The carriage stopped.
Not the kind of stop where it gradually slowed down.
The wheels suddenly rolled over some invisible boundary, and the entire carriage jolted violently, as if a giant hand had pressed down on its shoulders.
Chen Mo nearly fell out of his seat.
"We're here."
Big Bro One lifted the curtain.
Chen Mo poked his head out—and froze.
He had assumed the real Yellow Springs Station would be grander, eerier, or more... How should he put it? More in keeping with the vibe of a special-ops unit.
But the scene before him looked exactly like a water town in Jiangnan from a period drama.
Countless wooden pavilions floated above the River of Forgetfulness.
They weren't built along the bank.
They were floating.
Glowing vines coiled around the base of every pavilion. The vines plunged into the pitch-black water, like countless anchors holding the buildings in place atop the churning river.
Suspension bridges connected the pavilions.
People streamed across them.
Couriers in delivery uniforms of every color carried packages, pushed flatbed carts, and even rode flying swords as they hurried back and forth across the bridges.
It was as lively as a farmers' market.
"Surprised?"
Meng Po's voice came from below.
Chen Mo looked down and realized that the carriage had stopped at a dock. The dock stretched out into the river, with a small boat moored at the end.
Meng Po stood at the bow, holding a bamboo pole.
"I thought..." Chen Mo jumped down from the carriage. "It'd be a little more serious."
"Why would people delivering packages need to be so serious?"
Meng Po tapped the bamboo pole against the riverbed, and the little boat glided silently across the water.
"Get on."
Big Bro One jumped down after him, but didn't board the boat.
"I'll take you this far."
He patted Chen Mo on the shoulder.
"Once you're inside, talk less and watch more."
"The people in there..." Big Bro One paused. "They don't have the best tempers."
"You're not going in?"
"Me?" Big Bro One shrugged. "I still have to go back and write my report."
"We tore up half the station. Someone has to explain it."
He turned, jumped back onto the carriage, and rode away.
Chen Mo: "..."
That guy really did come and go like the wind.
"Stop staring." Meng Po urged him on. "Get on. The water's about to rise."
Chen Mo hurriedly climbed into the little boat.
The boat was incredibly steady—so steady that it didn't feel like it was floating on water. It felt more like it was floating in midair.
Meng Po pushed off with the bamboo pole, and the little boat slowly entered the depths of the pavilion complex.
The farther in they went, the more Chen Mo felt that something was wrong.
Behind the windows of those pavilions, pairs of eyes watched him.
They weren't couriers' eyes.
Those eyes had no pupils, only a sheet of ghastly white.
"The stranded."
Meng Po spoke without turning around.
"Packages that can't be delivered will eventually develop consciousness if they're left there long enough."
"They like watching people."
"Especially..."
She paused.
"People with a Rogue Mark on them."
Chen Mo instinctively drew his wrist closer to himself.
The Rogue Mark was being suppressed by Yellow Springs Station's rules, but under the gaze of all those eyes, it had begun to burn faintly again.
"Sis Meng, what exactly is this place?"
"Yellow Springs Station."
"I know. I mean..."
"The real Yellow Springs Station," Meng Po said, her voice dropping, "isn't a place for delivering packages."
"It's a place for locking them up."
Chen Mo stared.
"Locking them up?"
"Some packages can't be delivered."
"Some secrets can't be allowed to reach their recipients."
"Some things..."
Meng Po's bamboo pole came to a stop.
The little boat pulled up in front of a building far larger than all the others.
The building had no door.
There was only a huge, pitch-black opening, like a mouth waiting to swallow something whole.
"Some things should never have been mailed out in the first place."
Meng Po turned around and looked Chen Mo directly in the eye for the first time.
Her eyes looked even older here.
So old they resembled two dried-up wells.
"Chen Mo, do you know why Rogue Logistics exists?"
"Because... someone wants to intercept the packages?"
"No."
Meng Po shook her head.
"Because Three Realms Express itself is creating 'packages that shouldn't exist.'"
"What's inside those packages are loopholes in reincarnation, stains on the laws of Heaven, and..."
She pointed at Chen Mo's chest.
"People like you."
Chen Mo's heartbeat skipped.
"Me?"
"Your past life wasn't that of an ordinary person."
Meng Po took a ceramic bowl from inside her robes.
The bowl held half a serving of soup.
Its color was strange. It wasn't clear or murky, but... constantly changing. At times it was blood-red, at times pitch-black, and at times it shimmered with a faint golden hue.
