A brief silence fell over the wooden cabin as everyone digested the information Yan Zheng and Zhou Caiwei had brought back.
After a moment, Violita coughed softly, breaking the silence.
Leaning back in his chair, his face was pale, but his expression remained calm. He fixed his gaze on Yan Zheng and raised a question.
“Mr. Yan Zheng, there's one thing I don't quite understand.”
“If what Vigi said is true and everyone on this train must die—and based on what we've experienced, they would indeed be slaughtered by the Mountain God's thralls, only for the outside world to be told that everyone perished in a landslide...”
“...then how would they explain the survival of a single conductor in the face of an otherwise absolute natural disaster?”
He paused before adding, “Furthermore, speaking of grudges, Vigi is the child of the engineer who oversaw the construction back then.”
“If the Mountain God hates humans for destroying the forest, would someone with Vigi's background really be able to escape the curse just by hiding here? And did the station truly have no other motive in assigning him as the escort?”
Violita's words instantly struck a chord with everyone.
Bai Ci frowned, voicing her own concerns as well. “That's true. And there's another thing: how long do we have to stay here? Are we supposed to just wait indefinitely without doing anything?”
“We didn't bring any food with us. Is there enough food here to sustain us? After all, we didn't bring a single thing when we escaped.”
These were the most pressing questions at hand.
Everyone's gaze shifted back to Yan Zheng, waiting for his answer.
However, Yan Zheng shook his head. These questions fell squarely into his blind spot.
He had been too busy navigating the mountain forest, and once he found this place, he had immediately rushed to set up the escape method. He simply hadn't had the spare time to look into these details.
“I can't give you accurate answers to these questions either. However, Vigi should be able to enlighten us.”
“Precisely. We must seize this opportune moment to drag him forth and interrogate him face-to-face, so that we may unravel all lingering doubts and uncover the truth of this matter,” Arbiter chimed in, offering her counsel.
“I'll do it, I'll do it!” Zhou Caiwei immediately raised her hand and stood up eagerly. “Leave a minor task like this to me. I guarantee I'll bring him right out.”
Without waiting for the others to respond, she turned and walked toward the cabin's only bedroom with light, quick steps.
Before long, Zhou Caiwei's voice drifted out of the bedroom, accompanied by a rather irritated grumbling.
Moments later, Zhou Caiwei pushed out a pale, messy-haired man.
It was Vigi.
His hands were bound with rope, and his eyes were filled with exhaustion and annoyance. Having likely been jolted awake from a deep sleep, his face still bore a trace of groggy confusion.
“See? What did I tell you? What a coincidence—he wasn't even asleep. He woke right up the moment I called,” Zhou Caiwei said with a chuckle, her tone laced with a hint of slyness.
As she spoke, she shoved Vigi into a chair by the wooden table, deliberately pinning his shoulders to keep him from squirming.
No one present was a fool; they could all see right through her little act.
But since Vigi was the target, everyone tacitly chose to let it slide.
Yan Zheng looked at Vigi and decided to take a step-by-step approach, starting by repeating the questions Violita had raised earlier.
Hearing Yan Zheng's questions, Vigi's body visibly stiffened. A flash of panic crossed his eyes, and he instinctively lowered his head, avoiding everyone's gaze.
“Hey, we're already in this situation. Does it really make a difference whether you talk or not?” Zhou Caiwei said, applying a bit of pressure as she shook his shoulders.
Vigi didn't resist. Perhaps he had tried before and failed? He reluctantly endured Zhou Caiwei's rough handling.
After another moment of silence, he finally seemed to gather his thoughts and spoke slowly. “First of all, I don't need to explain how I survived.”
“Because the station didn't even put my information on this train's schedule. It's as if... as if I was never on this train to begin with.”
Hearing this, Bai Ci understood. Without any record on the schedule, he essentially didn't exist on this train. Even if he survived, no one would suspect a thing.
But by the same token, even if he died here, no one would ever notice.
After all, as long as the station denied it, no one would ever know there was a conductor named Vigi on this train.
Bai Ci looked at Vigi. “Are you sure?”
“Sure about what?” Facing the gentle-looking Bai Ci, the shadow of physical threat receded slightly, and Vigi's old attitude began to resurface.
He didn't see the point in asking such an obvious question. There was no reason for him to lie about this.
When he shot back with a question, his tone carried a trace of the smug, irritating attitude he had shown back in the dining car.
Bai Ci, patient as ever, clarified, “Are you sure you're truly the descendant of that engineer? And are you sure the station didn't put your information on the schedule?”
“I'm sure,” Vigi nodded. “I'm sure about both of those things.”
“Is that so?” Violita interjected, his tone carrying a faint, mocking edge once he realized what Bai Ci was driving at.
“But the information I uncovered says otherwise.”
“When I sent that telegram to check the train's schedule earlier, I saw clearly that the station had directly put your personal identification details onto the roster.”
“In other words, the station never intended for you to leave this train alive.”
He ruthlessly laid the raw truth bare before Vigi.
Look at this poor fool, completely oblivious to the fact that he had been abandoned from the very beginning.
“What?” Vigi snapped his head up, the panic in his eyes no longer concealable. “Impossible... How could that be?”
Seeing Vigi's frantic and bewildered state, Bai Ci knew he wasn't lying.
The man truly had been kept in the dark.
Erasing someone's information from a schedule was a double-edged sword; it could serve as a shield to protect, or a blade to harm.
Whether one lived or died ultimately depended on the station's conscience and whim.
But to brazenly write someone's name onto the schedule...
That was a blade forged purely for slaughter. For him, death was the only end.
Bai Ci then reiterated her own questions.
Flustered by the barrage of questions, Vigi's speech became incoherent. “I don't know... I really don't know...”
“The station didn't explain any of this in detail. They only told me that as long as I reached this wooden cabin, I would survive. They didn't say anything else...”
The more he spoke, the more uneasy he became.
“They only told me to escape the train when the landslide happened, come here, and wait for the curse to end... I really don't know how long we have to stay, or if there's any food...”
...
Vigi's reaction didn't seem faked. But precisely because of this, everyone present fell into a collective, speech-deprived stupor.
Rate on N.U.
