128: Chapter 128 The Flame of Life

At the Linhai reverse elevator entrance, Bai Ya stood on the second basement level of a half-abandoned shopping mall.

The elevators here had stopped running three months ago. The upper floors of the mall still had a few shops open, but the basement was sealed off due to water seepage and fire safety issues. Ordinary people passing by the rolling shutter door would only feel that it was cold inside; no one knew that the elevator in the deepest part would descend on its own in the early hours of the morning.

At Bai Ya's feet lay a return ticket that was half-burnt.

The ticket stub connected to the Qinghe Safe House and also to the Liuqiao Old Station in Jiangbei. It was not a complete Anchor, but merely a weak marker confirmed by the Grey Net that could briefly drop a Fire Seal.

"Time is running out," Bai Ya said into his headset.

The warehouse door of the Qinghe No. 1 Safe House had just been sealed shut, with the Yellow Line jammed inside by the forklift and collapsed shelves left behind by Chen Fu. The wreckage of the first bus in Jiangbei was still parked below the second Anchor, and the Ticket Inspector had not completely disappeared. The three sources of trouble were like three strings stretched to their limit; if one snapped first, the other two would be dragged along with it.

Lu Chen did not have Zhao Ye and Shen Qinghe each go to save one location.

That would only let them continue to be led around by the anomaly.

In the Xinhuo Hall, the firelight from the central stele was suppressed very low. Lu Chen moved the Jiangbei First Anchor, the Jiangbei Second Anchor, the Qinghe No. 1 Safe House, and the Linhai weak Fire Beacon all to the top layer of the Grey Net.

The four points had no natural connections.

Between them lay cities, roads, rainy nights, and a large number of unconfirmed pollution traces.

"How many more times can the Spark Post Road be opened?" Lu Chen asked.

Zero gave the answer.

[Single-line crossing can be maintained twice.]

[Multi-point linkage requires consuming existing Anchor reserves.]

[Risk: All connection points will be briefly exposed to the same rule's vision.]

After hearing this in Linhai, Bai Ya chuckled softly.

"It means that even if we light up all three fires, they might be blown out in one breath by someone."

Lu Chen said, "So don't let it blow on them first."

Zhao Ye was holding down the wreckage of the first bus at the entrance of the Liuqiao Old Station in Jiangbei. Shen Qinghe remained outside the Qinghe Safe House, the bronze bell listening to the last lingering sounds of the Yellow Line at the warehouse door. Tang Zhiwei, Xu Minglan, Lin Zhao, Chen Jue, Zheng Xiang, and Tyrannosaurus King were each guarding the Lamp-Keeping Zone and roads on the reality side.

No one was standing in the most comfortable position.

But everyone knew that if they retreated, someone behind them would be pushed into the Yellow Line.

Lu Chen raised his hand.

"Form the array."

The Spark Post Road did not just draw out a single line as it had before.

The Jiangbei First Anchor lit up first; the firelight passed along the traces beneath the Liuqiao Old Station, connecting to the second Anchor. The second Anchor then projected a thin white fire path toward the Qinghe No. 1 Safe House. At the same time, the ticket stub at Bai Ya's feet ignited, and a spark of fire also appeared in the cracks of the elevator on the second basement level in Linhai.

The four points connected into an incomplete map on the Grey Net.

It was not a regular Formation.

It was more like someone forcefully pulling several loose threads together on black paper by hand.

But when the last line closed, the flames in all the Lamp-Keeping Zones retracted inward simultaneously.

Then, it lit up.

The clouds above the Liuqiao Old Station in Jiangbei were illuminated in a pale white by the fire lines. Outside the Qinghe Safe House, the steel cables of the tow truck blocking the intersection began to reflect light one by one. In the Linhai underground mall, Bai Ya saw that black water was finally no longer seeping down from the cracks of the elevator that had been stopped for three months.

Gu Xingzhou saw in the official monitoring room that the maps of the three locations were strung together by the same anomalous fluctuation, and his expression changed.

The person beside him asked if this was Torch's ability.

Gu Xingzhou did not answer.

He only saw in the monitoring footage that grey-white fire lines, which did not belong to streetlights, appeared simultaneously in the night of the three cities.

