As soon as Yan Wei finished speaking, the metal floor of the train began to shake. The thick blood had already clung to the corners of the carriage, and it was only a matter of time before it completely spread.
The stench of decay instantly intensified more than tenfold.
Even though their perception was sealed, everyone present could feel the enveloping sense of crisis, pressing down on them, nearly suffocating.
Xu Miaomiao exclaimed in shock, “Are you talking about Carriage Zero!?”
When they first boarded the train, they entered the dining car, while the sleeper compartment that Yan Wei and Xu Miaomiao initially chose to stay in was in Carriage Eleven, separated from the dining car by one carriage. So, the dining car was Carriage Nine, the carriage they initially stayed in was Carriage Eleven, and the night before, they stayed in Zhao Jingchen’s previous room, which was in Carriage Twelve.
Moving forward from Carriage Twelve, they would reach Carriage Eleven, and moving forward two carriages from their current Carriage Eleven would lead them to the dining car in Carriage Nine. Counting forward nine carriages from the dining car, the number would naturally count down to zero.
In old-fashioned trains, the locomotive was usually not included in the numbering sequence. It could be referred to as Carriage Zero or as the locomotive before Carriage One.
Xiang Ying fiddled with the Buddhist prayer beads on his wrist and quickly said, “That can’t be right. Everyone here has walked forward dozens of carriages. Even if it’s an illusion, there can’t be only nine carriages ahead.”
“There are indeed more than nine carriages ahead, but our habitual thinking has led us into a fatal logical trap: we assume that the monotonous carriages we’ve walked through couldn’t possibly be the locomotive.”
They had all overthought it.
Including Yan Wei himself, they had previously thought that the so-called locomotive was either the physical front of the train or an abstract representation of the “starting point.”
But in reality, their speculation about the concept of infinity was completely wrong. And this error had a particularly easy-to-spot flaw, but this flaw had been obscured by all of them on the very first day they boarded the train.
As the train shook, Yan Wei stood up and walked to the front window of the carriage.
The curtains were tightly drawn. Some thick blood had already dripped onto the curtains, casting an eerie hue on the light.
Yan Wei raised his hand, his fingertips already touching the edge of the window curtain.
Xiang Ying hurriedly said, “Wait! The glass reflects light; it might attract ghosts!”
Yan Wei turned to look back.
The carriage shook as if the sky were collapsing and the earth were shaking. Resentful energy surged chaotically, and the blood-red color reflected on everyone’s faces. Yan Wei’s face also showed a hint of darkness, but his clear eyes remained bright.
He glanced at the blood pooling on the floor, “—Are we still afraid of attracting ghosts now?”
Xiang Ying paused his attempt to stop him.
Yan Mingguang already had a long, thin whip in his hand, and Lin Qing turned around, bow in hand, aiming at the window in front of them.
Xu Miaomiao pursed her lips, “Ghosts are about to come out; whether we attract them or not makes no difference.”
With a swift motion, Yan Wei pulled open the curtains!
In the next moment, the slightly bright daylight poured in, somewhat dispelling the darkness inside the carriage. Fine raindrops fell by the window, and the blurry outline of the rainy scenery outside began to appear.
On both sides of the carriage, Yan Mingguang swung his whip, immediately pulling down all the curtains on one side. Lin Qing released a black arrow, which grazed the window, lifting the curtains and finally pinning them to the metal wall at the end.
All the curtains and coverings were pulled open.
A distant thunderclap lit up the sky for a moment, illuminating the carriage in an instant.
Xu Miaomiao’s mouth slightly opened in surprise.
“This isn’t…” Xiang Ying, ignoring the blood flowing on the metal walls, leaned against the window, looking at the scenery outside, “Isn’t this the desolate mountain we first boarded the train from? We’ve been on this train for three days, and we haven’t left…”
Outside was a mountain wall covered in wild grass and scattered rocks.
The scene was not much different from what Yan Wei and the others had seen on the platform. The wilderness was filled with weeds and rocks soaked by the rain. The train seemed to be moving in a slightly curved path, passing through the desolate landscape.
As if destined, the next moment, the distant scenery outside the window gradually became clearer.
Everyone in the carriage watched intently as the train passed by the platform outside, the very platform they had boarded on the first day of the instance. The train swiftly passed this familiar scene, continuing forward—just like the scene when they first boarded the train.
Xu Miaomiao murmured, “We haven’t left; we’ve been… circling around this mountain all along.”
This train wasn’t passing through areas with rain everywhere; it was simply that this desolate mountain was in its rainy season. They had never left this place, so the thunder and rain never ceased.
“Have you heard of the Ouroboros?” Yan Wei adjusted the coat Yan Mingguang had draped over him, speaking slowly, “The legendary creature that devours its own tail to form a circle. Its most well-known symbolism is the infinite cycle, self-consumption, and also the symbol of immortality.”
Li Mao didn’t have an infinitely long track for this train to run endlessly.
All he had was a track as long as the train itself, a circular track that looped around the mountain they were on.
