171: Chapter 171 Black Shore Resurgence

The rain in Linhai stopped at four in the morning.

The ground in the port area was still soaked with dampness; oil stains floated in the puddles, reflecting the distorted colorful neon lights from the shore. The blockade line outside the Seventh Pier snapped in the sea breeze. The young police officer on duty had been standing for half the night, his eyelids so heavy he could barely lift them. The moment he lowered his head to rub his eyes, he suddenly caught a glimpse of the patterns in the puddle at his feet flowing in reverse, receding bit by bit toward the sea.

He was instantly wide awake.

What the puddle reflected was a pitch-Black Shore.

There were no lights, no sound of waves, only rows of railings gnawed white by salt frost, jagged and scattered, like the ribs of countless dead men. The officer opened his mouth, but before he could shout the alarm, his collar was grabbed by someone, and he was forcibly dragged back two steps.

"Don't look at the water." Tide's voice was hoarse, carrying the dryness of someone who hadn't slept all night. "Look at me."

The officer looked up, dazed, and saw that her raincoat was still stained with mud from last night. One hand gripped a walkie-talkie, the other held a Temporary Fire Seal, her knuckles white with tension. She was actually afraid too, but fear was one thing; she hadn't retreated a single step.

In the distance, the faint light of the Linhai Third Anchor still hung beneath the old port lighthouse; the firelight was weak, like a needle stuck into the dense fog.

The Black Shore had never truly retreated.

It had just been temporarily pressed back beneath the surface of the sea.

Inside the safe zone, Jiaoyue finished administering an injection to the last hypothermia patient and raised her hand to press her brow. She hadn't closed her eyes all night, and a thin layer of salt frost had formed on the cuffs of her white coat. The patient's family member asked in a hushed voice nearby: "Doctor, my dad... did he really go into the sea?"

Jiaoyue looked at the old man still trembling on the bed.

There was no water in the old man's lungs, but the soles of his shoes were packed with fine black sand, as if he had walked across a stretch of non-existent Black Shore out of thin air.

She didn't say "You're overthinking it," nor did she say "It's over." She only reached out and tucked the corner of the quilt up.

"He's back now. Let him sleep first."

The family member's eyes turned red, and they forcibly held back their sobs, only nodding vigorously.

On the other side, Tang Zhiwei spread the temporary placement list on the hood of the car, her pen tip sliding over a name, then suddenly stopping.

Deputy Captain He Yuan.

The Shore Keeper of Wanghai No. 7.

He hadn't been completely dragged away by the Black Sea, nor had he been registered by the Tide-Reversal Bureau. He died beneath the light; at the last moment, he had shoved the coordinates of the Hidden Lamp into Tide's hand. The paper was wrinkled from being soaked in seawater, but the handwriting was clear, stroke by stroke.

Tang Zhiwei stared at the four characters "Relic Handover," unable to put her pen down for a long time.

Zhao Ye returned from patrolling outside the blockade line, his clothes flapping violently in the sea breeze, his shoulders still stained with the black salt he had brushed against while suppressing the sea gate last night. He walked over and glanced at the form, his lips moving, but it took a long time for two words to squeeze out.

"Write it."

Tang Zhiwei didn't look up: "You write it?"

Zhao Ye was instantly choked up.

He could punch through a contaminated gate, and he could hold out against the minions of the old law in a Suppression Domain for several seconds, but facing these few thin lines on a form, he found he had nowhere to put his fingers.

After a long silence, he cursed in a low voice: "This damn business."

Tang Zhiwei finally put her pen to paper.

In Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen was also looking at Deputy Captain He Yuan's record.

The list of sacrifices beneath the stone tablet had only just lit up; the names of Han Yue, Chen Fu, Lu Chengzhi, and Liang Cheng were still burning quietly in the firelight. Now, there was one more: Deputy Captain He Yuan.

He was not a member of Torch, not an Apprentice, and didn't even have candidate qualifications.

He was just an ordinary person who had guarded the lamp at the old Linhai shore station his whole life; by the end, no one remembered why that lamp still needed to be lit. What he left for Torch was neither grand words nor complete intelligence, only a piece of advice blurred by seawater.

"Don't let the Black Shore use the lamp to return."

Zero's voice echoed in the hall: "Shall he be included in the Torch memorial?"

