[Life-Saving Talisman: Fusou Wannian] [Properties: A large life-lock made from gold, silver, and the silicate mineral Rose Shining Stone.] [Talisman Category: Spirit-Type / Life-Lock] [Versatility: In a Spirit Calamity, the talisman can drive spirits away from passengers. Most Spirit Calamities can affect people's brain waves and optic nerve signals, causing hallucinations. The light of the Shining Stone can reveal the true surroundings and guide passengers along the right path.] [Instructions: Rose Shining Stone is a triclinic crystal. If you find yourself in a Spirit Calamity, keep your passion, courage, and anger alive. It will help you turn danger into fortune.] [Manufacturer: Nine Realms Station Shining Stone Ironworks · Spirit Elder.] [Notes: A life-lock given to children who have yet to grow up. It was once a treasured gift from a wet nurse, a blessing meant to protect the child. When they came of age, the wet nurse would unlock the life-lock and release its true power.]
This journey's destination was uncertain, and no one could say whether fortune or misfortune awaited.
To get a better understanding of what his teammates could do, Jiang Xueming read through A Xing's two instruction manuals as well.
Having just finished with the Life-Saving Talisman, he opened the brocade box and took out A Xing's cane.
[Mingde Masterwork: Iron Knight] [Properties: A carbon-steel dress cane made with precision die-casting.] [Weapon Category: Bludgeoning / Slashing / Sword / Cane] [Versatility: This cane can help passengers cut through weeds and cross swords with their opponents. Its handle is shaped like a steel hammer in the form of a male lion, and a quick-draw sword can be pulled from its tip.] [Instructions: In ancient times, envoys carried tokens when entering and leaving city gates. When knights took off their armor and put on formal attire, they couldn't carry swords, so the baton fighting style and the defensive dress cane came into being.] [Manufacturer: Nine Realms Station Ironworks · Aoheng] [Notes: Humility, honesty, compassion, courage, justice, sacrifice, honor, and spirit. You don't have a single one of these eight virtues. Do you only have hunger and lust?]
Meanwhile—
—Bu Liuxing knocked on the golden door of the VIP carriage.
He had a vague sense that some inexplicable connection, like gravity itself, was tugging him toward the door.
He remembered what Xue Ming had told him—
—In the underground world, caution always came first.
But he couldn't control his hands, just as he hadn't been able to tear his eyes away from the newspaper's fiction section earlier.
To put it in an odd way—
"It's like knowing that staying up late is miserable, your body is wailing and your eyes are dry and bloodshot, but you still can't pull yourself away from your phone, your computer, your TV—can't pull yourself away from any of it."
At that moment, A Xing was talking to himself. It was as if he were making excuses for himself, and also as if he had picked up one of Jason Megan's odd habits: repeating things over and over to reinforce them in his memory.
He pounded on the golden door, growing more and more impatient.
"Teacher Victor! Are you in there?"
He could hardly wait to find out what happened in the next installment of the novel—what came next in the story?
The door suddenly swung open.
A gaunt, stern face appeared through the narrow gap.
Devil Victor [David Victor] stood perfectly still.
A Xing found it hard to describe the unfamiliar man's appearance. His cold, severe bearing was unlike anyone he had ever met.
Beneath a mass of wild blond curls were sharp, angular brows and a broad forehead.
His emerald-green eyes were deeply set on either side of a high, strongly defined nose.
His lips were full and fleshy, while his chin and cheekbones were thin, giving him the look of an anorexic who kept a strict routine but had been dieting for a long time.
He felt completely different from Jiang Xueming—
—If Big Brother Jiang Xueming was like a pure block of ice,
then the writer before him was like a glass of absinthe glowing faintly green. His features and bearing alone gave A Xing a dreamlike impression.
Victor had one hand on the doorknob, his knuckles broad and his joints rough. He hunched over and leaned his head out, as if hiding inside the doorway while staring at Bu Liuxing.
His large green eyes held a cold, contemptuous gaze.
Bu Liuxing was both frightened and delighted. Before he knew it, he had come to regard the author as his idol.
"Teacher Victor! I can't believe I actually get to meet you here!"
He took off his hat and bowed awkwardly in greeting.
David Victor didn't respond directly at all—
—He merely looked outside the door, glancing left and right to make sure no one else was there.
Only then did Victor step out and approach Bu Liuxing, the reckless reader, properly.
He wore pajamas and held his right hand behind his back, looking quite polite.
He stood over six feet tall, yet still had to look up at A Xing.
He toyed with the fountain pen in his hand. It seemed to be the baton the BOSS had given him. He scrutinized A Xing again and again but still said nothing.