The train was also a circle. Like the Ouroboros, the front and the end of the train connected to form a circle. The circular train ran on a circular, closed track, driven forever by the engine powered by resentment. It would forever circle the track, yet be forever trapped, unable to escape.
Whether they walked forward or backward, they encountered the same hard-seat carriages, creating a visual sense of endlessness. This infinity was achieved by connecting the ends. Players, whether walking forward or backward, would have to pass through hundreds of carriages to return to the starting point.
But they would be attacked by ghosts after walking through dozens of carriages, never having the chance to discover this.
If they had kept watching the scenery outside, they would have discovered on the second day that the train kept returning to the starting point, that the scenery outside repeated at intervals, and that the train was simply going in circles.
But they couldn’t discover it because this easiest-to-spot flaw, the key to breaking the cycle, had been obscured by their own hands on the very first day they boarded the train.
Why did reflective objects attract ghosts, even though it had nothing to do with the Azure Sky Project, yet became a trigger for ghost appearances?
To prevent the “passengers” from seeing the scenery outside the window, from discovering that the scenery repeated.
—A leaf blocking the eye.
The reason Ding Xiao was targeted by Li Mao was precisely because in her retrospection, the workers had pointed out this crucial logical flaw about the track.
“The Azure Sky train is a perpetually driven Ouroboros. The carriage before Carriage One is the locomotive, the head of the Ouroboros devouring its tail, the end of the train. The ends are connected, an eternal cycle, and also Prometheus bound to the rock, suffering torment day after day.” As Yan Wei spoke, he walked forward, but Yan Mingguang pulled him back.
“Li Mao is ahead,” the man said calmly, “You’re in your normal state today. I’ll go first, use my skill to take you all there.”
Yan Wei didn’t argue, stepping aside to let Yan Mingguang take the lead.
Xu Miaomiao activated her puppetry skill, bringing Ding Xiao along as she followed behind Yan Wei, with Lin Qing and Xiang Ying bringing up the rear.
The metal floor had already begun to crack like parched skin, and strands of dirty hair emerged from the cracks. In the carriages ahead and behind, ghostly figures covered in corpse spots and blood seemed to slowly materialize. These were the bodies of workers killed by Li Mao, sealed beneath the carriage floors.
The ghosts in the dining car appeared first.
The creature was now covered in decay worms, its half-severed neck swaying with the train’s movement, its pale hand reaching out. Though it had been at the end of the carriage just moments ago, it had already advanced two meters in the blink of an eye.
Xiang Ying, at the rear, quickly threw out a high-level item. Lin Qing turned around, bow in hand, and a black arrow shot through the air, piercing the high-level item and striking the ghost.
The arrow silently hit the ghost between the eyes.
Though Lin Qing’s stats were sealed, the arrow, enhanced by the high-level item, caused the ghost to pause for a moment.
Yan Wei and the others quickly moved through several carriages but suddenly stopped.
The hard-seat carriage was drenched in blood, the dark red mingling with the heavy green of the seats, creating a jarring sight. Li Mao, dressed in a white attendant’s uniform, sat on one of the seats. The blood flowing down from the metal walls had already stained most of his clothes, yet he remained motionless, merely tilting his head slightly to look at Yan Wei and the others.
Yan Wei tightened his grip on Yan Mingguang’s hand. They couldn’t possibly fight Li Mao head-on; they could only rely on skills to evade.
Yan Mingguang nodded at him, already prepared to use his skill.
Li Mao’s ordinary face was now filled with a sinister aura, his features gaunt, his eyes empty, a bottomless black.
Xiang Ying exclaimed, “The resentment is clashing; it’s overwhelming! The black aura around him is almost drowning him. He’s a ghost too.”
No surprise there.
Everyone on this train had already died, their malice turning them into fierce ghosts, their resentment permanently lingering. Among them, Li Mao, with the strongest obsession, carried the heaviest and densest resentment.
“I just wanted eternity,” he spoke, his voice hoarse and muddled, “Why is it so hard?”
His words echoed through the corridor-like train, and at the front, Yan Mingguang’s expression flickered imperceptibly, a hint of struggle in his eyes. But the change was so fleeting that no one noticed.
Yan Wei frowned.
He had heard many confessions from ghosts in instances, mostly filled with obsessions and unwillingness born from greed, anger, and delusion. After hearing so many, even the kindest person would become numb.
But this time, he felt a pang of discomfort. It seemed to touch upon something he cared about or had experienced, striking a deep, unspoken pain.
Yet in his memory, there was nothing that could be connected to these words.
Yan Mingguang had already used his skill.
He pulled Yan Wei along, Yan Wei holding onto Xu Miaomiao’s bone staff behind him, Xu Miaomiao dragging Lin Qing, and Lin Qing pulling Xiang Ying. In an instant, they moved several carriages ahead.
Ahead was the connecting locomotive.
From all directions, the dead workers emerged from beneath the carriages, their mutilated bodies rushing toward them. Li Mao merely sat there, murmuring, “I just wanted eternity…”
The voice was soft, yet it was repeated by every ghost, as if a thousand mouths spoke simultaneously throughout the train, overlapping and stimulating the nerves.