The Ticket Inspector raised its head inside the wreckage of the first bus in Jiangbei.

It had originally thought it had broken Torch into multiple lines.

But now, those lines were not broken.

They were pulled together by the fire, instead forming something it had never seen before.

"You are using my ticket to draw a path." It lost its voice for the first time.

Bai Ya stood at the Linhai elevator entrance, listening to this sentence coming from the Grey Net, and whistled softly.

"Wrong."

"It's you who found the path for us."

The moment the Fire Map stabilized, a loud noise erupted beneath Liuqiao.

The Liuxia Passenger Station, trapped in the interlayer, was finally forced to reveal a corner to reality.

After the Fire Map was formed, the four battlefields did not immediately quiet down.

On the contrary, all hidden routes were revealed in the firelight. Below the Liuqiao Old Station in Jiangbei, black lines crawled out from under the waiting seats; outside the Qinghe warehouse door, the Yellow Line was pressed by collapsed shelves but was still looking for cracks on both sides; inside the Linhai reverse elevator, black water retreated along the door cracks, only to seep out from deeper within.

This was not a perfect array.

It was more like four people simultaneously grabbing a net that was about to be torn apart; whoever let go first would have their side break.

Zhao Ye punched through the thickest Yellow Line in Jiangbei one punch at a time; each time he struck, the Spark Post Road grew shorter. Shen Qinghe listened to the bronze bell in Qinghe, telling Tang Zhiwei which section of the shelves could not be moved. Bai Ya nailed the ticket stub into the cement crack at the Linhai elevator entrance, his fingertips becoming numb from the corrosion of the black water.

"How long can you hold on your side?" Zhao Ye asked.

"A little longer than you," Bai Ya said.

"Bullshit."

"Then come over here."

They argued across the city, which instead eased the tension in the channel by half.

Lu Chen listened without interrupting.

Forming an array did not mean turning everyone into a machine.

Each fire line needed someone to guard it, someone to curse, someone to be afraid, and someone to keep persisting. The reason the Fire Map could be connected was not because the array was beautiful, but because these people did not abandon their points when things were at their hardest.

Gu Xingzhou saw in the monitoring room that the fire lines were covering the city roads. He knew the authorities shouldn't pry too deeply, but he still picked up the communicator and issued the same order to the peripheral units in Qinghe and Jiangbei: All non-essential vehicles must detour around the anomalous routes, and all temporary shelters must maintain lighting and hot water.

This order sounded ordinary.

But it saved the Lamp-Keeping Zone a lot of time that would have otherwise been consumed by explanations and disputes.

When the Fire Map was brightest, the Linhai elevator door was finally nailed shut by Bai Ya. Something inside the door was banging, causing the metal casing to bulge bit by bit. Bai Ya did not retreat; he looked up and saw a long-disused floor sign above the elevator light up.

Basement Level 2.

That place originally had no electricity.

But when the fire line shone there, an old route map soaked through by seawater was revealed behind the sign.

On the map, there was a freight line from the Linhai Port Area to Jiangbei, circled over and over again with a red pen.

Chen Jue was guarding the lamp outside the Qinghe Safe House when he saw for the first time the fire line extending from the mark on the inside of his wrist.

He did not gain new abilities, nor did he become stronger. But when the Fire Map connected, the Guardian Lamp he was responsible for did not go out.

Zheng Xiang was cursing at him from the other side not to space out, as the water bucket was about to burn dry. Chen Jue immediately snapped back to his senses and ran toward the lamp with the water.

This was a very small matter.

So small that Zhao Ye in Jiangbei couldn't see it at all.

But in the Grey Net's records, the stability of the Guardian Lamp outside the Qinghe Safe House lasted forty seconds longer because of this. Forty seconds was enough for Tang Zhiwei to send the last batch of people across the intersection, and enough for Xu Minglan to take Zhao Haiming away from the edge of the Yellow Line.

Lu Chen looked at that data without giving Chen Jue any evaluation.

The reason the Fire Map could be connected was never because everyone was doing earth-shattering things. Someone guarding a lamp, someone recording a chart, someone parking a car across an intersection—these all counted.