Amidst the increasingly loud cries for help, Yan Mingguang leisurely finished smoking a cigarette.
To avoid letting Yan Wei see his reflection, he had taken off his glasses the night before. His cold, hard features were now unmistakably visible; when this man stood silently, he resembled a pine tree covered in snow during winter, impossible to approach.
Seeing Yan Mingguang like this, Lin Qing had initially wanted to ask something, but he held back.
However, he had long lost any sense of panic and could calm down in an instant. Even if Yan Wei encountered danger, he would never resort to loud cries for help.
He withdrew his steps.
Outside, it was already an overcast day; even in daylight, the light was dim. With the curtains of the entire carriage drawn, the air inside felt heavy and drowsy.
The train was not very stable, emitting a mechanical clanking sound mixed with the rust of iron every few seconds, and the carriage swayed unsteadily. Yan Mingguang stood in the corner, his posture while smoking remained steady.
He usually would catch the falling ash, but this time he made no effort to do so.
The ash drifted down with Yan Mingguang’s movements, soon covering the ground in front of him with a layer of fine, scattered ash. He stood where Cao Qun had just been smoking, and beside this layer of ash was another mess, with three cigarette butts clearly discarded by Cao Qun.
One of the butts was still long; when Yan Wei had walked in, Ding Xiao had told Cao Qun to extinguish his cigarette, so this one had not been finished.
The cries for help suddenly stopped.
At this moment, Yan Mingguang had just finished his second cigarette. He looked down at the ash on the ground, but his gaze was not on the patch in front of him.
Then, he threw the third cigarette he had just taken out directly onto the ground, and after taking a deep look at the two patches of ash left by the smoked cigarettes, he turned and said, “Go find Yan Wei.”
Zhao Jingchen was in the first restroom of the carriage behind the dining car.
He locked the door and turned on the light, staying inside. The mirror in the restroom had long been covered with cloth by the players last night, but in this restroom, the place where the mirror should have hung was empty—Zhao Jingchen had taken it down.
The restroom on the train was extremely cramped; upon entering, both sides were cluttered. One side had a squat toilet stained with unremovable grime, and the lid of the flushing mechanism stuck to the wall was half broken, with the outline of the float barely visible, as if the water inside would leak out if the train swayed any further.
The other side had an old-fashioned washbasin, with a troublesome rotary faucet.
The entire restroom was filled with a stronger stench of decay and rust than outside, the smell of years of grime thickly clinging to the air.
Zhao Jingchen pinched his nose, feeling quite displeased as he waited inside.
He had taken down the mirror and hung it on the wall directly opposite the door of the next restroom.
If someone happened to open the door and enter, the light from outside would illuminate the dim restroom, and the mirror facing the door would instantly reflect the light, casting the shadow of the person entering onto the mirror.
Even if the person entering noticed it right away and tried to cover the mirror with something at hand, they would discover that the cloth covering the mirror in this restroom had been pulled down. They might block the one facing the door, but they would still be reflected in another mirror on the side.
With two angles, one would surely succeed.
As long as a shadow was reflected, then this trigger would…
Zhao Jingchen suddenly felt that the smell in this restroom was not so unbearable anymore.
He had woken up early in the morning but did not go to the dining car first; instead, he observed outside his bunk for a while. Among the sixteen players, some had used the restroom after getting up, while others had simply washed up. Among those who just washed up, Yan Wei had drunk the most—he seemed to have consumed an entire bottle of mineral water.
After everyone had looked at the blackboard in the dining car, if someone were to go to the restroom, the first to use it should be Yan Wei.
Zhao Jingchen deliberately moved the mirror from this restroom to the next one, sticking it on the wall directly opposite the door, while also pulling down the cloth that had covered the mirror in the dark. Then, he returned to this restroom, turned on the light, and locked the door, ensuring that anyone coming from the dining car looking for the restroom would naturally go to the next one.
As long as they went to the next one and opened the door…
Then Zhao Jingchen’s goal would be achieved. He was not really interested in seeing Yan Wei’s face; rather, it was because of the grudge he had with Lin Qing and his group that had existed before entering the instance. With the conflicts involving Yue Mang and Blackbird, he had to be wary of Lin Qing and them from the start, and conversely, the three from Blackbird felt the same.
The Death Oppression Instance would not have any prompt sounds, as the method to break it was fixed—players had to find a certain item within the instance’s location, which represented the Stairway. During the search, senseless or traceable methods of death would suddenly appear, claiming players’ lives.
What players needed to do was find the item symbolizing the Stairway, and… survive.
How to survive? As long as others died, the probability of being killed oneself would be lower. Players who knew about the Death Oppression Instance understood that in such instances, secretly triggering death for other players was quite common.
The primary targets were those with whom one had already formed grudges.
Thus, for the sake of safety in the instance later, Zhao Jingchen also needed to resolve this concern.
Naturally, the sooner it was resolved, the better.
To take a step back, even if that person was not Yan Wei, it did not matter. If there was a dead person, he would be the first to receive the information.
When he heard footsteps heading towards the next carriage, Zhao Jingchen knew the fish had taken the bait.