Under Teacher Victor's stare, Bu Liuxing felt a chill creep through him. Something didn't feel right.
Ming Ge had said that after years of traveling underground, passengers all developed a few psychological quirks.
Perhaps Victor was also an old passenger with a long history of travel and many places behind him. Maybe that was why he acted so strangely.
A Xing gathered himself and tried to introduce himself.
"Teacher Victor, I'm your reader!"
Before A Xing could finish—
—David Victor cut him off. "Be quiet. I'm observing you."
A Xing still wanted to strike up a connection. He remembered that David Byrne, the armed employee in Fang Feng Settlement, had the same name.
"Teacher Victor, do you know how unlikely this is? The first safety officer I met at the station was also named David. Don't you think that's fate bringing us together?"
"I said—be quiet." Teacher Victor paced in a circle, crouching and leaning in to peer at Bu Liuxing from the front and behind, looking him up and down.
A Xing grew more and more nervous—
—He couldn't figure out what Teacher Victor was trying to do.
He tried to read the writer's expression, but saw no distracting thoughts there. Victor looked intent and serious, as if he really were observing a sculpture or a work of art. In Teacher Victor's eyes, it seemed there was nothing but an ardent pursuit of art.
"When I meet an interesting stranger, I can't help studying their appearance closely. I want to figure out their habits and microexpressions," Victor explained. "Forgive my presumptuousness; I haven't even asked your name. Perhaps you've calmed down enough to remember your manners. When you visit a stranger, you should introduce yourself first."
"My name's Bu Liuxing, Teacher Victor!" A Xing perked up at once. At last, he was free of that feeling of being watched, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
He thought to himself—
—that feeling of being stared at just now had been so strange.
"You already know my name, so there's no need to repeat it at length like some bloated, pointless article." Teacher Victor still had his hands behind his back, standing straight with his head held high.
He greeted his uninvited guest at a forty-five-degree angle, like a figure in a golden-ratio portrait, and began speaking at an unhurried pace.
Victor said, "When we first met, I had a favor to ask you."
Bu Liuxing's brows relaxed at once. It couldn't be better that Victor needed something from him—after all, Big Brother Xue Ming had said—
People had to help one another!
Maybe if he helped Teacher Victor out, he could get an early look at the story in The Sun Times!
"Just tell me what you need. I'll do whatever I can to help!"
"The first thing I'm asking you to do—" Victor corrected him, "is to call me 'you' informally, not 'sir.'"
"Oh, that's easy enough." Bu Liuxing scratched his head. "Why? I'm just showing you respect."
Victor gritted his teeth and interrupted him impatiently again. "Because that inexplicable honorific makes me anxious and uncomfortable. Please stop addressing me with that frivolous, fawning title, as if you were talking to some celebrity idol. Bu Liuxing, you can call me by my full name. You and I are both ordinary people, born beneath the same sky."
"Oh, ha ha. Heh." A Xing felt an inexplicable pressure—
—Yes, pressure.
When he was around Teacher Victor, he felt as if an invisible hand had closed around his throat. It wasn't choking him to death, but even breathing had become difficult.
When he had first met Big Brother Xue Ming, A Xing had felt a similar pressure. But as they got to know each other and more time passed, that pressure had faded.
Perhaps that was why the passengers were afraid of Big Brother Xue Ming.
David Victor had the same force about him. Perhaps Victor's mental strength was on par with Big Brother Xue Ming's.
"There's a second thing I'd like to ask of you." Mr. Victor brought up a minor work-related problem. "I've run into a difficulty while writing that I can't solve on my own."
"Oh! A novel! I love novels!" Bu Liuxing grew excited again and tried to say something enthusiastically.
—Victor immediately silenced him with a gesture, and he didn't dare speak again.
Victor stepped aside, opening the door all the way.
"This will take a while to explain. Why don't you come in, and we can talk?"
Bu Liuxing looked inside—
—It was a simple but far from ordinary studio.
The furnishings inside were very strange. Why describe them as strange?
Because beside the desk was a kitchen rack, beside the rack was a bathtub, and beside the bathtub was a bed.
The carriage's overhead light shone on a ceiling mural of a starry night painted by Van Gogh.
The shower and toilet were crammed into the narrow private space, too.
A bright red carpet ran straight inside from the door, all the way to the end of the carriage. This was the last carriage on the train. The safety door at the rear had been removed, and through the opening, one could see the scenery rushing past.
"Judging by your body's reaction," Victor said, rising onto his tiptoes to whisper in A Xing's ear, "you seem afraid. I suppose that makes sense. I consider myself a reclusive, eccentric person. If my rash invitation offended you, you can go back the way you came. But I'd ask you to keep my presence a secret. Don't tell anyone on the train where I am. I don't want to be woken from my writing by someone knocking even more insistently."
