146: Chapter 146 The Torchbearer Approaches the Sea

Outside the Seventh Pier, the night sky of Linhai seemed to have been peeled back by someone.

The Black Sea hung inverted above the city, seawater crawling up the exterior walls of high-rises, while lights in the elevator shafts shone in reverse.

People outside the blockade finally saw things they shouldn't have: cars stopped midway, people standing by the roadside holding children, and others holding up their phones but afraid to record.

When the sea pressed down, the first Fire Beacon of the lighthouse cracked.

Tide stood beneath the Fire Beacon, her earphones filled with intermittent cries for help and distress calls.

She could no longer distinguish which were real phone calls and which were voices mimicked by the descending station.

She only knew one thing—once the Fire Beacon went out, all the roads in the Old Port District would change.

"Hold the line," she said into the walkie-talkie.

She didn't know who she was saying it to.

The next second, the three fire points at Qinghe, Jiangbei, and Linhai lit up simultaneously.

It was not the Spark Post Road.

That route was still cooling down and could not withstand more people passing through.

But the remaining fire lines between the three anchor points were plucked up one by one from the Xinhuo Hall by someone, like ten thousand lamp filaments suddenly pulled taut in the dark night.

Lu Chen walked out from the end of the fire line.

He did not descend from the sky, nor did he shatter any buildings.

He simply took a step onto the embankment outside the Seventh Pier, and the grey-white Purifying Flame beneath his feet spread along the ground.

The flames did not burn cars or people; they crossed the blockade, hospital corridors, and the stagnant water beneath residential buildings, finally stopping beside every still-lit street lamp.

Many people saw clearly for the first time the person who had always been hidden behind the firelight.

He was dressed very ordinarily, his complexion even a bit pale, as if he hadn't slept well for several nights.

But when he looked up at the Black Sea, the wind across all of Linhai stopped for an instant.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau stood on the inverted sea surface, a register floating in its palm.

"Fire Keeper," it said, "how many people do you want to bring back?"

This question fell into everyone's ears along with the sound of the Tide.

Some thought of loved ones who hadn't returned from the shipwreck, some thought of the names on their return tickets, some thought of the pair of hands in the carriage that refused to let go.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau didn't need them to answer; it only needed to make them think.

Lu Chen did not raise his hand immediately.

He saw Cao Gui standing not far away, his face deathly pale; he saw Tide clutching the Tide level gauge tightly; he saw Jiaoyue running out from the hospital entrance, her cuffs still stained with blood; he saw Zhao Ye deep in the pier supporting the Suppression Domain, fire patterns already burning up to his collarbone.

"There are many who want to come back," Lu Chen said.

The tip of the Tide-Reversal Bureau's pen touched down.

"But the living should not sacrifice themselves to fill the places of the dead."

The Purifying Flame flared up suddenly.

It was not a larger ball of fire, but the sound of a bell tolling.

Deep within Xinhuo Hall, the Law-Suppressing Bell Shadow rang across Linhai in its entirety for the first time.

The bell sound passed through the three fire lines and landed on the Tide-Reversal Bureau's register.

The pages were not burned, but they seemed held down by someone, and all the names currently being written stopped mid-stroke.

Lu Chen raised his right hand.

The grey-white Purifying Flame traced an extremely long line along the edge of the inverted Black Sea.

Below the line was Linhai; above the line was the sea.

"This place is not your station."

The Tide-Reversal Bureau retreated half a step for the first time.

It was not because it feared fire, but because it discovered that the person before it had not provided a "destination" that could be registered.

Lu Chen did not beg it to bring anyone back, nor did he admit that any city should be abandoned.

He simply rewrote a boundary line back into reality.

Deep in the Seventh Pier, seizing the moment the bell sound fell, Zhao Ye lowered five fire pillars simultaneously.

The Suppression Domain no longer supported the sky, but instead nailed the five elevator lines leading from the Tide-Reversal Bureau to reality back into the interlayer one by one.

Shen Qinghe's bronze bell rang for the third time.

The Illumination Realm shone onto the register.

The names on the pages that had been written by the Tide finally revealed their true exit.

It was not in the sea.

It was that lamp in everyone's reality that had not yet gone out.

After Lu Chen stepped onto the embankment, his first task was not to find the Tide-Reversal Bureau.

He first looked at the people who had evacuated from the Seventh Pier.

