132: Chapter 132 Reverse Elevator

During the day, the Old Port District shopping mall was like a hollow shell that hadn't fully woken up.

Half of the advertising billboard on the exterior wall had fallen off, leasing posters were plastered on the glass doors, and the milk tea shop and children's playground inside had long since ceased operations.

Yet, several ambulances were crowded near the underground entrance, and quite a few people stood outside the cordon; some had wet shoes, others were clutching their clothes, and no one could clearly explain where they had come from.

Tide was waiting for them inside the cordon.

She was wearing a reflective raincoat, with dark circles under her eyes, and clutched a walkie-talkie in her hand. Upon seeing Shen Qinghe, she didn't ask for identification first, but simply handed over the walkie-talkie: "You said you could handle it, then listen to this first."

No one spoke on the walkie-talkie.

There was only the sound of ocean waves.

The sound of the Tide was very close, as if crashing right against the eardrum. After a dozen seconds, a man gasped and shouted: "Don't go down! The elevator door is open, and it's full of water below—"

The voice cut off abruptly, followed by a "ding."

Zhao Ye put the walkie-talkie back: "Where is the person?"

"Two went in, one came out." Tide pointed toward the B1 level of the shopping mall, "The one who came out is in the car; he doesn't recognize his own home and refuses to leave."

Space Venerable held a rangefinder and circled the elevator shaft, his brows furrowing tighter and tighter. He knocked on the wall with the back of his hand, then lay on the ground to listen for a while.

"The shaft is only six stories deep." He said, "Below is an abandoned equipment room, and further down is the old drainage ditch of the port district. It's impossible for there to be thirty-six floors."

"Whether it's possible or not, we'll know once we go in." Zhao Ye said.

"Even if we go in, we need to know where we'll come out first." Shen Qinghe stopped him.

She took out the Fate-Illuminating Bronze Bell. The bronze bell was barely larger than a palm and missing a corner, looking somewhat unremarkable when held in her hand. But as her fingertips brushed across the mouth of the bell, a faint, grey-white line of Purifying Flame lit up within the crack.

The bell rang.

It wasn't a loud sound, just like someone tapping the rim of a cup from very far away.

The lights on the B1 level of the shopping mall flickered for an instant. At the end of the previously empty corridor, a damp glass wall suddenly appeared. Behind the wall were not parking spaces, but a stretch of blackened water, the surface reflecting rows of upward-counting floor numbers.

"This place has borrowed the boundary of somewhere else." Shen Qinghe said, "The elevator isn't going down; it's sending people to a place that's been flipped over."

Bai Ya did not enter. He stood at the escalator entrance, the mark on his wrist lighting up, and the faint fire dot belonging to Linhai within the Grey Net immediately branched out into a dozen thin lines. Those lines did not drill into the elevator, but instead crawled along the walls like tiny sparks, attaching themselves to fire doors, drainage outlets, and every still-functioning security camera in the mall.

"Patrol Lamp has returned." Bai Ya said, "There are seven exits on the B1 level, and six of them are fake."

Zhao Ye looked at him: "How do you know?"

"The fake ones have no shadows in the surveillance footage."

Tide felt her scalp tighten. She had worked night shifts here for two years and knew the location of every emergency exit. Yet, in the images on the screens, there were figures standing behind the blue fire doors she was familiar with; some were wearing the clothes of Old Port District workers, others were carrying canvas bags that only existed over a decade ago.

The elevator door opened again.

A man walked out from inside.

He wore the old uniform of a port worker, and his name tag read "Chen Li." His clothes were dry, his hair was dry, and only his hand clutched a soaked homecoming ticket. He looked to be only in his thirties, but in reality, Tide had looked through the missing persons files; Chen Li had been confirmed dead three years ago in a nighttime fall accident.

Someone outside the cordon recognized him and screamed, wanting to rush over.

"Dad!"

A girl nearly slipped under the cordon tape. Zhao Ye reached out and pressed down on the railing, not touching her, but simply separating her from Chen Li by half a step. Chen Li heard the voice and slowly turned his head, but his eyes lacked focus.

"There are people standing under the sea." He said, "They said I haven't reached my stop yet."

