123: Chapter 123 Empty Ticket Substitute

The blank ticket had no temperature.

Chen Fu held it between two fingers, as if it were an ordinary outbound shipping slip.

But the characters "Chen Fu" on the ticket became clearer the more he looked at them; in the end, even the habit he had when signing his name—flicking the final stroke upward—seemed to have been perfectly mimicked.

Lin Zhao stood outside the warehouse door, shouting to him across the yellow line: "Don't touch it!"

"I didn't touch it while it was writing," Chen Fu replied.

"Put it down."

Chen Fu placed the ticket on the forklift seat, not immediately stepping back.

Looking at the warehouse full of cardboard boxes, he suddenly understood why the Ticket Inspector had chosen him.

He knew better than anyone where the supplies in the Safe House came from, where they went, and who was responsible for the handovers.

As long as he was written down as a substitute passenger, the anomaly could use his habits and records to treat every box of goods as a ticket to the station.

This was more troublesome than kidnapping a person.

Tang Zhiwei asked through her earpiece: "What did the blank ticket write?"

"It wrote me."

The channel went quiet for a moment.

Zhao Ye, still in Jiangbei, cursed upon hearing this: "Get him out of there."

"I'm coming out," Chen Fu said.

He took a step back.

However, the yellow line slid forward an inch, as if stepping into wet paint.

Deep in the warehouse, the cardboard boxes simultaneously emitted a soft, scratching sound; the sealing tape peeled back one by one, revealing the photographs, old keys, returned express delivery slips, and unclaimed medical records inside.

These items were originally just miscellaneous objects.

Now, it was as if every single one of them was weighed down by a lingering regret that refused to leave.

"It isn't just writing your name," Shen Qinghe's voice came through the remote channel.

She had just finished handling a residual line in Liu Bridge and was currently rushing to Qinghe via the Spark Post Road.

"It wants you to open the door for all the ticket stubs."

Chen Fu looked at the ticket without speaking.

He had indeed thought for a moment about taking the blank ticket and getting as far away from the Safe House as possible.

As long as he wasn't here, perhaps the warehouse door wouldn't continue to spread.

As soon as this thought emerged, he felt it was absurd.

What the anomaly liked most was making people believe that if they just threw themselves away, everyone else could be saved.

"I'm not leaving," Chen Fu said.

Tang Zhiwei's voice sank: "I'm not asking you to go to your death."

"I know," Chen Fu said, looking up at the shelves, "and it's not that I can't get out."

After saying this, he passed the ticket out of the warehouse door.

Lin Zhao didn't take it directly, instead using a sealing clamp to grip the edge of the ticket.

The moment the ticket was clamped, the handwriting suddenly faded, as if it wanted to escape from the paper.

The Grey Net immediately isolated it into a transparent sealing bag.

In the corridor outside, Luo Ping stood far away, his face pale.

He was still in the observation period and shouldn't have been near the high-risk warehouse.

But he was holding a black ticket in his hand, the corners already crumpled into a mess.

"I didn't hide it," he said hurriedly, "I came to hand it over as soon as I received it."

No one praised him.

Yet Luo Ping stood there, not daring to move, as if waiting to be scolded.

Chen Fu glanced at him.

"Where did it come from?"

"In my shoe cabinet," Luo Ping said, "Last time I hid something in my shoes, this time... it knew."

Luo Ping's voice dropped low at the end.

Last time he secretly kept an old ticket, he had almost sent himself into the Liu Bridge waiting area mezzanine.

Now he was still afraid, still subconsciously wanting to shove the anomaly into a place where it couldn't be seen.

But he didn't handle it alone this time.

"You did the right thing by handing it in," Chen Fu said.

Luo Ping was stunned.

"Don't stand there, go outside and watch the door," Chen Fu added, "If anyone asks you to get a ticket, find a relative, or help open a door, call someone first."

Luo Ping nodded vigorously.