Ahead, Yan Mingguang swiftly threw items, clearing the ghosts and leading Yan Wei to the photograph hanging at the end of the carriage.
Xiang Ying, at the rear, wasn’t faring as well. Just as he and Lin Qing threw an item, a ghost’s hand from the other side suddenly grabbed his arm.
The ghost, with a mouth full of blood and dark, hollow eyes, smiled eerily. It yanked hard on the bloody wound, trying to pull Xiang Ying into the horde of ghosts!
Lin Qing reached out to grab—
He grabbed a slippery bald head, his hand slipping, missing his target.
Lin Qing: “…”
He reached out again, grabbing Xiang Ying’s collar and pulling the man, who had lost an arm, back.
“Ugh—” Xiang Ying clutched his prayer beads with his other hand, his face twisted in pain.
“Your wound will heal once we’re on the stairs,” Lin Qing shot a few more arrows, then added, “Sorry, I was trying to grab your hair like I used to grab my brother.”
He paused, then said seriously, “Forgot you’re bald.”
Xiang Ying: “…”
Ahead, Yan Wei, under the cover of Yan Mingguang and Xu Miaomiao, had already taken down the hanging painting in the carriage.
He flipped the painting over.
On the back was another frame, containing an old photograph of several mutilated, gruesomely killed bodies.
—The evidence left by the workers who discovered the truth!
But the stairs didn’t appear.
Xu Miaomiao had already used up the items Yan Wei had given her earlier. Her bone staff was grabbed by a ghost, and she yanked it back, slamming into the blood-soaked metal wall behind her from the momentum. Seeing that Ding Xiao was about to have her arm pierced by a ghost, even though she knew the puppet could be repaired with her puppetry skill, she still got up to block the attack.
The nearest ghost immediately tore off a chunk of flesh from her neck.
She didn’t make a sound. Ding Xiao took a few more legendary items from Yan Wei and threw them forward, asking with concern, “Are you okay?”
Xu Miaomiao shook her head, thinking to yell at Yan Wei to hurry up, but then remembered how terrifying this guy actually was and decided against it, preferring to face the horrifying ghosts.
Yan Wei, protected by everyone, held the frame and muttered to himself, “Where are the stairs…”
Beside him, Yan Mingguang’s calm voice came, “Prometheus.”
Yan Wei blinked.
The story of Prometheus in mythology is divided into three stages.
First, he stole fire, then was punished by Zeus, and finally was rescued by Heracles.
The workers who discovered the truth were like those who stole fire. They found out Li Mao’s plan, left evidence, and informed everyone who was kept in the dark—though they ultimately failed.
This was why Li Mao treated them as traitors, binding them to the train that looped endlessly, suffering torment day after day, like Prometheus being pecked by the eagle.
This photograph represented the first stage, Prometheus bringing fire to humanity.
What they needed to do now was like Heracles, breaking the chains and shooting down the eagle.
Yan Wei’s eyes lit up.
Holding the frame in one hand, he took out a dagger with the other and swiftly dismantled the blood-stained wooden frame.
The frame shattered, the two photos inside falling away to reveal a painting sandwiched between them. In the painting, the chains binding the man had broken, the eagle lay fallen on the ground with a black arrow piercing its heart, and the man stood up from the rock.
The painting didn’t fall but slowly rose. Ahead, at the connection between the carriages, a flame emerged, stubbornly burning even in the rain. It burned through the connection, severing the loop.
The chains broke, Prometheus was freed, the connection between the ends was severed, and the infinity ended.
In the next moment, the painting emitted a dark light, and all the ghosts around them suddenly froze. The shaking of the train, the sound of rain and thunder outside, the blood seeping through the metal walls—everything stopped.
A black staircase appeared, passing through the carriages and the frozen ghosts, extending all the way to Yan Wei and the others.
Xu Miaomiao let out a sigh of relief, “That hurt…”
Lin Qing glanced at Xiang Ying beside him, noticing the man had turned pale from losing an arm and was leaning weakly against the metal wall. After a moment of thought, he helped Xiang Ying up.
Xiang Ying, feeling Lin Qing’s gaze on his head, asked, “What are you looking at?”
Lin Qing: “Checking. I think I have some blood on my face.”
Xiang Ying: “?”
“Your head seems a bit reflective. Doesn’t it attract ghosts?”
“.”
Yan Wei looked at Yan Mingguang. The man had taken out a pair of glasses that could block the cold, putting them on slowly. His cold features now carried a touch of gentleness, less distant.
Yan Mingguang smiled at him, “Let’s go.”
They needed to get an invitation letter above the 90th floor and enter the top level again.
Yan Wei, momentarily dazzled by Yan Mingguang’s rare smile, came back to his senses to find himself holding Yan Mingguang’s hand, walking toward the staircase.
The system prompt, absent throughout the entire instance, finally sounded emotionlessly: [The Death Oppression Instance “Endless Train” has ended. Please proceed to the staircase for reward distribution.]
