Truth

Qin Shang eagerly spread open the diary.

May 6. El has not sent me a telegram in a long time. I want to go see where she works. Priests of the Holy Church cannot leave their posts without permission. I escaped, so I can only become a wandering priest from now on.

"Priest?"

Qin Shang instinctively glanced at the old man, Buddha Saves the Predestined, only to find that both the security officer and the old man were staring at him strangely.

Only then did he realize that these two probably did not understand English.

So even though they had obtained the notebook first, they had been unable to understand its contents.

Qin Shang's lips twitched.

Damn, it feels like the teacher class's skills run through this entire dungeon!

Who the hell would have thought that the con artist class was naturally suited for clearing dungeons?

If Don't Touch Me, I'll Turn Green had not died, then after these few rounds, she would probably have been the person in the team who had obtained the most clues.

After all, whether it was the diary of Jack, the conductor with dissociative identity disorder, on the wall, or the diary the Elder Priest had just found in another bedroom, they were both written entirely in English.

Unless someone had professionally studied English, they basically could not understand what these foreigners had written without an interpretation skill.

The next moment, Qin Shang refocused his attention on the diary.

May 8. I came aboard this train. There is a freak on it who calls himself Mary, but he is clearly a man. Every day, he wears a red dress and plays the role of a train attendant. These passengers seem to find it completely normal.

May 9. I discovered something strange. I have not seen El. She was not among the staff. Over the past two days, I have searched every carriage, but I have not seen El.

May 10. Carriage Three! There is a secret hidden in Carriage Three.

El told me before that her rest area was in Carriage Three, but I discovered that Carriage Three was not open. I asked the freak, but he knew nothing. Yet his words were filled with fear. I think El's disappearance must be connected to Carriage Three.

May 11. I told the freak who I was. I told him that El had disappeared. I thought that freak might know something, because his eyes were filled with fear when he looked at me, as if I were some kind of monster. But I could not communicate with him.

May 13. I found a diary on the train. It recorded the freak's identity. This guy was actually the conductor of this train...

A diary...

Could it be the things I saw in Carriages One and Two?

If he had seen those things, it would indeed be easy to deduce that Mary and Jack were the same person.

After all, the paper on the back was Jack's psychological evaluation, and there was no attendant named Mary on the train at all. It was not difficult to figure that out.

May 14. This is the first time since I boarded the train that I have seen the freak moving around at night. He changed into men's clothes, but took a hunting rifle and began wandering around the compartments. Was he patrolling?

May 15. Someone has disappeared. If I am not mistaken, the freak did it. Whenever this madman sees someone moving through the corridor at night, he hunts them down. He is completely insane...

May 16. Someone else has disappeared. It was a child. I heard that the child disappeared when the train entered a tunnel. The freak is spending more and more time dressed as a man. Does that mean his mental state is becoming increasingly unstable?

Although he cannot communicate even when dressed as a woman, at least he does not engage in crazed behavior like killing people with a hunting rifle.

May 17. While the freak was patrolling at night, I entered his resting quarters. El... El is dead. I saw El's corpse. The murderer was that red-dressed lunatic. That freak was the one who killed El. I saw the letter El wrote to me!

The letter El wrote to me!?

Qin Shang's mind trembled.

Vien—the Vien in El's Letter. This man was the one!

May 19. Almighty Lord, please forgive my selfishness. In my ignorance, I still cannot glimpse the truth. I do not understand why that freak harmed my El. I am going to hold a trial. I am going to curse this train.

A curse!?

Between the lines, Qin Shang sensed a hatred that made his scalp crawl.

May 20. According to legend, the Fallen Curse of the Church can revive a loved one as long as enough blood is offered as a sacrifice. I cannot bear the grief of El's departure. The passengers' silence regarding El torments me.

That madman had displayed signs of mental instability long ago, yet they did not send even the slightest message to the outside world. I will sacrifice every one of them!

