xu Anbang.
He wore an exceedingly strange outfit. It was a coarse cloth military uniform that could no longer be seen in this era, washed almost white and worn through in places.
Most shocking of all, the uniform was densely covered in patches.
Red, blue, gray...
Scraps of cloth in every color had been sewn onto it with crude stitches. It looked like a beggar's outfit, yet also like a Patchwork Garment.
The old man shouldered a bare flagpole.
At its tip hung