169: Chapter 169 The Guardian

Tyrannosaurus King's trailer was stuck fast on a road that shouldn't exist.

In front of the cab was the surging Black Sea, and behind the trailer was boundless black water. Looking around, the buildings of the Linhai Port Area, the warehouses, the storage yards, and the cranes had all vanished. The human outline of the entire Linhai had been completely erased. Deep in the mist, only a row of blackened road signs, soaked by the Tide for years, stood alone. The arrows on every sign obstinately pointed in the same direction.

"Return to Shore"

Inside the cab, Tyrannosaurus King was covered in cold sweat, his clothes on his back already soaked through with dampness, sticking stickily to his spine.

He had tried reversing, but the rearview mirror didn't show the way home; it only reflected a dead, pitch-black pier waiting in silence. He had tried charging forward, but the road surface the tires rolled over would quickly seep water, and the puddles would get deeper and deeper—every step was a desperate trap.

Every attempt was futile, so he simply turned off the engine, grabbed a wrench from inside the car, and smashed it fiercely against the navigation screen. Three times in a row, venting all his strength.

The screen remained undamaged.

A cold mechanical voice looped repeatedly, stubborn and icy, echoing in the enclosed cabin.

"Please driver, drive to the destination."

That was the path home preset by the darkness for the living, a destination of certain death.

Just as his heart was on the verge of collapse, a wisp of pale grey-white dark fire quietly landed on the black water in front of the car.

Tyrannosaurus King's pupils shrank. At first, he thought it was just a hallucination born from desperation, not daring to believe it.

Until that slender line of fire bent quietly along the surface of the water, precisely avoiding all the blackened road signs, bypassing all the "Return to Shore" directions, and steadily winding toward the car door, carving out a path of life belonging only to the human world in the boundless darkness.

The silent walkie-talkie suddenly emitted a sound. Tang Zhiwei's calm, restrained voice pierced through the static, landing steadily in the cabin.

"Look at the ground, don't look at the signs."

Tyrannosaurus King's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva, suppressing the panic surging in his heart.

"Let me ask one thing first... Can this special rescue route cover the paint scratched off my trailer?"

Even at the moment of life and death, he couldn't change his sharp-tongued nature.

Tang Zhiwei's tone carried a hint of tense scolding, but it hid relief: "Get out alive first, then we'll talk about reimbursement."

Tyrannosaurus King bit down on his back molars and shifted gears. The vehicle followed that faint line of fire on the ground, going against all the dark signs, inch by inch breaking free from the shackles of the phantom road, struggling to return.

Meanwhile, at the Linhai Port Area pier, the standoff had reached its peak.

The Shore Keeper slowly opened a black umbrella.

Under the umbrella, there were no ordinary shadows, no shelter to be seen, only countless fine, wet-black threads drilling out from the cracks in the pier's stones, spreading and climbing, sticking to everyone's soles and trouser legs, silently winding upward and eroding them.

Anyone touched by the black threads heard an ethereal whisper in their ears, gentle and bewitching, repeatedly questioning their inner hearts.

Where do you want to return?

Zhao Ye didn't give it a second chance to bewitch people.

He stepped forward, his figure firmly holding the defense line. The prototype of the Suppression Domain spread out with a boom, forming a rule-bound territory within eight yards.

The thousands of black threads crawling on the ground suddenly froze, like ink frozen by severe cold, stuck in place, unable to advance another inch.

The Shore Keeper slightly raised the umbrella, its gaze landing on Zhao Ye, its tone flat and waveless, carrying an indifference that saw through everything.

"Shore Suppressor?"

"Stop slapping labels on me." Zhao Ye's voice was cold and hard, without the slightest concession.

He raised his hand and pressed down hard on a wisp of black thread trying to crawl toward the shelter point. The veins on the back of his hand bulged, and he exerted all his strength. The power of the Suppression Domain was ultimately limited and could only briefly imprison a small area, but the black threads were endless, infinite, seeping into the city from all directions—through pier cracks, warehouse corners, and drainage pipes, infiltrating everything.

Shen Qinghe stood quietly behind his side, her palm pressed tightly against the Fate-Illuminating Bronze Bell fragment, her fingertips turning white.

What echoed in her ears right now was never the sound of surging Tides.

It was the sound of a huge, strange map being slowly spread out and reshaped by invisible hands.

Every time the Shore Keeper uttered "Report to Shore," it was drawing a new boundary on the realistic territory of Linhai. It had no intention of overturning the seawater or flooding the city, but it was using the most sinister method to bit by bit tamper with the ownership of this city, rewriting the boundary between the human world and the Black Sea.

