57: Chapter 57 The Beginning of the Lamp Keeper

The emergency hall was as noisy as ever.

A feverish child was crying hoarsely, an elderly person with a fall injury was sitting in a wheelchair waiting for X-rays, a drunk person was vomiting while holding onto the wall, and family members were arguing at the triage desk about who should be seen first.

These sounds were real, chaotic, and exhausting, yet they also made Xu Minglan feel at ease.

At least the suffering here followed logic.

Anomalies did not.

She changed into her white coat, set her phone to silent, and the Mark of the Torch on the inside of her wrist was covered by her cuff.

Ordinary colleagues only saw her walk into the treatment room as usual; no one knew that in her Xin Huo Interface, a new low-privilege notification had just appeared.

"Guardian Lamp Prototype: Available for trial."

"Current identity: Apprentice, Medical Assistance track."

"Permission restriction: Cannot independently establish a complete Guardian Lamp; can only stabilize low-tier pollution remnants by relying on medical tools."

This notification came from a new module parsed from the longevity lamp.

The longevity lamp steals life, while the Torch Guardian Lamp protects it.

Lu Chen had reverse-engineered the rules of the "lamp" to form the Guardian Lamp Prototype.

A complete Guardian Lamp was part of the core standard techniques for full members, capable of establishing a small-scale safe zone at an anomaly site, temporarily blocking low-tier auditory hallucinations, calling names, chill, and pollution erosion.

Xu Minglan did not yet possess full permissions.

What she could use was only a very weak lamp shadow.

But for a doctor, sometimes a little bit of stability was enough to save a life.

At 1:16 AM, a patient transferred from another city was brought in.

The patient was in his thirties, male, with blurred consciousness, no obvious external injuries, but his vital signs had been fluctuating subtly.

The accompanying family member said he came from Jiangbei; the hospital there could not find any issues, only knowing that he kept repeating that he had ridden a bus without a driver.

When the nurse pushed the patient into the observation room, Xu Minglan's Mark of the Torch suddenly grew slightly warm.

She saw a faint grey-black line on the back of the patient's hand, like the edge of a torn ticket.

It was almost invisible under normal light, but after the mark heated up, that line seemed to be gently tugged by something, retreating deep into his wrist bone.

Xu Minglan did not immediately use her Torch ability.

She first checked his pupils, blood pressure, and heart rate according to standard procedure, then arranged for basic tests, avoiding areas that might touch anomalous remnants.

She increasingly understood that the Xinhuo Council did not let its members abandon reality's rules, but rather gave them an extra pair of eyes to see danger on top of standard procedures.

The patient suddenly opened his eyes.

"The bus is here."

His voice was very soft, yet it made the lights in the observation room flicker.

The nurse next to him was startled.

"What bus?"

Xu Minglan immediately spoke up: "It might be confusion; don't engage with him for now."

The nurse was stunned for a moment, but seeing her serious expression, she nodded and stepped aside.

The patient whispered again: "Next stop... yesterday."

The Mark of the Torch under Xu Minglan's cuff began to burn.

The Xin Huo Interface popped up a notification.

"Suspected out-of-town transportation-type anomaly remnant."

"Pollution intensity: Low."

"Recommendation: Block response, stabilize consciousness, prevent standard samples from contacting the pollution source."

Below, there was a new line of permissions.

"Guardian Lamp Prototype available for trial."

Xu Minglan took a deep breath.

She placed a basic purification patch under the hospital bed and lightly touched the Mark of the Torch on the inside of her wrist with her fingertip.

No one saw her action; only the Xin Huo Interface before her eyes lit up slightly.

A faint spark of light landed beside the hospital bed.

It didn't look like a flame; it was more like an invisible small lamp.

The light was not bright, and it didn't even cast a shadow, but the moment it lit up, the whispering in the patient's mouth was dampened by a few degrees.

The chill in the observation room receded a little.

The patient's rapid breathing gradually stabilized.

The nurse let out a sigh of relief.

"I thought he was going to seize just now."

Xu Minglan didn't explain, only lowering her head to record the data.

She knew this was not a cure.

The Guardian Lamp Prototype could only stabilize low-tier pollution remnants; it could not remove the anomaly core.

The real problem was not inside the patient, but in that "bus" he had encountered, or rather, on that road that shouldn't exist.

The Xin Huo Interface automatically generated a record.

"Guardian Lamp Prototype usage successful."

"Pollution remnant stabilized."

"Recommendation: Submit out-of-town anomaly file."

Xu Minglan looked at those lines, and for the first time, a very clear desire arose in her heart.

She wanted to redeem an Ability Seed for the medical route.

Not to become stronger, nor to fall from the night sky like Zhao Ye, but to be able to do more than just light a weak lamp at times like this.

She wanted to make the lamp steadier.

Xu Minglan did not leave the observation room immediately.

She finished writing the standard medical record, and then added an anomaly record in the Xin Huo Interface that only she could see.

The standard record couldn't mention a driverless bus, nor could it mention a route from yesterday; but in the Torch record, all details had to be preserved.

The patient's temperature changes, pupil reactions, the keywords in his dream-talking, and the direction in which the grey-black line on his hand retracted were all filled in one by one.

She suddenly understood why Shen Qinghe was always so cautious.

The most terrifying thing about anomalies was not just that they could hurt people, but that they would tear loopholes in the record of reality.

If a doctor misdiagnosed a cause, a police officer misclassified a case, or logistics missed a transfer, the anomaly could crawl out through these loopholes.

The Guardian Lamp Prototype could only protect one observation room.

But if one day, a complete Guardian Lamp could light up a safe zone in the hospital, then polluted patients sent from other places wouldn't have to rely on luck to survive.

This thought made Xu Minglan's fingers pause for a long time at the end of the record.

She suddenly felt that she was not just a doctor in the hospital, but was also becoming the first lamp in the Xinhuo Council that had not yet truly been lit.

Before the patient fell asleep, he suddenly whispered another sentence.

"That's not a bus."

Xu Minglan stopped writing.

The patient's eyelids trembled.

"That is a road."

The ward lights returned to normal.

But Xu Minglan's Mark of the Torch did not immediately cool down.

She stood in the observation room, looking at the lights of Qinghe deep in the night outside the window, and suddenly realized that anomalies did not necessarily have to be brought into the city in the form of old objects.

People could also bring remnants.

Roads could also bring remnants.

And some roads might be extending over from other cities.

She lowered her head and submitted the complete record in the Xin Huo Interface.

"Out-of-town transportation-type anomaly remnant."

"Keywords: Driverless bus, yesterday, road."

"Suggested association: Jiangbei Paper Sedan incident."

After the submission was completed, in the Grey Net map area far away in the Xinhuo Hall, a point of dark red light gently lit up in the direction of Jiangbei.