Hers was no longer the only voice.
It was reassuring.
Su Cheng was dazed for a moment, and her wildly pounding heart gradually settled.
She couldn't help blinking twice, then stopped.
Su Cheng touched her face and smiled. How wonderful. She had complete control over them again.
The black band around her wrist had been replaced by the familiar bracelet again, and she wore the yellow dress that had yet to be stained red.
She had become Mu Ling again.
Only this time, she couldn't use anything in her storage slots. All she had left was the dagger clutched in her hand.
Su Cheng had fully merged with this body and controlled it freely, as though it had always been hers.
Su Cheng looked around. It was very familiar.
She had returned to the train carriage where the murders had happened three years ago.
Had Xunfang and Chen Renping also entered the bodies of passengers, then...
Author's note:
None.
Chapter 23
What was she supposed to do, returning to the murder scene from three years ago as one of the victims?
Stop the murderer from killing and successfully escape in Mu Ling's body?
Su Cheng knelt on the seat and craned her head out to look for Chen Renping.
She peered at the seats ahead and behind her, meeting the eyes of a frightened-looking Chen Renping in a seat behind her.
Chen Renping was actually in his own body, without a passenger's face draped over him.
The passengers were scattered loosely throughout the carriage. Su Cheng wasn't seated far from him, so she simply hurried over to his seat to join him.
Chen Renping looked tense and lowered his voice. "Three minutes until the train enters the tunnel!"
Su Cheng remembered that in the dream Mu Ling had shown her, the murderer had a gun and a knife, and began the massacre after the train entered the tunnel.
In other words, they had only three minutes to think of a suitable plan.
The most dangerous thing about the murderer was the gun in his hand. Su Cheng only had a melee weapon, while Chen Renping had no weapon capable of causing harm.
The disparity in firepower was enormous.
Su Cheng kept recalling everything from Mu Ling's perspective in the dream in greater detail, racking her brains over what to do...
Su Cheng said, "The murderer appears near the connection between carriages, while we're in the rear half. If we break the lights as we enter the tunnel, the darkness could give us an opening for a surprise attack..."
"The two of us definitely can't do it alone."
Chen Renping nodded. "We're short on time and have no other options. We can only try. Let's split up and get the other passengers involved without alerting anyone up front!"
Su Cheng caught Chen Renping as he turned to act. "One more thing."
"I suspect Xunfang has entered the murderer's body, but she could also be among the passengers. Be careful."
Chen Renping nodded thoughtfully. "All right."
There was no time to lose. They crouched down and left their seats in opposite directions.
Three minutes was an especially tight deadline.
They were in a hurry, but they absolutely couldn't let things descend into chaos.
Su Cheng chose the nearest passengers based on the positions of the overhead lights.
"There's a dangerous person on board who could strike at any moment. When we enter the tunnel shortly, we'll need the passengers to work together..."
Su Cheng explained under the passengers' doubtful gazes. She had to keep it brief without frightening them too much.
Some were skeptical but willing to cooperate with Su Cheng's plan. A few were unwilling to take the risk and hesitantly hid beneath their seats.
Including Su Cheng and Chen Renping, there were ten people in the rear section of the carriage. They successfully rallied eight of them, all relatively tall men and women.
Each person waited on a seat beneath a light, ready to stand on the tray table and smash their assigned light when the train entered the tunnel.
Their weapons could be high heels, metal keys, or other objects with sharp edges...
Su Cheng gripped her dagger tightly and stared ahead as the tunnel came into view.
6... 5... 4...
A tall, thin figure rose from a seat up front.
3... 2... 1!
Crash!
It wasn't a gunshot, but the sound of the lights shattering simultaneously.
The lights in the rear of the carriage went out, and under the tunnel's cover, it sank into darkness.
Bang!
The masked man raised his handgun and fired twice at the seats in the darkness.
His face and expression were hidden behind the mask, but the irritable displeasure radiating from him was unmistakable.
"Ah!"
"Fuck, he's got a gun!"
Unaware passengers in the front cried out in alarm, while passengers hiding in the back cursed under their breath.
Two passengers up front scrambled into the aisle, trying to leave the carriage, only to be mercilessly shot dead by the masked man.
Su Cheng lay beneath the seats, carefully moving under row after row and slowly approaching the masked man.
The masked man walked unhurriedly toward the rear section by the windows, stopping at the boundary between light and darkness as he said with a leisurely laugh:
"How about this? One person comes out now and tells me where everyone else is, and I'll let them go."
"My bullets don't have eyes. Only one person gets the chance to leave safely. If you pass it up and someone else beats you to it, don't blame me..."
With that, the masked man turned slightly sideways to clear a path.
Su Cheng looked back. Several passengers were already wavering. They didn't entirely believe the murderer, but the chance to leave safely was simply too tempting...