He held up the ticket, and on the back of the ticket was a row of words formed by water stains.

[Heading down, please present the person you wish to return.]

Chen Li suddenly broke free from the medical staff, turned around, and wanted to walk back into the elevator.

Zhao Ye didn't wait this time. He spread his five fingers, and four Fire Nails shot out from his palm, nailing into the tiles in front of the elevator door. The Fire Nails were as thin as needles, but upon landing, they made the entire ground shake. With the elevator as the center, translucent fire patterns spread out along the floor tiles, as if someone had used a red-hot ruler to draw a boundary circle.

Chen Li rushed to the fire patterns, his footsteps stopping abruptly.

He wasn't knocked back, nor was he burned.

He simply couldn't cross that seemingly thin line no matter what.

Sweat quickly seeped from Zhao Ye's forehead. The Suppression Domain was not a wall, but more like temporarily pinning the matter of "No Entry" to the ground. Every time Chen Li struggled, the Fire Nails sank a fraction deeper.

"Take him out of sight." Shen Qinghe said.

Tide immediately called for people. She had a shaky voice, but remained composed, arranging for the medical staff to take the real stairs and avoid all doors that could reflect light.

Space Venerable stared at the elevator shaft, then suddenly shoved the rangefinder to Bai Ya: "Help me aim this here."

"What for?"

"I want to see which load-bearing column it borrowed."

He walked along the wall toward the innermost fire cabinet, reached out, and drew an 'X' on an ordinary tile.

"The space behind this wall is empty." He said.

Zhao Ye looked at him.

Space Venerable swallowed hard: "Don't ask me why. Smash it open and you'll know."

Zhao Ye raised his fist.

With one punch, tiles, concrete, and steel bars exploded simultaneously. There was no equipment room behind the wall, only a stretch of Black Sea suspended in mid-air. The seawater didn't fall down; it clung to the sky on the other side, and waves were slowly rolling over their heads.

Tide looked up, her Face as pale as paper.

In that sea, an elevator was continuing to sink.

The number jumped from -8 to -9.

Inside the elevator, a pale hand pressed the open-door button.

After Chen Li was sent to the ambulance, his daughter kept gripping the car door, refusing to let go. She repeated over and over that her father had recognized her just now, and if he recognized her, it meant he was real. Tide didn't try to persuade her to let go, just had a female officer accompany her, and placed the homecoming ticket into a transparent evidence bag. As soon as the ticket left Chen Li's hand, a layer of water droplets immediately condensed on the bag's wall, sliding down the plastic to form an arrow pointing directly inside the shopping mall.

"It is still calling him back." Tide said.

Zhao Ye looked at the arrow and reached out to put the evidence bag into a containment box. The Suppression Domain Fire Nails were not retracted, and the fire patterns on the ground had already cracked the tiles. His breathing began to grow heavy, and as the fire patterns receded from beneath his skin, it felt like being scraped by a dull blade.

Shen Qinghe glanced at him: "Don't force yourself."

"I am holding the door, not Face." Zhao Ye said.

Space Venerable couldn't help but glance at him, as if wanting to say that for Zhao Ye, there didn't seem to be any difference between the two. Bai Ya, meanwhile, pulled up the circuit diagrams for all floors of the mall, and Patrol Lamp crawled inch by inch through the surveillance footage.

"For every floor the elevator descends, the actual groundwater level will rise four centimeters." Bai Ya said, "If we let it go down ten more floors, the three nearby parking lots will be flooded first."

Tide's expression changed. The rainwater and sewage pipelines in the Old Port District were already aging; once the groundwater backflowed, people on the ground would instead be trapped in high-rise buildings. She grabbed the walkie-talkie and began dispatching, speaking quickly, first ordering people to seal the east drainage gate, then telling the fire trucks not to approach the main entrance of the mall.

Zhao Ye looked at her: "You know what to do?"

"I work night shift dispatch." Tide said, "You handle what's under the sea, I handle the places that haven't been flooded yet."

The elevator on the B1 level suddenly swayed gently. A wet, dripping finger reached out from the door crack and pressed the external call button.

"Ding."

The elevator began to ascend.