120: Chapter 120 The First Bus Returns

When the first bus sank, the ground at Liuqiao Old Station did not shake.

It was merely like a well finally closing, swallowing the last bit of its headlights into the ground.

The wind outside the barrier began to blow again, and rain fell onto the broken bricks and old concrete, making a very ordinary sound.

So ordinary that it made people feel as if that bus just now was a case of collective madness.

But the list in the Safe House did not disappear.

Thirty-six return tickets; twenty-seven people were pulled back to reality by the Lamp-Keeping Zone and the Return Realm.

Nine did not return. Two of the tickets were thrown from the bus by Wu, signifying that someone had let go of their name but failed to find the bus door.

The remaining seven were still inside the first bus.

They could not be marked as "Processed."

Nor could they be marked as "Confirmed Dead."

Tang Zhiwei sat at the innermost table of the settlement point, checking the data one by one.

She had already changed her pen three times, but the tip was still unsteady.

On the form were the name, family members, last seen location, whether they held a ticket, whether they entered the yellow line, and whether they left any realistic clues.

When she wrote Zhou Yuan's name, she paused.

Zhou Yuan's ticket had already fallen, but he had not returned.

His wife was waiting outside, holding their child, and had asked twice if he had been found.

Tang Zhiwei said each time that she was still checking.

She dared not say "No."

Nor was she willing to say "There is hope."

Xu Minglan placed a cup of hot water beside her.

Tang Zhiwei did not touch it.

"I used to think that logistics was just about putting people and things in the right place," she said suddenly.

Xu Minglan did not interrupt.

"Now I know that people are not boxes," Tang Zhiwei said, looking at the list. "If you put them in the wrong place once, you might never be able to find them again."

Xu Minglan sat across from her.

"That is why we must keep recording."

"What is the point of recording?"

"At the very least, it means they didn't just disappear in the bus without anyone on the outside knowing."

Tang Zhiwei fell silent.

She picked up her pen and wrote a new category at the very top of the form.

[Long-term Missing Persons Record from the first bus Incident]

It was not a closed case.

It was not a death certificate.

It was Torch acknowledging that these people were still on some invisible road, and just because they could not be saved for the time being, they should not be completely erased by reality.

Zheng Xiang kept watch in the community activity room until dawn.

Old Qin finally finished that bowl of cold porridge, cursing with every mouthful, saying it tasted terrible.

Zheng Xiang sat beside him, so sleepy he could barely keep his eyes open, yet he still had to respond.

"Even if your son came back, he wouldn't drink it."

Old Qin cursed him: "Bullshit, he drank everything when he was a kid."

After cursing, the old man's eyes turned red first.

Zheng Xiang did not speak again.

He wiped the lampshade of the Guardian Lamp at the door clean and made room for the newly arrived family members.

Some did not believe in the firelight, some did not believe in the authorities, and some did not believe in Zheng Xiang, this low-level street official.

But they were all tired, so tired that in the end, they still came in and sat for a while.

The Guardian Lamp did not make anyone forget.

It simply allowed people to not have to stand alone in the rain waiting for the bus for a while.

After Wu came down from the bus, he never said his real name.

No one asked again.

He sat by the window of the observation room, the Temporary Fire Seal on his wrist having dimmed by more than half.

When Xu Minglan brought him medicine, she found him writing something on a piece of white paper.

He wrote a line, then erased it.

In the end, only a few characters that could not be erased by the anomaly remained on the paper.

Han Yue.

Chen Jue stood outside the door, and seeing those two characters, his footsteps paused.

Wu did not turn around.

"He is not one of the people who returned," Wu said. "He helped me push the door open a little."

Chen Jue's throat felt a bit dry: "Then is he still inside?"

"Yes."

"Can he be saved?"

Wu was silent for a long time.

"Perhaps in the future."

Chen Jue did not press for more.

He took out the paper from his pocket that read "Don't be like me" and pressed it against the corner of the table.

The edges of the paper had already been frayed by him rubbing it.

"I won't," he said.

Wu looked up at him.

Chen Jue added another sentence: "But I also won't pretend I didn't see it."

This was said very firmly, like he was setting a rule for himself.

