138: Chapter 138 Don't Press the Open Button

When the freight elevator doors opened, the rain in the alley suddenly stopped.

It wasn't that the rain had actually stopped, but rather that all the falling water droplets were suspended in midair, as if supported by an invisible layer of glass. A dim, yellow light shone inside the elevator, but the floor was not metal plating; instead, it was a section of wooden pier blackened from being soaked in seawater.

The person pressing the open button was a man in his forties.

He stood before the elevator, clutching a Return Ticket in his hand with his wife's name written on it. His wife had died in a port accident ten years ago; the Tide Lantern Keeper hadn't forced him or touched him. He had simply sat in the teahouse, written out the ticket, and waited for the man to walk out on his own.

"Don't go in," Zhao Ye barked.

The man turned around, his face covered in tears. "She's inside."

"That's not her inside."

"How do you know?" the man suddenly roared. "Have you ever lost anyone?"

Zhao Ye paused, taken aback by the question.

Of course he had lost someone. But what would saying it do? The other man didn't want an answer; he wanted a reason to press the open button for himself.

Cao Gui stepped forward first.

His expression was even worse than the man's, yet he didn't snatch the ticket. He stood half a meter outside the elevator doors, staring at the yellow line that was already extending inward.

"My brother is inside too," Cao Gui said. "He might have been in there even longer than your wife."

The man was stunned.

"I want to go too," Cao Gui continued. "I almost took the ticket just now."

He raised his hand, showing the other man his trembling fingertips.

"But I just realized something. It's not letting us see people; it wants us to admit that there is no way forward on the living side."

A woman's voice came from inside the elevator.

"Lao Zhou."

The man trembled all over.

The voice sounded so much like her—like the woman who, ten years ago, would still scold him in the kitchen for forgetting the green onions when buying groceries. The man took a half-step forward, and the yellow line lit up along the tips of his shoes.

Wu suddenly reached out from the side and grabbed the elevator door.

When his fingers touched the doorframe, his skin rapidly turned white as if soaked in saltwater. The sound of waves surged from within the door, rushing to his ears, calling not "Wu," but a string of erased names.

Wu grit his teeth. "Don't answer."

The man asked in a breakdown, "Then what else can I do?"

"You can miss her," Wu said. "Don't trade yourself to go in."

These words weren't particularly beautiful; they were even a bit clumsy. But the man stopped.

Space Venerable had already circled behind the freight elevator. He used a rangefinder to scan the wall inch by inch, with the structural maps of the Old Port District sent by Tide piled at his feet. The freight elevator was not in its original position; the elevator shaft had been twisted by the interlayer next to a load-bearing pillar. As long as someone actively pressed the open button, the structures of the entire alley would be recognized as a "downward entrance."

"Zhao Ye!" Space Venerable suddenly shouted. "Don't smash the door, smash here!"

He pointed to a wall that looked completely ordinary. Small takeout flyers were still pasted on it, their corners curled up, as if no one would ever pay attention to them.

Zhao Ye understood with a single glance.

Fire patterns lit up on his arm, and this time, the Fire Nails of the Suppression Domain were not driven into the ground, but into the four corners of the wall. He smashed his fist down; the wall wasn't shattered, but instead emitted a hollow, muffled thud. Immediately after, an old steel beam hidden inside was shaken loose, wrapped in black threads like seaweed.

The moment the black threads snapped, the yellow line violently retracted.

The wooden pier board inside the freight elevator doors began to rot.

The Tide Lantern Keeper finally couldn't sit still any longer. He walked out from the back door of the teahouse, a small dark blue lantern now in his hand. As the lantern light shone, another freight elevator at the end of the alley opened on its own.

"One door is closed," he said. "There are other doors."

Tide had been standing outside the cordon line all this time, but now she suddenly rushed over and slammed a roll of waterproof maps onto the ground.

"Seventh Pier!" She pointed at the map. "The old freight elevator is connected to the Seventh Pier cargo shaft. There's still one over there that hasn't been dismantled!"

