91: Chapter 91 The Prophet Is Not a Prophet

Three hours after the Jiangbei First Anchor was ignited, Jingling forwarded that strange message into the outer channel of the Grey Net.

[What you ignited is not the end, but a countdown to the next outbreak.]

The avatar of the sending account was a black background with white text, containing only two words: Prophet.

After reading it, Bai Ya's first reaction wasn't surprise; instead, he set his coffee cup on the table and let out a cold laugh.

"These days, the bigger the name, the more like a scammer they are."

Zhao Ye was more direct: "Prophet? Why doesn't he call himself the Heavenly Emperor?"

Jingling replied with a string of ellipses online and added: [I also think it's very punchable, but the information provided doesn't look fabricated.]

Inside Xinhuo Hall, the Grey Net dismantled the account's activity log.

This "Prophet" had no stable extraordinary fluctuations, no Mark of the Torch, and certainly no reaction from an old law core.

It was just an account that frequented local Jiangbei forums, deleted post backup sites, anonymous hospital mutual aid groups, and urban legend threads about old stations.

Over the past two months, he had recorded thirty-seven pieces of information related to the "Night Bus": missing time, mobile phone time discrepancies, photos of bus stop signs, hospital night admissions, deleted short videos, and several images that were clearly secretly cropped from the corners of official announcements.

After Shen Qinghe finished reading the first batch of data, her brow did not unfurl.

"He is not predicting."

"Then what is it?" Zhao Ye asked.

"Statistics." Shen Qinghe dragged several timelines together. "He has piled up the fragments that everyone else dismissed. If you pile up enough, some things will be revealed."

Bai Ya flipped to the last page, and his expression finally became a bit more serious.

The Prophet left a sentence.

[I do not see the future. I have just seen too many of the same deaths.]

This sentence made the channel quiet for a few seconds.

Lu Chen stood behind the Fire Keeper's seat, not in a rush to speak.

He had Zero compare the Prophet's data with the existing Jiangbei nodes on the Grey Net.

The results were not complete, and there were even several conflicts.

The Grey Net could confirm that the Old City East Station had already been anchored by a Fire Seal and could track the lingering traces left by the Night Bus in that area, but it could not see branch stations that had not yet been touched by Torch.

In other words, what the Prophet provided was not necessarily entirely correct, but it filled in the gaps in reality that the Grey Net could not see.

"Can you locate him?" Bai Ya asked.

Zero responded: [Cannot confirm real-world identity through the account. The other party is deliberately dispersing login traces.]

Jingling immediately jumped out: [He is even more afraid of death than I am.]

Zhao Ye snorted: "A person afraid of death sends this kind of message?"

Bai Ya said: "Being afraid of death and wanting to live are not the same thing."

The Prophet soon sent a second document.

This time it wasn't a riddle, but a table.

The table header was written very messily, as if pieced together from different web pages, chat screenshots, and handwritten records: time, location, number of missing persons, mobile phone deviation, bus stop sign changes, and eyewitness descriptions.

The last row was highlighted in red.

[Xiqiao Temporary Stop.]

It was not an abandoned station, just an ordinary bus stop on the edge of the Jiangbei Old District.

During the day, food delivery workers waited for orders, and at night, there were late-night snack stalls. Nearby, there were also pharmacies, lottery shops, and two old residential buildings.

The Prophet's judgment was written below the table.

[After the East Station was ignited, the Night Bus will no longer enter from the front of the Old City East Station. It will bypass the Fire Seal and look for branch lines that haven't been pinned down.]

Shen Qinghe did not adopt it immediately.

She replied in the channel: "Give evidence."

The Prophet replied after a long time.

[Every time someone tries to blockade in advance, the next stop will shift. It's not running away; it's taking a detour. You just pinned down the East Station, it will definitely change stations.]

[Xiqiao Temporary Stop has shown time discrepancies three times in the past seven days; it will become an entrance tonight.]

Zhao Ye looked at the word "definitely," and his expression wasn't very good.

"This kind of person is the most annoying. Speaks with full confidence, but doesn't show up himself."

Shen Qinghe re-read the table and finally marked the Xiqiao Temporary Stop into the outer layer of the Grey Net.

"Process it as a suspected risk point first. Not because he calls himself the Prophet, but because the data matches."

Lu Chen opened the draft mission. He didn't have Zero issue a high-level mission directly but listed the Xiqiao Temporary Stop as an observation node instead.

The Grey Net is not a god.

But Torch can slowly connect the eyes of everyone willing to look into the darkness to the net.

At 9:40 PM, Jingling sent another short video.

In the video, a Jiangbei youth stood by the side of the road, the phone camera shaking slightly.

He aimed it at the bus stop sign, muttering under his breath: "Is this piece of junk broken again?"

The bus stop light box lit up on its own.

A line of text appeared on it.

To verify this information, Bai Ya had Jingling dig up the earliest source posts.

The results came out quickly: the Prophet was not an account that had just popped up in the last few days.

Back when the driverless night bus was first posted on the forum as an urban legend, he had reminded people below: "Record the time, do not record the license plate."

That reply was mocked by a group of people at the time, saying he had late-stage delusions.

Later, the post was deleted, the original poster went missing, and those who mocked him changed the subject.

Only the Prophet kept saving those fragmented screenshots one by one.

After reading this, Zhao Ye's expression became a bit awkward, but he still stubbornly insisted: "That still doesn't prove he's reliable. A madman can also persist in keeping a diary."

Shen Qinghe said: "That's why we don't trust him; we trust the evidence."

Hearing this, Lu Chen's fingertips paused on the edge of the stone tablet.

She was becoming more and more like the investigative core of the Xinhuo Council, not because she was always right, but because she had started to understand how to keep skepticism within her actions.

Bai Ya, however, was more interested in the Prophet.

He stared at the account's activity log for a long time and suddenly said: "This person is very afraid of being found. Every time he sends information, it's like he's leaving a suicide note."

Jingling replied quickly: [I noticed that too. After he sends important information, he deletes the local traces and deliberately goes to a few irrelevant forums to spam.]

"Afraid of death, cautious, and yet wants to help." Bai Ya rubbed his chin. "Troublesome person."

Zhao Ye glanced at him: "You evaluating others as troublesome is very convincing."

Bai Ya smiled: "Thanks, that's called professional expertise."

Lu Chen ultimately did not include the Prophet in the Candidate list; he only hung a temporary tag on him in the outer layer of the Grey Net: Intelligence Source Pending Verification.

This tag was cold, but also safe.

It acknowledged the other party's value without pushing an account that only sent information into the Torch system.

Bai Ya raised an eyebrow after seeing it but didn't speak.

He knew that this caution, not rushing to recruit people, was more like the Xinhuo Council than a simple "Welcome to join."

At the same time, Lu Chen added a risk mark to the Prophet's data in the backend: Usable, Not Trustworthy.

Usable because the data could save lives, and not trustworthy because the other party had not yet stood before the firelight to undergo scrutiny.

The Xinhuo Council could not treat anyone who could provide accurate information as one of their own just because they were in urgent need of intelligence.

This boundary must be maintained.

[Next bus: 23:17.]

But in real time, it was only 9:40.