"The problem is with the umbrella." Shen Qinghe spoke suddenly, breaking the deadlock with one sentence.

Bai Ya's gaze instantly locked onto the black umbrella, crow shadows quietly condensing in his eyes.

On the inside of the umbrella, countless extremely slender coastlines were arranged densely, layered and crisscrossing. At the end of every tiny coastline, a blurry name was firmly nailed—all obsessions and lifelines locked by the darkness.

"Is this umbrella the shell of that black book?" Bai Ya asked in a deep voice.

"No." Shen Qinghe shook her head gently, the gravity in her eyes deepening, "The book is a record; the umbrella is its true shore."

She was already powerless to casually trigger the second chime of the bronze bell.

The tinnitus and dizziness remaining from the last time she forcibly nailed down the judgment had not yet dissipated. But she knew clearly that if she didn't take this moment to completely nail down this black umbrella, the boundary of Linhai's territory would eventually be completely tampered with by the darkness, with no hope of return.

Zhao Ye instantly understood all the pros and cons, gritting his teeth as he pushed the Suppression Domain power, which was nearing its limit, forward another half inch, the pressure on his Physical Body increasing sharply.

"How many seconds can you hold?"

Shen Qinghe raised her eyes, her gaze determined.

"Give me as many seconds as you can hold."

"Eight seconds." Zhao Ye roared.

"Enough."

The next instant, Zhao Ye suddenly lowered his body and exerted force, the Suppression Domain territory tightening and solidifying abruptly.

Within the eight-yard barrier, all wandering black threads, the black water dripping from the umbrella's edge, and the damp cold aura lingering on the Shore Keeper's clothes were frozen and stagnant; time and rules were both forcibly locked.

A huge backlash instantly swept through his whole body. His knees smashed heavily into the hard floor tiles, the old wounds on his palms split open again, and fresh blood slowly dripped through his fingers, hitting the wet stone surface.

"One!"

Shen Qinghe slowly raised the bronze bell fragment in her palm.

She didn't raise her hand to strike it; she simply aimed the incomplete bell pattern precisely at the core of the black umbrella, locking the formation with the pattern and fixing the boundary with the rhyme.

"Two!"

Bai Ya's long-prepared crow shadows rushed out. The pitch-black phantoms shuttled rapidly along the umbrella ribs, each crow shadow biting down hard on a coastline, tearing and stripping it away with all its might.

His face was pale and greenish, the blood vessels in the corners of his eyes bursting. His flesh and Divine Soul were bearing pressure simultaneously, yet he did not retract a single phantom, not retreating a single bit.

"Three!"

The Space Venerable leaned over the general map of the port area, his pen tip as sharp as a knife. He precisely locked onto the coordinates of the old berth of Pier 7, and the red pen slashed down fiercely, completely erasing this false boundary that had long been abandoned and should have vanished.

The words were sonorous, shaking the defense line.

"There has never been a berth here!"

"Four!"

At the dispatch console, Tide decisively cut off all automated navigation data for the outer channel, switching the entire system to manual Tide mark calibration. She laid out the last cruise log left by Deputy Captain He Yuan before his death on the desk. The pages were softened and wrinkled by seawater, but the handwriting was still clear.

Her fingertips pressed against the route on the paper, her voice steady without a tremor.

"This is not your shore either."

She wasn't finishing what Deputy Captain He Yuan left undone.

She simply refused to allow the darkness that Deputy Captain He Yuan had dragged away with his life to be easily drawn back into Linhai and step into the human world again.

"Five!"

Within the defense line of the shelter point, Lin Zhao pressed the light of the Guardian Lamp to the limit. The warm light no longer diffused outward but stuck firmly to the ground, supporting a stable arc of light.

Xu Minglan led everyone in carrying out reverse anchoring. Whenever someone was entangled by black threads and lost their composure, their companions would immediately loudly recite their name, address, family members, and recount what they had done that day and their tracks in the human world.

The black threads retreated extremely slowly, inch by inch, withdrawing with difficulty.

But it was indeed retreating.

"Six!"

Outside the pier, Wu stood still in the wind, the Fire Seal in his palm burning hot, the heat penetrating his skin and flesh. Through layers of black mist, he saw clearly the secret hidden in the deepest part of the black umbrella—there, a blank coastline was hidden, nameless and traceless, yet permanently left empty, specifically waiting for a unique landing point.

