"You conspired with him to lock me in the restroom and leave me helpless, then even stuck a ghost-attracting talisman on my back. Ha, what a clever scheme!"
"But you must be disappointed. I made it out alive."
Su Cheng's well-supported accusations made the passengers exchange glances and take small steps away from Xunfang.
These passengers had no minds of their own to begin with. They seemed to stick together, but their trust in one another was fragile. As soon as they noticed anything suspicious, they would follow the crowd.
"It wasn't me! Don't slander me!"
Xunfang looked like a falsely accused victim, angry and innocent. She pointed at Chen Renping. "I gave him that talisman of yours. He stuck it on your back. What does that have to do with me?"
Su Cheng almost laughed in anger. Even now, she was still framing someone else!
Su Cheng approached with the chainsaw raised. "Everyone else, get out of the way. Don't blame me if you get hurt."
The passengers quickly ducked into the seats, leaving Xunfang alone in the aisle.
Xunfang retreated step by step until her back pressed against the door connecting the carriages. "What do you want?"
"I don't want anything."
"I can tell you more about this train!"
Su Cheng stopped. "Let's hear it. If your information satisfies me, I can consider going easier on you."
Seeing that Su Cheng had stopped approaching, Xunfang let out a small breath of relief. "Actually, the killer from three years ago was never brought to justice. His family got him out by substituting a scapegoat."
Xunfang pointed at He Lie, who sat slumped, clutching his leg. "He's the killer from back then."
An uproar broke out among the passengers, who all turned to look at He Lie.
He Lie's expression darkened slightly. "What nonsense are you talking about?"
"Tsk."
It was a shame Xunfang hadn't become an actress.
Seeing that Su Cheng hadn't even raised her eyelids, Xunfang said urgently, "Don't doubt me. The corpse in his suitcase is proof. Only someone as depraved as him could dismember a body!"
"I know you might not believe me because that man surnamed Chen may have told you something, but why do you trust him so much?"
"Everything you know about the old train case comes from one person's account. But what if that person deliberately lied to you, or didn't know the full story himself?"
Xunfang's expression didn't look feigned. Her somewhat jumbled words and every tiny gesture were filled with an anxious desire to be trusted and the panic of being misunderstood.
Su Cheng looked at Chen Renping among the passengers. He was staring fixedly at Xunfang, his thoughts unknown...
Someone was lying.
Su Cheng calmed down. "How do you know so much?"
Seeing her waver, Xunfang caught her breath and explained, "My older sister was one of the victims, so I've been investigating in secret all these years."
Then she looked earnestly at Su Cheng. "You'd better believe me. Of these two men, one's deceiving you, and the other's a murderer. Men are all trash!"
"That talisman of yours wasn't mine. All my talismans really are ghost-repelling talismans."
Xunfang offered an explanation for every suspicion Su Cheng had.
And those explanations sounded reasonable.
But... the logic still didn't hold up.
If everything was really as Xunfang said and she was innocent, then Xunfang pushing her in the restroom, her shock and panic at seeing the chainsaw in her hands, her inciting the other passengers to restrain her...
Perhaps an explanation could be found for each and every incident.
But too many explanations amounted to a cover-up. Lies woven in desperation couldn't withstand scrutiny.
Xunfang was a master of psychology. Her acting made Su Cheng doubt and waver.
Someone less firm in their convictions might truly have fallen into hesitation.
They would either overturn their previous answer and choose to believe Xunfang, or take a middle course and work out a new answer.
Whichever outcome they chose, Xunfang would have achieved her goal.
But Su Cheng happened to be someone who firmly trusted her own instincts and judgment.
She didn't believe a word Xunfang had just said!
Su Cheng advanced on Xunfang again with the chainsaw. "Sorry, but I think I'd better tie you up first and prove it through my own experiments."
"Don't regret this!"
After her expression darkened and she spat out that curse, Xunfang actually opened the door behind her and slipped through!
She had the key to the door!
Talking her way out of Su Cheng's hostility had only been her first approach. Her escape route lay beyond the door...
Chen Renping, who had been watching Xunfang closely, followed right on her heels as she went in.
Seeing the door about to close, Su Cheng quickly ran over and slipped through.
Click.
After Su Cheng entered, the door gently closed.
Crossing the threshold brought her into another world.
Beyond the door was a carriage identical to the original, but there were only three colors here: gray, black, and white. Like an old television set, the entire scene was dark-toned.
Rootlike ridges bulged from the walls, some thick and some thin, crisscrossing and spreading throughout the carriage.
