61: Chapter 61 Embers of the Distant City

The incident in the Jiangbei Old District was ultimately characterized as a major gas accident, and the mass panic that ensued from it.

The news covered it in less than a minute.

The anchor's tone was steady, and the background footage showed only police tape, fire trucks, and old buildings half-hidden by the night.

There were no paper sedan chairs, no driverless night bus, and no spark falling from the distant sky.

But in internal files, this incident has already been listed on the highest priority observation list.

Because everyone involved in the investigation discovered something unexplainable.

The paper sedan chair had disappeared.

The path traces left by the driverless night bus had extinguished.

Those remnants of red lines that had once covered the stairwells, bus stop signs, and street lamp bases in the Old District had also broken on a large scale at the same time.

The anomaly diffusion curve looked as if it had been forcefully severed in the middle.

Gu Xingzhou sat in his office, looking at the anomaly analysis report that had just been delivered.

This was his first time truly seeing a cross-city anomaly suppression record.

Qinghe and Jiangbei were not far apart, but in the official System, cross-city intervention in anomalies was almost equivalent to impossible.

Transferring personnel required approval, blockades required paperwork, and on-site rules needed to be re-confirmed.

Yet that night, the anomaly in the Jiangbei Old District was suppressed at its most dangerous moment.

There was only one concluding sentence at the end of the report.

[After the unknown organization intervened, the anomaly diffusion index dropped by 92%.]

Gu Xingzhou was silent for a long time.

He finally realized one thing.

Torch was no longer just a local force in Qinghe.

It possessed the ability to intervene in anomaly events across cities.

It might even already possess the qualifications to establish a regional anomaly defense System.

Meanwhile, deep within Xinhuo Hall.

Above the Fire Keeper's high platform, Lu Chen sat back in his own seat.

The hall remained quiet.

The central stele burned with a steady light; in the Sealing Corridor, the containment cell housing the longevity lamp wick was buried even deeper, while the red line remnants brought back from Jiangbei were pressed under another small Seal.

But only Lu Chen knew that the toll brought by this cross-city descent was far greater than it appeared on the surface.

It was not physical exhaustion.

It was that the load on the Core of the Torch had increased significantly.

Within the Grey Net, the node representing Jiangbei was still flickering with a faint red light.

The anomaly there had been suppressed, but not truly archived.

Zero's prompts slowly surfaced.

[High-order Spark cross-city projection complete.]

[Consumption for this instance was high.]

[Jiangbei old law remnants not fully archived.]

[Recommend establishing an outer-city anchor point, otherwise long-term stable response is impossible.]

Lu Chen looked at the prompts, thoughtful.

This Jiangbei incident allowed him to confirm one thing.

He could save Jiangbei once, but he couldn't personally cross cities to put out fires every single time.

If Torch wanted to truly step outside of Qinghe, it must establish its own outer-city System.

Anchor points, Candidates, intelligence networks, logistics nodes, local response forces—not one can be missing.

Otherwise, so-called cross-city support would only turn into him alone constantly fighting fires on the map.

That is not an organization.

That is overtime.

Thinking of this, Lu Chen suddenly felt like laughing.

Back when he worked on projects, what he hated most was when things went wrong everywhere after launch, and the planners were temporarily dragged in to fill the holes.

Now, switched to the Xinhuo Council, he was still the person staring at the backend, only before he was fixing numbers, and now he was fixing the anomaly fissures at the city's edge.

On the other side of the hall, Zhao Ye had just finished reading the Jiangbei incident briefing and was silent for a long time.

Bai Ya leaned back in his chair, flipping through documents, and looked up at him.

"Why aren't you saying anything?"

Zhao Ye glanced at him.

"It's nothing."

Bai Ya smiled.

"We are Sparks."

"He just threw the sun over there."

Zhao Ye rarely didn't refute.

Because he discovered that he actually couldn't refute it.

Shen Qinghe stood in front of the Grey Net map, her attention not on the joke.

She looked at the red lines around the Jiangbei node that had not yet completely extinguished, and said in a low voice: "Suppression does not equal the end."

Lu Chen heard this sentence.

He raised his hand and tapped on the stele.

The map of Jiangbei Old District was enlarged, and several broken routes emerged in the Grey Net, like insects that refused to die after being scorched.

"Record."

Zero responded.

[Jiangbei anomaly remnants temporary file established.]

[Recommend establishing a special mission subsequently.]

The night grew deeper.

In Jiangbei Old District, an abandoned bus stop sign stood quietly by the street.

The route sign had long been scorched black by the Purifying Flame.

But right at the midnight hour, a line of blurred text suddenly appeared on the scorched surface.

As if someone had written it out bit by bit with their fingertips.

— The last bus has not yet arrived at the station.

In the further Candidate outer ring, several people who had just come into contact with Torch also saw the lingering light of the Jiangbei node.

They didn't know what exactly happened when Lu Chen descended across cities, only that that city was originally almost dragged into deeper depths by an invisible road, but at a certain moment, it was forcefully pinned down by a light of fire.

Han Yue's projection stood at the edge of the outer ring, his face paler than the others.

He was from Jiangbei and knew best what that Old District looked like before it spiraled out of control.

When the paper sedan chair passed by the entrance of a residential building, no one upstairs dared to make a sound.

When the bus stop sign lit up in the middle of the night, the whole street seemed to be waiting for a bus that shouldn't come.

But now, most of the red dots on the Grey Net had extinguished.

For the first time, he truly believed that what he saw was not some higher-level urban legend.

But an order capable of suppressing urban legends.

Shen Qinghe did not comfort him, only reminded him: "Jiangbei is not yet safe."

Han Yue nodded.

"I know."

"That is why I want to stay."

This sentence made many Candidates in the outer ring look at him.

Zhao Ye also heard it, said nothing, and just closed the Jiangbei briefing.

He was not good at comforting people.

But he knew this kind of look.

When an ordinary person has seen an anomaly and is still willing to walk back, it is not because they are not afraid, but because they know that after they run away, others will still be left behind.

Lu Chen sat on the high platform, watching the reaction of the Candidate outer ring.

After the hall upgraded, Torch was no longer just a place to issue missions to members.

It also began to become a place to screen wills.

Those who are afraid can leave.

Those who stay have the qualifications to get closer to the light of fire.

Deep in the Sealing Corridor, the containment cell where the Jiangbei remnants were housed trembled slightly.

That was not resistance, but more like some kind of unfinished echo.

Lu Chen looked towards there, the Purifying Flame in his eyes flashing.

The containment cell stabilized again.

He did not tell all members about this slight disturbance, only added it to the Jiangbei temporary file.

Some fears do not need to be spread to everyone immediately.

But some preparations must begin from this moment.

If Torch wants to step out of Qinghe, the first step is not to rush over, but to first learn to see the path clearly on a larger map.