63: Chapter 63 Outer City Candidates

The third day after Xinhuo Hall completed its expansion and stabilization, the Candidate Outer Ring officially opened.

This was the first time Candidates from outside Qinghe were connected simultaneously.

Firelight lit up on the perimeter of the hall.

Several figures appeared one after another.

Their projections were unstable, with fine grey-white sparks at the edges, as if they had just been pulled out from reality.

Jiangbei community worker Han Yue.

Linhai property manager Zhong Li.

County folklore museum curator Tao Shouzhuo.

Mechanical repairman Liang Zhu.

Warehouse manager Chen Fu.

They did not enter the area where formal members were located.

Instead, they were arranged in the Candidate Outer Ring.

The central stele was distant and blurry.

The formal members' area was blocked by a curtain of fire.

The Sealing Corridor, Training Ring, and the deep layers of the Grey Net were all hidden behind permission restrictions.

Only the outline of the Fire Keeper's high platform could be seen.

The only things that appeared before them were the rules.

Contribution system.

Candidate missions.

And basic directory descriptions.

Standing in the Outer Ring, Han Yue's first reaction was not amazement, but an instinctive look back.

He seemed to be checking if that paper sedan chair was behind him.

Zhong Li stared at the fire patterns on the ground.

She had recorded many floor numbers during the reverse elevator incident in Linhai, making her exceptionally sensitive to spatial changes.

She quickly realized that this was not an ordinary dream, nor was it a hallucination.

Tao Shouzhuo whispered the ancient characters emerging on the stele, as if his occupational habit had flared up.

Liang Zhu looked at his hands in silence.

Chen Fu's first sentence was very realistic.

"If I wake up now, will I remember this place?"

Zero replied.

[Candidates retain necessary memories.]

[Leaking information will trigger a permission lockdown.]

Someone couldn't help but speak up.

"What exactly is Torch?"

Zero's voice sounded calmly.

[Torch does not explain anomalies.]

[Torch handles anomalies.]

The hall became quiet again.

Inner Ring area.

Shen Qinghe was responsible for observing the mental state of the Candidates.

Bai Ya was responsible for screening risks related to the Old Object Chain.

Zhao Ye was responsible for explaining mission risks.

Tang Zhiwei began to calculate logistics costs for the Outer City.

Zhou Yan focused on Tao Shouzhuo and Liang Zhu.

One was skilled at compiling local chronicles.

One had experience with workshops.

Both were talents urgently needed by Torch.

Zhao Ye looked at these Outer City Candidates, his expression more serious than usual.

"Candidates are not members."

He said.

"Being able to enter here only means you are qualified to know a little bit of the truth."

"Whether you truly walk into the fire depends on yourselves."

Han Yue looked up and asked: "What if we refuse?"

Zhao Ye glanced at him.

"Then refuse."

"Torch doesn't drag people in."

This sentence caused the expressions of many Candidates to soften slightly.

Bai Ya stood on the other side, his gaze sweeping over each of them.

He was more concerned about whether anyone had been pre-contaminated by the Old Object Chain.

When the Candidate screening ended, Candidate permissions appeared before everyone.

[Candidate permissions: Enabled.]

[Can view Candidate missions, contribution points, and basic directory.]

[Ability Seed: Can view details, cannot exchange.]

[Standard equipment: Can view details, cannot exchange.]

[Temporary mission equipment: Can apply.]

Several Candidates silently looked at the directories they might touch in the future.

Just then, a remnant of a broken blade shadow suddenly appeared behind Liang Zhu's projection.

The blade was covered in cracks, but it was slowly repairing itself.

The surrounding firelight was pulled by it, emitting a slight trembling sound.

Zero immediately popped up a prompt.

[Anomalous material detected.]

[Suspected old law fragment of the workshop type.]

Many people in the hall looked up at the same time.

The workshop system finally had a real Breakthrough.

The Candidate Outer Ring was not comfortable.

There was no stable firelight from the formal members' seats, nor the low-level protection around the Apprentice seats.

Every Candidate could feel that they were only allowed to stand at the doorway, still separated from the true Torch by an invisible boundary.

Zhong Li was the first to adapt to this pressure.

She worked as a property manager in Linhai, dealing with countless tenant disputes, having seen elevators stop, corridors leak, and midnight alarms, but she had never seen an elevator that could send someone back to a non-existent floor.

Looking at the Candidate mission instructions, she asked very directly.

"If an anomaly appears again, what can I do?"

Zero replied.

[Observe.]

[Record.]

[Stay away from the core.]

[Wait for formal member support.]

Zhong Li was not dissatisfied; instead, she breathed a sigh of relief.

What she feared was not being unable to do anything, but not knowing what to do.

Tao Shouzhuo kept staring at the summaries of the folklore-type anomaly files in the basic directory.

The more he looked, the more silent he became, because some things inside were extremely similar to the old records he had seen in local chronicles in the past.

In the past, those words were like legends.

Now they were like warnings.

Chen Fu was most concerned about the logistics line.

When he saw rules like "Anomalous packages must not be opened privately," "Unknown old objects require observation," and "Rewards for recording Old Object Chain nodes," he couldn't help but smile bitterly.

"Someone should have written this a long time ago."

Bai Ya heard this, turned his head, and glanced at him.

"You've seen quite a few?"

Chen Fu was silent for a moment.

"I've seen some things that shouldn't be in circulation."

"Before, I only knew not to touch them."

"Now at least I know where to report them."

This sentence made Lu Chen add an evaluation for him in the background.

[Risk awareness qualified.]

[Suitable for logistics/logistics observation line.]

After the Candidate meeting ended, the projections of the few did not disappear immediately.

Zero gave them permission to ask one question before exiting.

Han Yue asked if Jiangbei could still be restored.

Zhong Li asked if that building in Linhai could still be inhabited.

Tao Shouzhuo asked if the records in local chronicles known as "ominous signs of a bad year" could all be related to anomalies.

Chen Fu asked the most practical question.

"If I find another suspicious package, should I just record it and not touch it?"

The answer given by Zero was equally brief.

[Record.]

[Stay away.]

[Report.]

[Wait for mission authorization.]

These answers were not gentle.

But they made the Candidates in the Outer Ring realize for the first time that what Torch gave them was not power, but rules to avoid dying inexplicably.

This was already precious enough.

Before the Outer Ring extinguished, Lu Chen looked at these new names from the high platform.

They were still far from Torch.

But this was the very meaning of the expansion.

Torch could not only burn in Qinghe, nor could it rely solely on the first few people to fight fires.

Every Outer City Candidate was a small coordinate that might be lit up in the future.

Not everyone would stay.

But as long as some people could remember the rules, when anomalies spread in the Outer City, they would no longer go completely unnoticed.