Ding Xiao said no more.
The faint sunlight filtering through the curtains vanished in an instant, plunging the cramped sleeper compartment into near-total darkness. The only sounds were the rumbling of the train and the increasingly heavy rain that had just started. As the carriage swayed, Ding Xiao gripped the ladder for support, the cold metal chilling her palms.
At that moment, she straightened her back, her expression tense, feeling as if something was lurking in the shadows, watching her.
But despite her vigilance, she wasn’t overly anxious.
With Yan Mingguang here, nothing major was likely to happen.
In the next moment, the lightbulb hanging above the sliding door flickered, casting a swaying glow before stabilizing.
Ding Xiao saw Yan Mingguang sitting at the other end, his body slightly turned, his gaze lowered, his expression calm. Beside him, a blood-covered figure crouched by the bed, its pale hands mottled with corpse spots, its jet-black hair dripping with thick, dark blood. Its face, a mix of pallor and bloodstains, was cracked in places, with decay worms crawling through the fissures.
The thing looked up at Yan Mingguang, its subtle movements causing the worms to wriggle in the cracks, while black tears streamed from its dark eyes.
Yan Mingguang simply raised a hand, hovering it between himself and the filthy creature.
The ghost could advance no further.
Yan Wei and Lin Qing had each chosen a lower bunk to lie on. After Lin Qing finished organizing the information, he discussed it with Yan Wei before lying quietly on his side without speaking. Yan Wei lay on his back, his hands cushioning his head, his eyes unfocused as he stared at the bunk above, his brow slightly furrowed.
Earlier, he and Lin Qing had discussed several possibilities about the train’s front, but Yan Wei still felt something was off.
The most likely scenario was that the starting point was the source. Whether in the myth of Prometheus or in ordinary logic, the beginning of an event is the root of suffering. If it never starts, suffering won’t occur. From Zeus’s perspective, Prometheus was doomed to torment the moment he stole the fire. From the players’ perspective, the moment they boarded the train was the start of their “punishment.”
So, the dining car was likely the symbolic front of the train—this was undeniable and the most probable.
Their focus tomorrow would also be on the dining car.
Another possibility was that the train was just extremely long, creating the illusion of endlessness. They might be able to reach the front after running through a hundred or so carriages. With all five of them, combined with their high-level and Legendary Items, they could probably hold out.
But Yan Wei felt this was highly unlikely—it contradicted the principle of the Death Oppression Instance, which didn’t test brute force.
However, the dining car…
He blinked slowly, pulling the blanket over himself. Wrapped in Yan Mingguang’s coat and the thick bedding, the cold, damp chill couldn’t reach him, and he finally felt a bit of warmth.
“Lin Qing,” he said, “do you remember what was in the hard-seat car and the dining car?”
Lin Qing opened his eyes and replied steadily, “The dining car has a small kitchen, a bar, cooking utensils, tableware, dining tables with benches on both sides, a small blackboard hanging at the end, curtains, and the windows that are already covered. Further ahead is the endless hard-seat car, which is very simple. There are luggage racks above on both sides, hard seats below, with three seats on each side of every row, an aisle in the middle, and rusted, blocked intercoms at both ends with a decorative painting hanging below each.”
He paused, as if afraid Yan Wei might misunderstand, and added, “After Yan Mingguang discovered something behind the blackboard, I checked the decorative paintings in several sleeper cars. They’re just ordinary paintings, nothing unusual.”
Yan Wei sighed. “What you said matches my memory exactly. But I still feel something’s off, like we’re missing something.”
He said, “I’ll think about it some more.”
Yan Wei closed his eyes.
The train had been unusually quiet for the past few hours. Aside from the smell of rust and the increasingly strong stench of decay, everything seemed to have been paused, with no extra sounds.
In the second sleeper compartment of Carriage 11.
Xu Miaomiao sat alone on the lower bunk, leaning slightly against the wall. She stared ahead, her fists clenched, cold sweat dripping from her forehead.
There was nothing in front of her. But from the moment she separated from Yan Wei and the others—more precisely, from the moment she was completely separated from Yan Mingguang and Yan Wei—she felt a sense of being watched from all directions.
This was a feeling she had experienced in almost every Ghost-related instance.
But this time was different.
At first, she calmly used her high-level Item to thoroughly inspect the small sleeper compartment from top to bottom, inside and out. She found nothing unusual, nothing out of place.
Yet the feeling of dread grew stronger.
Even if she was being targeted, there had to be a trigger. Her name wasn’t on the Death List—had she done anything out of the ordinary today?
“Fzzzt—”
The lightbulb flickered a few times before going out completely. The train had entered its lights-out period, and all the carriages plunged into darkness. Xu Miaomiao’s vision went black, and her ears were suddenly filled with a sharp, drawn-out scraping sound, like nails dragging across cold metal.
“Scratch—”“Scratch—”“Scratch—”“…”
Xu Miaomiao felt her nerves twist into a knot, as if they might snap.
She didn’t move, taking a deep, calm breath as she pulled a flashlight from her Black Ring. The cold touch of the flashlight’s handle spread through her palm, and she pressed the switch without hesitation.
A pale beam of light spread out.
Yan Wei couldn’t sleep.