"No! No, no, no!" Bu Liuxing pressed his lips together and sniffed hard, like a bull whose eyes had gone red. "How could I refuse when you need my help, Teacher?"
With that—
—A Xing charged into the studio.
He found a comfortable spot and sat in the guest chair beside the desk, as if he were trying to prove his mettle or pick a fight.
He rolled up his sleeves and acted as casually as if he were at home, stretching and yawning at ease, as if he were about to settle in for a nap.
He called out loudly, "Teacher Victor! I'm sitting right here, and I'm ready. You said you were having trouble with your novel. Ask me anything!"
Victor closed the door, still holding his right hand behind his back, and unhurriedly returned to the host's seat.
"Bu Liuxing, you're wearing two kinds of perfume. One is Gucci's Snake's Mystery? The other is Dior's Sauvage? Or Dior Homme? I can't quite remember the scents of these luxury brands, but I recognize them vaguely..."
"Oh." A Xing felt a little awkward. He'd originally meant to let the girls smell the perfume. "The other one is Dior Homme Sport."
"Then I was right. I found the person I was looking for." Victor stubbornly kept his right hand behind his back, opened his fountain pen with his teeth, and made notes on the manuscript. "Bu Liuxing, you must have a lot of romantic experience."
"I do. What makes you say that?"
"You have active tear ducts, a lot of capillaries at the corners of your eyes, a fleshy area around your tear ducts and eyes. Those are signs of someone who cries often. A handsome, wealthy young man who cries a lot will often have hunters coming after him."
"That... sounds about right. You're good at reading people, Teacher."
"Then this will be easy. I want to know what it feels like to lose a lover."
Victor picked up his fountain pen and leaned toward Bu Liuxing, speaking with absolute conviction.
"Tell me about your experience. What does it feel like to lose a lover, to be parted from the person you love by life and death? The more detail, the better. It would be even better if you could describe it in enough detail that it felt like cutting open your chest and examining your heart."
A Xing leaned back involuntarily. Victor had suddenly come at him, making that pressure grow more and more terrifying.
In an instant, cold sweat trickled from A Xing's forehead down to his chin.
Victor sat back down, having noticed the delicate nerves of the nervous young man.
"Sorry, I can be obsessive. But I truly feel like a failure. I have no romantic experience at all, and I don't understand women—
—All the novels I've serialized in The Sun Times have been written for male readers. I've never considered how female readers might feel.
—This time, I'm writing a romance, a subject I've never touched before. It isn't some daring experiment. I just want to kill off the mediocre, lazy person I used to be."
"Do you mean the story I saw?" Bu Liuxing asked cautiously. "The one about Broken Hand?"
"Yes." David Victor chose his words with extreme care. When he spoke of his story, he was as cautious as a surgeon holding a scalpel. "I hadn't even decided on a title. I sent it to the newspaper just to see what would happen. But..."
All at once—
—Victor shifted from utter calm to a raging lion, letting out a shrill roar from his throat.
"But the editor at the newspaper didn't even read it! He sent my draft straight to the presses!"
He went from freezing cold to blazing hot in barely a second.
A Xing was too stunned to speak.
All he knew was that Big Brother Xue Ming had told him how strange and strong-willed the underground passengers could be, but he had never met anyone like Victor.
"I wouldn't expect a stranger I'd just met to understand my agitated, unsettled state." Victor returned to his calm, as if that roar had been a hallucination. "Nor would I expect you to feel any unnecessary sympathy for me. Bu Liuxing, I've tried to explain everything clearly. But an author's unedited first draft is like his bare backside. They actually put my backside in the newspaper for everyone to see!"
His intense fixation and sense of shame made A Xing feel as restless as a beast in a cage.
Victor went on, "It was a mistake. I wanted the story to be polished and refined. It should have had a headline, a subtitle, a proper message and introduction—not a hasty, crude idea about someone 'hanging by a thread,' with a mask used as an apron."
"Maybe... readers won't care too much," A Xing said, finally managing to get a word in. "Teacher Victor, don't you think you're... being a little oversensitive?"
"But I care." Victor was deadly serious, his eyes bloodshot. "I care a great deal. If I took a picture of your backside and published it in the newspaper—"
A Xing said, "That would be a pretty good deal for me, wouldn't it?"
An eerie silence lasted for more than ten seconds.
Victor calmed down again.
"In any case, I want you to hear me out.
