119: Chapter 119 The Light of Return

After the first bus turned back, it didn't immediately sink into the Liuqiao Old Station underground.

It was as if it were tethered to the edge of reality by an invisible thread, with half the carriage parked below the old station steps and the other half still suspended in the night of Jiangbei. The yellow lines of the twelve waiting points hadn't completely disappeared, and no one in the Lamp-Keeping Zone dared to let their guard down.

Wu was trapped in the carriage.

After the Temporary Fire Seal went out, the Grey Net could only intermittently see his perspective through the faint connection left by Han Yue's notebook.

The picture was very unstable.

Sometimes it was the back of a seat, sometimes a darkened window, and sometimes only breathing and the sound of wipers could be heard.

Zhao Ye stood outside the entrance to Liuqiao Old Station, his fists clenched white.

"I'm going in."

Shen Qinghe blocked his path.

"If you go in, what happens to the people outside the bus?"

"So we just watch him in there?"

"I didn't say we were just watching."

Shen Qinghe's voice was very low, but firmer than usual. "the first bus is currently stuck in the boundary of the return journey. If you use the Courier Road to break in, the Ticket Inspector will follow you and drag the second anchor of Jiangbei onto the bus as well."

Zhao Ye didn't roar again.

He just looked at the bus, his Adam's apple bobbing a few times.

"Then what other way is there?"

In Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen didn't answer immediately.

The boundary had turned the act of "going home" into a visible road, but the people on the bus had already been half-written into the list. Relying on that road outside alone was not enough to pull the nine people sitting in the carriage back.

Zero extracted a very thin fire trace from the notes Han Yue left behind.

That was a residual echo of memory left when Han Yue sent the entrance coordinates out.

Lu Chen looked at that fire trace and raised his hand to guide it into a small copper lamp.

The lamp had no name.

It wasn't equipment that could be exchanged either.

It was just a one-time temporary delivery.

"Send it in," Lu Chen said.

The Grey Net followed the fire line that hadn't yet broken between the first bus and the second anchor, pushing a tiny speck of light across.

In the carriage, Wu was leaning against the last row of seats.

The Ticket Inspector didn't approach him again. That person stood at the front of the bus, as if waiting for something. Every once in a while, a passenger's ticket would change from "Unverified" to a thin red line.

Wu knew that once the red line closed completely, it meant that person would be taken deeper by the bus.

He couldn't call their names.

He couldn't touch each person either.

He didn't even know who to save first.

A speck of light slipped in through the crack in the bus window and landed on the back of his hand.

Wu was stunned for a moment.

The light was very small, like the head of an ordinary match, but it slowly grew in his palm into a lamp the size of a palm.

Two lines of text left by Lu Chen emerged in the lamp's shadow.

[No need to call them back.]

[First, let them remember where they still are.]

Wu stared at those two sentences, and after two seconds, he suddenly smiled.

He smiled very lightly, like someone who had almost forgotten themselves had finally grasped something.

He walked over to the first passenger.

It was a woman holding the memorial portrait of her son. She was looking out the bus window, where a young man was waving at her.

Wu didn't ask what her son's name was.

He only saw a plastic bag dropped at her feet, containing antihypertensive medication and a key.

"Which key is for your home?" Wu asked.

The woman didn't react.

"Who is the medicine for?"

The woman slowly turned her head.

Wu continued: "Did you turn off the stove when you left the house?"

These questions were very stupid.

So stupid that it didn't seem like he was saving anyone.

But the woman's fingers tightened bit by bit. She looked down and saw the plastic bag, as if she suddenly remembered that there was an elderly person at home waiting for her to deliver the medicine.

The face of the young man outside the window began to blur.

She didn't get off the bus, but she loosened her grip on the ticket in her palm.

Wu placed the Return Journey Lamp on her lap.

The second person was Zhou Yuan.

He kept saying his father was waiting for him to take the last bus home. Wu saw yellow mud from an alley on his pant cuffs, and there was an unsent text message on his phone screen: Dad, I'm working overtime tonight, I'm not coming back.

Wu stuffed the phone into his hand.

"Your dad used to wait for you because he was afraid you'd be hungry."

Zhou Yuan looked up.

"Have you eaten tonight?"

Zhou Yuan froze.

He suddenly covered his face, his shoulders trembling violently.

A ticket fell.

The Ticket Inspector finally moved.

"You are tampering with passenger information."

Wu held the small lamp and took half a step back.

"It's not information," he said. "It's the days they haven't finished living yet."

When the ticket puncher clipped down, the residual shadow of Han Yue in the last row suddenly stood up.

He didn't go to block the puncher.

He just pushed the notebook forward.

All the scenes outside the windows in the carriage flickered simultaneously. Those forged relatives began to be unable to speak, like actors who had forgotten their lines.

Wu seized the opportunity and ran toward the bus door.

The Ticket Inspector chased from behind, the puncher's mouth almost touching his shoulder.

The residual shadow of Han Yue said one sentence behind him.

"Don't take my seat."

Wu didn't look back.

The bus door opened a crack before his eyes. He lunged out, his body slamming heavily onto the damp concrete of Liuqiao Old Station.

Zhao Ye was the first to rush up, dragging him across the yellow line.

Wu lay on the ground coughing for a long time; the Return Journey Lamp in his palm had only a little residual warmth left.

When he looked up, the bus door had already closed again.

Han Yue did not come out.

Out of the nine passengers, only two tickets drifted down from the gap in the carriage, landing next to the Fire Seal. The other seven were still being carried by the first bus, turning back toward the deeper darkness.

Bai Ya intercepted the last part of the carriage's route in the Grey Net.

Linhai.

Beitong.

Nanling.

And a ticket pressed at the very bottom.

The ticket had no city on it.

Only four words.

[Xinhuo Hall]

After Wu tumbled out of the bus door, a long, thin crack appeared on the palm of his right hand, as if grazed by the ticket puncher. The wound wasn't deep, but it refused to close; the edges looked like a burn one moment, and like white erased by an eraser the next.

When Xu Minglan treated it, she asked him if it hurt.

Wu looked at his palm and thought for a long time.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"Sometimes pain is a reminder that you're still here; sometimes pain is just it confirming you haven't left."

Xu Minglan didn't respond to such metaphysical talk. She pressed a hemostatic patch onto the wound, her tone very direct: "Then just take it as a reminder for now. Don't touch it, and don't go out alone."

Wu was stunned by her words and actually nodded.

Zhao Ye stood to the side without interrupting. After Xu Minglan walked away, he tossed a bottle of water to Wu.

"That thing in the bus, I'll go collect it next time."

Wu couldn't twist the cap off, so Zhao Ye took it back and opened it.

"Do you official members all love saying 'next time'?" Wu asked.

Zhao Ye looked at the underground entrance.

"Because it wasn't cleaned up this time."

This sentence didn't have any heroic air, but instead made Wu quiet down.

The Grey Net marked the two released tickets separately as "Potential Pull-Back Objects." Bai Ya didn't say they could definitely be saved, nor did he let anyone take those tickets to try. He only recorded the numbers, reality clues, and the seating positions inside the bus, hanging them in the long-term tracking column.

Chen Jue watched from afar, clutching Han Yue's paper in his hand, without coming forward.

When Wu was sent back to the Safe House, he asked in a low voice: "Was what he said at the end true?"

Wu knew he was asking about Han Yue.

"He said don't take his seat."

Chen Jue nodded and didn't speak again.

That sentence was like a nail, pinning down the impulse he had to rush onto the bus.