Zhao Weilai searched the men's bodies and found the item 【Portable Toilet】, a bottle of 【Thousand-Mile Hunger-Free Pill】, and seven or eight train tickets.
She stood frozen in place, clutching the clay doll necklace as her entire body trembled.
Deng Ziwen.
It really was Deng Ziwen.
He didn't have a class, and his only two life-saving items had been stolen from him.
On top of that, he had been beaten, stripped of his ticket, and thrown into the fourth carriage, a place of completely unknown danger.
What was in there?
Had those men been telling the truth?
She had no idea.
A surge of fury rushed straight to her head, nearly burning away all of Zhao Weilai's sanity.
With a loud sob, she collapsed to the floor, wishing she could take a knife and hack those selfish bastards to pieces.
“Weilai!”
Weng Yang patted her back and comforted her softly, “Don't worry. The fourth carriage is a safe zone. Deng Ziwen will be fine staying there.”
“They stole Ziwen's items and his ticket!”
Zhao Weilai's eyes were as red as a rabbit's, her voice thick with despair. “Without a ticket, he'll be eaten by 【The Invisible Ticket Conductor】.”
“Even if you kill them now, it won't help.”
Weng Yang grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet with sheer force.
“Haven't you noticed? There's something wrong with how those two died.
And I've been keeping an eye on the system panel's death announcements. Deng Ziwen's name hasn't appeared, which means he's still alive.”
“Really? You're not mistaken?”
Zhao Weilai froze, her voice trembling with a sob. “...You're not lying to me, are you?”
“...”
Weng Yang shook her head.
“Deng Ziwen has always had great luck. He even managed to survive that incredibly dangerous Instance last time just by having diarrhea. He'll definitely be fine this time too.
The door to the fourth carriage won't open right now, but we'll go save him as soon as it does.
Killing these two men right now won't do us any good—it'll only bring us trouble.”
Weng Yang's words acted like a tranquilizer.
After turning it over in her mind, Zhao Weilai finally began to calm down.
She stood up and realized that the rest of the new players in the carriage were still crouching on the floor.
Many of them looked at her with eyes full of terror, as if they were looking at some man-eating demon.
They seemed to have misunderstood, believing that she was the one who made the men's heads explode.
The Indian player pulled away from her, his eyes full of wariness.
Kim Myung shielded Park So-na in his arms, his head buried low as his entire body trembled.
Mu Xiao's face was deathly pale, her eyes filled with sheer fright.
Even Margaret, who had always been friendly, kept her head down, not daring to make eye contact.
...
“No, it wasn't me.”
Zhao Weilai explained haltingly, her voice choked with tears, “I don't know why they ended up like that. Their deaths really had nothing to do with me.”
No one spoke.
It seemed that in the face of unknown terror, people would always subconsciously look for a concrete "culprit."
Zhao Weilai felt a wave of frustration. Weng Yang, however, holstered her gun and sat down on a nearby seat, frowning in thought.
“Do you think it's an Instance rule? Like, players aren't allowed to maliciously attack each other... No, that's not it. I fired my gun just now and didn't trigger any death penalty.”
“It's not a rule against player conflict. It's that you can't lie.”
A thin, weak voice chimed in.
Mu Xiao raised her head from the crowd, her face completely pale.
“Sister Zhao, that man just now... he lied.
The first man said he found the items on the floor, which was a lie, and then his head burst.
The second man said at first that your boyfriend was killed by the ghost and gave them the items, which was also a lie, and then his neck started stretching.
What he said afterward was probably the truth... but he still died.”
Both Zhao Weilai and Weng Yang froze.
They had been too consumed by anger just now to notice this detail.
Hearing Mu Xiao's explanation, Zhao Weilai suddenly remembered the teenagers who had died on the first night.
At the time, they had been bragging, claiming they could perform magic.
Not long after they said that, their heads exploded.
"We can perform magic"—it was a joke, but it was also a lie.
...
“In this Instance, lying means death?”
Zhao Weilai clutched her head, finding the concept utterly absurd.
How many lies does a person tell in their lifetime?
White lies, malicious lies, intentional ones, unintentional ones.
Who could keep count?
“As long as you lie, it triggers the death mechanism? Regardless of whether you confess afterward?”
Weng Yang voiced her hypothesis, and Zhao Weilai translated her words for everyone else.
“!”
“...Lying leads to death?”
“This is unbelievable. It's too evil.”
A commotion broke out among the crowd.
Everyone instinctively covered their mouths, terrified that they might have uttered some lie earlier and triggered the death rule.
Some even hurriedly reached up to touch their own necks, sighing in relief only after confirming they were still normal and hadn't started to stretch.