Bai Ya's Patrol Lamp looped back from the ticket stubs, flying all the way toward the harbor along the alleys, shopping malls, and drainage ditches. His voice sounded a bit urgent for the first time: "All the ticket stubs are converging there. The Tide Lantern Keeper doesn't just want to open one elevator."

"He is looking for a door for the entire port district."

From the direction of the distant Seventh Pier, a very soft sound of metal hinges echoed.

It sounded as if someone beneath the sea had pressed a ticket punch.

When Wu took his hand off the elevator doorframe, his fingertips were already completely bloodless. He stared at his palm for a long time, as if he had forgotten how this hand was supposed to bend. After seeing this in the video feed, Xu Minglan's voice immediately sank: "Stay away from the door. Every time you touch this kind of unrecorded boundary, your information in reality drops."

Wu did not reply.

Tide looked down at her phone and saw that the character "Wu" that had just appeared in her contact list was flashing, turning into a string of gibberish the next second. She hastily wrote down his appearance, the color of his coat, and his speech habits on a piece of paper.

"Don't write things down recklessly," Wu suddenly said.

"Why?"

"If you write too much, the sea will learn."

Tide's pen stopped.

Hearing this, Space Venerable's face turned pale, but he still continued to measure that steel beam. He discovered that all the load-bearing structures borrowed by the interlayer would leave an extremely thin salt line in reality. As long as he could find the starting point of the salt line, he could determine which door was the real exit and which was a mouth borrowed by the sea.

After Zhao Ye smashed the steel beam, a gash was split open on the back of his hand. As fresh blood dripped onto the ground, the yellow line actually crawled toward the bloodstains. Lin Zhao immediately threw a small Fire Seal from behind, burning the bloodstains away.

"Don't leave any words for it," Lin Zhao said.

Chen Jue, following behind him, clenched his fists subconsciously upon seeing this. In the past, he always felt that because he lacked ability, he would only cause trouble. But tonight, he had been continuously moving people, securing ropes, and remembering who hadn't made it out. No one praised him, and he didn't ask again when he could enter the core.

After the Seventh Pier freight elevator was activated, Tide pulled up the duty roster for the vicinity and found that there were still twenty-six people in the warehouse who hadn't off-shifted yet. She called for them to evacuate over the walkie-talkie, and the first to respond was a young worker.

"Sister Chao, the door won't open."

There was the sound of wind in his voice, along with a very close sound of waves.

The next second, the crisp sound of a ticket punch falling came from the walkie-talkie.

*Click.*

The worker's voice became very soft.

"I seem to... have gotten a ticket."

Listening to the worker's voice on the walkie-talkie, Chen Jue felt as if something had nudged his heart. He had heard voices like this before. It wasn't a cry for help, but rather the sound of someone who was clearly terrified but trying to pretend they could handle it.

He grabbed the spare walkie-talkie and said to the other side, "Listen, don't look at the ticket. Keep your back to the elevator, feel the wall, and walk to the left. There's a yellow pipe on the left; once you find it, don't move."

The worker gasped, "Who are you?"

Chen Jue paused for a moment.

"Someone who almost died."

There was a moment of silence over the walkie-talkie, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps.

Soon, the worker's response came over the walkie-talkie.

"I see the yellow pipe."

Chen Jue closed his eyes and continued, "Don't run, walk along it. Count to twenty and pause, then listen to see if anyone is calling you from outside."

The worker asked, "What if they do?"

"Don't answer."

Chen Jue gripped the walkie-talkie, the blood on his palm making the buttons slick. He suddenly recalled the words Han Yue had left him—"Don't be like me"—and felt a tightness in his chest, but he still kept his voice steady.

Twenty seconds later, the worker finally burst out of the warehouse's side door, his legs so weak that he collapsed directly to his knees.

Tide rushed over to help him up. Chen Jue stood where he was, not saying a word about whom he had saved. He simply put the walkie-talkie back in the case and went to tie a knot on the next evacuation rope.

At the distant Seventh Pier, the freight elevator sounded for the second time.

This time, there was more than one person speaking inside.