A chill, gloomy wind swept past, deepening the fear in Qin Shang's heart.
Cold sweat poured down his forehead, and his heart was practically leaping out of his chest. If there hadn't been a living person who could speak standing beside him to share the fear...
He definitely would have been too panicked to move his feet.
The corpses were gone.
When had they disappeared!?
Where had they gone...
Where had those two corpses gone?
Could Eagle of Justice and the other two have taken them when they left?
Impossible!
Although I wasn't a priest, human senses instinctively sharpened in dark surroundings.
With his vision obstructed, his hearing would become much more sensitive.
The footsteps of the three people hadn't changed at all.
I hadn't heard anyone's footsteps suddenly grow heavier.
If they had been carrying corpses, two of the three people would definitely have had much heavier footsteps.
Corpses weren't living people. Carrying away a hundred-pound girl was easy, but moving a hundred-pound stone stool was as difficult as reaching the heavens.
Not to mention a corpse—long, limp, and utterly lifeless. It was hard even to lift one.
Qin Shang had been imprisoned before. The warden at the time had been sent there for negligent homicide and was undergoing rehabilitation.
The warden often said this:
"Anyone who has killed someone should know that killing is easy, but hiding a corpse is difficult. If I hadn't been spotted while moving the body, I wouldn't have been arrested and sent here so quickly."
"We country folk can easily beat a thief weighing over two hundred pounds to death, but I couldn't move his corpse..."
What the hell was going on!?
Qin Shang took a deep breath and suppressed the fear in his heart.
Little Loli, "Grandpa Niu," seemed to notice that something was wrong with Qin Shang. She hurriedly turned her head and asked,
"Big brother, what's wrong..."
Qin Shang's gaze fell on a group of HelloKittys, and his tone grew solemn.
"The corpses of those two people are gone!"
"Ah! There are ghosts!"
A piercing scream rang out beside him. Qin Shang felt as if his eardrums were about to shatter from the little girl's shriek, and he immediately glared at her.
"If there are ghosts, won't your screaming make it obvious that you want to lure them over?"
"Big brother, I... I'm scared..."
"Let's go!"
"Go to Carriage Three. Once we reach Carriage Three, the secret should be solved."
Qin Shang had no time to tease a little girl.
"Stop trembling. Do you think continuing to tremble will help?"
"Even if these HelloKittys are somewhat strange, could they really stand up and attack us? They're just an element of the instance..."
As he spoke, he pulled Little Loli along and quickly passed through Carriage Two. Nothing strange happened along the way.
The instant they entered the next carriage, a notification sounded in both their ears.
Ding! You have entered Carriage Four Exploration: 9%
The exploration percentage seemed to increase as long as they kept moving forward?
That made sense and also fit the main mission, but... why was this Carriage Four?
After Carriage Two came Carriage Four. Where had Carriage Three gone?
According to the diary of the person with multiple personalities, no matter how he looked at it, the final mystery should have been revealed in Carriage Three.
But why had they arrived at Carriage Four after passing through Carriage Two?
What the hell!?
Qin Shang furrowed his brow and, without another word, dragged Little Loli onward.
Carriage Four was just like Carriage One at the beginning. There was nothing inside, and those diaries were still pasted on both sides of the windows.
Jack seemed to have some kind of peculiar quirk. He had actually printed out so many copies of his diary.
The carriage still contained leather seats that reeked of decay.
"Big brother, my mission is to assist the Team Leader. Do you suspect who the Team Leader is?"
"Why didn't the Team Leader in the group admit his identity just now..."
The little girl had originally been quite quiet, but after the incident of the corpses disappearing without a trace, the fear in her heart had probably surfaced again.
Now that they were facing this strange instance, she could no longer hold herself back.
Qin Shang said hoarsely,
"It should be related to the mission!"
If the Team Leader was the security officer, he shouldn't have abandoned the two of us so readily just now.
Had he never considered what would happen if the two people traveling with him were both werewolves?
What would his fate be then?
"The side mission. What is the Team Leader's side mission?"
The assistant's side mission was to cooperate with the Team Leader and keep everyone alive as much as possible. The Team Leader's side mission should also be related to protecting the players, right?
At that moment, the notification from Background Story arrived. A cold, emotionless female voice rang out.
At Carriage Four, the passengers had been killed or wounded almost to the last. Before anyone could catch their breath, they saw the sky gradually darkening, and everyone's mood grew exceptionally heavy. After all, there were no lights inside the train. If that madman attacked after nightfall, no one would be able to escape unscathed.
At that moment, Miss Mary proposed a solution. The train couldn't stop while it was moving, so what could they do? What could they possibly do? Amid the crowd's urging, Miss Mary suggested that everyone hide in Carriage Three, then cut off their own limb to survive by severing the connection between Carriages Three and Four...
Boom—
The moment he heard this, Qin Shang froze.
No wonder there was no Carriage Three. Mary had let the passengers hide in Carriage Three and cut off their own limb to survive. In other words, they had abandoned Carriage Three on the railway?
The murderer was Miss Mary herself—in other words, Jack, the train conductor.
While mentally deranged, he had begun killing people at random.
Entering a tunnel was like nightfall. Jack, his second personality, would rapidly awaken and then, in his own words, pass judgment on the passengers.
