101: Chapter 101 Remnants of the Willow Character

The transport vehicle was intercepted before dawn.

Two of the streetlights outside the old industrial park were broken, and the remaining few were reluctant to shine; their light fell on the iron siding of the carriage like a layer of dirty ash.

When Zhao Ye pressed the last piece of the old station sign into the containment box, his knuckles were still numb.

He had already smashed that thing, but black water was still oozing from the cracks, like some kind of not-quite-dead insect, inching along the bottom of the box.

"If you move again, I'll really dismantle you."

After saying it, he felt the words were stupid.

Bai Ya was squatting nearby, using the Fire Seal to add a mark to the box opening; hearing this, his mouth twitched.

"If it understands you, then you've successfully intimidated an anomaly."

Zhao Ye looked at him irritably: "Can you say less?"

"No."

Shen Qinghe ignored them.

Her attention was fixed on the deepest part of the carriage.

There was still one item there that hadn't been fully opened.

It wasn't a monthly pass, a courier receipt, or an old station sign; it was half a charred willow wood plaque.

The plaque was small, as if it had been split off from some old door plaque or the side of a station sign. The edges had been burned by fire, but the surface wasn't completely charred; between the black cracks, a bit of dark yellow wood color was visible.

Only one character remained on it.

"Liu."

The font was crooked, as if someone had carved it in bit by bit with a knife. Deep in the carvings were thin red lines that had already dried, yet still made one feel they were wet.

Shen Qinghe wore gloves and placed the wooden plaque onto the temporary containment cloth.

The Fate-Illuminating Bronze Bell did not ring.

This actually made her feel even more uncomfortable.

Truly dangerous things sometimes don't make a sound. They just wait for you to get close, wait for you to press your ear against them.

"Not the core," Bai Ya said, glancing at the Grey Net feedback. "A fragment. A severed delivery tail."

Zhao Ye frowned: "Even the tail is this sinister?"

"If the head were here, tonight wouldn't be us collecting the vehicle; it would be the vehicle collecting us."

Just as Zhao Ye wanted to retort, Tang Zhiwei's voice came through the channel.

Her voice was very soft, softly to the point of being abnormal.

"Lu Chengzhi's identity has been confirmed."

The few people on the scene fell silent.

Lu Chengzhi, a peripheral driver. That night, outside the Safe House, there were only incorrect navigation directions and anomalous text messages. After receiving the dispatch from Tang Zhiwei, he only replied with one sentence: "Understood."

Later, the bus arrived.

Four affected personnel were sent into the Safe House.

He did not get off.

When he was found later, he was sitting in the driver's seat, his hands still gripping the steering wheel, and the vehicle screen was frozen on a line of text.

[Terminal Station has been reached.]

Tang Zhiwei paused for a few seconds on the channel before continuing: "He has a daughter at home, in junior high school. I will take care of the compensation plan."

No one replied.

At times like this, whatever one says sounds like nonsense.

In Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen was also reviewing the replay.

In front of the central stele, the Grey Net listed the losses for the night.

Liang Cheng, ordinary delivery person, taken away by the Night Bus, failed to be rescued.

Lu Chengzhi, peripheral collaborator, confirmed dead.

Chen Jue crossed the line, nearly triggering a secondary induction.

Han Yue, Chen Shi, Li Xi, and other Jiangbei collaborators still have residual marking risks.

"Shall I archive it?" Zero asked.

Lu Chen looked at the words "failed to be rescued," and it was a long time before he spoke.

"Archive it."

He said it very steadily.

But after the archiving was completed, he did not turn to the next page.

The firelight reflected on his face; clearly not hot, yet it made his eyes feel a bit dry.

He remembered when he first obtained the Core of the Torch, his first thought was to survive. Later, it was to establish order, and then later, it was to let more people survive.

But now, names were beginning to appear in the records.

Not data.

Not losses.

It was someone who didn't wait for the next bus, someone who held the steering wheel until the end, someone who was originally just delivering food, someone who just accepted a temporary task.

Zero did not urge him.

The hall was as quiet as a well.

After a moment, Bai Ya transmitted the image of the willow wood plaque back.

[Residual character discovered: Liu.]

The Grey Net could not directly locate it.

This was not a complete anomaly core, nor was it a node already marked by Torch. It was like a map with most of it torn away, leaving only a road name, letting people know there was a road ahead, but not knowing where the road led.

The Prophet quickly sent a message.

He didn't offer any pleasantries, directly throwing out three place names.

Liuqiao Old Station.

Liuhe Paper Effigy Street.

Li Xi Town Old Passenger Transport Station.

Bai Ya stared at the screen and clicked his tongue.

"Does this guy live inside the Jiangbei database?"

The Elf responded quickly: "He isn't a database; he is the kind of person inside the database that is the most annoying. He saves everything, deletes nothing, and the filenames are a mess."

Zhao Ye asked: "Which one is the most dangerous?"

The Prophet replied with two words.

"Liu Bridge."

Immediately after, he added a sentence.

[I haven't just started fearing this thing today.]

Shen Qinghe looked at that sentence and did not immediately evaluate it.

What she cared more about was the other side.

At the Safe House, Xu Minglan re-partitioned the affected people.

Those who received text messages sat on the left, those who heard the bus sound sat on the right, and those who had contact with tickets or photos of station signs were isolated separately. Li Xi held the registration board and asked them one by one for their names, sense of time, and the sounds they heard; when she asked the third person, her pen tip paused.

That was a young man who had been swept by the bus lights; after waking up, the first thing he asked wasn't where he was, but: "Has Liang Cheng come back?"

Liang Cheng was that delivery person.

His electric scooter was still parked outside the Xiqiao Temporary Stop, the delivery box tilted on the back seat, and inside was a portion of cold fried rice. The order note was very ordinary: less spicy, include an extra pair of chopsticks.

This kind of ordinariness was harder to bear than blood.

When Lu Chen saw the synchronized footage, his fingers paused on the desk.

The cruelest part of an anomaly was never how scary it was, but that it forcibly erased someone who was originally just rushing for time from life, leaving only a serving of fried rice that no one would pick up again.

Zero filed Liang Cheng's record into the ordinary casualty file.

Lu Chen looked at that line and suddenly spoke: "For ordinary casualties, don't just write the ID number."

Zero paused.

Lu Chen said: "If there is a name, write the name."

The firelight flickered slightly.

The two characters "Liang Cheng" were added into the record.

In the Safe House, Han Yue sat in front of the folding table, flipping through his handwritten records page by page.

His writing was dense, some places stained by water, the edges of the paper curled up, as if it had been crumpled and then unfolded.

When he flipped to the third book, his hand stopped.

It was a clipping of an old news article from three years ago.

[The night before the demolition of Liuqiao Old Station, the last bus carried away seventeen people.]

Below the news headline was his own handwriting.

[I was outside the station at the time.]

Han Yue stared at that line of text, his face turning pale bit by bit.

He didn't remember.

He completely didn't remember why he would have written this sentence.

Before the willow wood plaque was put into the containment box, Lu Chen asked Zero to add another note.

[The "Liu" character fragment is tentatively not classified as an independent anomaly.]

This sentence was very important.

If it were treated as an independent anomaly, Torch would only handle the plaque itself. But if it were just a tail, the real thing was still behind the tail.

Outside, someone was carrying the containment box, the bottom of the box rubbing against the floor, making a very soft sound.

But Han Yue suddenly looked up.

The sound didn't sound like a box.

It sounded like wheels rolling over the edge of an old station platform.

It also sounded like someone shouting from very far away:

"Liu Bridge has arrived."