It Was Alive Too!

The three of them hadn't gone far from the train. They had only searched the lush forest for some edible fruit.

They crossed a patch of flowers and reached the railway tracks, now overgrown with weeds. The train was still parked there, perfectly still...

But the area around it was eerily quiet.

The others were nowhere to be seen!

"Did you hear anything?" Su Li asked.

Wu Hen shook his head.

There wasn't a sound.

It was far too strange. The others had been gathering supplies near the train. There was no way they could have done that without making a sound.

Unless...

A gust of wind swept around from the other side of the train, carrying a thick, heavy smell of blood.

Su Li, Wu Hen, and Yang Qin cautiously approached. They soon spotted a vivid splash of red by the carriage door!

It was human blood!

It had only just been sprayed there!

An axe lay abandoned on the tracks. Blood had painted it bright red, and strands of flesh and hair clung to its blade!

Yang Qin clapped a hand over her mouth, nearly screaming.

Wasn't that the weapon Scar-faced Uncle always used?!

"There's something moving in the safe room... The sound of bones creaking!" Wu Hen finally heard a faint noise and immediately told Su Li.

The safe room was completely enclosed and lightproof. The fireflies that protected them at night needed that kind of environment.

But if the door was open and an evil spirit had gone inside, the fireflies' faint glow wouldn't be enough to keep it at bay!

There was still a Midnight Mass hiding on the train!

And someone had moved it into the pitch-black safe room while everyone was gathering supplies!

They could imagine what awaited the people who returned to put their supplies away: not fireflies, but a Midnight Mass!!

"I'll take care of it!" Wu Hen burned with anger.

They had finally escaped together, only to avoid dying at the hands of evil spirits and end up dying in the madness of one of their own.

One Midnight Mass was manageable. One shot could wipe it out.

The safe room was crucial to them. They had to take it back, or they wouldn't stand a chance against so many evil spirits after nightfall.

"Xiao Yi!"

Wu Hen tried calling for his personal weapon.

"Xiao Yi?"

"Foster Father???"

But no matter how many times he called, Foster Father didn't respond. Not even a single glowing pattern appeared on his right hand.

"Without Yuan You to feed it, Yuan Yi's power will fall dormant," Su Li said.

Wu Hen's heart sank.

After showing off yesterday, it was useless the very next day?

Without Yuan You, it didn't care whether its brother lived or died?

"What do we do?? What do we do???" Yang Qin was on the verge of tears.

"Forget the safe room. The fireflies have probably all escaped. We'll head to the engine, start the train, and get out of this Evil Soil as quickly as we can!" Su Li said.

There was no way they could run far enough to escape this patch of soil before nightfall. Besides, the soil would keep spreading.

They couldn't abandon the train. Their best option was to use it to get away in daylight, while the Midnight Mass wouldn't dare leave the safe room.

"Help me..."

"Please, help me..."

"Uncle Lin's gone mad. He hurt me."

Just then, a little boy covered in blood appeared at a carriage window and cried out.

Yang Qin saw him and instinctively started toward him, but Su Li yanked her forward.

"Are... are we not going to help him?" Yang Qin asked in terror.

"Don't believe anything!" Su Li kept running without even glancing at the miserable boy. "If you want to live, crawl to the engine on your own!"

Wu Hen said nothing. He followed Su Li toward the engine.

Thankfully, the train's engine was still working. Su Li breathed a sigh of relief.

Thankfully, people suffering from evil madness weren't very smart. If they had wrecked the engine too, they would have been truly trapped!

"Clackety-clack~~"

"Clackety-clack~~~ clackety-clack~~~"

The train started moving again. Su Li could only hope the old train was fast enough to get them out of the Evil Soil before dark!

"They're all dead. They're all dead..." Yang Qin huddled in the engine compartment, on the verge of a breakdown.

She never would have imagined that in broad daylight, during what should have been the safest time, their group would be wiped out in an instant, leaving only a few of them alive.

Worst of all, somewhere in the middle of the train, a pitiful voice had been crying for help. It sounded like the boy was trying with all his might to crawl toward the engine.

That boy wanted to survive.

Yang Qin was truly desperate. She wanted so badly to go home.

Wu Hen could hear the boy's helpless cries too...

But at a blood-soaked scene like that, the only survivor was the one most deserving of suspicion.

Had Scar-faced Uncle killed everyone, or had the boy brought the Midnight Mass into the safe room...

They couldn't be sure.

With odds of fifty-fifty, they had to choose indifference.

"Aunt, last night I saw the city growing across the earth like roots. Will this Evil Soil keep expanding too?" Wu Hen asked.

"Yes."

"Like a desert swallowing a forest, turning it into desert bit by bit?" Wu Hen asked.

"Similar in nature, but the speed of the spread is different," Su Li said.