In the warehouse, the forklift's taillights suddenly went out.

The beeping stopped as well.

Before anyone could breathe a sigh of relief, the yellow line rose up from the ground.

It climbed up along the shelves, walls, and ceiling, like the edge of a vertical station platform.

The Safe House's overhead lights were cut across by the yellow line, and the light instantly turned into the turbid white color of a train carriage.

Outside the warehouse door, the station broadcast sounded again.

"Please, substitute passenger, prepare to enter the station."

Chen Fu stood inside the yellow line, looking up at the line that was about to touch the ceiling.

He didn't turn his head.

"Sister Tang."

"Speak."

"Evacuate the children and the elderly first."

Tang Zhiwei gritted her teeth.

"I know."

Even after the blank ticket was clamped into the sealing bag, the yellow line in the warehouse didn't stop.

It was as if someone had snatched a name away from it, making it even more urgent.

The cardboard boxes closest to the door began to slide outward on their own, the bottoms of the boxes scraping across the floor and leaving thin yellow marks.

Lin Zhao and Chen Fu pushed the boxes back together; the moment their hands touched the side of a box, a woman's crying sound came from inside.

It wasn't a scream.

It was just a suppressed voice repeating over and over, "Let me see him once."

Chen Fu's hand stopped.

"Don't open it," Xu Minglan said from outside.

"I wasn't planning to."

"I know."

Her words "I know" made Chen Fu's chest feel tight.

He didn't listen to the sounds inside the boxes anymore, instead pushing the boxes to the isolation area covered in Fire Seals.

Every time he pushed a box, he recited the box number, not because the number was useful, but because he was afraid of being led astray by the human voices inside.

Luo Ping stood on the outside, his face growing paler as he watched this scene.

He used to think these rules were just set up by Torch for show; only now did he realize that once a person truly hears a familiar voice, the little bit of self-proclaimed cleverness in one's brain is completely unreliable.

"Brother Chen," he suddenly spoke up.

"Speak."

"Can I help you move them?"

Chen Fu glanced at him: "Yes, follow Lin Zhao. Don't touch them alone."

Luo Ping nodded vigorously.

When he lifted the first box, a voice came from inside as well.

The voice called his name, using the childhood nickname only his grandmother used to call him.

Luo Ping's legs went weak, and he almost dropped the box.

Lin Zhao caught the bottom of the box.

"Look at me."

Luo Ping looked up.

"This is a warehouse, not your home," Lin Zhao said, "Is the box heavy?"

"Yes."

"Then that's right. Keep moving."

A very clumsy sentence, yet it dragged Luo Ping back from that voice's call.

Outside the warehouse, Tang Zhiwei had already changed the evacuation list to a non-numbered version.

Everyone was no longer arranged by room or ward, but grouped by "whether they can walk on their own," "whether they need an escort," and "whether they heard the broadcast."

Chaos was troublesome, but for a ticket that relied on orderly seating, chaos could also be a form of protection.

When Shen Qinghe arrived outside the Safe House, the warehouse door had already been cut by the yellow line like the edge of an old train ticket.

She didn't go inside, just placed the bronze bell on the ground to listen.

After a while, she said: "It is waiting for someone to admit they are the substitute."

Chen Fu understood.

The blank ticket having his name written on it didn't mean the rules were complete.

What truly made the ticket effective was him saying "I'll swap" out loud, or leaving this place in front of everyone.

This was also why the anomaly wasn't in a rush to drag him away.

It was waiting for him to feel that he would drag others down.

Chen Fu took his hand off the gap in the door and slowly exhaled. "Then don't give it that sentence."

Upon hearing this, Tang Zhiwei didn't say anything pleasant.

She only told Lin Zhao to double-check the evacuation route for everyone.

Because not saying it out loud didn't mean the risk would disappear.

Every person left outside the warehouse door had to be prepared to hold the line for the part of Chen Fu that he refused to admit.