...
“The Book of Proverbs in the Bible says, ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who deal truthfully are His delight.’ And all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone.”
Margaret's expression was devout and solemn, her voice carrying a resolute dignity. “This is God's punishment. It is the sin of lying.”
The priest frowned and crossed himself.
He did not believe this was some divine punishment; it felt much more like a game of the devil.
And they were merely actors on a stage, using their lives to entertain Satan lurking behind the scenes.
...
Waiting was always agonizing.
Zhao Weilai was in no mood to obsess over what the death rule actually was.
Her mind was completely consumed by the missing Deng Ziwen.
But Weng Yang was right. She couldn't do anything right now except wait.
Wait for the night to pass, and wait for the next carriage door to open.
No news was good news.
Of the four men, two were dead. Of the remaining survivors, one had passed out from excessive blood loss due to the gunshot wound to his shoulder.
The other was scared completely out of his wits, huddled in the farthest corner of the carriage, clutching his head and trembling uncontrollably.
He kept muttering “I didn't lie” and “Don't kill me” over and over again, seemingly on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Nobody paid them any attention.
No one dared to approach them, and no one wanted to.
When everyone's own survival was on the line, nobody was going to sympathize with two bastards who robbed people and threw them to their deaths.
In fact, quite a few people felt it was better that they died, so that Zhao Weilai and Weng Yang wouldn't vent their anger on the rest of the group.
As time ticked by, the players took their seats one after another, preparing to face the anomalies of the second night.
Zhao Weilai and Weng Yang chose two rows of seats in the middle of the carriage.
This spot was close to both the front and rear doors, making it convenient to monitor the surroundings.
The other players also found places to sit, keeping as far away from the corpses as possible, while maintaining a cautious distance from the two women—neither too close nor too far.
Time slipped away, and the train continued to hurtle through the endless darkness.
The rhythmic clanking of the tracks repeated in a monotonous drone.
The light inside the carriage remained a dim, dusty yellow. It was impossible to distinguish day from night, and they could only keep track of time by looking at their watches.
By around three in the afternoon, their hunger reached its peak.
Some began rummaging through the scattered luggage on the floor, searching for anything edible.
Even if it was moldy biscuits or dry, hard baguettes.
Those who found something were overjoyed, quickly and carefully hiding their spoils.
Those who found nothing stared with eyes full of jealousy, their gazes dating toward the hands of others as they plotted.
Arguments broke out, with some beginning to snatch food from others, which quickly escalated into physical fights.
In the end, it was the priest who stepped forward to pull the two fighting players apart.
He muttered a few prayers, broke the moldy bread in half, and distributed it equally between the two, finally putting an end to the farce.
Zhao Weilai watched this scene with a heavy heart.
It was only the first day, and yet the selfishness and malice inherent in human nature were already impossible to conceal.
If they had to starve for another couple of days, there was no telling what chaos the players would cause.
...
“Don't think about it.”
Weng Yang used the cover of a yawn to slip the pill under her tongue.
“I'll keep watch for the first half of the night. Close your eyes and get some rest. Things will probably get hectic again tonight.”
Zhao Weilai nodded wearily.
She was indeed exhausted. Having kept her nerves taut for nearly a day, followed by such a devastating blow, both her mental and physical strength were pushed to their limits.
She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, but sleep eluded her.
Her mind was flooded with images of Deng Ziwen's face.
They had clearly promised each other that they would survive together, work together in the Special Investigation Bureau, grow stronger together, and work hard to find a way to escape these Instances for good.
The more Zhao Weilai thought, the more anxious she became, her heart pounding frantically against her ribs.
Amidst her dazed thoughts, she finally drifted off to sleep.
But her sleep was fitful, plagued by nightmares of exploding heads and Deng Ziwen's desperate cries for help.
“Tap, tap, tap!”
It was exactly one in the morning.
The carriage was deathly quiet.
Thus, the sudden sound of knocking on the window was exceptionally grating.
The sound was rhythmic, like something pecking at the window glass.
Zhao Weilai snapped her eyes open and whipped her head around to look at the window beside her.
Outside the window lay a pitch-black darkness so thick it seemed impenetrable; nothing could be seen.
Suddenly, a face pressed hard against the glass, locking eyes with her.
It was a woman's face that resembled an owl.
She had grayish-black feathers and large, round yellow eyes with pupils contracted into thin slits.
A sharp beak was pecking at the glass, tap by tap, producing a clicking noise.
Her face was pressed incredibly close, fully flattened against the glass.
Her eyes stared straight into the carriage, exuding an indescribable, eerie chill.
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