"This is..."
"The real Meng Po's Soup."
"It isn't meant to make you forget."
Meng Po handed him the bowl.
"It's meant to make you remember."
"Drink it, and you'll see the first name on the Three-Lives Stone."
"That name," Meng Po said, her expression growing complicated, "is also carved into the bronze gate."
Chen Mo took the bowl.
His hand was shaking.
"What if I refuse?"
"Then you'll never know," Meng Po said indifferently, "why the ghost runner called you a key."
"And you'll never know..."
"why your number is Courier No. 9,742,001."
Chen Mo took a deep breath.
He tipped his head back.
And drank it all in one gulp.
The taste was bitter.
So bitter it was as if every regret of his entire life had been boiled down into a bowl of medicine.
Then the world spun.
He felt himself falling.
Not downward.
He was falling inward.
As if he had been shoved into a narrow pipe, with countless images flashing past him on every side—
He saw a palace.
Seven people stood inside it.
They wore gold delivery uniforms, each with a different number embroidered over the chest.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
The seven people surrounded a door.
A bronze gate.
Seven grooves were carved into it.
All seven people placed their hands on the grooves at the same time.
The gate opened.
Behind it was...
It was...
Chen Mo couldn't see clearly.
Because the image broke apart right there.
As if someone had used an eraser to forcibly rub away everything that came after.
He only heard a voice.
The voice was exactly the same as his own.
"If we fail..."
"Break the memories apart and send them into reincarnation."
"One day, someone will gather all the fragments again."
"Open that gate."
"End all of this."
The moment the voice faded, Chen Mo's eyes flew open.
He found himself still on the little boat.
But the bowl in his hands was gone.
In its place was a fragment.
A fragment of stone that was pitch-black all over, its surface covered in golden cracks.
It was exactly like the Three-Lives Stone Fragment Meng Po had received.
But this one was smaller.
Older.
As if something had ground it down countless times.
"This is..."
"Your fragment."
Meng Po's voice was soft.
"Seven keys. Seven fragments."
"Each of the seven people who opened the bronze gate back then left behind one fragment."
"You are the seventh."
"And the last."
Chen Mo gripped the fragment and felt it grow faintly warm in his palm.
Like a sleeping heart.
"What about the other six?"
"Dead."
Meng Po pushed off with the bamboo pole, and the little boat slowly moved away from the doorless building.
"Or, more accurately, worse than dead."
"They became the Seven Apostles of Rogue Logistics."
Chen Mo's pupils suddenly contracted.
"The ghost runner..."
"Is one of them."
Meng Po nodded.
"Number Seven back then. A Rogue Logistics Apostle now."
"And their goal," Meng Po said, turning back to Chen Mo, "is to find you."
"To find the last fragment."
"To open the bronze gate again."
"This time," there was an emotion in her voice that Chen Mo couldn't understand, "it isn't to close the gate."
"It's to completely release whatever is behind it..."
Before she could finish speaking, the entire Yellow Springs Station suddenly began shaking violently.
The pavilions swayed.
The suspension bridges snapped.
The waters of the River of Forgetfulness churned madly, as if a giant beast had awakened beneath the riverbed.
Countless stranded let out shrill screams and surged out from behind the windows like a flock of startled birds.
Meng Po's expression changed.
She abruptly looked toward the deepest part of the station.
A blood-red pillar of light shot into the sky there.
Within the pillar, the enormous character "Rogue" could faintly be seen.
"Oh no..."
For the first time, Meng Po's voice trembled.
"They found it."
"Found what?"
"The bronze gate's..."
"true form."
Chen Mo followed her gaze.
At the end of the blood-red pillar of light, he saw a gate.
A bronze gate even larger than the one he had seen in his dream.
The gate was slowly opening.
Through the gap, that world-shrouding hand reached out once again.
This time, it seized the entire Yellow Springs Station.
[Emergency Alert!]
["Rogue"-level disaster detected!]
[Three Realms Express's highest-priority order: All couriers, evacuate immediately!]
[Repeat: All couriers, evacuate immediately!]
Chen Mo stood on the rocking boat, clenching the fragment in his hand.
The fragment was burning hot.
Hot enough to feel as if it were about to catch fire.
A voice rang out in his mind.
It wasn't the system.
It was his own voice.
Or rather, the voice of his past life.
"Go open the gate."
"This time..."
"You decide what's behind it."