"What! Twelve hours just passed like that?"
Time always flew when he was on his phone.
Scrolling through short videos and sending messages was enough for the hours to slip away.
Especially on the Path of the Gods Player Official Forum, Qin Shang had browsed plenty of free content.
That alone had taken quite a while.
Just scrolling through the Leisure and Entertainment section had taken Qin Shang two or three hours. He had learned what pollution sources and polluted instances were, then silently digested all that information.
Yet facing the second round of the Death Train, Qin Shang was still filled with dread.
To be honest, he had not gained any particularly useful clues from those few hours.
Even after receiving El's Letter, he still had no idea what had caused all the passengers on Train Three to disappear.
Sigh, what is coming will come!
Qin Shang pursed his lips, his expression gloomy.
Immediately afterward, his vision blurred, and his consciousness felt as if he were riding a roller coaster.
The milky-white walls of the bedroom around him rippled like water.
After a while, the bright bedroom vanished. In its place was a pitch-black metal carriage, accompanied by the continuous clanking of the train wheels passing over the tracks.
The moment his five senses recovered, the stench of rotten mold once again reached Qin Shang's nose.
He narrowed his eyes. This was already his second time entering a Path of the Gods instance...
After adjusting to it, he looked around again, and his expression turned solemn.
He was lying flat on a bunk. Outside was a small sliding door, followed by a narrow corridor barely wide enough for one person.
The lights were still dim, but there were no newspapers covering the windows of this carriage. Dense fog filled the outside world, dark and sinister. The sparse moonlight made it impossible to see even the shape of the moon.
For some reason, gusts of ghostly wind kept blowing through the bunks in the carriage from an unknown source. The cold air carried away Qin Shang's body heat.
In such an environment, changes in temperature could easily affect a person's emotions in a direct way.
Fear crept into his heart once more.
Knock, knock, knock—
Just then, steady but sluggish footsteps sounded from the corridor outside.
Qin Shang's pupils abruptly contracted.
"Who is it?"
Was it Eagle of Justice, Heart-to-Heart Sister, Buddha Saves the Predestined, or Grandpa Niu cosplaying as a maid and seducing Strong Mama?
No, it couldn't be any of the four of them!
Knock—knock—knock—
This sounded nothing like human footsteps.
Heavy, dense, and even-paced, like lead-filled sandbags smashing against an iron plate.
Knock—knock—knock—
Every step seemed to strike Qin Shang's heart, deepening the fear within him.
The next moment, Qin Shang clearly sensed the owner of those heavy footsteps stop.
He felt as if his heart were about to leap out of his chest. Hiding on the bunk, Qin Shang even felt that he could hear his own heartbeat.
Judging by the sound, the owner of the footsteps had probably stopped at the bunk beside his.
What was it going to do!?
Was this the thing Mary had mentioned in her letter?
Qin Shang suppressed his breathing, terrified that the thing next door would notice the sound.
Then...
Knock, knock, knock!
A knocking sound immediately followed.
Qin Shang's eyes widened. His heart rose to his throat, and a chill stabbed from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head.
Knocking!?
Wasn't this exactly what he had seen in the diary?
Was it... Conductor Jack, who patrolled at night?
Polluted instances would contain many uncontrollable factors!
That was the conclusion Qin Shang had reached after spending the entire afternoon scrolling through posts in the Leisure and Entertainment section.
The next moment, Qin Shang's heart sank. The thing next door was knocking harder and harder, with increasing force.
Then Qin Shang heard a gunshot—bang!
The sound of wood being shot through rang out. Those heavy footsteps sounded again, and it seemed to have entered the compartment next door.
Qin Shang hurriedly scrambled up from the bunk. In this environment, remembering the few instance hints was the key to staying alive.
The Path of the Gods would never bring players in just to send them to their deaths. The instance hints certainly concealed clues to clearing it.
Stay calm!
He had to stay calm!
Even if some uncontrollable and strange factors appeared in an exploration-type mission,
the Death Train instance was still, in essence, an exploration-type mission.
There was absolutely no hope of breaking through the situation by hiding here. The key to clearing the instance had to be hidden in Carriage Three.
Just as he was about to get up, Little Loli's faint, trembling little-girl voice suddenly sounded beside him.
"Brother..."
