136: Chapter 136 Lighthouse Beacon

The rooftop of the Old Port District was very cold.

Sea breeze drilled out from the cracks in the waterproofing layer, carrying the smell of rust, diesel, and damp fishiness.

Tide pressed a Tide table onto a concrete pier, the paper corners flapping in the wind.

Space Venerable lay on the edge of the building, constantly measuring the tilt angle of the building with a laser rangefinder, his forehead covered in sweat.

"If it tilts another three centimeters, this building won't be considered on the vertical line of reality anymore," he said.

Zhao Ye didn't understand, so he asked directly: "Can it still stand?"

"It can for now."

"That's good enough."

Shen Qinghe didn't speak.

She stood in the center of the rooftop, holding the old navigation lamp taken from the hospital freight elevator.

No matter how much she wiped the salt frost on the lamp shade, it wouldn't come off, but the lamp wick brightened a little when she approached.

The Core of the Torch had already provided the analysis result.

This lamp used to be a navigation device for the Old Port District.

After being eroded by the remnants of the reverse elevator, it became a nail driven into reality by the Linhai downward station.

It couldn't directly suppress the reverse Tide rules, but it could be remodeled into a Torch Fire Beacon.

The premise was that someone had to confirm reality for it.

Tide was responsible for the Tide level.

Space Venerable was responsible for the central axis of the building.

Cao Gui had to find the true coordinates of the port district from old blueprints.

Lin Zhao was guarding the temporary Lamp-Keeping Zone downstairs, Jiaoyue remained at the hospital to hold down those affected.

Bai Ya had to spread the Patrol Lamp to the dozen or so surrounding buildings to find the line where the Fire Beacon could land.

And Shen Qinghe was responsible for listening.

Listening to which rule that sea had borrowed.

Lu Chen didn't give them something that would "win with a single press."

The Xin Huo Interface only listed a series of brief conditions in Shen Qinghe's field of vision.

[Fire Beacon is not a weapon.]

[Losing the reality coordinate, the Fire Beacon extinguishes.]

[Beacon keeper leaves, direction distorts.]

[Fire Beacon illuminates the path home, it does not replace anyone's choice.]

"Does it feel like lighting a lamp?" Tide asked.

"It feels like reasoning with a building," Space Venerable said.

"Can a building understand?"

"I've seen too many things today; I dare not say it can't."

Cao Gui rushed up from the stairwell, clutching a roll of even older blueprints.

He was panting heavily.

He spread out the blueprints first, pointing at a small black dot that was almost invisible in the open sea outside the Old Port District.

"The navigation tower from ninety years ago is here," he said.

"Later, when they reclaimed the land, the tower wasn't completely demolished; the base is still underground.

The reverse elevator borrowed all the vertical lines of the port district, and it has been trying to drag people in that direction."

Tide slapped the Tide table onto the blueprint: "It's the lowest Tide before midnight tonight.

After midnight, the water level will rise, and the building misalignment will be more obvious."

Shen Qinghe looked at the navigation lamp.

"Then do it now."

She placed the lamp onto the steel frame reserved on the rooftop.

Zhao Ye stood on the outermost side, and the Fire Nail of the Suppression Domain was nailed into the concrete again.

After forcibly holding up the garage last time, his arm hadn't recovered yet, and his muscles ached as soon as the fire pattern lit up.

But this time, it wasn't to block an opening; it was to nail the entire building into reality.

Four Fire Nails fell, and the water line at the edge of the rooftop stopped instantly.

Bai Ya's Patrol Lamp flew over from afar, one by one.

They weren't birds, nor did they have wings; they were just little fires jumping along surveillance cameras, street lights, fire exits, and mall signs.

Every time one landed, a thin line appeared around the Fire Beacon, and the other end of the line was connected to a reality position that hadn't been swallowed by the sea yet.

"Eleven places," Bai Ya said.

"Twelve places," Tide corrected.

"There's one more at the hospital."

Jiaoyue replied over the walkie-talkie: "The emergency room hasn't gone out."