He suddenly understood the entire conspiracy and warned in a deep voice.

"It wants to nail the Fire Keeper's name into its shore."

At this moment, the Shore Keeper, which had always been indifferent and waveless, showed a slight movement in its eyes for the first time.

"Seven!"

Lu Chen slowly raised his hand, the warm power of Torch in his palm condensing and gathering.

He did not trigger the blazing Purifying Flame to bombard the Black Sea or tear the black umbrella.

He just dropped a point of grey-white glimmer, like a tiny but firm nail, precisely nailing down the blank coastline on the inside of the black umbrella, sealing off its reserved ultimate landing point.

In an instant, the pattern of Torch's name-leaving lit up suddenly.

Liang Cheng, Lu Chengzhi, Han Yue, Chen Fu... and Wu, as well as all the ordinary people of Linhai who were called back by the lamp light and anchored by human hearts—countless tiny, warm lines of fire ignited from all over the city, gathering toward the pier along streets, roads, and defense lines.

These lines of fire did not illuminate the darkness and did not seek the sea route.

They only branded a row of hot, clear words right next to that blank coastline.

"The human world is here."

"Eight!"

The bronze bell fragment in Shen Qinghe's palm vibrated slightly.

The long-silent second chime fell with a boom, silently suppressing the realm.

The coastline nailed down inside the black umbrella shattered and collapsed in response.

The black umbrella in the Shore Keeper's hand collapsed inward and deformed violently. The soaked pages in the book flipped and trembled crazily. Countless wet-black crows perched on the Black Shore reefs took flight in unison, rushing into mid-air, but they lost all support of power, like pieces of dry paper scraps, falling one after another into the Black Sea.

Zhao Ye completely exhausted his strength, his legs went soft, and he knelt heavily on the ground.

The power of the Suppression Domain dispersed completely, and the eight-yard rule barrier dissolved without a trace.

But the crowd holding the defense line did not retreat a single step.

To everyone's surprise, the Shore Keeper did not take advantage of the dissipation of the barrier and the exhaustion of the crowd to push forward.

It looked quietly at the cracks in the umbrella body, and a trace of genuine confusion grew in its eternally cold eyes.

"The shore has fallen, why are there still people waiting for the unreturning?"

Lu Chen stood before the lamp light, meeting its gaze frankly, every word clear.

"Because our lamps are never lit for the sea."

As the words fell, the nameless thin book in the Shore Keeper's palm ignited spontaneously.

The flames were small and weak, but they burned backward along every name forcibly transcribed on the book, backtracking one by one, returning all the obsessions and traces stolen by the darkness back to the human world.

It tried to close the black umbrella and reorganize the coastline, but all the umbrella ribs were bitten firmly by the crow shadows, unable to move, and could no longer be closed.

In the distance on the sea, the long-lost roar of an engine pierced through the thick fog, getting closer and closer.

Tyrannosaurus King's trailer broke through the dense black fog, the front of the car violently smashing through a patch of stagnant black water in front of it, and the tires rubbed against the pier floor, pulling out a harsh, sharp sound.

He braked the vehicle hard, pushed the door open, and jumped out. His legs were still uncontrollably trembling, but he was still stubborn with his mouth.

"Did I time my return just right to catch the ending?"

No one in the audience answered, and no one was distracted.

The Black Shore lurking outside Linhai began to slowly retreat, and the black fog dissipated layer by layer.

The Shore Keeper held the tattered and collapsed black umbrella, turned around, and walked slowly toward the end of the pier.

The sea breeze swept through the hall, blowing its wet old station uniform so it rattled, but its figure remained upright and stiff, without any swaying.

The moment it was about to step back into the Black Sea, it suddenly looked back.

"Linhai does not report to the shore."

"Then change to another place, and record it all."

The black fog surging behind it slowly parted, and deep in the sea, a very low, very heavy black lamp faintly emerged.

That lamp was not in the outer sea of Linhai, not in this sea area.

It hung at the other end of the entire Black Sea, distant, deep, and hiding endless unknowns and greater crises.

The Shore Keeper stepped completely back into the Black Shore territory.

The wooden pier began to break and dissolve from the root, completely severing the passage between the human world and the Black Sea.

The sea breeze, the sound of the Tide, and the wind of the port area returned to the human pier.

The world returned to clarity, and the defense line was barely held.

But in the vast outer sea, the qingsuo no. 2, carrying Deputy Captain He Yuan and countless hopes, ultimately did not return.