133: Chapter 133 The Floor is in the Sea

The wall that had been smashed open did not close immediately.

The Black Sea hung behind the wall, and beacons from the port district that should have been extinguished long ago floated on the water's surface. Beneath each lamp hung a thin string, and at the end of each string were tied work badges of various colors, old keys, plastic toys, and yellowed ID photos.

Tide stared at one of the work badges, her lips moving slightly.

"That belongs to Pier 3," she said. "Five people went missing after the typhoon the year before last."

Bai Ya's Patrol Lamp had already crawled into the crack. Unlike before, when he could only wait for the Grey Net to return a pile of cold text, over a dozen tiny sparks skimmed along the edge of the Black Sea, dragging out lines of flickering fire. The lines of fire bypassed the beacons upon contact, but left a glimmer of light whenever they touched the elevator shaft.

"It's not just a problem with one shopping mall," Bai Ya said. "The elevator shafts of all twelve buildings in the Old Port District are connected to the same interlayer."

Shen Qinghe held the bronze bell up to the wall.

As soon as the bell rang, a wave surged over in the Black Sea. It wasn't water striking the wall, but the entire inverted world pressing down on them. She withdrew her fingertips, and the wisp of Purifying Flame within the crack of the bell's mouth stretched into a line along the wall, illuminating the previously blurry boundary of the interlayer.

The floor was indeed in the sea.

An inverted old city was submerged on the other side of the water surface. The mall's second basement level was merely a corridor it extended into reality; the further down one went, the closer one got to the rooftops of that city. The elevator was not descending, but rather transporting people to a world that had already been swallowed by the sea.

"Who built it?" Tide asked.

"It wasn't built by anyone," Shen Qinghe said. "Someone took what was originally there and used it."

When Cao Gui from the Archives arrived, his trouser legs were still stained with rainwater. He was carrying an old cardboard box, the lid tied tightly with string. When Tide called him, she had only said, "There might be a problem with your brother's file." He had run all the way here, not even bringing an umbrella.

Cao Gui was a temporary organizer at the Linhai Old Archives. He was in his early forties, and his hair was already starting to gray. He didn't ask what Torch was, nor did he ask why Zhao Ye was able to block people outside the line of fire. Seeing Chen Li, he stood still for a long time before lowering his head to rummage through the box.

"Chen Li, missing for three years. The Port Authority Group reported it as an accidental fall into a well at night." He spread a photocopy out on the plastic tabletop. "But this death confirmation notice… the seal is blank."

Tide leaned in.

Where the red seal should have been on the paper, there was only a ring of ink soaked by water.

Cao Gui pulled out a map of the port district from ninety years ago. The map was large, its edges already brittle. He pressed his fingernail against an area that had been blacked out. "There used to be a freight transfer station here. Both port cargo and city cargo went through underground. Later, it was filled in. The first batch of missing persons cases started here as well."

Five faded characters were written on the map.

Linhai Downward Station.

Wu had been standing on the very outside. He didn't approach the wall, nor did he look at Chen Li; he only stared at the death confirmation notice. The blank space where the seal should have been on the paper made his expression grow increasingly grim.

"He isn't coming back," he said.

Cao Gui looked up.

"He didn't come back from outside the list," Wu pointed at Chen Li. "Someone crossed him off the list. After being crossed off, reality no longer knew he had died."

"Then who is he?" Tide asked.

Wu was silent for a few seconds.

"He's still Chen Li," he said. "But there is a location following him."

No one understood this sentence immediately.

Not until Chen Li woke up in the ambulance, struggled free from the restraints, and reached out to grab his daughter's sleeve.

"Where is your mother?" he asked.

The girl was crying so hard she couldn't speak.

Chen Li, however, seemed not to see her tears and only lowered his head to feel his pockets. "I have to go pick her up. She's waiting for me below. She said there's no road home."

Shen Qinghe's bronze bell gave a violent jolt.

In the Black Sea behind the wall, all the beacons flashed at once.

A voice slowly drifted up along the elevator shaft, like a broadcast fished out from the deep bottom of the water.

"Next passenger, please hand over the person you wish to bring back."

Zhao Ye's Fire Nails turned red one by one.

Provoked by this voice, Chen Li's daughter actually took a step toward the elevator. Tide reacted faster than Zhao Ye, reaching out to grab her and holding her tightly. The girl struggled and cried, "He's back! Why won't you let him come home?"

Tide's eyes also reddened, but she didn't let go.

"After he came back, he didn't even know your mother was gone," she said. "Do you want him to go back down there again?"

The girl froze.

This wasn't an answer; it was just the most painful stone in reality. Yet Tide did not avoid it.

Cao Gui looked at the old map, his fingertips pressing on the characters for "Downward Station". He suddenly flipped to the bottom of the box and pulled out an even older missing persons registration form. There was a handwritten name on the form that had been crossed out and rewritten repeatedly.

Cao Zheng.

That was his brother.

Cao Gui stared at the name, as if he had been punched in the chest. Thirty years ago, his brother went missing at the pier, and the family had always said he was swept away by the sea. But on the back of the registration form, there was a remark he had never seen before.

[Tide inspection incomplete, exit prohibited.]

In the Black Sea, those beacons flickered again.

Beneath the lamp closest to the wall hung an unfinished registration page.

At the very top of the page, a line of wet, dripping characters slowly seeped out.

[Cao Gui, may return.]

Cao Gui flipped the registration form over to the back; a faded group photo was tucked behind it. In the photo, two young men stood in front of the railing at Pier 7. One was Cao Gui, and the other was half a head taller than him, smiling ostentatiously, holding two cans of soda in his hand. The date the photo was taken was exactly the day before his brother went missing.

Cao Gui stared at the photo for a long time, then suddenly stuffed it back into the file bag.

"My brother wasn't the type to go diving into the sea," he said. "He went to pick me up from work that day. I was half an hour late."

Tide didn't respond. She knew that in such matters, the thing one feared most was others saying, "It's not your fault." Many years had passed; words that sounded like comfort only made one want to dig that half-hour out of memory and relive it all over again.

One of Bai Ya's Patrol Lamps retreated from the Black Sea. The sparks landed on his fingertips, bringing back a short, chaotic scene: people queuing up in the Linhai Downward Station—some holding cargo manifests, some holding children, others standing at the elevator entrance crying. Behind the window at the very front, there was no ticket agent, only a wet, dripping hand writing names into a register one by one.

"It's not just a simple point of disappearance," Bai Ya said. "That place is like a long-running registration station. People brought in are first recorded as 'Awaiting Tide Inspection'."

When Shen Qinghe heard the words "Tide Inspection", a very faint cracking sound suddenly came from the cracks in the bronze bell. She hid the bell in her palm, not letting anyone notice anything unusual. The Illumination Realm was not omnipotent. She could illuminate the borrowed boundaries, but she could not judge for everyone whether they should turn back or not.

On the other side of the Black Sea, the number on that elevator stopped at -13.

The door opened a crack.

A port dispatch order, softened by water, drifted out from the crack. On it was written a new destination.

[Linhai Second Hospital]