142: Chapter 142 The Returning One

Outside the emergency room entrance of Linhai Second Hospital, the lights were still on even at past two in the morning.

Jiaoyue was already on her second white coat. The first had been soaked by seawater, and the sleeves of this second one were stained with iodophor and blood. On the whiteboard next to her, dozens of names were written, with annotations like "Heard Broadcast," "Contacted Elevator," "Received Return Ticket," and "Hypothermia" marked behind them. Every name had been crossed off once by her, confirming the person was still there.

But the real trouble lay not with those in the hospital beds.

They were standing outside the door.

An unlicensed minibus parked across from the emergency room. Once the doors opened, over a dozen people got down one after another. There were elderly people, young workers, and a girl wearing an old school uniform. They all looked perfectly normal, with clean clothes and complexions even better than the patients. Yet, not a single one of them had a shadow.

The first to rush out was a child.

"Daddy!"

He hugged one of the middle-aged men. The man looked down and patted his head with a practiced motion, as if he had truly just left and returned. Beside them, the mother covered her mouth and wept so hard she could barely stand.

Jiaoyue did not immediately step forward to pull them apart.

She first had the nurse turn up the brightness of the Guardian Lamp at the entrance, then sent a message to Xu Minglan: "Returnees, seventeen, shadowless, body temperatures abnormally stable."

Xu Minglan replied quickly.

"Don't ask them 'Are you really you?' Ask them what they plan to do tomorrow."

Jiaoyue looked at the man holding the child, walked over, and kept her voice as calm as possible: "What time does the child have class tomorrow?"

The man paused.

"Eight o'clock."

"Which school?"

"...Port District Primary School."

"He transferred to Linhai Experimental School the year before last." The mother suddenly froze, tears still hanging on her face. "When his father went missing, he was only in the first grade."

The man's smile slowly faded.

He looked down at the child, as if realizing for the first time that the boy had grown taller. But the expression in his eyes did not change, remaining frozen on a certain day from many years ago.

The child hugged him tighter. "Daddy, don't you recognize me anymore?"

The man opened his mouth.

The sound of the tide suddenly echoed at the emergency room entrance.

The man's fingers suddenly tightened, his nails digging almost into the child's back. Jiaoyue immediately rushed forward and yanked the child from his embrace. The other party was incredibly fast, like a shadow lunging out of water; Jiaoyue's shoulder throbbed with pain from the collision, but she did not back down.

The Guardian Lamp flared.

With Lin Zhao staying in Jiangbei, Linhai's Lamp-Keeping Zone was maintained by several logistics personnel who had just completed their Fire Seal collaboration training. The light barrier was not as stable as Lin Zhao's, its edges trembling whenever the sound of the tide struck. Jiaoyue jabbed a Tempering Needle into the man's arm. As the liquid was injected, the man's pupils contracted sharply, and his chest felt as if a water bubble had burst.

Looking at his wife and child, he suddenly wept.

"I shouldn't have come back," he said.

After saying this, his shadow still did not appear, but his body began to turn translucent, like a receding tide.

The child tried to give chase, but Jiaoyue held him tight.

"It's not that he doesn't want you," she said, panting. "He's just afraid of taking you away with him."

Outside the emergency room, the dozen or so returnees looked up simultaneously. The ticket stubs left behind by the Tide Lantern Keeper were still burning hot inside their clothes. They hadn't come to seek help; they had come to lure the living to the elevator.

For the first time, Jiaoyue truly realized that even a medical zone could become a battlefield.

She turned to the nurses and said, "Separate all the family members who refuse to let go. Don't scold them, and don't provoke them. Give everyone a piece of paper and have them write down what they still need to do now."

The nurse dithered, "Is writing this really useful?"

"Some people don't actually want to die," Jiaoyue said. "They just feel like there's no meaning in staying on this side."

Xu Minglan's video call connected. Seeing the wound on Jiaoyue's shoulder, she fell silent for two seconds before casting over a page of temporary authorization from the Xin Huo Interface.

[Temporary Medical Collaboration Authority: Tempering Record.]

It was not an Ability Seed, nor was it giving Jiaoyue a flame capable of killing.

It simply ensured that every injection she administered and every piece of patient information she wrote down could be briefly preserved by the Guardian Lamp, preventing them from being easily erased from reality's records by the Downward Station.

After reading it, Jiaoyue simply said, "It's enough."

She took a new syringe and administered the injection to the second returnee. As the needle tip went in, a soft knocking sound came from the direction of the elevator.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

As if someone inside was asking:

"Doctor, there are hospitals in the sea too."

The knocking sound at the emergency room entrance grew clearer and clearer.

Jiaoyue did not let the nurses open the door. She first pushed the whiteboard to where the Guardian Lamp shone brightest, then told all the patients who could still speak to write down their names, addresses, and the last thing they did today. Some complained that she was making a fuss, while others began to weep as they wrote. Yet, as more words filled the whiteboard, the sound of the tide from the direction of the elevator weakened slightly.

"What is it afraid of?" the young nurse asked.

Jiaoyue pinned a medical record covered in writing back onto the clipboard. "It's afraid of you not being a line on its registry."

The returnees outside began to squeeze their way in. The Guardian Lamp's light barrier was only enough to block three or four people. With Lin Zhao away from Linhai, the arms of the few collaborative personnel holding the lamps were trembling. Jiaoyue picked up a second Tempering Needle and first stabbed it into the elderly man closest to the door. The old man had just been shouting his daughter's name, but once the needle went in, he suddenly quieted down, staring at the old-style phone clutched in his hand.

"My daughter... bought me a new phone last year," he said.

He looked down at the old, long-discontinued model, his gaze gradually drifting.

Jiaoyue did not wait for him to completely vanish. She simply stuffed the medical record into his arms. "Then don't go looking for her with an old phone. She's out there."

The old man's shadow finally flickered slightly under the light.

Everyone witnessed this scene. The returnees were not obliterated by a single injection; rather, they were pulled back by the unfinished days of reality. Seizing the opportunity, Jiaoyue had the nurses guide the family members to speak of "present" matters one by one: the child's school promotion, the pending medical follow-up, the shop downstairs changing owners, the cat at home that hadn't been fed yet. Not everyone could take it in, but there were always those who listened.

Watching Jiaoyue through the video, Xu Minglan suddenly raised the level of the medical collaboration authority by one tier.

[Tempering Record: Can preserve the real-world identities of thirty affected individuals.]

Jiaoyue did not look at the System text. She simply took the syringe and told the nurse, "Start with those who are most easily lured away. Don't worry about me."

She used six needles in a row, her knuckles scraped raw by the needle caps. By the time the seventh returnee lunged in front of her, the wound on her shoulder tore open again, blood dripping down her white coat.

Seeing the blood, the returnee suddenly stopped.

It looked down and sniffed, as if remembering something, a muffled sound rumbling in its throat.

"Seventh Pier... registry... beneath the sea."

Soon after, it slowly dissolved into a damp mist under the Guardian Lamp.

Supporting herself against the wall to stand steady, Jiaoyue's face was terribly pale.

She put a band-aid on herself and looked up at the elevator.

"Send this sentence to Shen Qinghe."

Outside the freight elevator doors, the knocking sound suddenly stopped.

Underneath the crack of the door, a soaked registration slip was slowly slid in.

The registered department read:

[Downward Station Emergency Department]