Wu did not laugh at him, only nodded.

When the Grey Net was backtracking the remnants of the first bus, Bai Ya intercepted a batch of intercity ticket stubs.

The ticket stubs had old station names from Linhai, Beitong, and Nanling; some station names had even disappeared from the real map.

The Longevity Society did not just want something to happen in Jiangbei.

Using the first bus, they figured out how Torch deployed personnel, how they guarded the lamps, and which places would be prioritized for rescue, then sent out the same set of tickets elsewhere.

Bai Ya zoomed in on the last ticket.

The ticket surface was very clean.

No city, no passenger name, only a station name that had been cut very neatly.

[Xinhuo Hall]

Inside the hall, the flame of the central stone tablet faltered slightly.

Zero's notification appeared very quickly.

[Unknown route detected performing conceptual marking on the Core of the Torch.]

[Marking not established.]

[Recommendation: Strengthen permission isolation between the anchor point and the hall.]

Lu Chen looked at the ticket and did not throw it into the containment zone.

He had the Grey Net place the ticket on the outermost observation platform.

"They are trying to find a way in," he said.

Bai Ya asked: "Should we recall all the outer city lines first?"

"If we recall them, the bus will go look for places without lamps," Lu Chen said. "No one can stop it there."

It was quiet in the hall for a moment.

the first bus had turned back.

Jiangbei had not been dragged into the darkness.

But that bus had taken nine people away, and also left a larger route map in front of Torch.

Lu Chen raised his hand, and the two fire points at Qinghe and Jiangbei on the Grey Net map slowly lit up.

"Separate the ticket stubs by city."

"Linhai line, find people first."

Below the stone tablet, a new task record unfolded.

And underground in Jiangbei, the first bus stopped beside a platform without a timetable.

In the last row, Han Yue's lingering shadow sat down again.

In front of him, there was now a small lamp that had been extinguished.

Deep inside the carriage, the empty ticket with "Fire Keeper" written on it was still placed on the seat.

It was just that below the ticket surface, a new line of text slowly appeared.

[Next stop: Linhai.]

After dawn, a long line formed outside the temporary settlement point in the Eastern District of Jiangbei.

Some came to look for missing persons, some came to hand over tickets they had hidden, and others just heard there was a lamp here and wanted to come in and sit for a while.

Zheng Xiang moved the registration table to the door, asking for names, contact information, and whether they had heard the station announcement sounds.

If anyone found it troublesome, he would just hand them the form.

"It's up to you whether you fill it out or not."

"Then why are you asking?"

"Because if you fill it out, and you walk out again at night, we will at least know where to look."

This was not a pleasant thing to hear, but no one laughed again.

When Tang Zhiwei synchronized the long-term missing persons record to Gu Xingzhou, the other side was silent for a long time.

The authorities could explain it to the families as a disappearance, an accident, or a need for further verification, but they could not fill in the real reason for them.

Gu Xingzhou only said one thing at the end: he would do his best to hold the line on the perimeter blockade and family resettlement.

Lu Chen did not take this as an escalation of cooperation.

It was just that someone had seen the nine empty seats and was unwilling to pretend that nothing had happened anymore.

At the door of Wu's observation room, the Grey Net had set up a very small new whiteboard.

It was not for files, did not record names, and only recorded what he could still remember that day.

Today he wrote: Rain. Xu Minglan. The Safe House smells of ginger.

When he wrote to the fourth line, he paused and finally added two characters.

Han Yue.

Those two characters were not erased.

The Grey Net's intercity ticket stubs were spread out on the table; the three station names of Linhai, Beitong, and Nanling were like three nails that had already been driven in.

Lu Chen marked them one by one as "Unverified Outer City Lines" and did not let anyone set off immediately.

the first bus had just retreated, and Torch also needed to catch its breath.

But just as the map was being closed, the ticket on the outermost circle that read "Xinhuo Hall" gently curled up at one corner.

A new string of departure times floated out on the back of the ticket.

Not tonight.

Nor tomorrow.

[Departure time to be determined.]

It was as if it were telling everyone that the bus had not gone far.

It was just waiting patiently until it opened its doors next time.