If liquid flowed through those ridges, they might look more like blood vessels inside a human body.
That strange association flashed through Su Cheng's mind.
In the gloomy carriage, she was the only splash of vivid color in the entire space, like a conspicuous, incongruous intruder.
Su Cheng instinctively held her breath. Clearly, there was something very unusual about this place.
Su Cheng put away her chainsaw and took out her dagger. In a place with such an eerie air, the dagger that could affect ghosts was more suitable.
Starting from the rear of the carriage, Su Cheng walked forward step by step, passing row after row of empty seats.
Tap, tap, tap...
In the silent carriage, only Su Cheng's footsteps could be heard.
She was walking so lightly, yet there was still a sound...
The floor beneath her feet rose and fell slightly in a rhythm, steady and drawn-out, like a sleeping person's breathing.
It was as though she were walking on the carriage's body...
But how could a carriage be alive?
Su Cheng steadied herself and cast aside those strange thoughts.
Where had Xunfang and Chen Renping gone?
Click, click...
Su Cheng turned toward the sound and met an eye that had emerged from the roots on the wall, with a black pupil and gray white.
It blinked and blinked, gazing calmly at Su Cheng.
!!
Su Cheng went rigid. At the sight of it, she almost flung the dagger in her hand.
More and more eyes emerged from the roots. They struggled their way out, densely covering the entire carriage, all observing Su Cheng curiously.
Some were entirely black pupils, some had pupils like sesame seeds amid expanses of white, and some were nothing but white...
Eyes of all sizes stared at Su Cheng together, blinking and blinking, making a disorderly clicking sound.
One blinking eye made only a faint sound, but thousands of blinking eyes covering the walls produced an eerie noise impossible to ignore.
Like a curse, the sound burrowed into Su Cheng's mind and played over and over, trapping her in a cage of sound.
Su Cheng shook her head, trying to resist the sound's invasion.
Clang...
The dagger fell to the floor.
Su Cheng's breathing grew heavy. She closed her eyes and clamped both hands over her ears, but nothing could stop the clicking of the blinking eyes beside her ears...
The wallful of eyes surrounded her, blinking even more merrily.
Su Cheng's mind was filled with the sound of blinking eyelids. She had never heard that sound so clearly before.
It was as though she were in a world of nothing but eyes. They observed her, were curious about her, welcomed her... invited her.
As though answering some summons, Su Cheng's eyes began blinking along with them.
She widened her eyes in panic, but couldn't control their blinking.
Click, click.
Click, click.
Her eyes seemed to have developed a will of their own, eagerly joining the rhythm of their kind.
Her eyeballs itched, as though they wanted to fly onto the wall.
Her eyes blinked faster and faster, her vision flickering light and dark. She could no longer tell whether the clicking inside her head came from her own eyes or those on the walls...
Stop!
Su Cheng covered her eyes, but even covered, they refused to stop.
Her lashes kept brushing her palms, like an invisible provocation!
Stop! Stop!
Su Cheng didn't understand why they insisted on defying her. As though under some lure, malicious thoughts surfaced, and anger and resentment arose without cause!
They belonged to her. What right did they have to escape her control?
Anything disobedient shouldn't exist.
Her fingertips touched the membranes of her eyeballs. The stinging pain made her jerk her hands back as though suddenly waking...
What am I doing?
Resentment and her remaining reason battled in her mind.
The prying gazes covering the walls and the amplified clicking suffocated her!
She wanted to gouge out those disobedient eyeballs. Gouge them out, let them go, and perhaps everything would end.
But at the critical moment, reason stopped her fingertips as they touched her eyeballs... The conflict left her at a loss, tormented.
Why did it have to be like this...
Why wouldn't her eyes obey? Why wouldn't they obey!
Stop blinking!
Stop blinking!!
"Stop blinking-!!!"
Su Cheng roared at the top of her lungs, using every last ounce of strength.
"Hah, hah, hah..."
The blinking stopped. All the eyes were motionless, and only Su Cheng was panting.
She touched her eyes. They had finally stopped.
She gently stroked her eyes over and over, as though seeing a rebellious child finally become obedient. With bittersweet relief, a tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
Click.
The door at the front of the carriage opened, and a faint light shone through, like
salvation.
Su Cheng picked up the dagger, wiped the lingering tear tracks from her cheeks, and ran desperately toward the front of the carriage without looking back.
The gazes followed her like shadows... as though they were trying to keep her, hoping she would take them away with her...
The moment she stepped through the door, some prying gaze was cut off as she passed from one space into another.
At last, sounds reached her ears: the train running, passengers talking, children laughing...