83: Chapter 83 The Post by the Time-Space Apostle

It was already past midnight when the Elf restored the old posts.

She did not appear in Xinhuo Hall, but simply dropped a compressed file into the peripheral Grey Net channel with a very casual filename.

[Jiangbei Night Bus_Deleted Post Collection_Don't scold me for the bad naming.zip]

Bai Ya saw the filename and was silent for three seconds.

Zhao Ye asked from the side, "Can you open it?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you silent?"

"I am paying my respects to her aesthetic death."

Inside the compressed file were thirty-seven screenshots, over a dozen short videos, and a schedule that had been repeatedly revised. Most of the content came from local Jiangbei forums, second-hand groups, and short video comment sections. Many of the posts were deleted within minutes of being published, making it almost impossible for a normal person to save them in their entirety.

Yet the Elf had saved them.

Her note consisted of only one sentence: "Don't praise me, I'll get arrogant."

This time, the Elf didn't just dump the data and go offline as she usually did.

She sent another voice message; in the background, there was the sound of typing, and someone cursing in a low voice, "Why is this crappy network down again?"

"I'll state this first: I didn't go to the scene."

After listening, Bai Ya immediately replied, "You had better really not have gone."

There was silence on the channel for two seconds.

The Elf typed quickly.

[Do I look like someone who doesn't value their life?]

Zhao Ye glanced at it: "You do."

No one refuted this statement.

Because they all knew that anyone capable of saving these deleted posts one by one was already very close to danger. The only difference was that she was currently standing outside the line.

Bai Ya projected the most critical ones into the Grey Net.

Poster's codename: Time-Space Apostle.

This codename had previously appeared in the Torch peripheral archives. The Elf had once tracked his account, and Bai Ya had also tried to investigate, but the other party hid themselves very carefully, unlike an ordinary urban legend enthusiast.

The tone of the posts was not insane.

It was even excessively serious.

"June 17th, Old City East Station, station sign time 23:46, mobile phone time 23:59. A thirteen-minute discrepancy."

"June 20th, eyewitness Lin, boarded at 23:51, family received a call at 3:17 AM, the call content was only static."

"June 22nd, a temporary route appeared at the abandoned platform, the route named 'Return Trip'. Jiangbei Bus Company has no record."

"Do not trust the time on the station sign. That is not the current time; it is the time it wants you to arrive."

The conference room was quiet for a while.

Zhao Ye frowned, feeling annoyed as he read it.

"So it's not that it runs fast, it's that the time is wrong?"

Shen Qinghe stared at the schedule.

"It's more like it drags those who board into a different set of arrival rules. A few minutes in reality might not be a few minutes for the people on the bus."

Zhao Ye turned to look at her.

"Speak human."

Shen Qinghe was a bit annoyed by his questioning and simply closed the file.

"Don't get on the bus."

Zhao Ye nodded: "That works."

Lin Zhao asked quietly from the side: "Then what if someone has already gotten on?"

No one answered immediately.

That was the real problem.

Among the missing people in Jiangbei, some might not be dead yet. They might be trapped in some incorrect timeline, or they might have already become part of the delivery rules. What Torch needed to do was not simply destroy the Night Bus projection, but to pull back those who were still alive as much as possible.

The Grey Net began trying to fill in the points based on the posts.

Every time discrepancy recorded by the Time-Space Apostle was converted into Grey Net coordinates. But the grey lines did not immediately take shape; on the map, they were like ink in water, spreading out and then gathering together.

Zero's prompt appeared.

[Insufficient current information.]

[Fire Seal markers missing.]

[Field rules unconfirmed.]

[Grey Net cannot directly identify time-displacement nodes that have not been triggered.]

Zhao Ye saw the prompt and couldn't help but say: "Can't it see everything?"

Bai Ya glanced at him.

"The Grey Net is not a god. For things that haven't been burned, marked, or archived, it can at most smell a scent. You want it to guess which station sign will go crazy in the middle of the night from across the city?"

Zhao Ye thought about it: "Then it's quite like a police dog."

Shen Qinghe was almost choked by this metaphor.

Bai Ya actually nodded: "To some extent, it's more accurate than a lot of things you say."

Zhao Ye didn't want to bother with him.

Lu Chen sat in the Fire Keeper's seat, quietly listening to them argue for a few moments without stopping them.

This kind of bickering actually put him at ease.

The members were not people executing scripts. Zhao Ye asked when he didn't understand, Shen Qinghe would snap back when annoyed, and Bai Ya had a sharp tongue but could explain things. As long as they didn't make fatal mistakes at the mission site, these frictions were the sounds of the organization truly coming alive.

The Elf soon sent another new message.

[The Time-Space Apostle's last login location has been found.]

Following it was a location map.

Old City East Station in Jiangbei.

That station had been abandoned six years ago due to route renovations; there were no records of night operations in official data, nor was there any public network coverage.

Bai Ya stared at the location, the relaxed expression on his face fading bit by bit.

"He isn't watching the fun from afar."

Shen Qinghe said: "He has been to the scene."

The Elf added another sentence.

[It's not just that he has been there.]

[His account's last post was located right under the platform.]

[The posting time is displayed as tomorrow at dawn.]

Lin Zhao asked in a low voice: "Tomorrow?"

The post on the screen had not been published yet.

The Elf continued to add in the channel.

[This is not the first time the Time-Space Apostle has reported this.]

[He has sent records to local Jiangbei platforms, the bus company, and forum administrators.]

[The result was basically having his posts deleted, being blacklisted, and being treated as someone with an unstable mental state.]

Subsequently, a screenshot was sent.

It was a message the Time-Space Apostle had sent to a customer service representative early on, the tone still very normal.

"The station sign time at Old City East Station is abnormal, suspected equipment malfunction, please repair as soon as possible."

The customer service rep replied: "Registered."

The next day, he sent another one.

"It's not an equipment malfunction; someone went missing after boarding at that time."

The customer service rep did not reply again.

After that, his posts started becoming shorter and shorter.

"Don't wait for the bus."

"Don't check the time."

"I might still be thirteen minutes short."

Zhao Ye looked at these screenshots; he originally wanted to say that this guy was quite capable of making a fuss, but the words died on his lips.

Because he suddenly realized that if he hadn't been chosen by Torch, if no one had told him after the Black Rust Construction Site incident that it wasn't a hallucination, he probably would have also become the kind of person who repeatedly warned others online, yet no one believed.

Shen Qinghe also thought of Luo Wei.

Many victims of anomalies had not failed to seek help before they died.

It was just that reality couldn't catch the words they spoke.

What Torch needed to do was precisely to provide a place for these words that weren't caught to land.

Lu Chen classified all of the Time-Space Apostle's records into the Jiangbei special project.

Not because every single one of them was accurate.

But because behind every one of them, there was an ordinary person who had groped their way through the darkness.

But there was already a title in the cache.

"If you see this, it means I didn't get off the bus."