Elio’s Notes: We’re moving updates to around 2pm UTC daily. 😁
Fog Harbor was a city that never slept. Even at midnight, its lights still blazed brightly, traffic flowed endlessly through the streets, and scattered points of light remained along the coastline.
Shang Lu left the Anomalous Case Department and spent several minutes figuring out the ride-hailing app.
Overtime again.
Fortunately, Diva had come back from the dead and helped him write the investigation log and mission report, taking a considerable amount of work off his shoulders.
Even during Shang Lu’s personal time, Diva remained conscientious. “You still haven’t received your first rabies vaccine. This afternoon, you said you would go tonight.”
“The vaccination clinic is closed.”
Diva didn’t believe him. “I checked. There is still an accredited clinic operating nearby, less than one kilometer away. You still need several injections, so using that clinic would be convenient.”
Shang Lu only wanted to sleep. “Definitely next time.”
“When exactly is next time—”
Shang Lu climbed into the ride-hailing car and shut her off.
When the door to his home opened again after several days away, Shang Lu switched on the lights. The apartment was silent. He had forgotten to close the windows before leaving, and after several days of wind and rain, water stains remained on the living-room floor while a thin layer of dust had settled across the entryway table.
He changed his shoes and accidentally knocked over the ceramic dog bowl on the floor. Bending down, he picked it up, then took the dog tag engraved with his phone number from his pocket. He washed both clean and put them away in a cabinet.
Shang Lu had found San Tiao at an accident scene during a mission several months earlier.
A fishing boat that had inexplicably disappeared for several months suddenly reappeared near the coast. Everything aboard was intact, nothing like a vessel that had spent months drifting uncontrolled at sea. There was even food inside the cabin that had not spoiled. Several people had disappeared together with the boat. None of them returned, but there was now a dog aboard instead. Something had bitten one of its legs. The dog was starving and dehydrated, and maggots had infested the wound.
Local fishermen said the dog might have belonged to an offshore fish farm and had probably climbed aboard the fishing boat on its own before drifting back with it.
When no owner could be found, Shang Lu took the dog to a veterinary hospital.
The dog spent a month in the hospital, costing Shang Lu nearly half a month’s salary. When it was discharged, it had one fewer leg and a new name: San Tiao. After only a week living at Shang Lu’s apartment, his work became so busy that he had no choice but to bring the dog to work with him. To his surprise, after only half a month “working” at the Anomalous Case Department, San Tiao completely stopped recognizing Shang Lu as his dad.
The apartment had only been lively for a brief time.
No.
Shang Lu made up his mind.
He had to win custody back.
The moment he got home, exhaustion hit him so hard he wanted to throw himself straight onto his two-meter-wide bed.
But his empty stomach needed filling first.
He showered, rummaged through his miserable refrigerator, found absolutely nothing worth eating, threw away a pile of vegetables instead, and finally resigned himself to expertly cooking a bowl of noodles.
In the morning, his phone ringtone woke him. Shang Lu opened his eyes and discovered that he had actually fallen asleep on the sofa and had never made it anywhere near his bedsheets. He picked up the phone and cleared his throat. “Hello, Da Xin.”
“Brother Lu, does Group Seven have anyone available right now?”
Once an investigation log was submitted, the Dispatch Center could tell which teams had enough time to squeeze in another assignment.
Early in the morning, Shang Lu lay there with one hand over his eyes to block the light. The wound on the arm holding the phone throbbed faintly.
He wasn’t surprised to be assigned another case. “Go ahead.”
Da Xin briefly explained the case and location, then formally assigned it to Investigation Action Group Seven.
Shang Lu washed up quickly, called another car, and headed straight for the scene. On the way, he notified Zheng Xiao Yu to bring the equipment. Shang Lu’s original set had died in the line of duty together with the pickup in Xueping.
This anomalous incident had occurred on a school campus, at a private secondary school in Fog Harbor called Chengchuan Middle School.
By the time Shang Lu arrived, classes had already been suspended and the students evacuated home. Even so, quite a few students were still lingering near the school. The bolder ones stood with their backpacks on, peering through the wire fence.
For a moment, Shang Lu almost imagined he saw another backpacked figure among them.
Now that the kid was in Fog Harbor, he’d probably continue going to school too.
The scene had already been taken over by the police. Shang Lu showed his identification. “Investigation Action Group Seven, Anomalous Case Department. Shang Lu.”
The police officer in charge nearby was an old acquaintance surnamed Xie. Shang Lu had worked two cases with him before.