"How fast? How fast is it?" Wu Hen recalled the terrifying, impossible sight of the city growing beneath yesterday's setting sun.

"Faster than we can run," Su Li said.

Wu Hen froze at her words.

The spread of the Evil Soil was faster than a person could run??

That meant the key to escaping a patch of Evil Soil wasn't just heading out. You had to reach a certain speed!

They had to escape by train because it was fast enough to outrun the spread. Otherwise, they would be trapped in this soil forever...

And if they stayed still, that living Evil City would catch up to them!!

That was freaking insane!!

Honestly, Wu Hen really missed home.

No matter how precarious things were there, it was still a thousand times better than this place.

No wonder Su Li called it paradise!

"Then can we get out?" Yang Qin asked from where she was huddled, her face streaked with tears.

"I don't know." Su Li raised her head and gazed at the daylight overhead.

"He's stopped making noise..." Yang Qin said quietly.

Su Li remained silent.

If she'd had bullets in her gun, she wouldn't have minded shooting him then. It would have ended things for him sooner.

The daylight shifted little by little.

The train roared along the tracks. After enduring the long ordeal, Wu Hen couldn't help looking up at the sky.

He hoped the sun would descend more slowly, and that the old train would go faster.

They chewed on wild fruit, but it did nothing to ease their hunger. Their thoughts kept slipping away for no reason. The world ahead seemed like a lush fairyland, but whenever they looked away, the corner of their eye caught something entirely different: a rotting, festering landscape, mountains and earth oozing pus!

Wu Hen rubbed his eyes. They felt drier by the minute.

The mental corruption Su Li had mentioned had begun to take effect. Wu Hen felt inexplicably irritable, constantly wanting to vent his feelings somehow.

But he knew very well that this wasn't the real him.

"Creak, creak~~~~~"

"Creak, creak!!!"

A series of bone-grinding sounds came from inside the safe room.

It was the Midnight Mass hiding inside. It was moving again.

Wu Hen looked at the sky once more. The sun was slanting toward the horizon, and it would set in an hour or two.

"We're almost out!" A note of joy suddenly entered Su Li's voice.

Yang Qin hurried to her feet. Looking down the long stretch of tracks, she saw a magnificent mountain range ahead. An ethereal layer of clouds drifted across its peaks, like a heavenly divide separating this world from the one beyond the mountains!

There was a railway tunnel at the base of the range.

They still had a ways to go, but they could see it with the naked eye!

The sun was still some time from setting in the opposite direction.

At the train's current speed, they would make it through the mountain tunnel and reach the other side of the range!

"Can we go home now??" Yang Qin asked excitedly.

"Once you're out of the Evil Soil, you won't be as easily lost. Follow the guidance of the Soul-Returning Wood, and you'll definitely find the Nuwa Divine Tree," Su Li said.

Yang Qin grew even more excited and was about to share her joy with Wu Hen.

Wu Hen ignored her, his expression unusually grave.

"Aunt, something's wrong," Wu Hen said.

"Are you worried the Midnight Mass will come out and attack us while we're going through the tunnel?" Su Li asked.

"No. The Midnight Mass in the safe room is doing something strange. It sounds like it's dancing," Wu Hen said.

"Dancing?" A sense of foreboding stirred in Su Li's heart.

Suddenly, streaks of eerie red light burst through the safe room's windows. An immense flood of crimson liquid poured endlessly out of the tiny room!!

Like a dam bursting, the blood-red liquid flooded the tracks in an instant, swiftly staining the earth red!!

Wu Hen leaned out of the train window. When he looked back at the ground the train had passed over, he saw an endless expanse of crimson.

The vegetation, soil, and rocks—all of them were being swallowed by the blood tide at an utterly impossible speed. The eerie glow surged into the sky, dyeing it a sinister red!!

Wu Hen was horrified.

What kind of power could transform the mountains and rivers, the very world itself, in an instant—or was it...

"Wu Hen, don't blink. This is what the Evil Soil really looks like!" Su Li said, her voice calm.

Wu Hen couldn't believe it. The sight left him shaken to the core, and his soul trembled uncontrollably!

By contrast, Yang Qin seemed unable to see any of it. She remained immersed in the joy of almost escaping, even as everything around them revealed its most horrifying form!

"So that's what it was doing. A sacrifice, a summoning..." Su Li murmured to herself. "No wonder it killed all our companions!"

"Aunt..." Wu Hen said, forcing himself to stay calm.

"It's coming." Su Li gazed up at the sky.

Wu Hen could barely understand what she meant, but he followed her gaze toward the blood-red sky.

The moment he looked, his scalp went numb. The terrifying sight threatened to scatter his soul...

The sun high in the sky!!

That sun was moving backward, chasing after the train from beyond the far horizon at a speed that seemed to tear through the sky.

Wu Hen could hardly believe it. It was alive too!!!