151: Chapter 151 The Rhine Chart

Three days after the third anchor in Linhai stabilized, a sea map appeared in Xinhuo Hall.

The sea map was sent by Rhine. The paper looked like it had been fished out of saltwater; the edges were curled, and the original shipping routes on the map had almost completely faded, leaving only Qinghe, Jiangbei, and Linhai circled heavily in dark ink.

Thin, greyish-white lines were drawn between the three points, as if someone had sewn one lamp after another in the darkness.

The center of the triangle had been painted a solid, inky black.

Bai Ya pressed the sea map against the side of the stone monument and rubbed his fingertip over the inky black patch. A streak of ink actually crept onto his finger, like cold, damp water. He immediately pulled his hand back: "Someone has tracked us down along the Fire Map. And they've been looking quite closely."

Lu Chen did not respond.

Grey Net was slowly replaying the audio attached to the sea map. Rhine's voice was choppy, cut up by waves and electrical interference; only one sentence could be heard clearly:

"After you lit the beacon, something looked back along the Fire Map."

Beneath the stone monument, the three anchor points for Qinghe, Jiangbei, and Linhai dimmed simultaneously for an instant.

The flames of the three anchor points all shrank in height.

It was as if, from across a great distance of wind and rain, someone had pressed a finger onto the wick.

Lu Chen raised his eyes, his gaze passing over the fire points of the three cities and landing on the center of the blacked-out triangle.

"Grey Net, backtrack."

Zero executed the command quickly.

A massive amount of reality records flowed past the edges of the Fire Map: casualty lists from hospitals, lockdown applications from the Linhai Port Area, duty rosters from the Jiangbei station collaboration point, and supply lists from the Qinghe Safe House. At first, everything was normal, until a message from Qinghe was forcibly inserted.

Tang Zhiwei's voice was urgent.

"Lu Chen, something has happened here in Qinghe."

The scene switched to an administrative window.

Chen Fu's wife sat on a plastic chair, clutching a stack of Materials in her hand. She had already come twice; the first time they said the System was under maintenance, and the second time they said data was missing. Today, the staff member at the window checked the computer several times, sweat beading on their forehead.

"Ma'am, are you sure it's Chen Fu?"

She froze.

"My husband."

"There is no such person in the System."

The voice behind the counter grew quieter, "That accident at the warehouse... his name wasn't registered for that either."

Chen Fu's daughter stood nearby, still clutching that takeout receipt in her arms. The edges of the paper had been softened by her grip. She looked up and asked Tang Zhiwei in a small voice:

"Auntie Tang, did Dad never come here?"

In that moment, Tang Zhiwei couldn't answer immediately.

Tang Zhiwei's throat tightened. If a convoy went out of control, they could change the route; if supplies were short, they could restock; if a phone call didn't go through, they could send someone to knock on the door. But the computer in front of her was too blank, too clean, as if someone had forcibly gouged Chen Fu out of existence.

The warehouse key was still there, the work log was still there, and the words on the back of the takeout receipt were still there.

Yet, in the System, there was only one phrase left: No such person found.

"He was here." Tang Zhiwei crouched down, her gaze level with the little girl's, "He saved people and couldn't come back. Someone is erasing his name. We will write it back."

The little girl didn't understand the last half of the sentence, but she hugged the takeout receipt even tighter.

At the same time, beneath the stone monument in Xinhuo Hall, a line of names began to fade.

[Chen Fu.]

The grey-white firelight flickered slightly at the edges of the handwriting, as if being erased bit by bit by an invisible eraser.

Lu Chen's fingers hovered above the stone monument, not touching it immediately.

Lu Chen stared at the fading name.

He had encountered things that devoured people, devoured blood, and devoured memories.

But this one before him had its sights set on the three words: "It happened."

Bai Ya said in a low voice: "There's feedback from Jiangbei too. Lu Chengzhi's dispatch recordings are gone, and Liang Cheng's platform orders have been wiped clean. Three pages of the notes left behind by Han Yue have turned blank."

Zhao Ye's expression darkened: "Who did this?"

"It's not clear yet." Lu Chen said, "But it didn't touch the living first."

He watched Chen Fu's name gradually fading.

"It touched the dead first."

The hall was quiet for a while.

Afterwards, the Linhai Fire Beacon suddenly flashed three times.

Within that inky black patch on the sea map, a line of text, looking like both water stains and ink, slowly seeped out.

[Unfulfilled duties may all become cases.]

After Tang Zhiwei hung up the communication, she didn't leave the window immediately.

Chen Fu's wife was still sitting on the chair, the Materials in her hands rummaged through and messy. Inside were accident notices, warehouse inventory logs, a leave request form for the child's school, and a shopping receipt Chen Fu had previously tucked into the pages. The two characters for "Chen Fu" on the paper were already so faint they were almost illegible.

Tang Zhiwei pulled out the receipt and flipped it to the back.

On the back was a string of crooked characters, written by Chen Fu's daughter: Dad is coming back for dinner on Friday.

That line of text had not disappeared.

"Electronic records can make mistakes." Tang Zhiwei said to the staff member at the window, "The System can also be tampered with. Issue today's acceptance form, handwritten, stamped, and kept on file."

The staff member subconsciously wanted to say, how can I issue it without a name?

Tang Zhiwei looked up at him: "I am here. The family is here. The child is here. What other proof of person do you need?"

The person opened their mouth, but finally lowered their head and took out a paper form.

In Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen saw this scene and suddenly had Grey Net split all sacrifice records of the three cities into two copies. One copy would remain in the System, and the other would fall back to the most rudimentary physical objects: recordings, handwritten notes, keys, photos, access logs, and a sentence remembered by others.

Bai Ya looked at the task panel, uncharacteristically not making a joke.

"Does this count as going backwards?"

"No." Lu Chen said, "It's storing things that can be erased separately."

Before leaving the administrative window, Tang Zhiwei looked back at the computer one more time.

Chen Fu's name in the System was already empty, and the warehouse accident was left with only a cold, indifferent reference number. But the warehouse key on the table was still there, the paint on the edge of the key ring worn away—it was exactly the one Chen Fu always hung at his waist.

She snapped the key into an evidence bag and looked up at Gu Xingzhou: "Keep a record of the reference number too. If anyone asks in the future, this won't be an unclaimed accident."

Gu Xingzhou nodded.

The staff members he brought had originally wanted to ask about procedures, but in the end, they said nothing, only silently adding a note to the paper acceptance form: On-site remains confirmed.

Those few words were very ordinary.

Yet they were like driving a new nail into a world being erased.

On the edges of that black area, there were no city names, no sea area numbers; even the latitude and longitude looked as if they had been scraped away with a knife.

Yet Lu Chen noted it down.

Just because some paths cannot be walked now doesn't mean they don't exist.

The inky black patch in the center of the sea map gently surged again.

As if something behind the paper had heard this sentence.

Lu Chen raised his hand and temporarily pressed Chen Fu's name into the deepest part of the Core of the Torch.

The firelight barely managed to keep the line of text, but it could not make it bright again.

"Tang Zhiwei." He said, "Convert all sacrifice and missing person records in Qinghe to manual verification; do not rely on any single System."

"Already doing it." Tang Zhiwei said, "Anything else?"

Lu Chen looked at Grey Net.

"Notify Shen Qinghe, Zhao Ye, and Bai Ya to return to Qinghe."

He paused.

"Don't just focus on the Archives."

"Guard the names."