113: Chapter 113 The Sparkling Road

After the Liuqiao Old Station Second Anchor lit up, the roads in Jiangbei stopped feeling like roads.

Navigation systems would lead cars into dead ends, taxi drivers would find themselves circling back to their starting point mid-drive, and even familiar highway exits seemed to have been moved by someone.

Ordinary people could get by with cursing at the navigation and turning around to restart, but the people of Torch couldn't always rely on luck to make their appointments.

The alley where Zhou Yuan disappeared was less than three kilometers from Liuqiao Old Station.

By the time Zhao Ye arrived, he was seven minutes late.

Seven minutes isn't long.

But in an anomaly, it's enough time for someone to cross the yellow line, for a ticket to have a name written on it, and enough for a bus that never existed to drive away with the bus stop sign.

Zhao Ye stood at the entrance of the alley, his face dark.

Bai Ya said in his earpiece, "Don't look so grim. The alley hasn't been taken away, which means he hasn't entered the main station yet."

"How do you know?"

"I don't," Bai Ya said. "I'm just telling you not to tear down the wall."

Zhao Ye kicked an empty soda can on the ground, sending it flying.

The can rolled into the alley, hit the corner, and made a crisp sound.

The next moment, the sound of someone punching the metal edge of a ticket with a ticket puncher came from deep within the alley.

Click.

Zhao Ye didn't move.

He remembered the rules. If you hear the sound of station staff, do not respond, do not pursue the source, and do not cross the yellow painted line on the ground.

Shen Qinghe arrived a little later than him.

She unwrapped the outer covering of the Fate-Illuminating Bronze Bell.

The bronze bell didn't ring, but its surface felt slightly cold in her palm.

"This isn't a waiting area," she said. "It's a fork in the road."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone has hidden the real road."

In Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen pulled up the records for the Jiangbei First Anchor and the Liuqiao Old Station Second Anchor to the same layer.

Both Fire Seals were present; although they were over ten kilometers apart on the real-world map, the anomalous trajectory traced back by the Grey Net looked like a straightened line.

One end of the line was at the Safe House.

The other end was at Liu Bridge.

Between them lay the city, roads, residential buildings, and countless lives that had yet to be confirmed.

Zero popped up three notifications in a row.

[Resonance between dual anchors has reached critical levels.]

[Emergency fire road can be established.]

[Authorize formal members for a one-time cross-point jump?]

Lu Chen didn't click confirm immediately.

"Risks."

[Users must pass along the confirmed Fire Seal path.]

[If the middle of the path is severed by route-type anomalies, the user may become stranded in the interlayer between reality and the anomaly.]

[Ordinary people cannot pass. Those without formal authorization cannot pass.]

This wasn't a door that could whisk everyone away from danger.

It was simply a way for those already recognized by Torch, those who had learned to shoulder responsibility, to travel faster between the lights of the fire.

Lu Chen raised his hand.

"Name it."

Zero was silent for a moment.

"Spark Post Road."

The Fire Seal outside the Jiangbei Safe House lit up.

The Mark of the Torch on the inside of Zhao Ye's wrist suddenly grew hot.

Before he could ask, Shen Qinghe was already looking at him.

"You go."

Zhao Ye frowned. "What about you?"

"I'll stay here and listen to the rules."

"By yourself?"

Shen Qinghe lifted the bronze bell in her hand.

"Don't I have this?"

Zhao Ye didn't waste any more words.

The Fire Seal at the Safe House projected coordinates through the Grey Net, and the light from the direction of Liuqiao Old Station responded simultaneously.

The two beams of light didn't explode into the sky, but instead drew an extremely thin white line along the ground, as if someone had struck a match in the darkness to carve out a path.

The moment Zhao Ye stepped onto it, all sound around his ears was drained away.

He couldn't see the buildings beside the road, nor could he see the ground beneath his feet.

There were only Fire Seals lighting up ahead, scattered at various distances like lanterns on an old-fashioned post road.

He ran two steps and suddenly saw a section of a station platform appear by the side of the road.

The platform was very old, the white tiles yellowed, and the billboard displayed a beverage advertisement from forty years ago.

A person wearing an old-style ticket inspector's cap stood there, holding a ticket puncher in their right hand, their left hand extended.

"Ticket."

Zhao Ye didn't stop.

The person asked again.

"Passenger, present your ticket."

Zhao Ye gritted his teeth, the Torch under his feet exploded violently, and he swept past the platform.

Click.

The ticket puncher closed behind him.

It didn't catch him.

But it clipped off a bit of the white fire trail trailing behind his shoulder.

When Zhao Ye landed, his knees almost buckled.

He had returned to reality; beneath his feet were the broken bricks outside Liuqiao Old Station, and his nostrils were filled with the smell of damp cement and rust.

But the spot behind his shoulder where the fire tail had been clipped felt cold, as if his clothes had been torn open from behind.

Bai Ya's voice immediately drilled into his earpiece.

"Are you back?"

"I'm back."

"Did you answer?"

"No."

"Did you buy a ticket?"

"Ask one more time, and I'll beat you up as soon as I get back."

Hearing that he still had the energy to curse, Bai Ya actually breathed a sigh of relief.

The Grey Net, however, did not relax.

After Zhao Ye passed through, the non-existent platform on the road didn't disappear.

Instead, the Grey Net recorded the outline of the platform, and an extremely thin black line appeared on its edge, crawling back along the clipped fire tail.

Lu Chen watched that line, his expression darkening.

The Spark Post Road could let Torch travel faster.

But it would also let the things hiding in the route see how Torch traveled.

In the Liu Bridge alley, Shen Qinghe heard the bronze bell emit an extremely faint vibration.

She looked up at the corner of the wall.

Beside the shoe Zhou Yuan had left behind, a half-black, half-white ticket had appeared at some point.

There was no destination on the ticket.

Only a line of text that had just emerged.

[Post Road ticket validated.]

When Zhao Ye returned to the Safe House from Liu Bridge, the area behind his shoulder where the fire tail had been clipped was covered in a thin layer of frost.

After checking him, Xu Minglan didn't let him use the Post Road again immediately.

She held a disinfectant cotton pad against his injury; Zhao Ye's brows twitched from the pain, but he stubbornly insisted he was fine.

"If you're fine, then stop flinching."

"I'm not flinching."

"You cracked the armrest of the chair."

Zhao Ye looked down and saw a white mark where he had indeed crushed the plastic armrest.

He released his grip, his expression worsening.

The Post Road could save time, but it wasn't a free shortcut.

Every time he crossed over, it was like laying himself open for the things in the route to see.

Lu Chen did not revoke the authorization because of this, but added a new temporary restriction: the same member may not cross consecutively in a short period; when an unfamiliar platform appears on the Post Road, it must be recorded, not pursued.

After reading the rules, Bai Ya didn't make any jokes for once.

"It didn't clip away fire," he said. "It's preserving our path."

The Grey Net hung that black line separately next to the Liu Bridge file.

The black line didn't continue to crawl toward the Safe House, but formed a small mark at the end, as if someone had stamped it.

Zhao Ye looked at that thing and suddenly said, "Next time, I'm taking pliers in with me."

Shen Qinghe looked up. "Taking what?"

"To steal its ticket puncher."

Bai Ya finally let out a laugh.

Before the laughter had faded, the half-black, half-white ticket in the Grey Net flipped over on its own.

A new station notification appeared on the back.

[Fire bearer, please wait for the train in advance.]

At the end of the white line, in the direction of Liu Bridge, a headlight flashed by, as if responding to that ticket.