The passengers had no weapons that could compete with a gun. In a crisis, none of them wanted to die.
None of the passengers knew one another anyway. Even if they traded someone else's location for their own survival, it wouldn't weigh too heavily on them...
The masked man's divisive tone and tactics felt very familiar to Su Cheng... weren't these Xunfang's favorite tricks?
She no longer had any doubts.
Xunfang was inside the masked man's body!
But why were she and Chen Renping passengers while Xunfang was the murderer?
What connection did she have to the murderer, Lin Jie?
A passenger beneath a seat in the darkness finally succumbed to fear and asked shakily, "Are you really not lying?"
"Of course. I've always been honest."
At that moment, the smiling mask seemed like his real face. He was probably smiling, just like the smile on the mask... full of mockery.
The first person to waver was like a signal, putting pressure on the others and making them feel endangered. Afraid of being reported, someone else might rush out first.
They were a group with neither unity nor trust to begin with. A few casual words from the murderer could turn them against one another and break them apart.
She couldn't wait any longer.
Su Cheng slipped quietly beneath the seats and stopped under one just a single seat away from the masked man.
All he had to do was lower his head and look, and he would discover her.
Su Cheng lay flat on the floor, her breathing slowing like a predator waiting for the right moment to land a killing blow.
She watched his neck rather than looking directly into his eyes, because she remembered how sensitive this person was to being watched...
The masked man urged them on. "So, who wants to be first? I'll count down from five."
"5..."
"Xunfang!"
Bang, bang, bang!
Chen Renping had only spoken her name, but the masked man reacted as though he had touched his reverse scale, firing three consecutive shots toward the seat the voice had come from.
Bang, bang, bang!
His gun hand shook with sheer fury. Even the mask couldn't conceal his ferocity. "Shut up!!!"
Su Cheng was slightly startled. Three shots in a row, just over a name? Why such a strong reaction?
While the masked man's attention was focused entirely on Chen Renping, she seized her chance, sprang up, and lunged at him.
She drove her dagger hard into his shoulder. He cried out in pain, dropping the gun, which was kicked away.
With his other hand, the masked man drew the knife hidden at his waist and slashed at Su Cheng, but she rolled out of the way.
The blade cut Su Cheng's arm, leaving a bloody gash.
Su Cheng's dagger was still lodged in the masked man's shoulder, and blood soaked the right side of his upper body, but he seemed not to feel it at all.
He hurriedly bent to pick up the gun from the floor, only for Chen Renping to spring out and tackle him to the ground.
Chen Renping struck the masked man's head with the emergency window hammer in his hand. "Xunfang, stop!"
The masked man's eyes were filled with hatred. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! How could this disgusting body deserve that name-"
Despite his injuries, he unleashed tremendous strength, rolling over to pin Chen Renping down. He snatched the emergency hammer away with one hand and smashed it into Chen Renping's face.
The masked man clearly resented Chen Renping for calling out "Xunfang" over and over. He discarded the emergency hammer, raised the knife in both hands, and stabbed down...
"Die! Die! I killed you once, and I can kill you again!!"
Chen Renping struggled to seize the masked man's hands, but he still couldn't stop the knife's tip from pressing down inch by inch!
The instant Xunfang said those words, Su Cheng understood something.
The situation was urgent. Ignoring the pain in her arm, she kicked the gun farther away again.
The gun was actually the most powerful weapon, but she didn't know how to use it. Firing blindly might only injure herself or her teammate.
She hooked her arm around the masked man's neck from behind, giving Chen Renping a moment to breathe. He immediately seized the masked man's wrist.
But before Chen Renping could wrest the knife away, the masked man threw himself backward, slamming hard into Su Cheng. She took the opportunity to swiftly pull the dagger from his right shoulder.
As he thrust his knife at Su Cheng, she drove her dagger into his neck first.
The dagger pierced an artery, and a jet of blood sprayed across Su Cheng's face.
The masked man's movements instantly lost their strength. Su Cheng immediately lunged back and pinned him down, pulling out the dagger in her hand. Blood sprayed onto the carriage's ceiling and walls.
Without any change in expression, Su Cheng held the dagger and plunged it viciously into his heart again.
Squelch.
The blade pierced flesh.
Blood seeped from the edges of the mask. His body twitched a few times, then went still...
But the dagger still didn't stop, plunging in and out over and over...
As though an outer shell were being peeled away, their surroundings turned gray from end to end. Only the bright red blood never faded amid the gloom.
Su Cheng seemed caught in some obsession. Even though the masked man had stopped breathing, she still gripped the dagger and mechanically stabbed him again and again. Her eyes were vicious and hateful, and her hands, face, hair, and dress were covered in blood...
"You ruined me, you ruined me, you ruined me..."