"I've become completely trapped in this crude story. The serialization has already begun, and I'm caught in the anxiety of being forced to keep going—
—Bu Liuxing, I've revised the first draft twice, and the newspaper's editor-in-chief has apologized to me.
"But there's something missing from this love story. A fake is still a fake, no matter how much I dress up my writing. It can never become real."
Victor rambled on, dejectedly pointing his fountain pen toward the end of the carriage, toward the missing rear door.
"Looking out through this opening, I can find a lot of inspiration. I've seen so many of life's truths—
—I've seen people marry and have children here. I've seen Wool Sheep, as well as skuas and bats that migrated with the underground tides, pairing off in the caves.
—I've seen that love is inseparable from both the beginning and the end of life. My soul is missing its female character, and my work is just like its title: it has only one broken hand."
"This... might be hard for me to help you with." Bu Liuxing gave an awkward smile. "Teacher, I'm not a woman, and I have no idea what girls think when they're in love. If you want material from me, all I can talk about is the foolish things boys think when they're in love."
"..." Victor was silent, resting his chin on his left hand and biting his pen, his eyes dark and sharp.
A Xing didn't dare speak either—
—He looked away, unwilling to meet Victor's intensely oppressive gaze.
Then, quite suddenly, he noticed a line of dark red where the carpet met the floor.
A Xing took note of it, his pupils contracting as he focused.
The thick, sticky red liquid was blood.
A Xing didn't have much else going for him, but he had plenty of experience being beaten and bleeding. Under the dim yellow light, the crimson fluid had slowly soaked into the carpet, leaving an even darker stain in the red fibers. That was why he hadn't noticed the blood when he first entered the room.
All this made A Xing even more restless.
Why was there so much blood? Whose blood was it?
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Should he notify the train attendant? Right here? Or should he wait until he'd left and call Big Brother Xue Ming?
He had to find a way to get out. But if he left just like that, would Teacher Victor get suspicious?
In the long silence, the only sound was the deafening percussion of the train's iron wheels clattering over the tracks.
A Xing tried not to look at the trail of blood. He tried to look away, but the wild thoughts swirling in his mind almost drove him to his feet, ready to flee this narrow, bizarre study at once.
Then he glimpsed the books on the shelf display, barely visible beneath the starry-sky painting on the ceiling.
Bu Liuxing seemed to have found a lifeline. He tried to escape the oppressive, eerie atmosphere. "Teacher Victor, I'd like to take a look at your books. May I?"
Victor was still lost in thought, wearing the same anxious expression he got whenever he encountered a difficult problem. "Mm. Just remember to put them back when you're done."
Bu Liuxing let out a breath, as if he'd tumbled off an electric chair, and slowly walked over to the bookshelf.
He carefully avoided the trail of blood on the carpet. In the air, beneath the scent of incense, he could just make out a faint metallic tang of blood.
That's right. It was blood.
He was certain once again: there was blood in David Victor's study.
He gingerly felt for the cabinet door. In the dim light, it was hard to make out the titles of the books inside. All he could see were dozens upon dozens of thick, palm-sized notebooks, neatly lined up.
A Xing kept making awkward small talk, as if he'd stumbled upon a treasure trove. "Are these your writing inspirations, Teacher?"
"Yes," Victor replied. "They're journals."
"Journals?" Bu Liuxing echoed, too stunned to process it. His hand had already opened the cabinet door. "The passengers'..."
The distinctive fragrance of paper wafted out of the cabinet. Each journal bore a name—the unfamiliar name of an unfamiliar passenger.
They were crammed tightly into the bookcase. There had to be at least two hundred of them.
Bu Liuxing felt his body go rigid. He couldn't move another step. The cold sweat on his back had soaked through his spirit robe, leaving a damp, icy patch.
He couldn't tear his eyes away anymore. He could only stare at Victor.
The great author was sitting at his desk, his back to A Xing.
His left arm propped up his chin. His expression remained cold.
A ghastly wound gaped across the wrist of his right arm. Just a strip of flesh remained, leaving his hand dangling in midair.
The wound's clean, level edge made it clear that it had been severed in one decisive stroke, without the slightest hesitation. Even now, the nerves were still firing, making the severed hand twitch and spasm unnaturally.
Blood streamed continuously from the cut.
But David Victor seemed oblivious. He was still pondering the writing problem he'd encountered. Even as his complexion grew worse and his strength ebbed away, he never noticed that anything was wrong with his body.
A Xing was struck by an immense mental shock—
He could clearly feel his Madness Index rising rapidly. The erratic electrical signals in his brain had thrown his muscles out of his control, leaving his whole body rigid.
He looked at the manuscript on the desk.
