Under the dim yellow incandescent lights of the subway car, three gaunt figures sat blankly on the floor. Here, everyone's desire to communicate seemed to have been reduced to its lowest threshold.
"Have we reached the station?" The man's voice was somewhat hoarse.
The girl beside him weakly laid her hand over his and softly reassured him, "There's not much difference between having arrived and not having arrived. Maybe a little change would be a good thing for us."
The comforted young man forced out a smile. "Maybe it really is something good. Compared with last time, it seems we stopped several stations early this time... seven stations. The location is different. So subway accidents happen here too. If we get out, is there anywhere you want to go?"
A brief glimmer of light appeared in the girl's hollow eyes, but she gave no verbal answer. She merely gripped the young man's hand more tightly, giving him a clearer response.
Their shoulders rested against each other.
If they could get out alive, it did not matter where they went as long as they were together.
Cassell College, Class of 2004, Department of Alchemical Machinery, Gao Mi, now an Executive Department operative.
Cassell College, Class of 2005, Department of Mechanics, Wan Boqian, an Executive Department operative assigned to the same team as Gao Mi.
Gao Mi and Wan Boqian had long been a couple who knew each other intimately in private. However, the Executive Department had an ironclad rule forbidding members of the same team from dating, so they were still keeping their relationship underground. Their original plan had been to accumulate enough seniority, transfer to the Korea Branch, and then formally inform their families. Now, that was clearly no longer possible.
They were trapped here, trapped in a land the living were never meant to enter.
Because of the special application of Wan Boqian's Word Spirit, Bloodline Web, the two had recently been transferred to this city as surveyors. In ancient times, they could have been called scouts. Their combat ability was not especially outstanding, but their ability to gather intelligence could not be lacking.
Gao Mi's gaze drifted toward the last of the three, a dejected young man named Zhao Menghua, who crouched in the corner of the subway car with an unkempt beard.
There were only two ways to leave this subway-station maze: kill the maze's master, or win enough chips through the gambling game.
Killing the master of the maze was far too unrealistic for them. The only remaining option was to play the Texas Hold'em game.
The rules were that anyone who lost all their chips had to leave immediately, board a different subway train, and circle this maze alone. Only when the next game was about to begin would the train stop at Wangfujing Station, allowing everyone to gather, board the same train, find the gatekeeper Kamaitachi Queen again, and begin another round of gambling.
The wager was loneliness—each person's loneliness.
Everyone's loneliness was finite, so they had to keep winning other people's chips. Only after accumulating enough could they leave this maze.
If he wanted the two of them to get out together, he could only keep winning loneliness from him... Gao Mi thought guiltily.
Guilt was guilt, but when the time came to act, he absolutely would not show mercy or let his guard down. This concerned him and his girl.
But the loneliness chips of just one person would not be enough. There could only be one winner in each round of Texas Hold'em, and all the losers paid the winner. The more gamblers sat at the table, the faster the chips could be accumulated. If another five or six people entered the maze to join this game, then he would be confident he could take Wan Boqian out of here.
Hearing them talk, Zhao Menghua sluggishly raised his head. "When do you think the rescue team will come?"
He asked that out of nowhere almost every twenty or thirty minutes. At first, it had carried intense unwillingness; later, it became profound despair.
After being trapped here for so long, he was nearly numb. At the beginning, he had struggled desperately and constantly called for help from the outside world, because this subway train actually passed through stations from time to time.
The platforms were brightly lit, and the passengers were calm. They could not hear his voice or see him waving his arms wildly. From inside the car, he could see passengers waiting outside, and occasionally, he could see someone enter this car.
But no one truly came in, and he could not get out. Time and space were misaligned.
Zhao Menghua had tried pressing himself to the window and shouting until he lost his voice, but the people outside kept reading, listening to music, or staring into space as before. No one cared about his breakdown.
Outside the subway window, bat-like creatures fluttered up from the fallen stone debris. They were Kamaitachi, spiraling gently upward before suddenly accelerating, leaving strings of afterimages in the air.
They flew about in terrified confusion, fleeing their nest, too afraid to remain here.
Footsteps sounded from outside the window.
Hasty footsteps, as if someone was rushing along while dragging something heavy.
This was the first time in days that they had heard footsteps resembling those of a human.
All three of them abruptly raised their heads.
Was it a rescue team? Zhao Menghua, overwhelmed, was the first to rush to the nearest window of the car. Once the thought entered his mind, he could no longer care about anything else.
He had to take a look. He had to confirm whether he still had any chance of survival.
It was a long-haired man in a black trench coat. It really was some kind of professional rescuer! Zhao Menghua was so delighted that he could not make a sound as he raised an arm to slap the window.
Then he was shoved onto a subway seat, his hands forcefully pinned down and his mouth tightly covered.
Sweating coldly, Gao Mi held him down and tried to communicate with him through lip movements.
"Don't make a sound. Hold your breath."
His excitement at hearing the footsteps had been no less than Zhao Menghua's—if anything, it had been greater.
But in an instant, the rationality expected of an Executive Department operative suppressed that excitement.
The newcomer was too quiet. His hurried pace was fast, yet not the least bit disorderly. In this damned place, he was somehow still moving with leisurely composure.
Driven by curiosity and a sliver of hope, Gao Mi had also looked out the window. Just one glance had plunged him into an ice cellar.
In all his years at the college and in the Executive Department, he had never seen molten-gold eyes like those of an evil ghost. The violent fear left his mind reeling without pause. If Wan Boqian had not pulled him back, he might have dropped to his knees on the spot.
Even without making eye contact, the bloodline pressure was this overwhelming. That person was almost certainly not a college hybrid coming to rescue them.
The rusty partition door between the old subway cars was slowly pulled open, making the sound of rust flaking away.
It was time to get off.
Gao Mi and Wan Boqian did not move.
The trembling and terror in his body had yet to fade. Gao Mi thought of the Wild Hunt associated with Norse Mythology, often regarded by people who had once believed in gods as an ominous sign before disaster struck. The Secret Party had also specifically studied this phenomenon, though there was no way to verify it.
Myths said witnesses might be abducted into the underworld, have their souls taken away, and be brought into twisted time and space... In truth, the concept of the Wild Hunt was widespread. It belonged to the realm of folklore and was far from limited to one type of myth in a single region.
Its leader might be the legendary Hern the Hunter or King Arthur, or perhaps the goddess Freyja... But the most famous and widely circulated figure was Odin, king of the Norse gods.
A dead god walked through the night carrying blade and sword.
What was he taking weapons for? To cut down another god?
Through the car door, they finally saw what the black-haired man in the trench coat had been dragging. It was the mutilated corpse of the Kamaitachi Queen. The area around its heart was a mangled mass of flesh, and thick black blood flowed without end.
Perhaps to keep the traffic safe and avoid obstructing passing subway trains, the man dragged the Kamaitachi Queen, whose heart had been crushed, out of the tunnel and tossed the body onto the nearest platform.
Gao Mi, Wan Boqian, and Zhao Menghua were silent as cicadas in winter.
"Hah... hah..."
Only after the trench-coated figure had completely vanished into the depths of the tunnel did they begin breathing again, trembling in lingering terror.