The National Memorial Day is still a very high-level event, and Wang Zhengqiang’s deputy, a man named Zhang Jinwei, also came to take part in it.
After the memorial ceremony started, ceremonial soldiers carried wreaths and marched in with goose-steps. Everyone attending the event fell completely silent; the only sound in the venue was the sonorous, powerful footsteps of the honor guard.
At ten o’clock sharp, as the host announced, "Let us observe a moment of silence for the victims," a piercing air-raid siren resounded across the skies over Jinling City.
At that moment, all vehicles driving within Jinling City came to a halt, and together with the ships sailing on the Yangtze River and the inland waterways, sounded their horns.
That heart-wrenching, involuntarily shudder-inducing alarm echoed over Jinling City and also reverberated in the heart of every Huaxia person.
Luo Ziling, Yang Qingyin, Ye Xiaoli, and Shi Yidan were all in a heavy mood. They hardly spoke, just bowed their heads in silence.
After the moment of silence and the sirens ended, the Peace Bell was struck.
Several thousand white doves of peace took off from around the square.
Luo Ziling raised his head to look at the sky. The sky was still so dusky and oppressive that it weighed heavily on one’s chest.
"Will the blood debt ever be repaid in blood?" Luo Ziling sighed softly in his heart.
After the ceremony ended, Luo Ziling and Yang Qingyin followed the crowd into the memorial hall and toured it in a deeply sorrowful frame of mind.
When Zhang Jinwei saw Luo Ziling, he took the initiative to come over and greet him. But Luo Ziling did not bother with polite small talk; after finishing the tour, he went straight to the message area, planning to write an inscription in the guestbook and then leave.
What left Luo Ziling rather helpless was that when he was about to write, the memorial hall staff arranged for quite a few media reporters to film him.
The Weibo post that Luo Ziling had sent out that morning had already caused a stir. The memorial hall and the Jinling side certainly weren’t going to pass up such a chance for publicity and coverage. Luo Ziling did not end up declining; facing a cluster of camera lenses, he wrote his inscription in the guestbook.
"The thin pages of history cannot bear that era of humiliation; no matter how long the years, they can never wash away the blood and tears of that time. We will not forget, and we will never submit, because we are Chinese, because we have already grown strong!"
Luo Ziling wrote extremely fast; a few elegant lines of running script swiftly appeared before everyone’s eyes.
Applause broke out at once, people cheering Luo Ziling’s inscription.
After Luo Ziling finished writing, he did not linger. He said goodbye to everyone, then pulled Yang Qingyin along and left the memorial hall.
The process of him writing, and his figure pulling Yang Qingyin away, were all captured in the reporters’ cameras.
After leaving the memorial hall and finding a restaurant to eat lunch, Luo Ziling was surprised to see that the footage of his inscription and the content of his Weibo post were already being broadcast on television.
The message he had sent that morning had racked up several million views and reposts, and there were hundreds of thousands of comments.
Many people left messages saying they had long known Luo Ziling was a hot-blooded young man, but hadn’t expected him to be this hot-blooded.
His number of fans once again surged dramatically.
"Manage your Weibo well, make good use of your fans, and you’ve basically succeeded! I believe that on this special day, you gave a lot of people a pretty good lesson in patriotism," Yang Qingyin joked to Luo Ziling. "My Weibo has only a bit over a million followers; my fans aren’t even a fraction of yours. I’m so envious, jealous, and resentful. You’ve got to promote me, help divert some of your fans over to me so they can be my fans too."
"If you’re not afraid of the hassle, then no problem!" Luo Ziling, of course, wasn’t going to refuse.
"This trip to Jinling basically counts as receiving several rounds of patriotic education!" Yang Qingyin said with a smile. "So this trip is actually quite meaningful!"
"Definitely. We’re receiving patriotic education together." Luo Ziling nodded solemnly.
Toward evening, just as Luo Ziling and Yang Qingyin were getting ready to go back to the hotel to check out and then head to Yangzhou, someone came to visit them.
To their surprise, the visitor was Wang Jianmin, the administrative head of Jiangbei Province.
When they received the call from Wang Jianmin at the hotel front desk, saying he wished to pay them a visit, Luo Ziling was quite taken aback.
Luo Ziling did not refuse Wang Jianmin’s visit and readily agreed.
After hanging up, Luo Ziling said to Yang Qingyin with a smile, "Looks like our high profile has startled the local ’parent officials.’"
"That’s not a bad thing either!" Yang Qingyin smiled. "This Wang Jianmin should be one of the people your grandfather has his eye on, right?"
"He should be." Luo Ziling had a rough idea what kind of position Wang Jianmin held.
Because this man had only taken up his post in Jiangbei after Luo Xusheng was transferred to Jinling.
Precisely because Wang Jianmin arrived in Jinling later than Luo Xusheng, Luo Ziling knew he had been stamped with the Ling Family’s brand.
Since he was Ling Mingrui’s trusted man, it was no surprise that he would come to pay a visit.
Naturally, Luo Ziling had no reason to refuse to see him.
When Luo Ziling opened the door and ushered Wang Jianmin and his secretary inside, he warmly extended his hand and joked with a smile, "I really didn’t expect to actually alarm Mr. Wang!"
"I didn’t expect Mr. Luo and Miss Yang to choose this particular time to come to Jinling for a trip!" After giving Luo Ziling’s hand a firm shake, Wang Jianmin also greeted Yang Qingyin. "What I didn’t expect even more was that you’d stir up such a big commotion in Jinling, and on such a special day at that."
Wang Jianmin had not taken part in the memorial ceremony today; he had other official activities in the morning.
The main leaders of Jiangbei Province had all attended today’s memorial event.
If Wang Jianmin had also been at the ceremony, he would surely have greeted Luo Ziling at the Massacre Memorial Hall.
"We came all the way from Yanjing specifically to attend today’s memorial event!" Naturally, Luo Ziling wasn’t going to tell Wang Jianmin the real reason they had left Yanjing; he simply framed this trip as being for the sake of participating in today’s ceremony.
"So that’s how it is!" Wang Jianmin certainly knew this wasn’t the true reason Luo Ziling was in Jinling, but he did not press the matter.
He was here to make friends with Luo Ziling.
When figures like Lin Zeping, Wang Zhengqiang, Yang Yuanshan, and Fang Xiang all regarded him as someone of note and made a point of cultivating him, and when Ling Mingrui and Ling Jinhua also treated him with special consideration, how could Wang Jianmin possibly fail to see Luo Ziling as an important figure? With one being Ling Mingrui’s grandson and the other Yang Yuanshan’s granddaughter, Wang Jianmin did not feel he was lowering himself in coming personally to pay his respects to Luo Ziling and Yang Qingyin.
Since they were not familiar with Wang Jianmin, Luo Ziling and Yang Qingyin did not talk extensively with him. They only exchanged a few words about what had happened over the past two days and their travel plans.
When he heard that Luo Ziling and Yang Qingyin were planning to go on to Yangzhou and Gusu for sightseeing, Wang Jianmin immediately said he would have people make arrangements and try to provide as much convenience for them as possible.
Luo Ziling, of course, declined, saying they were just traveling in a private capacity and had never intended to disturb anyone.
Even so, he still noted down the phone numbers of several responsible officials in Yangzhou and Gusu.
In case something happened or any unexpected situation arose, he could call on them for help.
Moreover, Luo Ziling himself wanted to take the opportunity to get acquainted with a few more people with reasonably high rank, and, if possible, find ways to win them over.
After all, Ling Ruonan was painfully short of usable people by her side right now.