Some sat on the ground holding children, some clutched their return tickets in despair, others had just come out of the Lamp-Keeping Zone, their shoe soles still covered in sea salt.

Everyone was looking at that Black Sea in the sky, not knowing where to hide.

As the Purifying Flame spread along the embankment, Lu Chen raised his hand and tapped three times.

The first tap: the Guardian Lamp at the hospital entrance relit.

The second tap: all false exits on the basement level of the shopping mall were extinguished simultaneously.

The third tap: the fire line at the Seventh Pier extended all the way from the ground to the front of the sea gate.

There was no large-scale burning, and no one was swallowed by the firelight.

That fire did only one thing: it flipped the direction that the Tide-Reversal Bureau had reversed back to the right way.

The Black Sea pressed down on the sky, so the path of reality should be under one's feet.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau watched that boundary line; the register pages were held down by the bell shadow, yet the pen tip was still trembling.

It could not understand why the Fire Keeper did not ask for any of the dead to return.

It had seen too many power holders who traded disasters for bargaining chips, traded names for paths to survival, and in the end, always left a spot in the register.

"Is there no one you want to see?" the Tide-Reversal Bureau asked.

Lu Chen was silent for a moment.

Of course he did.

Every name in Torch that hadn't returned was under a tombstone.

Han Yue, Chen Fu, Liang Cheng, Lu Chengzhi, and all those ordinary people who hadn't left their names.

It wasn't that he hadn't thought about pulling them back from the darkness.

But he knew better than anyone that what the Tide-Reversal Bureau offered was never a return.

"I want to," Lu Chen said.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau's pen tip moved slightly.

"But they are not your tickets."

As these words fell, the Fire Beacon, Guardian Lamp, Patrol Lamp, and the three anchor points all shuddered simultaneously.

Hearing this deep in the pier, Zhao Ye gritted his teeth and pressed the last trace of the Suppression Domain into the sea gate; Shen Qinghe lifted the silent bronze bell—though the bell no longer rang, the bell shadow remained on the edge of the register; Bai Ya gathered all the Patrol Lamps to the side of that boundary line.

It was not one person who suppressed the sea.

It was that everyone finally had a line pointing in the same direction.

Lu Chen raised his hand, and the aftershock of the Law-Suppressing Bell Shadow fell once more.

This time, the bell sound did not strike the Tide-Reversal Bureau.

It struck all the elevators in Linhai that were still moving downward.

Ding. The elevator stopped.

Ding. The water in the door gap receded an inch.

Ding. A path of white lights appeared under the feet of every ticket holder.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau closed the register for the first time, as if realizing that if it continued to write, it could no longer guarantee who would follow its path.

Lu Chen watched it.

"You want to verify the Tide."

"Then let's first verify if anyone in this city is willing to stay."

The Black Sea surged.

All the lights in Linhai that had not yet gone out lit up one by one.

After the bell shadow stopped the elevators, someone outside the blockade finally reacted and began running toward the white light path.

Some supported the elderly, some held children, and some simply threw their phone navigation into the water.

The official police officers who had originally been shouting evacuation orders later changed them to the same phrase:

"Follow the lights."

Lu Chen did not look at those people.

Once he was distracted, the Tide-Reversal Bureau would stuff the question back into everyone's hearts.

But he could feel how many people on the white light path truly turned around.

Fire did not read thoughts, but it could feel whether a lamp had been chosen by someone.

One, two, a dozen.

More real light paths lit up.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau's register began to drip water.

It tried to write the destination of the "Fire Keeper" on the last page, but found that every stroke was burned off by the boundary line beneath Lu Chen's feet.

"You have no destination," it said.

Lu Chen looked up.

"I do."

He pointed to Linhai, then pointed further away to Qinghe and Jiangbei, which were connected by the fire lines.

"Where they are, that is it."

This sentence was not a sacrifice, nor was it a declaration.

It was simply a fact.

The Tide-Reversal Bureau was unable to write this kind of destination into its register for the first time.

Because its rules only recognized individual passengers, individual tickets, and individual losses.

It did not understand a group of people guarding each other, nor did it understand an organization sending living people back to reality to one another.

The Purifying Flame rose higher along the boundary line once more.

The Black Sea was finally pushed open by half an inch.

Behind the sea gate, the platform of the Tide-Reversal Bureau revealed cracks for the first time.