The train’s design was old-fashioned, and the cramped sleeping compartment only had a single wall lamp above the sliding door, casting a pale light.
Yan Wei stood by the small table near the window, turning his back to the glass. In front of him was the sliding door to the sleeping compartment, which he had locked earlier. The light from the wall lamp shone directly into his eyes, causing them to sting.
The narrow aisle on either side of the sleeping berths was just wide enough for one person to pass through, and with a single step, one could reach the door. In such a short distance, there was nothing but the door in front of him.
Lin Qing sat on the lower bunk on the left, rummaging through the bedding. He sat on the edge, his feet on the floor, and the shadow of the bunk slanted slightly, covering his knees. Looking inward from Lin Qing’s legs, the gap between the bunk and the floor of the carriage was filled with darkness, so black that nothing inside could be seen.
On the other side, Yan Mingguang had just climbed up to the upper bunk to inspect it.
The lower bunk on the right was empty, with a pristine white sheet neatly spread over the mattress. At the very front of the bunk, near Yan Wei, the folded bedding and pillow were neatly arranged, exuding a lifeless cleanliness under the stark light.
Yan Mingguang was the first to notice something was off with Yan Wei. He poked his head out from the upper bunk and looked down at Yan Wei: “Something wrong?”
Yan Wei was about to look up at him, but as his gaze shifted slightly, he caught a glimpse of something on either side of his shoulders. Those pale, blood-stained hands were reaching out again from above his shoulders, as if deliberately amplifying his fear, slowly inching forward. A chill spread across the back of Yan Wei’s neck, yet the surroundings remained eerily calm.
He didn’t turn around, but the image of the ghostly face he had seen earlier in the train window’s glass flashed through his mind.
Without his perception, he had no idea what was behind him. This unfamiliar sense of the unknown amplified the innate fear in humans. With his back to the window, a faint chill crept up his spine, as if something was watching him from behind.
Yan Wei paused for a moment, then decided not to turn around this time.
Instead, he smirked silently and raised his hand toward one of his shoulders, intending to grab one of the ghostly hands.
The source of the ghostly hands clearly didn’t expect someone to be so bold. It hesitated for a moment before suddenly retreating.
Yan Wei: “…” It seemed he had scared the ghost.
What a miscalculation. If he had been quicker, he might have been able to pull it out and figure out some rules of death.
The ghostly hands had vanished, but the darkness beneath the lower bunks on either side remained, shrouded in shadows. The creeping sense of dread continued to crawl up Yan Wei’s spine. Since he had missed his chance, now wasn’t the best time to try again.
Yan Wei said, “Lin Qing.”
“Hm?”
“Close the curtains. Now.”
Before the words had even fully left his mouth, Lin Qing, who had been searching the lower bunk, didn’t ask any questions. In the cramped confines of the sleeping compartment, he leaped up and, in a matter of seconds, reached out and pulled the old curtains shut.
As the curtains fully covered the train window, Yan Wei finally turned around—naturally, he could no longer see the pitch-black, smiling ghostly face.
“Boom—”
Another clap of thunder sounded outside, and the rain grew heavier. The occasional rumble of thunder overlapped with the roaring of the train, pounding heavily against their eardrums.
Yan Wei didn’t let his guard down. Instead, he immediately grabbed the neatly folded bedding, tore off the edge of the white sheet, and wrapped the torn fabric around the metal ladder used to climb to the upper bunk.
Yan Mingguang didn’t ask any questions. With one hand on the edge of the upper bunk, he flipped down to the floor and, without hesitation, also tore off a piece of fabric. Together with Lin Qing, they wrapped the other metal ladder.
Once all the reflective surfaces were covered with opaque fabric, the chill Yan Wei had felt earlier finally began to subside.
He took a few deep breaths and sat down on the now slightly messy lower bunk.
The curtains were tightly shut, completely obscuring the window and the night scene outside. At the foot of the lower bunks on either side, the metal ladders used to climb to the upper bunks were securely wrapped with strips of fabric. Even the small railings along the edge of the upper bunks were completely covered. The torn strips of fabric looked even more worn under the pale light.
Yan Wei glanced up at Lin Qing.
Lin Qing nodded solemnly, unlocked the sliding door, and stepped out.
Yan Mingguang stood in the center of the compartment, surveying the area. His tall frame seemed a bit out of place in such a small carriage. Standing in the middle, he blocked most of the light, making the cramped space feel even more oppressive and eerie.
The smooth tabletop, which had reflected a faint glimmer of light earlier, now appeared dull under Yan Mingguang’s shadow.
