This was a chaotic, arid, and dilapidated city street. Judging by the architectural style and the script, it should be in the Middle East.
On the street, hardly a building was intact, and the once-high towers were reduced to mere ruins. Those that were evidently residential buildings had windows almost entirely shattered and walls riddled with large holes.
Blood.
Blood spatter was everywhere, bodies covered in black ash lay beneath the rubble, and the dry, hot wind whipped up sand and scraps from the ground, making a wailing sound.
Gunshots of "bang," "bang bang" continued to echo from afar, fragile lives constantly taken by bullets. The screams of women and the cries of children were heard from all directions but quickly became quieter.
Jensen looked around in panic at the scene.
Judging by his clothing, he was one of the invaders, but at this moment, his expression was as if he were a squirrel mistakenly wandering into this chaos.
"Fizz... fizz..."
Suddenly a voice came through his headset, for Vid, who was within his memory, it seemed to echo at his ear as well.
"Hey! Guys, hurry up!" Someone excitedly reported a location, then said, "Found something good... it seems to be the target our superior was looking for!"
In an instant, many cheered excitedly, like a pack of beasts roaring.
But Jensen widened his eyes looking ahead, his eyes bloodshot and white, making him appear as if he were on the verge of collapse.
The scene abruptly froze, silver mist rapidly covering the view, and the memory's scene trembled violently, like a TV screen with poor signal reception.
"Ah!!!!"
Accompanying a piercing scream, the scene finally stabilized, but large areas were still covered by opaque white mist, as if there were many gaps in the memory itself.
Jensen's hat had fallen off, there was blood on his forehead, and he scrambled up from the ground, still dreamily following others running around.
This was the interior of a building, with many rooms lining the long corridor, and a soldier in front fired, the lock bursting open with a loud bang, and terrified screams came from inside.
Inside the room, five or six children wearing brown robes huddled together, the oldest no more than sixteen or seventeen, the youngest looked under ten.
Seeing the door burst open, the children ran around in a panic.
"Stop! Don't move!"
A soldier shouted loudly.
Thud! Thud!
The muzzle spat darts with wires that precisely shot two kids running in the back.
Blue electric arcs exploded on their small bodies, and the children convulsed violently, falling rigidly to the ground, their limbs still twitching.
"Control the intensity!" someone angrily shouted, "The order is to capture alive!"
"Sorry, boss!" A soldier who fired turned back, grinning, "Don't worry, these little brats are tough..."
Before he could finish, an older child who had dodged several shots turned around, mixing tears and hatred on his face, raised a Magic Wand, and screamed a few spells hysterically.
He spoke not in English, and the pronunciation was very peculiar; Vid couldn't understand the meaning, but soon saw the spell's effect—
The soldier who fired, and one leading the front, they were hit by the spell, almost silently blew into pieces, flying limbs showering Jensen in blood.
Jensen wet himself; his legs shook so much he could barely stand, and the muzzle trembled incessantly.
"Mon...monster..."
Jensen wanted to shoot, but seeing those innocent faces, his finger on the trigger wouldn't press down.
But the children across wouldn't stop for his hesitation, only to see another girl suddenly swing her hand—
"Boom!"
Jensen and two others were hit by an invisible giant hammer, thrown backward, crashing heavily into the wall.
The path to the door had been cleared.
Vid stood by the door, seeing the children struggling to carry their fallen companions on their backs, stumbling towards the exit, he sighed softly in his heart.
Their spells seemed powerful just now, but mainly it was the result of explosive emotions in a moment.
In terms of Magic Spell usage, these children were completely no match for Hogwarts students of the same age—they looked like they couldn't even perform Levioso, let alone half of them didn't even have Magic Wands.
A bunch of kids with no combat power just ran out like that...
Vid knew what would happen, but this was Jensen's memory; he could change nothing.
And Jensen, who had fallen, wasn't unconscious either. He struggled to prop himself up, looking towards the door, with a look of hoping they could escape smoothly.
However—
"Pop pop pop pop—"
The two older children at the front hadn't stepped out the door and were hit by seven or eight stun guns, the crackling of electric currents blended together, even faint smoke emerged.
The children fell one by one, their painful spasms soon turned into a deathly coma.
Jensen watched all this unfold, his breathing grew rapid, his hand gripping the gun trembled violently, and then he was severely kicked.
"If you're not dead, get up quickly! What a waste, a whole team almost got killed by a few kids!"
The speaker was also a soldier, tall and strong, but chest-upwards was blank—as in Jensen's distorted memory, this person seemed faceless and nameless, just a fierce symbol.
Soon after, this memory lasting only a minute or two began flickering again, covered by the silver mist. After a full thirty to forty seconds of blank silence, the broken scene slowly surfaced.
This time, most people's bodies were only halves or even less; some people had only boots standing on the ground or half-heads floating in mid-air.
The only clear image in the scene, apart from Jensen himself, was an old man kneeling on the ground, with white hair.
The place they were in seemed to be an underground structure, as it was extremely cold and lacked windows around.
The ground was paved with neatly cut stone bricks, many portraits hung on the walls, carved with intricate patterns, but these were unclear due to the scene's fragmentation.
The old man had his hair wrapped with a headscarf, wearing a dark blue short tunic, almost soaked through with blood, with a staff broken into three pieces beside him.
His face showed an extremely pained expression, breathing rapidly, trembling all over.
A man squatted before him, and with a "thud," stabbed a short knife through the old man's shoulder.
"Still won't talk?"
The man said, "You had a chance to use that teleportation magic to escape, yet stayed for those brats... since you didn't leave then, what's the point in holding the secret?"
He spoke gently, "Or do you have some moral constraint, needing to be forced?" Using force, I could meet your needs... Bring those wizard brats over, gut them one by one in front of you—then maybe you'll have something to say?"
"No... please..." the old man trembled and pleaded, "Spare them, they're just kids... Kofi and Gab, they're your Muggle children too..."
"Oh... but they have Magic, so they're a different species, right? At least you Wizards think so."
The man chuckled lightly and said, "And even if they were all... um... 'Muggles,' you think I'd care about them?"
The old man's eyes widened in disbelief at his words.
"Naive fool," the man sneered, "Go and see outside, today the Muggles who died are tens, hundreds times more! They are our main targets, and you... are just extra spoils!"
"But... but those were children..." the old man said tremulously.
"Oh." The man said indifferently, "So what?"
Seeing the old man's mouth agape with no words, he waved and said, "Bring over one of the kids... the youngest one!"
"Wait, wait..."
The old man hurriedly stopped, "Spare them, I'll...I'll tell you everything..."
...
Minutes later, the old man, with broken legs, lay prone on the ground, his Magic Wand forcefully taken away by a soldier.
And on the stone floor, bricks rumbled and moved, forming a slope downward tunnel revealing a Chamber of Secret hidden underground.
Heavily armed soldiers flooded in, and soon, they cautiously carried various items in boxes up. Among them, a Golden Teapot was particularly familiar.