180: Chapter 180 The Lamplighter

Before dawn, seven Black Shore branches had been forcibly nailed back.

Not completely cleared.

Just nailed down.

On the edges of the three-city fire map, a circle of faint, almost invisible grey-white fire dots appeared, as if someone had sprinkled a handful of salt along the cracks of darkness and then lit each one with a flame. The light was weak, but it was firmly embedded on the boundary line between the Black Shore and reality, preventing the darkness from seeping forward even half an inch.

Bai Ya sat on the steps of the Old Lighthouse, his complexion looking terrifyingly bad.

He held the Patrol Crow Lamp in his palm; the wick was shrunk to a tiny size, as if it might go out at any moment. Every time a crow shadow returned to the nest, it left a thin line of blood under his eyes. When the last crow shadow flew back from the Jiangbei Old Station, he raised his hand to catch it, but his fingertips trembled uncontrollably.

Zhao Ye stood nearby, his brows furrowed tightly.

"If you can't hold on, just say so."

Bai Ya's voice was very soft, slightly hoarse: "When did you learn to speak like a human?"

"I've always known how."

"Then you've been hiding it quite well."

Zhao Ye had intended to retort, but swallowed the words.

This time, Bai Ya had truly damaged his foundation. It wasn't just physical wounds, nor was it as simple as spiritual pollution. The Patrol Crow Lamp had only just taken shape, and he had been forced to run it along the three-city fire map for an entire night. It had memorized the path of the Black Shore, and the Black Shore had memorized its light.

From now on, whenever Bai Ya lit the lamp, he would be seen by the darkness even further away.

Shen Qinghe came down from the lighthouse and handed him a bottle of medicine.

"Sister Minglan told you to take this."

Bai Ya took it and glanced at the bottle: "What is this?"

"Painkiller, sedative, electrolyte supplement."

"Doesn't sound like medicine, sounds like maintenance fluid for a machine that's about to break down."

"You're harder to maintain than a machine." Shen Qinghe's tone was flat. "Machines don't talk back."

Bai Ya finally tugged at the corner of his mouth and smiled.

At the Qinghe Safe House, Zheng Xiang finished serving breakfast and fell asleep leaning against the wall. He was still clutching a porridge spoon in his hand, his cuffs stained with a ring of rice grains. Chen Jue returned from patrolling the Liuqiao Old Station and saw him like this; he didn't wake him, just tossed his own coat over him, covering his shoulders perfectly.

At the intersection of the Linhai North Shore, the Tyrannosaurus King's trailer was parked crookedly, its front bumper dented. He squatted nearby, staring at the dent while hissing in pain.

When Tide passed by, she asked: "Is the person okay?"

The Tyrannosaurus King looked up, his face full of grief and indignation: "The person is fine! The car is not!"

Tide glanced at the broken car: "Reimburse it."

The Tyrannosaurus King stood up with a "whoosh": "Really?!"

Tang Zhiwei's voice drifted out from the channel: "Calculated based on depreciation."

The Tyrannosaurus King wilted and squatted back down.

These fragmented human voices mixed into the morning sea breeze, finally making Linhai feel like a living city again.

In the Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen gazed at the three-city fire map in front of him.

The third reverberation of the Law-Suppressing Bell Shadow had already dissipated, leaving only a circle of faint, almost invisible patterns deep within the Fire Map. Zero did not pop up any prompts, as if it, too, knew that now was not the time to ask for names.

Lu Chen knew very well that this thing was far from complete, and couldn't even be considered "possessed." He had only borrowed the Core of the Torch, the three-city fire map, the thousands of names left behind, plus an entire night of the Patrol Lamp paving the way, to finally turn that bell shadow from an occasional spontaneous echo into a truly controllable, active suppression of the law.

It was very short.

Only enough for half a breath.

But half a breath was enough to save many people.

Below the central stone tablet, Deputy Captain He Yuan's name shone quietly.

After the Black Shore's bait was torn apart, his name had never been disturbed again.

Lu Chen looked at the name for a few seconds and spoke: "Record the Patrol Lamp nodes."

The Grey Net responded, marking the seven exposed Black Shore branches onto the Fire Map one by one.

[Qinghe underground old canal.]

[Jiangbei Liuqiao carriage residual line.]

[Linhai North Shore drainage canal.]

[Old Port Lighthouse shadow zone.]

[Wanghai No. 7 residual coordinates.]

[Starry Sky Station downward blind zone.]

[Unnamed coastline.]

The last item had no real-world coordinates.

Only a vague direction.

The distant sea.

When Bai Ya was called into the Xinhuo Hall, his condition hadn't recovered yet. He stood in the outer ring of light, holding that small black-feathered lamp in his hand. The usual careless laziness had been reined in, and he looked like an unlucky employee forced into a promotion.

