165: Chapter 165 Starry Sky

Starry Sky slept for eleven full hours on the hospital bed in the Linhai Safe House.

The long slumber was like a buffer that forcibly stripped away his consciousness, dragging him back to the mortal world, little by little, from the boundless Black Sea and endless illusions.

The first moment he opened his eyes, he didn't look at anyone or anything; he immediately asked three clear and sharp questions.

"What year is it now?"

"Is this land?"

"Is my mom still alive?"

Everyone in the room had the answer to the first two questions. But to the last one, no one responded.

In the quiet Safe House, silence spread, tightening everyone's breathing.

Jiaoyue sat by the hospital bed, a thick stack of medical reports spread across her knees, her fingertips pinching a thermometer. She wasn't wearing a standard white coat; her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, revealing slender, pale forearms. Deep dark circles pressed under her eyes, a sign of exhaustion from a sleepless night.

She didn't rush to answer, just handed him a cup of warm water, her tone steady and gentle, carrying a reassuring stability.

"Drink some water first. I can tell you the year and location truthfully. As for the last question, we can talk about it once your condition has completely stabilized."

Starry Sky lifted his hand to take the cup, his fingertips trembling uncontrollably, the coolness of the cup radiating through his fingertips to his whole body. He didn't back down from her reassurance, his gaze locked tightly onto Jiaoyue, stubbornly pursuing the question.

"Did she come to the Wanghai No. 7 platform?"

Jiaoyue raised her eyes, gazing back at him quietly.

Starry Sky's voice was extremely low, carrying a trace of imperceptible trembling, every word difficult: "The voice that called me outside the door, was it her?"

"No."

Jiaoyue answered crisply and cleanly, without a hint of hesitation, severing the last delusion in his heart.

"What came was an anomaly, not a person. It never was."

Starry Sky lowered his eyes, looking at the reflection in the rippling water in the cup. The water ripples shattered his features, and also shattered the obsession he had held for so long. He was silent for a long time, then lifted the cup and drank the water in one gulp; the hurried flow of water choked his throat, triggering a violent coughing fit.

He coughed until his eyes were red, until his shoulders and back trembled.

The moment his breathing calmed, he softly spat out two words.

"That's good."

These two short words held no relief for having survived a disaster; instead, they were like grievances and longing pressed deep in his heart for years, finally finding an outlet to shed tears, heavy and sour.

No one could clearly say how long Starry Sky had been trapped on the inverted Wanghai No. 7 platform.

The official supply records of the old observatory had completely ended seventeen years ago. But the observation logs written by Starry Sky's own hand only recorded forty-three days of content.

The dates on each page of the log were messy and mottled; some weeks repeated and overlapped, while others simply gave up recording time, filled instead with dense drawings of Tide lines and incomplete star charts.

Bai Ya laid the yellowing log flat on the table, flipping through it page by page, his gaze calm and sharp.

"How did you board the platform and get trapped inside?"

Starry Sky turned his head to look at the brightening horizon outside the window, his gaze unfocused, slowly retracing that eerie beginning.

"I was originally a surveyor for the buoy team. After the Wanghai No. 7 platform was abandoned and decommissioned, our team would regularly go out to sea to calibrate currents and navigation routes."

"That day, a thick fog covered the sea, standard navigation failed, and the equipment automatically locked onto an old, obsolete coordinate. When I piloted the boat closer, the originally dead Wanghai No. 7 was lit up with lights."

Zhao Ye raised his eyes and spoke: "And you just boarded it directly?"

"I thought the remaining personnel hadn't fully evacuated." Starry Sky mocked himself softly.

Zhao Ye didn't refute, nor did he comment.

He had seen this kind of start too many times. Everyone who stepped into an anomaly Domain initially thought they were just doing their duty, doing their job. No one knew that one wrong step meant eternal damnation.

From the most hidden layer of the log, Starry Sky pulled out a thin piece of paper, folded extremely small and softened by seawater.

On the paper was a hand-drawn nautical chart.

The outlines of the Linhai Port Area, offshore shipping lanes, and old observation zones were drawn roughly and sloppily; only that Black Shore stretching across the deep sea was drawn with lines as thin as hair, abrupt and clear, like a strand of black hair growing and spreading from the pitch-black seabed, cutting across the entire sea area.

Along the Black Shore, countless small dots were densely marked, and next to each dot was a minimalist lamp-shaped symbol.