It should have been Victor's third draft, after revisions—
Could it be...
Could it be that Teacher Victor had cut off his own hand just to revise his manuscript—to write about a severed hand, and observe the real thing as reference material?
In an instant, that strange, inexplicable attraction returned.
A Xing could barely keep his eyes off the manuscript. The powerful allure and overwhelming fear were like two cold, seductive executioners, forcing him back into the electric chair.
For a moment, he forgot all his reservations—forgot the Armadillo Hunters' traits, forgot every unsettling detail of the narrow study.
He felt as if someone had a hand around his throat, pinning him down and pressing him back into the guest's seat. Almost pleading, like a fish gasping for water, he begged Victor:
"I really want to know. I just want one look—just one look at the revised manuscript."
"I'm afraid I can't grant that request." Victor's expression was perfectly normal; it hadn't changed at all. "Until it's officially published in the newspaper, this manuscript is only a draft."
"Even if it's just a draft, I still want to see it. I don't care, Teacher." A Xing's voice trembled. "Please, I'm begging you. I really want to see it. I don't know what's wrong with me. Are you an Armadillo Hunter? Have you killed anyone? I feel so oppressed in this study, so scared—but none of that fear can make me leave. I can't control my curiosity. I really want to see it..."
"Then," David Victor said, lifting his teacup, his expression still composed and natural, "let's have a fair duel, Bu Liuxing. In this duel, I won't be some lofty author, and you won't be a reader chasing after his idol. We'll just be two knights."
A Xing was confused. "A duel?"
"I'm going to tend to my wound." Victor raised his bloody severed hand. "I'll make you a cup of White Lady coffee to clear your head. Do you know what it is?"
"I've heard of it. Wool Sheep mentioned it," Bu Liuxing said, remembering the vendor at the Golden Township station who had once sold the stuff.
"It's a folk-made Universal Elixir. It's not as effective as what they sell at the stations, but it can handle a few minor ailments." Victor carried his severed hand toward the door. "The White Lady is the larva of the Madness Butterfly. Its name comes from ancient, mysterious folk legends. In both East and West, the sculptures of Venus and the Nüwa stones of the Hongshan culture feature plump, rounded figures shaped like gourds."
A Xing had read this information in the passenger handbook and had committed it to memory.
Victor drank the coffee in his teacup, held his arm in place, and reattached his hand. In the space of a breath, the wound had healed.
The sound of muscles reconnecting was like sleet.
The sound of bone regrowing was like windblown sand.
"The Venus of Lespugue and the ceramic goddess from Dongshan in Kazuo, Liaoning; the Venus of Gagarino and the goddess of death from Moldova—they all share the same name. They're all called the White Lady."
After explaining the origins of these folk remedies, Victor laid out the terms of their duel.
"It'll take me about six to ten minutes to prepare this coffee for you—
"—if you can hold back until I return, and not sneak over to my desk like some ruffian trying to peek at my draft by pulling down my pants and looking at my backside, then you'll win this duel."
"What's the prize?" A Xing's excitement flared at this strange, unusual wager.
"I'll share my revised manuscript with you. We'll enjoy it in secret, just the two of us, before it's printed in the newspaper." Victor pursed his lips, looking faintly displeased, like he'd just encountered an uncouth client in a hurry to visit a prostitute.
Bu Liuxing jumped to his feet, thrilled. "Great! I accept your challenge!"
"But," Teacher Victor said, changing tack, "if you lose, you'll hand over your passenger journal and let me copy it into one of my books."
Bu Liuxing was very surprised. It was hard to describe the price of this wager as anything but trivial. It would hardly affect him at all. If Jiang Xueming knew what was going through this kid's mind, he'd probably beat his backside into a bunch of fist-sized bumps.
"That's it?"
"Don't misunderstand." Before leaving the study, Victor made a point of reminding A Xing: "I want your entire passenger journal, including your memories and every joy and sorrow in them. Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I have my own way of extracting that journal from your skull."
Although he didn't quite understand what Teacher Victor meant, A Xing had never been afraid of a face-to-face challenge. He'd never backed down. He was fearless.
"Go ahead and make the coffee, Teacher. I'll be good, and guard your damn manuscript like a knight! I won't sneak a peek, and no one else will get to see it early either."
"Bu Liuxing, I'm moved that you understand what I mean and connect with the unspoken meaning behind each of my words. Your safety officer happens to share your name. That isn't fate, but I believe the story born of our understanding—that is true fate. This is a duel, so you must stay alert. It's between you and me—"
David Victor closed the golden door.
"—[Tournament (feat. Patrick Bartley) · Knightly Jousting]"
Before you continue