When Captain Xie saw him, he walked over. “Team Leader Shang!”
Shang Lu ducked beneath the police tape and greeted him as well. “Captain Xie. What a coincidence. Looks like we’re working another case together.”
They headed toward the scene. Even from a distance, Shang Lu noticed something abnormal. “When did those sparrows appear?”
A dark mass hung above the school parking lot, made up of countless tiny dots. From a distance, it was difficult to tell what they actually were.
It was a flock of sparrows.
Most people had probably seen sparrows gathering in great flocks, chirping noisily as they flew. Sometimes there were so many packed together that the sight made one’s scalp crawl, but that usually happened around sunset or before sudden changes in the weather.
It was late autumn, and the sky had cleared after rain.
As a coastal city, Fog Harbor currently had exceptional visibility, as though even human eyesight had improved.
In weather this good, such a huge flock of sparrows should not have been gathering.
And that was without even mentioning the fact that they were completely motionless.
Their stillness was eerie, like someone had pressed pause on the image. Every single sparrow hung suspended in midair, forming an unpleasant cluster of black dots.
“You’ve got sharp eyes,” Captain Xie said. “They really are sparrows. When I arrived, I thought they were bees or something. We’ve already questioned the witnesses and had someone check the surveillance footage. They appeared suddenly at the exact moment of the incident. And the cameras captured no trajectory showing them arriving. A flock this large appearing out of thin air is extremely difficult to explain.”
“Have you confirmed whether they’re only images or actual physical entities?”
“Not yet. We preserved the scene. Your people hadn’t arrived, so we didn’t touch anything.”
As they spoke, the two of them entered the actual scene.
Chengchuan Middle School operated as a boarding school and accepted students from outside the city and from the suburbs. Because of the quality of its teaching, some local students also attended as day students, so the school provided buses for transportation.
At that moment, two yellow school buses stood out clearly in the Chengchuan Middle School parking lot beneath the suspended flock of sparrows.
More precisely, they were not “two” school buses.
Their rear sections were separated, one to the left and one to the right, with barely enough room for one person to pass between them. The farther forward they went, the closer the two bodies came together. Starting from the front doors, they were pressed tightly against each other, nearly forming a single front end. There was no visible seam whatsoever, and even the paint was smooth and unbroken.
It looked as though one bus had suddenly split apart, forming two rear ends.
A trail of blood began at the school-bus door and continued for five or six meters. Shang Lu had already learned from the Dispatch Center call that someone had been injured at the scene.
Shang Lu had seen his share of bizarre anomalous scenes, but his expression still became serious. He had only just encountered this kind of fusion or splitting of nonliving objects somewhere else.
“How many people were on the bus at the time?”
Captain Xie said, “Only the driver and three students. The driver and two of the students were fine. The other student was badly injured. Both his legs basically just vanished for no apparent reason—they were completely severed below the knees. The paramedics searched the bus but couldn’t find them, and they didn’t dare stay there too long. I questioned the driver and the other two students. They all said that when this student was getting off the bus, the vehicle happened to be squeezing out a duplicate. Terrible luck.”
Squeezing out a duplicate.
That was an unusually accurate description.
“Which hospital is he in now, and what’s his condition? I need to go see him.”
Captain Xie waved a police officer over to ask. “The emergency crew said he might be transferred. Let me confirm first. I’ll tell you as soon as I know.”
Shang Lu walked beneath the flock of sparrows and carefully examined their shapes, taking several photographs with his phone. He soon discovered that there was something abnormal about them as well. They seemed to be nothing more than phantom images, like mirages that could be seen but not touched.
To confirm his judgment, Shang Lu borrowed a high-jump pole from the physical education equipment and poked it upward.
The pole passed straight through the sparrow images and met nothing at all.
At that moment, Zheng Xiao Yu came hurrying clumsily toward the scene, only to be stopped by police outside. He had five or six shopping bags hanging from his left hand and carried an equipment case in his right. “Team Leader—!”
Shang Lu had them let him through. “Forgot your ID again?”
The chubby intern had sweat on the tip of his nose, whether from running or panic. “Sorry. Here, the equipment.”
Shang Lu took the case. “What’s all this? Are you moving house?”
“The clothes you asked me to buy for your little brother.”
“What do you mean, clothes for my little brother? Who’s my little brother?” Shang Lu laughed. “What’s wrong with you? You brought all of this to a crime scene? Why didn’t you leave it in the car?”
Zheng Xiao Yu said awkwardly, “I don’t have a car. I took a taxi. The subway would’ve taken too long. Someone in the parking lot yesterday saw a kid with a backpack following you and said you’d brought a family member to work.”