Maybe it was because Yan Mingguang wasn’t by his side today, or perhaps the mystery of the train’s front weighed on his mind, but no matter how long he lay there, sleep eluded him.
“Fzzzt,” Yan Wei closed his eyes, feeling the light disappear—the lights were out.
He burrowed deeper into the blanket, half his face buried in the fabric.
The room was getting colder.
Suddenly, Yan Wei opened his eyes.
Without hesitation, he sat up in bed, the Moon Wheel already in his hands. The faint white light emitted by the Moon Wheel faintly illuminated the area, outlining the figure standing in front of the lower bunk.
It was a blood-covered, filthy thing. Its front had been split open from top to bottom with a sharp instrument, its internal organs spilling out from the gaping wound, like a string of filth waiting to pour out.
The moment Yan Wei pulled out the Moon Wheel, the thing leaned slightly toward him, its filthy face breaking into a smile at close range.
Yan Wei stared at the face of Cao Qun, split in two, and made no sound. He stepped around the thing, glancing toward Lin Qing’s bunk. Lin Qing lay perfectly still, breathing steadily, eyes closed, clearly unaware of anything.
With Lin Qing’s abilities, no matter how suddenly a ghost appeared, he should have noticed—yet he slept so peacefully.
Yan Wei sensed something familiar. It was a feeling from the last time he ascended to the top floor. Back then, everything around him had been completely still, as if time and space had been forcibly paused. The instance’s progress halted, and he felt like he was in a sudden, isolated void.
Back then, it was just him and the thing born from Lou’s malice.
This was one of the ways that thing entered an instance. It couldn’t interfere with the instance’s progress or alter Lou’s rules. It could only manifest by attaching itself to a filthy creature, pausing everything in the instance, or… by taking on Yan Mingguang’s form, not interfering with the instance itself but disrupting him from the players’ perspective.
Both methods took a toll on the thing, but the former was easier.
Yan Wei looked up calmly at “Cao Qun.”
The thing didn’t move, and neither did he.
After about ten seconds, Yan Wei sneered, “You’ve played this trick before. Do you really think it’ll scare me? Trash.”
“Cao Qun’s” corpse tilted its head, its neck bending at a 90-degree angle in a grotesque manner, grinning even wider at Yan Wei. The thing, which shouldn’t have been able to make a sound, spoke to Yan Wei, “Long time no see.”
But the mouth of “Cao Qun,” split in two, didn’t move. The voice was high-pitched and ethereal, as if coming from a distance, identical to the sound of Lou’s notifications.
Yan Wei scoffed, “Long time no see? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, but you’ve always been hiding in the shadows, using Lou’s power to spy on me, haven’t you?”
“That’s attention.”
“You’re quite the smooth talker.”
“…”
Yan Wei and the thing stared at each other in silence for a while.
Finally, Yan Wei yawned in boredom, “Are you here to make sure I don’t sleep well?”
“…” “Cao Qun” chuckled, “You should give up.”
“Give up on reaching the top? Dream on.”
“Climbing up again is just a repetition. How about we make a deal? I can’t change the rules, but I can arrange the easiest high-floor instances for you every time and provide the clearest path for descending. You can roam freely in this world, always possessing abilities others can only dream of, immortal and invincible. Isn’t that easier than being an ordinary person?”
Yan Wei raised an eyebrow, already bored and tossing the Moon Wheel in his hand.
He said, “So, I don’t go to the top floor, wait until the maximum time set by Lou’s rules passes, get forced into an instance, descend, and repeat?”
“Isn’t that good? You can also stay with… him.”
“Do you, a filthy thing born of malice, really believe in such fantasies?”
“…”
Yan Wei sneered, “If I actually listened to you, would I end up in the easiest instance or the hardest one? Don’t you have any sense in that stupid head of yours?”
“…” If the thing could show emotion, it might have turned red with anger. But all it had was a pale, split Ghost face, hanging from its neck, calm yet revealing a hint of self-isolation.
Yan Wei was satisfied. “Why are you staring at me? You can’t touch me, and the ghosts in this instance can’t harm me either. Will staring at me make me lose a piece of flesh? Why don’t we meet again in the next instance? I’ll gladly send you off, making sure you go down convinced.”
After a moment, the ethereal, eerie voice trembled, emitting a shaky laugh.
The thing seemed to be speaking in a strained voice, “I really don’t understand your obsession. You’re still with him, yet you’re doomed to fail. I came to negotiate with you, but you refuse to compromise. Yan Wei, I’ve seen many fools who want to save everyone, but you’re the first person I’ve met who knowingly continues to play the fool.”
Yan Wei’s heart skipped a beat.
The thing seemed to be hinting at something, something involving Yan Mingguang. He didn’t fully understand what it meant, but he vaguely sensed it was related to a secret about Yan Mingguang that he hadn’t uncovered yet.
His expression changed, and he was about to find a way to keep the thing around longer to extract more information when the sharp voice sounded again, growing fainter, “You always want everything… but you always end up with nothing.”
“I can’t touch you, but for those who’ve triggered minor death conditions, I can amplify the danger. That person—ah, that female player, she’s your friend, right?…”
The voice had already faded, but another sound from the front of the train pierced the night, sharply entering Yan Wei’s ears.
“Ah!! Sister Ding—!!”
It was Xu Miaomiao’s cry for help.