May 21. I succeeded. El came back to life, but she became a bloodthirsty vengeful spirit, neither human nor ghost. She can only move within Carriage Three, and she craves blood.

Thus, I laid down a curse: whenever someone embarks on a journey aboard the Death Train, their companions will continuously disappear around them.

May 22. I do not intend to kill Jack as revenge. I have more or less figured out what happened. I cursed his two personalities to remain trapped here forever, endlessly repeating the cycle, imprisoned in boundless terror for all eternity.

Every beginning is El's disappearance, after which Mary's personality awakens and lives in a world of fear.

Breaking the curse is simple. See through the truth of the freak and stop the train from continuing onward. As long as someone discovers that something is wrong with the freak and breaks the curse, they can prevent every Death Train passenger from meeting the fate of total annihilation.

Please forgive my selfishness, my lords of the Holy Church. I am unworthy of being a priest. I am a fallen one. The thing I regret most in this life is failing the Holy Church's cultivation of me. I am going to another world...

It was signed Vien.

At that moment, Qin Shang's pupils abruptly contracted.

Resurrection!?

A priest from two hundred years ago possessed such an ability?

Whether the Death Train was something that had happened in reality or a fictional creation fabricated by the dungeon was impossible to know.

But if the priest in the Background Story possessed such an ability, did that mean that high-level priest players could also obtain this skill?

Resurrection was indeed somewhat absurd, but thinking of the interpretation and inheritance skills he had used before...

Qin Shang felt that his ability to accept supernatural phenomena had already skyrocketed.

Perhaps high-level priest players really did possess a resurrection skill.

He had no time to think about these things. In the flash of an idea, a series of complicated thoughts shot through his mind like an electric current.

I understand now!

I understand everything!

The next moment, Qin Shang pressed his lips together, rose, and walked straight out of the compartment. The Elder Priest and the security officer beside him were both utterly shaken.

The two of them tried to grab the young man to stop him from acting impulsively, but Qin Shang ignored them completely.

Knock, knock, knock—

At the same time, almost as soon as Qin Shang stepped out of the bedroom, a shadowy figure charged toward him with heavy footsteps.

Qin Shang stared coldly at the shadowy figure until it was almost in front of him.

Qin Shang suddenly gave a cold laugh and said,

"I know the mystery behind the Death Train passengers' disappearances!"

"It's El. Every time a passenger disappears, it is because the train is about to reach its destination. Jack falls into a state of fear, begins his own trial, and then leads all the passengers into Carriage Three."

"El, who died unjustly and was revived as a spirit by her lover, is here, waiting to pass judgment on these cold-blooded gentry."

"In El's boyfriend's eyes, it was these people's inaction and silence that allowed the freak, Jack, to run rampant."

"So every time the train departs, Jack and Mary's two personalities are effectively trapped in a cycle. No matter how the passengers around them change, the contents of Mary's diary never change."

"That is why she wrote so many identical diaries, day after day."

"The same applies to Jack."

"Mary's memories remain fixed on the first few days after boarding the train. Once she awakens, she returns to the day she first discovers El's disappearance, notices that her coworker El is missing, and then reports it to Jack's personality in an endless loop."

"After that, Jack's personality, who had given himself the identity of a heroic soldier sent on assignment, begins patrolling and hunting innocent passengers at night. The passengers gradually disappear one by one."

"Mary awakens during the day and discovers that passengers are missing, further deepening her fear."

"The two personalities then descend into madness once more, until finally they begin passing judgment on those cold-blooded passengers according to the priest's curse."

"As long as no passenger discovers the truth about the freak and steps forward to stop the train before he acts, there is no way to break the Death Train's cyclical curse."

"That is why every group of passengers is ultimately sent into Carriage Three, where they face El's slaughter."

"No, to be precise, it is not only El. As time passed, something also went wrong with the conductor Jack's personality."

"Perhaps this was the source of the contamination, causing the conductor Jack's personality, Mary's personality, and El's spirit to merge into a new creature."

"No—a monster!"