Lin Zhao's Guardian Lamp screen was shaking constantly from the sound of the Tide.

He gritted his teeth and pressed his hand on the bronze bell: "Mine counts too."

Space Venerable finished measuring the last set of data, his voice dry: "Central axis confirmed."

Cao Gui pressed down on the old blueprint: "Port district coordinates confirmed."

Tide looked at the wet street lights all over the city: "Tide level confirmed."

Shen Qinghe lifted the bronze bell.

When the bell rang, the wick of the old navigation lamp lit up instantly.

The grayish-white Purifying Flame didn't shoot into the sky; it just slowly spread along the edge of the lamp shade, as if someone in the night was polishing a navigation route that had been extinguished for a long time.

When the firelight passed over the rooftop, hospital, mall, and port warehouses, and shone onto that piece of inverted Black Sea, everyone saw the other side of the sea.

That was not the sky.

It was a city submerged underwater.

Countless floors were inverted, dim yellow lights were on in the windows, and elevator shafts were like lines hanging down to the sea surface.

In the deepest part, someone was holding a soaked booklet, slowly walking out of the sea.

On the lamp shade of the Fire Beacon, the salt frost cracked on its own, revealing a row of damp words.

[Tide Inspector has arrived.]

Zhao Ye clenched his fist.

"That name sounds punchable."

Shen Qinghe didn't smile.

Inside the cracks of her bronze bell, the newly lit Purifying Flame suddenly dimmed by half an inch.

That wasn't the Fire Beacon getting weaker.

It was that person on the other side of the sea, who also looked up.

The moment the Fire Beacon was lit, all the blue lines on Tide's dispatch screen stopped for half a second.

In that half-second, the elevator numbers of the twelve buildings in the Old Port District stopped jumping, and even the water seeping from the cracks in the hospital freight elevator door froze in place.

No one cheered.

Because everyone saw what the Fire Beacon illuminated.

The inverted city on the other side of the Black Sea was not a dead city entirely.

Behind every window with a light on, it seemed like there were shadows moving; some were waiting for the elevator, some were sitting in the hallway holding tickets, and others were pressing against the glass looking out.

The Fire Beacon illuminated them clearly, but it also revealed a more painful fact: those people might not all be savable.

Zhao Ye was silent for a while, then asked Shen Qinghe: "Can the fire open a door over there?"

"It can illuminate it," Shen Qinghe said, "that doesn't mean we can go in now."

Space Venerable stood on the edge of the building, his legs already weak.

He had almost been rolled out of the guardrail by a gust of countercurrent wind just now to confirm the central axis.

But he still held the rangefinder tightly: "The buildings in the city over there overlap with this side.

As long as we can find the true load-bearing line, we might be able to fix the entrance into one place."

Tide looked at him: "Maybe?"

"I do structures, not miracles."

Zhao Ye snorted: "The name sounds quite similar."

Under the Fire Beacon, one of Bai Ya's Patrol Lamps suddenly disappeared.

That speck of fire didn't go out; it was pinched by something from the Black Sea and dragged down.

Bai Ya's expression darkened, and he raised his hand to retract it, but the mark on the inside of his wrist was pulled into a thin line of blood by a reverse force.

"It is testing the lamp," he said.

Shen Qinghe looked along that line.

The figure in the dark blue station uniform on the other side of the sea was gone, leaving only a string of wet footprints.

The footprints walked all the way from the inverted city to directly below the sea surface.

The navigation lamp flickered again.

Behind the text where the salt frost cracked, a second sentence appeared.

[Tide Inspector, please clear the way.]

After the Fire Beacon illuminated the Black Sea, Tide's Tide table finally returned to the normal scale.

She saw the water line that had been out of control recede by two centimeters, almost thinking she had seen it wrong.

"It's useful," she said.

Bai Ya, however, warned: "We are just buying time.

It has already seen the lamp."

Shen Qinghe looked at the inverted city outside the Fire Beacon, gently holding the bronze bell.

"Then let it also know that a lamp cannot be extinguished just because one wants to."