"The first time it approached the platform, I turned on all the emergency lights and navigation lights of the entire platform." Starry Sky's fingertips stroked the lamp-shaped marks, his eyes full of gloom. "I thought that by turning on the lights, passing ships would see me and I would be able to wait for rescue."

"But I only realized later that the moment the lights came on, what approached was never a ship."

He pointed his fingertip at the first lamp dot at the forefront of the chart.

"When the lights turn on, the Black Shore moves forward an inch. It isn't afraid of the light; it uses the lights of the mortal world to identify direction, to approach land, to approach living people."

Bai Ya stared intently at the nautical chart and asked in a deep voice: "For forty-three whole days, how did you survive?"

"Turn off the lights." Starry Sky's tone was flat, every word piercing with the bone-chilling cold of a desperate situation. "Extinguish all light sources completely, never leave the slightest signal."

"The platform was pitch black with no power; what did you rely on to endure the desperate situation?"

Starry Sky tugged at the corner of his mouth; the smile was bleak and ugly, hiding endless torment.

"In the darkness, there would be knocking on the door, familiar people calling your name, voices tempting you to look at the sea from the railing. I didn't listen to, answer, or look at any of it. When I was extremely hungry and on the verge of exhaustion, I would silently memorize the rise and fall of the Tide and hand-draw the positions of the stars."

Wu, sitting in the corner, suddenly spoke, their voice cold and clear.

"On the platform, you can't see the real starry sky."

"Yes." Starry Sky answered frankly. "I couldn't see it, so I drew it myself."

He spread out a thick stack of hand-drawn star charts.

The star dots on the paper were scattered irregularly, without the arrangement patterns of real constellations. In the corner of each chart, precise times and real-time Tide levels were neatly noted.

Space Venerable leaned over to look closely for a long time, finally seeing through the mystery, his tone grave: "This isn't a star map."

Starry Sky nodded slowly, revealing the truth.

"This is a Fire Map of Linhai."

"Every time a Fire Beacon lights up in Linhai city, a lighthouse turns on or off, emergency lighting at settlement points is activated, or port pilot lights operate, a new bright spot appears in the Black Sea above the platform."

"As the bright spots appear one by one, the Black Shore moves steadily forward, shrinking the distance between the sea and the city little by little."

"It is mimicking the breathing of the city." Starry Sky raised his eyes to look at the deep night outside the window, his tone growing cold. "Wherever there is light in the mortal world, wherever there are people hoping for a return, people waiting, people wanting to go home, it records them one by one and carves them into the Black Shore."

Tang Zhiwei, listening nearby, immediately pulled up all lighting maintenance records for Linhai from the past seven days.

The time and frequency of every light turning on—lighthouse activations, hospital emergency lights, power supply at settlement points, port piloting, and the operation of Fire Beacons in the wild—perfectly matched the appearance sequence of the bright spots on the star chart, without the slightest discrepancy.

The evidence was conclusive, and thinking about it made one terrified.

"When is the next anomaly?" Tang Zhiwei looked up, her tone tense.

Starry Sky looked at the dark clouds hanging low over the port area; the clouds were heavy and oppressive, with no stars or moon to be seen.

"The Dead Tide."

"What is the specific time?"

"Tomorrow night."

Two short words fell, and the air in the room instantly stagnated, tense to the extreme.

Zhao Ye pressed his finger joints, his knuckles cracking slightly, and said in a deep voice: "Then tomorrow night, we send it back to the Black Sea completely."

Starry Sky looked up at him and shook his head lightly, carrying a trace of powerless sobriety.

"It's not that simple. It has never been just a single Black Shore."

He reached out and flipped to the last page of the nautical chart.

After the depth of the Black Shore on the page, there were seven huge black dots arranged, dark and eerie. Each black dot trailed a thin, long ink line, extending in seven completely different directions, covering the entire sea area.

"When I was trapped on the platform, I intercepted a large number of abnormal wireless signals." Starry Sky spoke in a deep voice. "Across the entire offshore area, there is more than one sea area emitting eerie distress signals."

Bai Ya's gaze was sharp as he looked at them one by one along the ink lines.

One of the thin lines extended straight from the Linhai offshore area, accurately docking with the black anomaly coordinates previously transmitted by Rhine.

The furthest ink line suddenly broke halfway, its end falling outside the boundary of the entire nautical chart, destination unknown.

