It was already midnight. I sat in silence, sinking into my seat, haunted by the story I'd just witnessed—a tale of endless waiting, suffocating in its emptiness. Afterward, nothing remained. Maybe Tony Tang never saw June Wu again. Tomorrow, I'll return the Spirit Comb to Spring Wu.
All clues were lost to the darkness. Dean Ding licked his lips, the night air thick with the greasy aroma drifting in from the food stalls outside the window.
"Can you feel Tony Tang's presence lurking nearby?"
I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. Dean Ding stared at me in confusion, then shot back a question.
"Tony Tang? Who's that?"
I blinked, staring at Dean Ding in utter disbelief, a chill crawling down my spine.
"Of course, I mean Yale Green—the one you all call Yale Green."
Dean Ding scratched his head, his movements awkward and uneasy.
"So his real name is Tony Tang? We've always called him Yale Green. It's just a name. If you want to talk about his presence, it's only in this Spirit Comb—nothing else."
Now, our only hope is to find the bridge that once linked Riverbend and Lakeside County. I’d questioned many elders before; all said the county’s expansion, and its absorption into J City, had twisted the land beyond recognition. The old Riverbend was swallowed by time, erased from existence.
Years ago, a catastrophic landslide erased Riverbend from the map.
Now, Riverbend is nothing but wasteland, abandoned since the disaster. The ground is so unstable, no road dares reach it.
I decided to drive through the night with Dean Ding, but hunger gnawed at us. After a heavy meal at a roadside stall, we steered the car east.
By 2 a.m., the road ahead vanished. Only a side road twisted off to the right. Before us loomed a cliff, its base buried in rubble—no trace of any riverbed. This wasn't the spot. I remembered: twenty years ago, this place was already deserted.
Most of Riverbend’s people fled to the county after the landslide. At this hour, not a single ghostly trace lingered here.
I stopped the car and stepped out, planning to scan the wasteland from above. Dean Ding was passed out drunk in the car. With a sigh, I took to the sky alone.
Scarlet flames erupted from my spine, shaping themselves into wings. I flew, slow and cautious, over the shattered landscape. The landslide had twisted the terrain into something unrecognizable.
Half the mountains had collapsed. Before the disaster, everyone had evacuated. Now, plants clawed their way through the gravel.
This must be the buried road from back then. I’d flown nearly twenty kilometers before stopping to search. There was no sign of the old town. If I could find it, maybe we’d have a chance.
I asked Dean Ding if maybe they’d ended up in a Shadow Realm, but he just shook his head. Even in a place like that, there’d be a trace of something. Tony Tang must be gone.