So this one didn’t have a car either, despite hauling dozens of kilos of equipment around all day.
Shang Lu remembered the address Zheng Xiao Yu had written on his employment paperwork and roughly calculated it.
His commute was two hours every day.
Now feeling a sense of shared suffering with him, Shang Lu put the equipment case on the ground, opened it, switched on the calibration anchor first, then took out the detector. “I did bring someone in. Who spread the story?”
Zheng Xiao Yu hesitated. “Team Leader He… Team Leader He said it in the group chat. You didn’t see it?”
The Anomalous Case Department had several group chats. Shang Lu had been there for years, so naturally he lurked in every single one.
But he found them too noisy and had muted all of them.
He hadn’t expected these people to dare gossip about him in there.
Sooner or later, he would teach them a lesson.
Diva automatically powered on.
“Equipment connected. Baseline calibration successful. Initial RG value: 0.03. Reality gradient normal.”
Shang Lu didn’t want too many people knowing Fang Huan Xing’s identity, so he continued questioning Zheng Xiao Yu. “What else did she say?”
Zheng Xiao Yu faithfully betrayed everyone to his own team leader, lowering his voice. “She said you’ve always been a loner and this was the first time in years anyone had seen you bring someone to the Department.”
Shang Lu snorted. “Anyone hearing that would think I brought a girlfriend.”
“No, they didn’t say that. They said…”
“What?”
Zheng Xiao Yu committed himself. “They said you like men.”
He wasn’t making it up. He had heard people say the same thing from his very first day at the Anomalous Case Department.
The rumor mainly came from the way Shang Lu conducted himself.
Team Leader Shang of the Anomalous Case Department was young, handsome, capable, and well-connected, yet somehow everyone remained suspicious of his sexual orientation.
First, during all his years at the Anomalous Case Department, he had never once been involved in romantic gossip, nor had anyone ever heard him mention a woman.
Second, before Zheng Xiao Yu arrived, Shang Lu’s only team member had been Zhou Jia Ying. Sister Ying was not only pretty but clever too. The two worked together constantly, seeing each other every day, yet somehow not even the slightest spark had ever appeared between them.
Finally, He Zhen, leader of Investigation Action Group Three, had once been a famously beautiful police officer. The moment she joined the Anomalous Case Department, she and Shang Lu immediately began butting heads. After several years, they had somehow turned into sworn rivals, and lately their conflict had escalated even further over the battle for custody of San Tiao.
It was hardly surprising that everyone in the Anomalous Case Department assumed Shang Lu liked men.
So…
Shang Lu didn’t bother defending his sexual orientation. Instead, after thinking it over, he said, “A bunch of single people themselves, and they have the nerve to talk about me?”
As he spoke, he glanced at the shopping bags on the ground.
Maybe I shouldn’t bring those back into the Department.
Better to have a delivery service take them directly to Dr. Xu’s place later. It wouldn’t be good for anyone to misunderstand.
The kid was still a minor.
“He’s not my family, and he’s definitely not my little brother. Just say he was invited to visit the Anomalous Case Department. You won’t be seeing him again anyway.”
With that, Shang Lu handed the calibration anchor to Zheng Xiao Yu. “Put this on. Take the detector and check the bus from front to back. Come out afterward and give me a detailed report.”
What interns lacked most was experience. This scene wasn’t particularly complicated, so it was perfectly suitable for Zheng Xiao Yu to operate independently while Shang Lu supervised.
Zheng Xiao Yu clearly hadn’t expected to be given such an opportunity, especially with his team leader personally calibrating the equipment for him. He eagerly agreed, strapped the calibration anchor onto his arm, and was about to climb onto the bus with the detector.
Shang Lu reached out and dragged him back. “Wait. What do you do if the calibration-anchor reading changes?”
Zheng Xiao Yu recited the rule. “If the RG value rises continuously by more than 0.1 within thirty seconds, or the total RG value approaches 0.35, evacuate immediately.”
Satisfied, Shang Lu let him go and remained outside to supervise.
Captain Xie returned and told Shang Lu, “The injured student is undergoing surgery at Anxin Hospital. He’s still unconscious. Our officers are already there. They say the situation doesn’t look very good.”
It was a disaster that had struck completely out of nowhere.
Shang Lu fell silent, able to imagine what a devastating blow this would be to a family.
“That’s not what I mean by ‘not very good,’” Captain Xie said. “According to the doctors, they found two complete sets of blood vessels inside the patient.”
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