161: Chapter 161 Black Shore Coordinates

The night wind of the Linhai Port Area was wrapped in a layer of fishy, salty sea scent that seeped into the skin and could not be washed away.

Tide played the radio recording on a loop six times. By the last time, she gripped her knuckles tightly, crushing the paper cup on the table until it dented and deformed.

Amidst the chaotic static of the current, a strange male voice paused for half a beat, deep and ethereal.

"If anyone can hear this, do not turn on the lights."

"The coastline will see."

As the words fell, the recording cut off abruptly, leaving only the dead silence of the background static.

The emergency dispatch center was filled with a silent stillness. Outside the window was the familiar night view of the Linhai Port Area: the red signal lights of the cranes, the aviation obstruction lights on the tops of buildings, and the flashing warning lights of the patrol boats, arranged in sequence. They usually looked steady and reassuring, but at this moment, in the eyes of everyone, they had become targets hanging in the deep night, with nowhere to hide.

Bai Ya spread out the nautical chart sent back by Rhine, his fingertips firmly pressing on the ink-colored coastline that had abruptly appeared on the satellite imagery.

"The coordinates have shifted." He said.

Tide looked up: "Shifted to where?"

"Yesterday it was still far out at sea; today it has already approached the outer edge of the Linhai shipping lane." Bai Ya pushed the two overlapping old and new nautical charts to the center of the table, "It is not being moved by the currents; it seems to be choosing its position autonomously, deliberately stopping here."

Zhao Ye leaned against the window, staring at the nautical chart for a long time, and finally uttered the most straightforward question: "Can we just blow it up?"

"The premise is that you must first find its physical entity." Bai Ya responded calmly.

"If we can't find it, we should clear the hidden danger even more." Zhao Ye said with a firm tone.

Tide ignored the dispute between the two and reached out to take the port patrol record handed over by Deputy Captain He Yuan.

Deputy Captain He Yuan was the deputy captain of the Linhai Maritime Patrol Team. He was nearly forty years old and had faced the sea wind and scorching sun all year round. His face was tanned dark and rugged, with outlines carved by the harshness of the sea wind. He had just finished leading a patrol of the outer shipping lane during the day. Upon returning, he didn't say a single extra word of nonsense and slapped the record book directly on the table.

"At 1:17 AM, qingsuo no. 2 witnessed a coastline in the southeast of the open sea."

People around looked surprised, vaguely feeling they had heard wrong.

"What's strange about seeing a shore at sea?" Zhao Ye asked, frowning.

He Yuan looked back at him, his tone steady: "That sea area is a full thirty-seven nautical miles away from the nearest land. The radar scan showed no islands, and the nautical chart marked no reefs, yet the crew saw a black rocky shore with their own eyes."

He tapped on the live video on his phone.

The camera was bumpy and shaking. It was deep night on the sea with no moon, pitch black. Only the patrol boat's searchlight broke through the night, sweeping out a gray expanse of waves. At the end of the light, on the sea surface that should have been empty, lay a pitch-black coastline. There were no plants or buildings on the shore, only rows of rugged black shadows, like reefs or silent standing figures, eerily indistinguishable.

Suppressed curses from the crew came from the video, followed by the searchlight being slowly raised.

The next second, that stationary Black Shore moved.

It wasn't the swaying of waves, but the entire boundless black coastline, as a whole, silently approaching the patrol boat by a stretch.

The screen instantly went black, leaving only the rapid and heavy breathing of the crew outside the camera, which was exceptionally clear in the silence.

"We immediately turned off all lights, and it stopped moving." He Yuan recounted the situation on the scene in a deep voice, "We steered the boat away and sailed four nautical miles out, but the radar still couldn't detect any anomalies. However, the boat kept leaning forward abnormally, and the seawater on the rear deck kept surging forward, as if the stern was being pressed down by an invisible deep-sea mountain."

Shen Qinghe had not watched the video the whole time. The Fate-Illuminating Bronze Bell fragment clutched tightly in her palm was vibrating slightly. The subtle resonance felt like a fine needle, gently scraping against her eardrums, bringing a dense tingling sensation.

"It's not just a problem with the lights." She said softly.

Everyone looked at her upon hearing this.

"At least it's definitely not just that. It is identifying who is trying to spy on and reflect its existence."

As soon as she finished speaking, the indoor lights of the dispatch center flickered violently.

The main lighthouse in the distance outside the window slowly swept its beam across the sea. The snow-white pillar of light swept past the end of the horizon, and in that empty darkness, the invisible black line clearly pressed down an inch, secret and eerie.

Tide's expression changed abruptly.

"Shut down the lighthouse."

The duty officer hesitated subconsciously: "Shutting down the lighthouse will disrupt night navigation, and ship sailing will have hidden dangers—"

"Shut it down immediately." Tide's voice was not loud, but it carried an unquestionable determination, "Notify all ships near the port to slow down, and switch port pilotage to manual signals completely. Extinguish port lighting in zones to prevent lights from leaking out in continuous patches."

In the communication channel, Tang Zhiwei's voice cut in at the right time: "The Linhai medical area and temporary settlement points have all switched to backup power and turned off overflowing lights. How should we handle the Lamp-Keeping Zone in the city?"

