141: Chapter 141 Nameless Floor

All the elevators in the Linhai Old Port District stopped at -15.

No one knew how many floors there actually were below that. The fire department dismantled every door they could, but behind the doors lay not elevator shafts, but corridors bleached pale by seawater. Some corridors ended in staircases, others in mirrors, and some led directly to the children's playground on the third floor of the mall. The structure of reality had been twisted like a piece of wet paper, and no one dared to let ordinary people inside anymore.

Wu stood beneath the first lighthouse Fire Beacon, clutching a piece of white paper in his hand.

His observation number had originally been written on the paper, but it had smudged halfway through. Xu Minglan had just replaced his record card; on the back, she had written his height, clothing, speech habits, and "do not leave the Lamp-Keeping Zone alone." She was afraid he would forget even his own name.

Wu turned the card over and over, staring at it for a long time.

"I'm going in," he said.

Zhao Ye frowned. "What can you do in there?"

"There are no floor names there." Wu looked toward the freight elevator entrance. "It cannot register a place without a name."

Tide felt her heart sink as she listened. She disliked treating a person as a tool, especially since Wu looked as though he might be erased from reality at any moment. But she also knew that the Tide-Reversal Bureau treated every entrance like a registration form. As long as a person had a name, a destination, and someone they wanted to return to, it would catch hold of a thread.

Wu was an exception.

Not because he was strong, but because he had already had too much of himself bitten away by the anomalies.

Shen Qinghe did not agree immediately. She illuminated the freight elevator door three times with the Illumination Realm. The tolling of a bell echoed at the entrance, revealing an extremely narrow, grayish-white outline. It was neither a Downward Station nor a floor in reality, but an unmarked rift.

"Once you're inside, do not call out anyone's name," she said. "Including your own."

Wu nodded.

Bai Ya pressed a Patrol Lamp spark into his collar. The spark would not clear a path for him; its only purpose was to keep his last remaining trace of reality hung upon the Grey Net. As long as the spark did not go out, those outside would at least know someone was still inside.

Zhao Ye glanced at him and suddenly handed him a Fire Nail.

"It can't pin down the sea," Zhao Ye said, "but if you see a place where you can get a foothold, drive it in. Don't push your luck."

Wu took the Fire Nail, his fingertips flinching from the heat. Instead of stuffing the nail into his pocket, he clenched it in his hand, holding it like a needle whose usefulness was uncertain.

The freight elevator doors closed.

The numbers did not continue to count down; instead, they vanished one by one.

-15.

-14.

-13.

Eventually, even the light on the buttons went out.

Wu stood inside the elevator. There were no waves around him, only a heavy, suffocating silence. When the doors opened, he was greeted by an unnumbered floor. Doors lined both sides of the corridor, their nameplates entirely blank. The walls were covered with missing person posters from the Old Port District, the faces in every photograph bloated and blurred by water.

Wu took a few steps forward and suddenly saw a very long wall.

The wall was densely carved with names.

Some were clear, some were left with only half a character, and some had been scratched away by fingernails, leaving only grayish-white marks. There was an empty space at the very bottom, as if someone had just wiped a name clean.

Wu approached the blank space.

A character slowly seeped out from the blank space.

Wu.

He stared at it, a powerful dread suddenly rising in his heart. It wasn't a fear of death, but a fear that once this single character was written into the wall, the people outside would never again remember whether he still existed.

He reached out and pressed the Fire Nail Zhao Ye had given him into the blank space.

The Fire Nail did not drive into the wall; instead, it pierced into his own palm.

Blood dripped down through his fingers, and the character 'Wu' on the wall flared as it was scorched.

From the end of the corridor came the sound of registry pages turning.

Someone asked from far away:

"Nameless One, where do you wish to return?"

The voice did not draw closer.

It simply lingered at the end of the corridor, waiting for Wu to provide an answer himself.

Wu's throat was very dry. A vast expanse of his mind was blank; he couldn't find where his home was, couldn't find the names of his relatives, and couldn't even recall if anyone had ever waited for him. The Tide-Reversal Bureau favored people like this the most: without a path pointing back to reality, they were easily written down as Descenders.

But he did not answer.

He looked down at the Fire Nail in his palm, remembering the blank notebook Xu Minglan had given him and the sentence he had to copy into it every day: 'I am still here.' It wasn't a name, nor was it an address. But it was something he had written with his own hands.

"I am not going back," Wu said.

The sound of pages turning at the end of the corridor paused.

"I am here."

The Purifying Flame on the Fire Nail suddenly flared. Wu did not drive the Fire Nail into any door; instead, he drew a horizontal line beneath the blank name on the wall. The line was very short, like an unfinished sentence, yet it blocked out the constantly seeping character 'Wu'.

Outside, Bai Ya suddenly snapped his head up. The nearly extinguished Patrol Lamp spark within the Grey Net actually brightened once more. It wasn't that Wu's identity had stabilized, but rather that Wu himself had left the smallest coordinate in reality.

"He is still there," Bai Ya said.

Shen Qinghe immediately ordered the Patrol Lamps to trace back along that spark. The Illumination Realm could not shine into the Nameless Floor, but a very thin line of fire could be seen outside the elevator, leading toward the core of the Old Port District's Downward Station.

Wu continued to walk deeper inside.

There was a door behind the wall, its nameplate blank, but light leaked through the gap. He pushed the door open; inside was not a room, but a station office half-submerged in seawater. Dozens of registries were piled on the desk, and the topmost one was open to the Linhai list.

He saw the names of Chen Li, Cao Gui, Tide, and Zhao Ye on it. A thick red line had been drawn behind Zhao Ye's name, as if someone had tried to write it in, only for it to be forcefully scorched away by fire.

At the very bottom, there was another unfinished line of characters.

[Nameless One, permitted to...]

Wu reached out and tore that page out.

The moment the paper left the registry, a piercing alarm blared throughout the station office. Seawater poured in from outside the door, and names simultaneously surfaced on all the blank nameplates of the Nameless Floor.

Behind one of the doors, someone tapped gently three times.

"Will the next passenger please verify their name."

The water outside the station office rose higher and higher. Wu stuffed the torn page into his collar. Just as he was about to leave, the names on the wall suddenly lit up together. Not all the names were calling to him; some were calling for family, some for old colleagues, and some were merely repeating a station broadcast that no one had listened to for a long time.

He almost looked back.

The Fire Nail Zhao Ye had given him burned in his palm. Remembering the words 'don't push your luck,' Wu did not open any doors. He walked back along the thin line left by the Patrol Lamps; with every step he took, the characters on the doorplates behind him faded by one.

Before the elevator doors closed, he saw a blue light turn on in the deepest part of the station office. Beneath the light sat a figure in a dark blue station uniform, retrieving the torn-out pages.

Wu held the door until the elevator returned to reality.

When he stepped out, a newly written line of characters had appeared on the paper in his hand.

[Name verification failed, transferring verification to the entire city.]

After the elevator returned to reality, Wu stood at the entrance for two seconds, looking as if he didn't know where to go next. Tide reached out to support him, but fearing that touching him might cause him to lose some memory, she could only press a bottle of warm water into his hand.

Wu held the bottle and looked down at the torn-out page.

Besides 'Name verification failed, transferring verification to the entire city,' there was another, fainter line of watery characters on the paper.

[The sea gate is not closed; the Tide verification has not ceased.]

Shen Qinghe did not take the paper after reading it. She had Bai Ya photograph the corner of the page into the Grey Net before returning the original to Wu.

"Keep it for now," she said. "You fought to bring this back."

Wu nodded.

He did not remember his own name.

But he remembered that this paper could not be taken back by the sea.