His expression remained unchanged. After a quick glance around, he tore off another piece of fabric from the bedding and completely covered the table. Then, he did something rare—he took off his glasses, put them away, and slowly sat down beside Yan Wei.
“It should be safe for now,” Yan Wei said, tilting his head to look at Yan Mingguang without his glasses. “In the past, whenever you took off your glasses, we’d turn off the lights… Cough, now that it’s ‘broad daylight,’ I’m not quite used to it.”
Yan Mingguang: “…”
Yan Wei kept staring.
Yan Mingguang’s facial features were sharp, like a sketch drawn with bold strokes. His eyebrows were thick like dark ink, the corners of his eyes slightly narrower than Yan Wei’s, his nose straight, and his lips thin. Without the glasses, his face looked even colder and more imposing than usual.
In the past, Yan Wei had once asked Yan Mingguang to stop wearing glasses, but without that touch of gentleness, he was so cold that it made others shrink back. Yan Wei had to give up on the idea.
Yan Wei suddenly remembered that the first time he had met Yan Mingguang, the man had already been wearing glasses.
He was the type of person Yan Wei liked—outwardly gentle and refined.
“Why didn’t I ever ask you before,” Yan Wei said, trying to lighten the tension from earlier, “it’s not like you can’t see without them, so why do you wear glasses?”
“You like it.”
“…” Yan Wei was both amused and exasperated. “Don’t say something so cheesy with such a straight face.”
Yan Mingguang fell silent.
The sound of the sliding door scraping open interrupted them. Lin Qing quickly closed the door and locked it, saying, “The others are the same. I found an excuse to check a few of the other occupied compartments. They’ve all covered any reflective surfaces, just like us. One compartment hasn’t done it yet—probably because they haven’t noticed. The others didn’t open their doors, maybe because they were afraid I was a ghost in disguise.”
Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang sat side by side, close together. Lin Qing noticed this but didn’t say anything. He walked over to the table, which was now covered with fabric, and stopped.
He pulled out a pen and paper and began drawing methodically. His strokes and technique were identical to how Lin Zhen had drawn the map of the Puppet Castle earlier. After all, they came from the same person, so their actions were naturally similar.
Yan Wei glanced at the drawing. Lin Qing was likely sketching out the current distribution of the players.
He took advantage of the time to once again inspect the cramped sleeping compartment with Yan Mingguang. The space was so narrow that even a slight movement from either of them could lead to a collision.
His gaze eventually settled on the door lock.
The lock was made of metal, but it wasn’t polished—it had a matte, sandpaper-like texture. Relying on his unshakable courage, Yan Wei leaned in for a closer look. He couldn’t see any reflection at all.
He deliberately stared at the lock for a while, but nothing happened.
It seemed that only surfaces that could reflect a person’s image were dangerous.
Reflective glass, shiny metal objects, smooth surfaces that could vaguely reflect a person’s image…
This wasn’t hard to figure out, and the others had likely encountered similar eerie phenomena, leading them to the same conclusion.
You couldn’t look at these things. If something could reflect your face, it would trigger the same kind of situation as before. When Yan Wei had looked out the window earlier, he had inevitably seen his own reflection in the glass, which had caused the hallucination.
The glass alone wasn’t enough to explain everything, but combined with his experience on the platform before boarding the train, it wasn’t hard to deduce that reflective surfaces or mirrors might be problematic. On the platform, the players had been more or less pressured by those sinister entities to board the train, but the one that had targeted Yan Wei hadn’t done anything except leave a bloodstain on his face.
What would a normal person’s first reaction be upon realizing there was a mark left by something sinister on their face?
—Panic and try to wipe it off.
What would a seasoned player’s first reaction be?
—Look in the mirror to see if there’s any information, then wipe it off.
At the time, Yan Wei’s instincts had told him something was off. The difficulty of a death-pressure instance lay in the fact that many dangers were hidden in the small details of daily life, or in seemingly insignificant actions and instinctive reactions. So he had stayed alert and hadn’t acted on his first impulse. He had suppressed his curiosity, not even looking at his own face to see what had changed, and simply wiped off the bloodstain.
He had avoided danger on the platform, but once inside the train, he had still encountered it—after all, every sleeping compartment had a window.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that if Yan Wei hadn’t been completely fearless today, or if he hadn’t reacted quickly enough, or if Lin Qing and Yan Mingguang hadn’t deduced the situation from his reaction and immediately covered up the reflective surfaces instead of just trying to hide, the first round of deaths might have already occurred.
The players who had made it this far weren’t pushovers. If they could figure it out, so could others, which was why Yan Wei had sent Lin Qing out to verify this. Yan Wei had only encountered this kind of situation twice, which wasn’t enough to confirm the idea that reflective surfaces could attract ghosts. But if others had done the same, it meant they had encountered similar situations, and with enough examples, the theory became more plausible.