Sure enough, after a while, Yan Wei’s cries for help rang out.
The cries were somewhat muffled, clearly coming from inside. But Zhao Jingchen recognized that it was Yan Wei’s voice, the young man’s tone carrying a hint of panic, which Zhao Jingchen found quite pleasant.
Lin Qing seemed to protect Yan Wei so much, and that Yan Mingguang, whose gaze was as cold as if he were looking at a corpse, yet at this moment, neither of them appeared.
The voice grew louder, reaching a point of desperation, as if it were tearing apart.
—Then it suddenly stopped.
Players who had soaked in the Tower World for a long time were very familiar with this abrupt cessation of cries for help.
It was the struggle of despair after failure, symbolizing a halt.
Zhao Jingchen smiled.
He raised his hand, unlocked the restroom door, and planned to go to the next restroom to reap his rewards.
As he pulled the door open, the dim daylight spilled in from the corridor. Zhao Jingchen slightly raised his head, just about to turn and step out, when he noticed that the handle of the restroom door had been tied with a rope at some point. With Zhao Jingchen’s movement, the rope pulled, as if something ahead had been dragged down by it.
Two pieces of white cloth, seemingly torn from a bed sheet, floated down due to the rope’s pull.
Zhao Jingchen looked forward in the direction the cloth was drifting down, and his movements suddenly froze.
In the narrow corridor of the train, where the restroom door should have been securely covered by curtains, there was a rather dirty mirror stuck to the wall. Below the mirror were spots of water stains that had splashed up from the washbasin over the years.
This was actually a trap.
He opened the door, and the rope pulled the torn cloth, revealing the mirror that had been covered.
Zhao Jingchen was very familiar with this mirror—it was clearly the one he had personally taken down from the restroom and stuck onto the mirror in the next restroom.
He suddenly opened his eyes wide, his pupils constricting, and in just a fraction of a second, he saw his own reflection in the mirror.
His figure, wearing a hooded jacket, swayed slightly, and a pale face appeared on the mirror’s surface. This face was ashen, devoid of color, with eyes that were completely black, dark as if they contained all filth.
Thick black blood dripped from the head of this ghostly face, which grinned at Zhao Jingchen with a bloody mouth, smiling sinisterly.
Zhao Jingchen had no time to think; the crisis awareness honed over years in instances made him immediately tear off his hoodie and throw it at the mirror.
—The trap he set had gone wrong!!!
He could not go in the direction of that restroom; he threw the clothing and turned to head towards the dining car.
The next moment, Zhao Jingchen’s footsteps came to a complete halt.
Not only was there a mirror stuck to the side wall of the corridor, but there was also a mirror hanging in the center of the corridor!!
The two pieces of cloth he had torn down earlier did not fully cover the mirror opposite the restroom; they also covered this one hanging in the middle of the path. The person who left the trap had not intended to use the first mirror to harm him but had predicted the direction he would choose, leaving the second mirror in this direction in advance.
And in front of that mirror stood a “thing” with black hair completely obscuring its face, its figure so thin it seemed to be nothing but a skeleton.
That thing had already floated in front of him.
It seemed that some chilling breeze froze Zhao Jingchen; he could not move at all, his muscles tensed, and the coldness penetrated to his bones.
This thing raised a hand mottled with corpse spots, pale in color, with sharp nails.
Its hands wrapped around Zhao Jingchen’s neck, tightening bit by bit, little by little.
A chill wind from who knows where blew through the corridor of the train, which should have been sealed, lifting its hair slightly and revealing half of a face infested with rotten worms. Those long, gray-black worms slowly wriggled on its face, emitting a nauseating stench.
As the filthy thing tightened its grip, Zhao Jingchen’s face turned red.
His eyes bulged, veins popping on his forehead, and the precise features he had acquired just half a year ago twisted and deformed.
Suddenly, a palm-sized statue floated up behind Zhao Jingchen, surrounded by a burst of golden-white light.
All of the thing’s movements seemed to be paused. Amidst the brilliant light, it let out a shrill scream, as if its sharp nails were scraping against a metal sheet.
“Bang—”
The statue shattered, and the hanging mirror broke into dust-like shards of glass, and the thing exploded violently, thick black blood, long rotting worms, and decaying flesh scattering everywhere, mixing together in a nauseating manner, drenching Zhao Jingchen completely. Even his hair was stained with a sticky feeling of decay.
But Zhao Jingchen had no time to care about the filth in the air; he fell to the ground, clutching his neck, gasping for breath.
The sticky, filthy black blood slid down from his head, flowing over his eyes, slightly covering his vision.
Zhao Jingchen looked up, and through the murky view mixed with dirty black blood, he saw ahead where the two carriages connected, a young man in a trench coat leaning against the wall, appearing quite relaxed. His trench coat remained neat and clean, and his scarf hung loosely around his neck, yet it was still impeccably arranged.
Yan Wei slightly lowered his head, playing with two Swallow Coins in his hand, casually saying, “What a powerful life-saving item—ah, this statue must be your Legendary Item, right? It seems to have shattered; what a pity.”
