Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 86 Xuanlu Society

The night rain had not stopped, as if it were trying to wash away all the secrets of the world.

The neon lights on the street dissolved in the rain, stretching into out-of-focus bands of color, shattering and reforming in the puddles on the ground, like a distorted reflection of the city.

Xu Yan walked in the shadow of the overpass, like a drifting ink mark.

The tiny splashes of water from the soles of the shoes were the only rhythm in the silence.

The aura of the substation still clung stubbornly to him. It wasn't just a simple smell; it was a metallic molecule scorched by high-voltage lightning, mixed with the burning sensation of his soul power being overdrawn, slowly seeping from his pores.

He subconsciously pulled up his collar and fastened a warm, smooth jade cicada back to his chest, the one closest to his heartbeat.

That small patch of body heat left by Chen Zhiwei, rapidly fading away, seemed to be his only connection to "the human world" at this moment.

There are forty hours left until the second stage of the assessment.

Time is like a slowly tightening noose.

The words left behind by the mysterious man were no longer words, but a cold probe, implanted deep within his mind:
"They're not testing you, they're feeding you."

--feed.

This word cast a nauseating shadow over all the previous tasks.

With each click of the shutter, each time a spirit was swallowed by the camera, he could clearly "hear" deep within the camera, the interwoven patterns of light emitting a satisfied hum, a cold hunger being nurtured and beginning to possess its own will.

He needed an answer, an answer that could pierce through this thick fog.

Amid the sound of rain, the terminal vibrated gently in my palm, carrying an untimely stubbornness.

It's A Zhe's encrypted frequency band.

Xu Yan hadn't intended to answer, but when his fingertips sensed a barely perceptible urgency in the vibration frequency, he inexplicably slid across the answer button.

"Hey—Yan-ge? It's connected! You're still fucking alive!" A-Zhe's voice exploded from the other end, with the sounds of hurried running and rain in the background, as if traveling through the belly of some huge machine. "Damn, the assessment list is fluctuating like a bunch of random scribbles. I'm really afraid you've been used as expendable material by those lunatics!"

"Not yet."

Xu Yan's voice was low and hoarse as he slung the camera even tighter behind his back.

He turned into a deeper alley, where peeling fire prevention signs and malfunctioning electronic warning signs overlapped on the walls, like layers of dead skin peeling off this era.

"Your place doesn't look like a lab."

"Me? I just escaped from that damned Silver Review Committee!" A Zhe gasped for breath, his tone a mixture of barely suppressed excitement and resentment. "Those lunatics at the Qingwei Research Institute, what kind of 'Symbolic Law Hedging Experiment' were they doing, directly using living remnant spirits to measure mental thresholds! I said this went beyond the ethical framework, and guess what they said? They laughed at me—'Too humane, unlikely to amount to anything'!"

"letter."

Xu Yan answered calmly.

A single word, calm and undisturbed, yet conveys a profound and unfathomable understanding of the dark side of this world more effectively than any lengthy discourse.

"...Your reaction is really boring." There was a two-second silence on the other end of the line, then his voice lowered, carrying a kind of helpless realization. "Yeah...you've seen more abysses than I've seen laboratories."

The two fell into a brief silence.

Only raindrops dripped from the eaves of the old building, hitting Xu Yan's shoulder with a sound as clear as ice needles falling to the ground.

"Let's get down to business, Brother Yan. Something's off about this assessment." A Zhe lowered his voice, his tone becoming serious. "The lineup is terrifying. It's not just the people from the Qingwei Research Institute; even the Shenxiao Electric Law Bureau—those living devils who manage large-scale lightning magic barriers in cities—and those old scholars from the Lingbao Public Works Bureau who specialize in dealing with 'historical relics' have come."

He gasped for breath, his voice filled with disbelief: “They’re all direct branches of the Xuanlu Yin-Yang Supervision Association. I even saw a few names on the list: like ‘Lei Zhenzi’ from Shenxiao and ‘Qingxuan’ from Lingbao. Their eyes were all gray, like glass shattered by lightning. Those kinds of people don’t come to assess students—they only appear before they ‘take action’.”

“Those were all old monsters I thought had long been locked away in top-secret files, or even devoured by the artifacts I researched! This time, they were all unearthed and sitting on the judging panel. The spectacle…” Ah Zhe’s voice was even lower, almost a whisper:

"It's not like an assessment, it's like a troop review before a battle."

Xu Yan looked up and saw a surveillance camera silently rotating across the street, its red dot like a spying eye.

His gaze instantly froze.

"They are focusing on screening 'stable individuals'."

"What do you mean?"

“The old tricks of the ‘Center’.” A hint of cold sarcasm seeped into Xu Yan’s voice. “That’s how they ‘selected’ my father back then, found the most suitable container, and then… ‘precisely fed’ him until the container could no longer bear it.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the communication line, followed by the sound of Ah Zhe swallowing hard out of fear.

"...Hearing you say that sends chills down my spine. Where are you now?"

"Western suburbs".

"Going to take photos of wandering ghosts again?" A-Zhe teased habitually, but his smile instantly vanished. "Wait, didn't you say you were going to rest and prepare for the assessment? Where's Zhiwei? Is she awake?"

The moment that name was mentioned, the sound of the surrounding rain seemed to be muted by an invisible hand.

Xu Yan paused for a moment before saying, "She's at the photo studio. Her recovery... isn't very fast."

"Damn, she's still not better? I... I thought..." Ah Zhe's tone suddenly tightened, revealing genuine worry and a hint of barely perceptible guilt, "I thought she was fine a long time ago."

“She will be alright.” Xu Yan interrupted him, her tone calm but carrying an unwavering certainty.

As he spoke, he stepped onto a rusty overpass leading to the old industrial area.

The wind grew wild here, carrying icy rain blades that seeped through the gaps in the steel structure, making the hem of his coat flutter loudly.

At the end of the overpass, a huge abandoned billboard hangs halfway in the air, its iron frame twisted.

On the sign, most of the words "Municipal Emergency Material Dispatch Center - Cold Storage" have been peeled off, and beneath the mottled rust and stains, a black mark, as if etched by a flame, is clearly visible:

【Sector-07】.

“Yan-ge…I know I shouldn’t ask,” A-Zhe’s voice rang out again, trembling with a sense of desperation, “but I can’t hold it in anymore. You and Zhiwei…are you really together?”

Xu Yan did not answer immediately.

His steps stopped at the end of the overpass. Rainwater slid down his forehead, swept across his nose, and gathered and dripped from his chin.

This cold touch felt just like a silent question from fate.

On the other end of the terminal, Ah Zhe's voice trembled with a sense of desperation: "I know I have no right to interrupt..."

Just then, a short, sharp sound, like an ambulance siren, came from the other end of the phone.

That voice, like a key, unexpectedly unlocked the floodgates of memory.

He suddenly remembered carrying the injured Chen Zhiwei away from danger; her disheveled hair, carrying a delicate fragrance, brushed against his ear.

At that moment, exhaustion and fear vanished, and he even absurdly believed that he could actually have a future.

(End of this chapter)