Danger was information.
Since most people had taken this approach, it was likely correct that you couldn’t look at reflective surfaces. From now on, they just had to be vigilant and avoid any reflective objects.
Lin Qing finished his drawing.
Yan Wei and Yan Mingguang squeezed together on the other side, and the three of them gathered around the table, all staring at the rough distribution map.
Lin Qing said, “The dining car is completely normal. The carriage in front of the dining car has its lights on—probably the conductor turned them on. He mentioned he lives there. The aisle between the dining car and the passenger carriages is empty, except for a small blackboard at the end of the dining car. It looks like it’s meant for writing the menu, but it’s still blank. Behind the dining car are the passenger carriages. I didn’t look too far, but there are about five or six carriages. Each carriage has three sleeping compartments, with four beds in each compartment—two upper and two lower bunks.
“We’re in the third carriage behind the dining car. There are sixteen of us, spread across seven compartments, from the second to the fourth carriage. The first carriage behind the dining car is completely empty. Everyone must be wary of the sinister presence that appeared in the dining car when we boarded, so they started occupying the compartments from the second carriage onward. But the second and fourth carriages aren’t full. We’re in the last compartment of the third carriage, which is fully occupied. The first compartment has two people, the second—the one in front of us—is Ding Xiao…”
Lin Qing paused, then said, “Ding Xiao and I are on decent terms, but we don’t know each other well. It’s just that Manjusaka and Blackbird have had a few friendly collaborations in the past. I didn’t realize it before, but now I think it’s because of you, Yan Wei.”
Yan Wei smiled, acknowledging it but not elaborating.
“And behind us, the first compartment in the next carriage is…”
“Zhao Jingchen, right?” Yan Wei said. “He has a grudge against me.”
In an instance like this, where players were living “next door” to each other, there were only two types of people who would end up as neighbors. One type were allies who needed to look out for each other, and the other were enemies who were eager to find an opportunity to strike.
Sure enough, Lin Qing nodded and said, “So far, the three carriages with occupied compartments haven’t had any major activity.”
Yan Mingguang said calmly, “It won’t happen that quickly.”
This wasn’t a low-level instance, so it was unlikely that someone would die so quickly and mysteriously.
Yan Wei memorized the player distribution that Lin Qing had drawn and, after a moment of thought, said, “We need to keep a close eye on the number of players, as well as any spaces related to door locks—like the sleeping compartments and bathrooms. The biggest issue with a train instance is that it’s a closed environment. The passengers can’t leave, so it’s easy for secret rooms to appear, and it’s also easy to lose track of the number of passengers, which shouldn’t change.”
Lin Qing nodded, then drew another distribution map for Yan Mingguang and Yan Wei. The three of them then took out meal boxes from a plastic bag.
They had discovered that all the food items in the store had turned gray and couldn’t be selected.
This kind of thing happened often. It meant that the players had to find their own food within the instance.
Inside the meal boxes were fresh, hot steaks, complete with knives and forks. Yan Wei examined them carefully. The utensils had a matte texture similar to the door lock, so they didn’t reflect any images. But in the end, Yan Wei decided not to touch the steak. Instead, he set the meal box aside and neatly stacked it.
“Even though there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it, let’s not eat it for now. We can survive a day without food. Let’s not take any unnecessary risks.”
Lin Qing naturally had no objections to Yan Wei’s judgment. Yan Mingguang nodded and said, “You sleep on the upper bunk. I’ll take the lower bunk below you, and Lin Qing can take the upper bunk across from you.”
This way, Yan Wei would be flanked by Yan Mingguang and Lin Qing.
Yan Wei also knew that he was the least skilled in combat among the three of them, so he didn’t argue. After tidying up a bit, he climbed up to the upper bunk first.
The night had completely descended amidst the pouring rain.
Amid the roaring of the train, the players all remained quietly in their chosen sleeping compartments. The several carriages, though fully occupied by sixteen people, felt eerily lifeless.
At exactly nine o’clock, the old train, like any other, reached its lights-out time. The already dim lights flickered once before collectively falling silent.
In the last flicker of light, Yan Wei, lying on the upper bunk, tucked in the blanket and glanced at the bunk number plate stuck to the headboard.
1109.
“Boom—”
Morning.
Yan Wei, along with Yan Mingguang and Lin Qing, arrived at the dining car. Like Xu Miaomiao, they stopped in front of the small blackboard at the end of the carriage.
The blackboard was completely blank, except for four neatly written numbers.