Before she could say the second word, Qin Shang's eyes widened. How is this little thing in this carriage too?
With quick reflexes, he had no time to care when Little Loli had appeared on the bunk beside him. He swiftly raised his hand and clamped it over her mouth.
Now that he was experiencing it firsthand again, Qin Shang finally understood why the first round in Carriage Two had contained such a huge pile of HelloKitty items.
That was also a clue...
HelloKitty had no mouth!
In the Background Story, after the passengers in Carriage Two entered the tunnel, someone was killed because Jack's personality awakened and he began slaughtering passengers indiscriminately.
But Jack was neither a priest nor a Path of the Gods player.
The characters in the Background Story could not possibly possess night vision.
In other words, he relied on sound to kill people in the tunnel!
That was why Carriage Two had been filled with HelloKitty items. This was itself a kind of instance hint.
After returning to reality, Qin Shang had used his phone to search for information related to HelloKitty.
Kitty the cat was created in 1974. The 1970s corresponded to around 1870.
In other words, HelloKitty was a cartoon character that would only appear a hundred years later in the instance's world.
By rights, it was an object that should never have appeared in the instance.
That contradicted the story in the Background Story...
"Pollution sources can contaminate instances, and the Path of the Gods can also adjust the clues within an instance."
"It can convey new information through certain clues and counter possible dangers."
"That was why those Kitty cats giving off a rotting stench existed."
"Those Kitty cats were hints from the Path of the Gods to the players!"
Cartoon cats without mouths had almost become the standard.
This also indirectly hinted to the players that, during that round in Carriage Two,
the God Eater's method of killing people in the tunnel was to imitate the Background Story and locate players through sound.
Calling out numbers had obviously been a mistake!
In the tunnel, Jack's method of killing people was to locate players through sound.
It was now nightfall—the time when Jack's personality awakened.
No wonder there were no newspapers!
At the same time, trapped in a desperate situation, Qin Shang's mind began spinning frantically.
No wonder, no wonder the earlier carriages had been half-covered with newspapers.
Based on the two diaries of the split personalities, it was not difficult to conclude that Mary's personality was active during the day, while Jack's was active at night.
As long as it was daytime and natural light shone in, it was Mary's personality...
So, in the Background Story of Carriage Two, even after they left the tunnel, Mary had awakened and proposed the method of holding hands and calling out numbers.
It still could not lead everyone to clear the instance.
Because the person who had proposed that method was the murderer himself.
Without thinking any further, he yanked Little Loli off the bunk and turned his head, pushing the little girl toward the outside.
"This damn perverted cross-dresser!"
He couldn't help cursing inwardly.
The two had just left the compartment and reached the corridor when Little Loli turned to look at Qin Shang. She blinked her big eyes and made a zipping motion across her lips, indicating that she understood what he meant and hinting that he did not need to keep covering her mouth.
Only then did Qin Shang slowly release his hand.
He had covered her mouth while frantically winking and gesturing at her.
As long as this little girl wasn't stupid, she should have understood!
Phew!
Qin Shang let out a sigh of relief and was about to continue forward.
At that moment, he suddenly noticed that Little Loli's body in his arms had stiffened.
Her pupils widened, as if she had seen something terrifying.
Qin Shang frowned, shook his head, and pointed toward the passage ahead, signaling for her to keep moving.
But the little girl covered her mouth tightly, her face filled with terror. She ignored him completely and stared fixedly behind Qin Shang.
The fear on her face did not seem fake.
Why does she keep staring behind me?
At that moment, Qin Shang's expression also changed drastically. He suddenly felt a chill crawl up his spine.
He turned his head instinctively and saw a scene that would remain etched in his memory for the rest of his life.
A figure in a red dress had appeared behind Qin Shang at some unknown point, less than a meter away. Beneath her long hair, half of her rotting face was concealed. Her deathly pale pupils stared fixedly at Qin Shang under the moonlight, and her entire body radiated the stench of a corpse.
From those eyes, Qin Shang read a trace of madness and violence, let alone Little Loli.
Even a grown man like Qin Shang felt his blood run cold and his scalp prickle at the sight behind him.
The next moment, the figure in red raised the Hunting Rifle in her hand, its pitch-black muzzle aimed at Qin Shang.
It was over!
That was the only thought in Qin Shang's mind.
Before you continue