Lu Chen gazed at that line of text for a long time.

"Include him."

The firelight settled, and Deputy Captain He Yuan's name shone steadily beneath the stone tablet.

The moment the name lit up, a very thin black line suddenly emerged on the surface of the sea outside the old port lighthouse.

It was not the Tide, nor was it a wake.

It rolled back from the distant sea, skimming the surface, inching closer to the Seventh Pier. All the streetlights along the way flickered simultaneously—it wasn't extinguishing, but rather like someone blowing a cold breath at the firelight from outside the lamp shade.

Bai Ya stood on the second floor of the lighthouse, his old binoculars still in hand.

He saw something float up at the end of the black line.

A piece of paper.

Very thin, very old, soaked to a grayish-white by seawater, yet it never sank. There were no words on the paper, only a clear, black raven feather mark.

Bai Ya's expression darkened bit by bit.

This wasn't for Lu Chen.

It was for him.

Tide's report came through the channel: "An abnormal Tide return has appeared outside the lighthouse, three hundred meters from the blockade line, and is approaching."

Zhao Ye immediately turned around: "I'm going over."

"Don't move." Bai Ya spoke first, his voice colder than the sea breeze. "It's calling my name."

The black line continued to move forward along the surface of the sea. Beneath the old port lighthouse, the Hidden Lamp left by Deputy Captain He Yuan swayed gently.

The wick hadn't gone out, but a black shadow like a raven feather appeared in the firelight, bobbing up and down.

Tide stood beneath the lighthouse, suddenly remembering what Deputy Captain He Yuan had said while he was alive. The old man had a foul temper and wouldn't let anyone get close while he was patrolling the lamp; he always said young people loved excitement, but a lamp—once it got too lively, it would break. Back then, she just thought the old man was stubborn, but now she understood—some lamps were never meant to light the way for people; they were lit for the darkness to see. The more people who saw it, the easier it was for the darkness to follow the light and find them.

Xu Minglan pressed Deputy Captain He Yuan's death certificate under the medical chart, hesitating to sign it. She had seen too much death; in the emergency room, a name moving from beside a ventilator to beside a freezer took only a few minutes. But Torch's records were different; they didn't just confirm who had died, they also confirmed why this person had died, who they had held on for, and whether they had been remembered by those who came after.

She suddenly felt that the pen in her hand was too heavy to hold.

When Bai Ya put the paper with the raven feather mark into a storage bag, his fingertip was cut by the edge of the paper. No blood dripped out, but a bit of fine black salt seeped from the wound. He looked at that bit of black salt, his expression unchanged; he only pressed his finger against the Fire Seal to cauterize it. The corner of his eye twitched slightly from the pain.

Zhao Ye saw it and didn't laugh, only asking: "Is it serious?"

Bai Ya put his hand behind his back: "Lighter than your brain."

There was no response from the distant sea. But at the edge of the three-city fire map, that black line gently touched the Linhai Third Anchor, like a fish testing a hook. Lu Chen raised his hand to press the Fire Map, and a very slight vibration came beneath his fingertips. The Law-Suppressing Bell Shadow did not ring; it only sank slightly deep within the firelight. The black line was forced to retreat half an inch, but it kept lingering on the periphery of the anchor point, not leaving.

Inside the Linhai temporary command vehicle, Gu Xingzhou's people were rewinding the surveillance footage frame by frame. Before the black line appeared, there was no physical anomaly on the sea surface, and the Tide gauge hadn't triggered an alarm. Only in the second when Deputy Captain He Yuan's Hidden Lamp lit up, all the cameras simultaneously had half a frame of static.

The technician wanted to say it might be electromagnetic interference, but halfway through, he shut his mouth.

Because shadows were hidden in that static, like countless ships without lights, silently drifting toward the shore, skimming the surface of the sea.

Bai Ya didn't report the bit of black salt as an injury, only writing a note in his own records: Slight reverse marking after contact.

After writing it, he deleted the word "slight."

Things that could find their way to your door through a bloody cut were never "slight."

He didn't tell anyone because the wound was still within the controllable range of the Fire Seal. But Bai Ya knew clearly that from the moment this raven feather mark landed on the sea surface, the Black Shore had already known—within Torch, there was a pair of eyes specifically watching the dark lines.