Inside Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen stood in front of the Three-City Fire Status Map, his eyes locked firmly on that bright spot of light in the Linhai Port Area.

That light was blinding and scorching, like a cold iron nail, nailed firmly to the edge of the coastline.

"The Guardian Lamp must not be extinguished, but the light source must be retracted."

Tang Zhiwei was silent for a moment, instantly grasping the deep meaning.

The lamps must not be extinguished to protect the safety of the thousands of people in the city.

Retracting the light source is to ensure that not a single trace of the land is leaked to the unknown weirdness on the sea.

The Grey Net System was activated immediately, rewriting the radiation direction of all fire points in the Linhai area. The lamps in the hospital corridors adjusted their angles, no longer projecting light to the open sea; the emergency Guardian Lamps at the settlement points were covered by layers of curtains and partitions; the beacon lights throughout the port area all lowered their halos to prevent leakage.

The entire port suddenly fell into deep darkness.

But the Black Shore beyond the horizon did not fade in the slightest.

It hung quietly on the dark sea surface, like an unknown existence that had closed its eyes, lying in wait.

He Yuan put away his phone and turned to walk out.

Tide called out to stop him: "Where are you going?"

"qingsuo no. 2 is still stationed in the outer shipping lane." He Yuan turned back, his tone steady, "The ship intercepted a repetitive old radio call signal, which does not belong to the conventional maritime patrol frequency, as if it were slowly floating from the deep sea."

"Do not set sail for now." Zhao Ye advised, trying to dissuade him.

He Yuan looked up at him, his expression firm: "If we don't go out to sea, the people on the boat won't come back safely on their own."

At this moment, Bai Ya looked up abruptly.

On the Grey Net monitoring interface, a segment of intermittent, chaotic, and fluctuating communication waveforms popped up abruptly.

The signal had no registration number, no assigned ship, no precise location, and no trace at all.

Only the moment the Black Shore appeared, it would light up for a brief moment, and then disappear without a trace.

Amidst the chaotic static, that strange male voice sounded again, even more ethereal and weak than before.

"This is... Wanghai No. 7."

"Whoever can hear this, do not call my name."

"My name is..."

The signal suddenly distorted violently, and the broken syllables became completely blurred.

After a long silence, only two very light words came through weakly, piercing through the dual entanglement of waves and current.

"Starry Sky."

He Yuan stood on the spot, neither agreeing to set sail nor taking a step back or conceding.

He replayed this audio repeatedly. When he heard the sentence "Do not call my name", he tapped his fingertips on the edge of the table twice. A Sheng, the crew member waiting by the door, couldn't help but ask in a low voice: "The existence in the sea even considers names taboo. If we go over rashly, what can we do?"

He Yuan looked at the lighthouse that had been completely extinguished outside the window, his tone plain but exceptionally firm: "First, bring the people back. No matter how many rules there are at sea, no matter how strange, those who fall into the water must be saved."

"But that thing might not be a person." A Sheng reminded in a hushed voice, with wariness hidden in his eyes.

"Then bring it back, and then distinguish the truth from the false."

Zhao Ye looked at this steady and stubborn Deputy Captain of the maritime patrol, and finally put away his dissuading words. He had never liked redundant descriptions in the face of danger, but he could see clearly that He Yuan was not showing off or being reckless, but was guarding the most fundamental and credible bottom line and common sense of maritime personnel in the extreme weirdness and unknown.

Tide quickly retrieved the archived data of the old observation area. Before the Wanghai No. 7 platform was dismantled, it was equipped with an independent set of meteorological, tidal, and radio transceiver equipment. According to common sense, after the platform was powered off and abandoned, it was impossible to transmit signals again. However, the background noise of this audio was exactly the old-style buoy reporting code sound that had been completely discontinued seventeen years ago, with the rhythm and frequency exactly the same.

Bai Ya imported this special frequency into the Grey Net for analysis, but the feedback was only a blank. It was not that the signal could not be captured or tracked, but that every time the System locked onto the coordinates, the point would completely disappear from the nautical chart the next second, becoming nothingness.

Lu Chen stared at the blank area on the screen and said slowly: "It doesn't want people to get close."

The person beside him looked up and asked softly: "Or is it that it is just waiting for someone to go over?"

The hall instantly fell into silence, with only the low hum of equipment remaining.

Lu Chen did not answer immediately, but tightened the mission authorization for the Linhai area layer by layer, to the greatest extent avoiding exposing the fire point trajectory of the Spark Post Road.

"Go out to sea to investigate first." He finally set the tone, "Do not turn on strong lights, do not call names, and do not enable automatic navigation routes."

Before the words fell, the Fate-Illuminating Bronze Bell fragment in Shen Qinghe's palm suddenly shook violently.

On the electronic nautical chart below, on the edge of the Black Shore with no coordinates and no definition, an offshore platform that should not have existed and had long since perished slowly surfaced from the sea.

The entire platform was pitch black and dead silent, with not a single light turned on.

Only behind the window of the top floor, a blurred figure slowly raised a hand and waved gently towards the direction of the Linhai Port Area.