Once they left the tunnel and the light returned, control would fall into the hands of the personality known as Miss Mary.
Qin Shang frowned. His train of thought, which had just suddenly become clear, once again seemed to be blocked like a dammed river. After thinking for a moment, he pulled Little Loli and hurried through the carriages. Soon, they entered another carriage.
Ding! You have entered Carriage Five Exploration: 16%
Ding! You have entered Carriage Six Exploration: 21%
Ding! You have entered Carriage Seven Exploration: 30%
The exploration percentage kept increasing, but Qin Shang found nothing in the next few carriages. Cold sweat streamed down his forehead in his anxiety.
The two biggest questions remained unanswered.
What had happened after Miss Mary led everyone to Carriage Three? Had there been a massacre?
And where had the corpses of those two players gone?
Had someone gone to Carriage Two while Grandpa Niu and I were returning to Carriage One?
Who?
Was it one of the three-person group, the security officer, the doctor, or the Elder Priest?
Or was it some kind of ghostly thing on the train?
The "thing" mentioned in the diary?
Starting from Carriage Four, the carriages afterward no longer had any Background Story notifications.
In other words, according to the Background Story, after these passengers reached Carriage Four, they had turned back and returned to Carriage Three.
So they had never reached Carriages Five, Six, or Seven. This also fit the rules of the instance.
Only upon reaching the scene corresponding to the relevant Background Story could they obtain clues and hints.
Time passed bit by bit. Qin Shang spent the next four or five hours traversing the entire train.
Yet he still hadn't found any useful clues. The same things remained pasted on the windows.
Most importantly, those three people had never appeared again after splitting up in Carriage Two.
Qin Shang's expression gradually darkened.
The instant the two of them stepped into Carriage Thirteen once more,
Qin Shang's pupils suddenly contracted. He smelled something unusual.
The smell of gunpowder!?
He stopped halfway through a step and turned to inspect the rows of seats on both sides of Carriage Thirteen. He discovered a hole in one place.
The area around the hole had rotted and emitted a scorched smell.
But the traces were very fresh, and his expression immediately stiffened.
There were guns in this instance!?
Or were there other NPCs?
Had those three disappeared because they encountered an NPC!?
If the NPC had a gun, wasn't that too absurdly powerful...
At that moment, an electronic notification suddenly sounded in his ears.
Ding! You have entered Carriage Thirteen Exploration: 50% Nightfall Unlocked: Night has arrived. All passengers, please hide in Carriage Three and explore the final part of the instance! Charlatan's Hidden Mission Unlocked: Find the God Slayer among the group!
As expected, as expected. It really was this...
But what did "Nightfall" mean?
Could something strange happen in the instance at night?
Night...
Qin Shang's expression stiffened. He turned his head and looked outside. It was as if the world had been shrouded in a dense fog. Originally, wisps of light had still shone through the diaries pasted to the walls.
But now, it was as if they had gone from day to night in an instant.
Day and night had changed in the blink of an eye!
So the subsequent plot would only be unlocked once the exploration percentage reached 50%.
I was so stupid. I should have thought of that sooner.
Carriage Three was a crucial part of the mission. Without finding Carriage Three, there was no way to complete the entire exploration of the Death Train.
Ding! Congratulations, you have completed 50% exploration of the Death Train Time Used: 15 hours Explore the mystery of the Death Train passengers' disappearance: Mission progress 1/2, saved Unlocked! Inventory Reward Item: El's Letter! (Added to the inventory) Rest Period: 24 hours. Time until the next entry into the Divine Path: 12 hours
Qin Shang's expression changed. He suddenly discovered that he couldn't move his body.
What the hell!?
Completing half the exploration only counted as 1/2 completion.
Wait, he had to come back again?
Was the Divine Path telling him to return to reality and use this mid-mission break to recuperate?
He turned his head to look at Little Loli behind him. The girl's pretty face was also filled with astonishment.
Soon, Qin Shang noticed that everything before his eyes had turned into rippling waves, making it impossible to see anything. Reality seemed to be swaying. The pitch-black train carriage gradually brightened, and a huge incandescent lamp, like a sword cleaving open the night, hung from the ceiling. Then it was replaced by a familiar bedroom—a bright room and a spotless bed.
The bed, sofa, cabinet...
And the air freshener unique to the room!
The next moment, Qin Shang came to his senses in a daze. I came home!?
I was teleported out by the Divine Path?
The feeling of surviving a disaster did not appear. In fact, Qin Shang hadn't found anything particularly terrifying during the exploration.
There had merely been countless suspicious points. Based on the clues available, he could basically confirm that the passengers had been killed by that cross-dressing enthusiast, Jack!
As for why all the passengers had disappeared, the reason was simple as well.
They had all entered Carriage Three. Thus, after the carriage was cut off, they had all vanished!
Then what else was there to explore in the second half of the mission, the remaining 50%?
A Carriage Three filled with corpses?
Could there really be "that thing" in Carriage Three?
What was "that thing"?
Qin Shang's brows furrowed deeply as his gaze fell on the small silver-white card in his hand, his expression solemn.
At that moment, he became utterly certain of one thing.
His wife's disappearance really was inextricably linked to the Divine Path game!
Before you continue