Starry Sky's fingertip touched the end of the broken line, his tone low and bone-chilling.

"There are signals from afar, warning me across the boundless Black Sea—don't turn on the lights."

"What it fears has never been the lights of Linhai city alone."

"What it fears is that the Fire Map of the entire mortal world will be completely seen through and locked onto by it."

Jiaoyue gently pushed a neat, simple schedule in front of Starry Sky, interrupting the increasingly heavy deduction.

"Let's pause for a moment. Don't rush to spill all the truths and clues at once."

"From now on, every half hour, you only need to tell us one absolutely true thing. Physical sensations, memory fragments, what you saw and felt—anything is fine."

Starry Sky looked at the dense time intervals and smiled wearily: "Does this count as a recovery check?"

"It counts." Jiaoyue's eyes were determined, gentle yet firm. "You were trapped in a desperate situation isolated from the human world for too long; first, stabilize yourself and reconnect with the real world. We will slowly dismantle the remaining mysteries and crises."

This gentle reassurance made Starry Sky fall into a long silence.

He lowered his eyes and sat quietly for a moment, then reached into the last hidden layer of the log and pulled out an old photograph.

The photo had long been soaked white and wrinkled by seawater, the image blurry but recognizable. He, as a teenager, was wearing a heavy life jacket, standing in front of a row of offshore buoys, making a clumsy and flamboyant gesture at the camera, green and vivid.

"This is me from before."

Wu looked up at the photo, then at the teenager who had experienced the vicissitudes of life before them, and asked lightly.

"Can you be sure you didn't misidentify yourself?"

Starry Sky curved his eyes, revealing the first genuine, shallow smile in days, his tone light and slow: "My nose doesn't look good; I can't be wrong."

The few people in the room chuckled softly, and the tense, oppressive atmosphere finally loosened slightly.

But the moment Starry Sky flipped the photo over and saw the handwriting on the back, the smile on his face instantly faded completely.

The back of the photo originally had a string of names written on it, most of which had long been corroded and washed away by seawater, blurry and hard to distinguish. Only a short sentence at the very bottom was barely clear and recognizable, revealing an eerie sense of fate.

[The one who lights the lamp waits for the shore to come.]

Bai Ya raised his hand and entered the photo into the Grey Net archive for comparison. The System quickly popped up a result: the handwriting style and the force of the strokes were completely different from all the carvings left on the Wanghai No. 7 platform.

Long before Starry Sky was trapped, someone had boarded the platform and been trapped there, and someone had left this cold rule in advance to warn those who came later.

Starry Sky pulled out another special page from the log.

This piece of paper had clearly been torn out and then carefully stuck back into the book, the traces clear. On the paper, only one sentence was written, the force piercing through the back of the paper.

The shore doesn't come from the sea; it grows from the place where someone wants to return.

Below the sentence was a minimalist schematic diagram.

When the lights on the ship turn on, the Black Shore approaches; when people call out to loved ones over the radio or think of returning home, the Black Shore also approaches. Two different triggers ultimately pointed to the same ending.

"It doesn't distinguish between lights and human voices." Starry Sky concluded in a deep voice. "To it, all obsessions with returning home and all the lights of the mortal world are precise coordinates, all signals that lure it closer."

Wu listened quietly until the end, then took out their personal Fire Seal, neatly wrote down this sentence on the back, and added a line of cold, hard advice.

Don't respond to it.

The moment the handwriting was set, the Grey Net terminal in the room emitted a very faint beep.

The screen light flickered, and the alarm silently lit up.

Outside the Fire Beacon defense line of the Linhai offshore area, seven unregistered dark locations suddenly emerged.

Seven points of darkness, without light or luster.

Yet they were like seven lonely lamps inverted over the Black Sea, floating heavily, waiting for an anomaly.

Tide walked quickly to the window, gazing into the pitch-black, heavy sea surface of the port area; the night was thick as ink, with no visible boundary.

"They have already arrived."

Amidst the vast sea fog, an old cargo ship with no number and no markings was slowly breaking through the thick fog, sailing out from the deep sea.

The bow of the ship was dead silent, not a single light burning, so silent it was heart-stopping.

Trailing behind the ship on the sea surface was a string of wet black buoys, rising and falling with the waves, swaying heavily.

On every cold buoy, a name was neatly written.

Every name belonged to a living person currently in Linhai.