The platform was so quiet it felt as though the world had forgotten it.
The fluorescent tubes overhead buzzed, casting down a ghastly white light that made the whole place look like a morgue.
The tubes were probably quite old. Their light carried a sickly pallor that made his skin look gray. Lu Mingfei's shadow stretched long behind him like a tail that was reluctant to follow him.
He looked around, his gaze sliding from one pillar to the next, jumping from one row of iron railings to another.
The platform was empty. Aside from dust and rust, the occasional torn newspaper would be swept up by a gust from nowhere and scrape across the ground with a rustle, as if something were secretly laughing in the darkness.
Then he spotted a pile of junk.
Calling it a pile of junk was generous. It was really just a heap of rubbish someone had dumped there at some unknown time—a few cracked plastic baskets stacked together, a folding chair missing a leg leaning crookedly beside them, and a bulging woven sack crouched against the wall with a grimy length of wire sticking out of its opening.
The items had been haphazardly piled behind a pillar at the end of the platform, as though someone had casually tossed them there and forgotten to take them away.
His gaze settled on a suitcase atop the junk pile. It was small and black, its surface slightly scuffed, but its clasps gleamed brightly, reflecting a cold glint beneath the ghastly white lights. It lay quietly on the woven sack, surrounded by rubbish, yet it was so clean it seemed not to belong there at all—
His gaming experience told him this might be a treasure chest, perhaps with items inside.
He walked over, crouched down,