Zhao Ye was also nearby, arms crossed, watching him with schadenfreude.

"Congratulations."

Bai Ya didn't even lift his eyelids: "Shut up."

Lu Chen didn't give Bai Ya any fancy titles. Torch never needed empty names.

On the central stone tablet, a new line of permission records slowly descended.

[Bai Ya: Patrol Lamp permission activated.]

[Patrol Crow Lamp: Binding in progress.]

[Duty: Track abnormal paths outside the fire dots, mark dark lines, escort the lost back to the lamp path.]

Bai Ya stared at the line of text, silent for a moment.

"Sounds like a lot of work."

Lu Chen said: "You can refuse."

Bai Ya raised his eyes.

The firelight in the hall fell on his face, illuminating the lingering blood-red in his eyes.

He suddenly remembered a long time ago, when he was just an intelligence peddler hovering on the edge of the Old Object Chain. At that time, he was best at watching the fun and selling news, just trying to survive. But later, he saw too many people who, after being swallowed by abnormalities, didn't even have their names left behind.

Now, there was a lamp that had fallen into his hands.

It wouldn't do not to light it.

It wouldn't do to make it too bright either.

What a bother.

Bai Ya looked down at the small lamp in his palm and tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Forget it."

"Who told me to have such good eyes."

Zhao Ye rolled his eyes.

Shen Qinghe didn't smile. She looked toward the edge of the Fire Map, where the coordinates of the Starry Sky Station were still flickering weakly.

This night of patrolling didn't manage to save Starry Sky, but it confirmed one thing: the location where Starry Sky was located was stuck in the crevice between the Black Shore and reality. They couldn't light the main lamp there, couldn't open the post road, and couldn't even let the Fire Map shine directly over.

But Starry Sky was still sending signals.

The signal was weak, like someone hiding in a place without lights, tapping on the metal shell with the last bit of battery power.

[I see... overseas lights.]

[Rhein... not one person.]

[Over there... also have people extinguishing lights.]

Static noise swallowed most of the content.

Only one sentence remained at the end, clear enough to prick the heart.

[Don't let the Black Shore learn to light Torch.]

Lu Chen raised his hand and sealed that intermittent radio message deep into the Grey Net.

Beyond the three-city fire map, the unnamed coastline was still extending silently in the darkness.

And on the other side of the even more distant sea, a strange lamp, as if sensing the light of the Patrol Crow Lamp, lit up briefly. It didn't approach, but simply sent an encrypted letter into Linhai's Fire Beacon.

The signature was Rhein.

The body of the text had only one line.

[Here, we are not allowed to light bells after dark.]

When Gu Xingzhou arrived in Linhai in the early morning, he only saw a mess. The twisted trailer was parked outside the blockade, empty porridge buckets were piled at the entrance of the shelter, and handprints from black salt remained on the lighthouse wall. The report was hard to write. He stood in the sea breeze for a long time, and finally, only wrote one sentence at the beginning of the record: Torch completed the interception of the three-city dark lines, casualties did not expand.

The Arbiter finished reading that sentence and asked him: "What does 'did not expand' mean?"

Gu Xingzhou capped his pen.

"It means if they hadn't held on, more than just the people in the report would have died."

The Arbiter didn't speak again. He was not yet a formal member of Torch, but he already understood more and more that behind many cold conclusions stood people who had endured until dawn.

When Bai Ya confirmed the Patrol Lamp permissions, he didn't immediately agree, nor did he refuse. He just looked up and asked Lu Chen: "Does this job have vacation time?"

Lu Chen answered very seriously: "Yes."

Zhao Ye sneered nearby: "You believe that?"

Bai Ya thought about it and also smiled: "No."

The tense atmosphere in the hall, which had lasted all night, eased up a little because of this not-at-all-funny remark.

Wu stood in the shadows of the outer ring, watching the Patrol Crow Lamp quietly. He had a strange sense of closeness to this lamp. The lamp illuminated the road, while he lacked a name. One was responsible for finding the road, the other for not being swallowed by the list.

Bai Ya noticed his gaze and raised the lamp in his hand: "Don't look, it strains the eyes."

Wu nodded very seriously: "I don't have much left that I can afford to strain."

Bai Ya opened his mouth, but for once, didn't have a comeback.

When Lu Chen filed Rhein's encrypted letter into the Grey Net, the patterns of the Law-Suppressing Bell Shadow had faded so much they were almost invisible. It didn't ring again, but it left a new outline in the deepest part of the Fire Map—like a bell that hadn't been cast yet, hanging heavily beneath ten thousand lamps.

Lu Chen wasn't in a hurry to name it.

A real name would wait for the day it deserved to be called out.