74: Chapter 74 Code Name: Elf

Sprite is not a name.

At least, when Bai Ya first caught this codename on the Grey Net, he couldn't confirm whether the person was male or female, a single individual, or a group.

This codename had been frequenting local forums, short video comment sections, junk groups, errand-running groups, and second-hand trading platforms for a long time.

When others saw supernatural videos, they would just exclaim that it was scary, but Sprite would save the video, remove the watermark, compare the upload time, and then deduce the location from street signs in the corners, store signboards, or food delivery bag codes.

What was more troublesome was that Sprite was very bold.

Too bold.

An encrypted compressed file was dropped into the dead drop mailbox on the periphery of the Grey Net that Bai Ya had specifically left open.

The compressed file had no viruses, only a pile of excessively organized information.

Traces of the secondary distribution of the abnormal recording from Luo Wei's phone.

Several deleted short videos of "phones lighting up on their own."

A screenshot of an unplated car passing by outside Li Guibing's warehouse.

A distribution map of old surveillance cameras in the South City Communication Market.

And a strange post made by a Jiangbei account.

The title was: "My dad got on the last bus with no driver."

The post only existed for seven minutes before it was deleted.

Sprite had saved the entire page.

Bai Ya finished reading the information and was silent for a moment.

Zhao Ye leaned over.

"How is it?"

"Useful," Bai Ya said.

"What about the person?"

"Even more problematic."

Zhao Ye raised an eyebrow.

"An enemy?"

"Doesn't look like it," Bai Ya closed a screenshot, "More like someone who chased the truth right to the doorstep and is only half a step away from getting themselves trapped."

Inside Xinhuo Hall, Lu Chen also finished looking through the information.

The quality of the information provided by Sprite was very high, even surpassing that of ordinary peripheral intelligence sources.

This person was familiar with the rules of online platforms, knew which videos would be deleted, and knew how to preserve evidence before the information disappeared completely.

But the more this was the case, the more dangerous it was.

Anomalies were not ordinary crimes.

People who were too close to the truth would be seen by the truth.

Lu Chen did not grant Sprite Candidate permissions, but only issued a low-privilege warning through the Grey Net.

[You may provide clues.]

[Do not make contact with anomalies alone.]

[Do not unpack.]

[Do not livestream.]

Three seconds after the message was sent, the other party replied.

[Received.]

Three seconds later.

[Then, can I have a codename verification?]

Bai Ya looked at this line of text and didn't speak for a long time.

Zhao Ye chuckled.

"This person has guts."

Bai Ya said indifferently, "People with small guts wouldn't call themselves Sprite."

Lu Chen did not laugh.

He marked Sprite as "Peripheral Intelligence Candidate" and added three restrictions to the permissions.

Must not make contact with sealed objects.

Must not enter mission sites.

Must not act in the name of Torch.

This was not out of distrust, but protection.

That night, Sprite sent another picture.

The abandoned South City Communication Market.

A row of old stalls had long since closed, but the glass counters were filled with second-hand phones with lit screens.

On every phone screen, there was the same sentence.

[Awaiting collection.]

Below the picture, Sprite wrote a sentence.

[I didn't go in.]

Bai Ya looked at these four words and, for the first time, felt that the other party could still be saved.

However, the next second, another message popped up.

[But I found the surveillance for the back door.]

Bai Ya pinched the bridge of his nose.

"This person will be targeted by an anomaly sooner or later."

Lu Chen looked at the Communication Market node lighting up on the Grey Net.

"So, before that happens, we need to establish the rules."

Sprite was sitting in a very small rented room.

The curtains were drawn, and there were three monitors on the table: one with the local forum open, one hanging in several second-hand trading groups, and the last one looping surveillance clips downloaded from short video platforms.

He didn't think he was courting death.

At least, he didn't think so at first.

In Sprite's view, there had always been "deleted things" in the city.

Someone posted that there was a mirror in the hallway that moved, and ten minutes later, the post was gone.

Someone filmed a bus without a driver, and just as the comments broke a hundred, the account was banned.

Someone asked for help in a group, saying they received a text message from a dead person's number, and the next day, the group chat history was cleared.

Most people, upon seeing these, would just treat them as marketing accounts, scams, or AI-generated content.

Sprite was different.

He liked to save these fragments, piecing together the patterns in the city's shadows like a puzzle.

At first, it was just curiosity.

Later, it was fear.

Then, the fear turned into a kind of obsession.

Because Sprite discovered that whenever there was something truly sinister, the same pattern would always appear: overexposed images, distorted sound, blurred faces, but there would always be a wisp of grey-white fire, as if burning through the cracks of reality.

That was not a special effect.

At least, Sprite had tried over a dozen video detection tools and hadn't found any traces of synthesis.

So he created a separate folder for that batch of videos.

The folder was named: Fire.

It wasn't until the old phone incident occurred that Sprite felt for the first time that he, too, had been noticed by something.

That morning, after he finished saving the surveillance screenshots outside Li Guibing's warehouse, a strange window suddenly popped up in the bottom right corner of his computer screen.

It wasn't a virus advertisement.

There was only one sentence in the window.

[Do not make contact with anomalies alone.]

Sprite stared at that line of text for a long time.

And his first reaction wasn't fear, but excitement.

"They really can see."

This was the reason Bai Ya judged Sprite to be dangerous.

For ordinary people, knowing that someone was handling anomalies would bring a sense of security.

For people like Sprite, however, it might bring deeper curiosity.

After the Grey Net issued the restrictions, Sprite agreed very quickly on the surface.

But Bai Ya still wrote in the notes: Needs continuous observation; extremely likely to overstep boundaries.

Lu Chen saw the note and did not refute it.

The Xinhuo Council would need intelligence talent in the future.

But if intelligence personnel had no boundaries, they would die faster than combat personnel.

So Sprite could only be a Peripheral Intelligence Candidate for the time being.

Not because his ability was insufficient.

But because he didn't yet understand the weight of fear.

When Sprite sent "I didn't go in," Lu Chen finally lowered the risk level from red to orange.

At least, this person knew how to listen to advice once.

As for the back door surveillance...

Bai Ya looked at the newly transmitted route map and sighed.

"Forget it."

"Compared to rushing into scenes blindly, hacking into old cameras is already an improvement."

Sprite, of course, did not know that he had already been labeled "extremely likely to overstep boundaries" by Torch.

He just looked at the grey-white window that had appeared and disappeared, his heart beating wildly.

In this city, the vast majority of people just want to forget after encountering an anomaly; only a few want to get closer to the truth.

Sprite belonged to the latter.

But those who get closer to the truth don't necessarily know that the truth will also get closer to them.

That night, his computer camera silently lit up for a second.

Sprite immediately unplugged the power, his back turning cold.

After a long while, a line of grey-white text emerged in the darkness of the screen.

[This is why you are not allowed to enter the scene.]

Sprite looked at that line of text and finally, for the first time, truly felt fear.

Then he replied very seriously.

[Understood.]