“What were you planning to say just now? Until we get to the bottom of this, nobody is leaving this train.”
Chen Renping gave a bitter laugh. “Xun Fang is right. I am indeed the security inspector from the murder case three years ago.”
Clenching his hands in resentment, he lowered his head guiltily. “At the time, my mind was entirely consumed by my wife’s cancer diagnosis. If I had been just a little more rigorous back then, could I have caught the contraband he was carrying…”
“After the incident happened, a strange number called my cell phone. As long as I was willing to testify in court to identify the killer, I would receive a million in reward money.”
Su Cheng frowned. “You did it for the money…”
Chen Renping nodded, his eyes and brows weathered with age. “Yes, I went to court to identify the killer for the money. That person didn’t lie to me either—an extra million appeared in my account.”
“With that money, I could give my wife the best treatment… But two years later, she still couldn’t pull through.”
“For the past three years, I’ve been having nightmares. I dream of those dead passengers interrogating me in my dreams… Their names echo in my head over and over again.”
Burying his hands in his hair, Chen Renping continued, “So on the anniversary of their deaths, I came to the station and somehow ended up boarding this train… I figure the rest of you ended up on here in that same hazy, confused state.”
Su Cheng: “Actually, you couldn’t be certain whether the person you identified was the real killer?”
“Correct.”
Recalling the events of that day, pain flickered deep within Chen Renping’s eyes. “Although his build was very similar, I suspect that the man I identified was a scapegoat!”
“After my wife died, I used the remaining money to track down the person who called me back then… I only found out that the person shared the surname Lin—the same surname as the killer, Lin Jie—and then the trail went cold.”
Su Cheng furrowed her brows slightly. It seemed the killer’s family background was quite affluent, likely the wealthy and powerful type capable of finding a scapegoat even for a massive murder case like this.
“Then could it be… the killer is right here on the train…”
Chen Renping’s body jerked as he looked earnestly at Su Cheng. “I thought so too, but nobody fits the description…”
Su Cheng lowered her voice. “Does that youth sitting by the restroom look like him?”
Chen Renping said with absolute certainty, “No. His build is even less like the scapegoat I identified back then than anyone else.”
Su Cheng fell into deep thought. Among the group, a series of the youth’s actions were highly suspicious.
Yet Chen Renping’s absolute certainty left her feeling somewhat unsure.
Su Cheng began to suspect all the surviving males. The boy among the couple didn’t fit the profile by temperament, but what about the young man who had been playing games next to the elderly grandmother earlier…
The gaming boy maintained an extremely low presence, always hiding among the crowd just like Su Cheng.
Could it be that while Su Cheng was observing others in secret, someone else was observing her as well?
The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
However, Chen Renping quickly dismissed Su Cheng’s idea. “None of them look like him. I’ve observed them; none of the ones of the right age match.”
It appeared this killer was exceptionally adept at hiding and disguising himself.
Following three consecutive deaths, the seats were soaked in blood, and a thick, heavy scent of iron filled the carriage.
Su Cheng got up and walked toward the three corpses.
The ghost seemed unusually fond of splitting human bodies into two halves. Was there a reason for this?
By now, no one was crying anymore. The remaining passengers had changed seats, sitting tightly huddled together with ashen faces like lambs waiting to be slaughtered, completely devoid of any capacity to resist the impending danger.
The youth paid no attention to Su Cheng as she walked over to inspect, continuing to stare self-absorbedly out the window.
Xun Fang wasn’t among them—had she gone to the restroom?
Su Cheng approached the passengers and asked, “Since you were sitting so close, did anything strange happen at the time?”
The headphone girl bit her lip. “I felt freezing cold at the time, just like being inside a walk-in freezer…”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Could it be because that thing was close by…”
“That was close… If it had been just a bit different, would we have been the ones who died…”
A startled scream echoed from the restroom: “Ah!”
Xun Fang came running out of the interior in a panic.
This was the first time Xun Fang had ever appeared this flustered. Pointing toward the restroom, her lips moved, but no sound came out—she seemed completely robbed of speech by sheer terror.
As Xun Fang rushed past Su Cheng, she shoved her blindly out of the way in her panicked scramble and squeezed in among the passengers.
Is there something in the restroom?
Vigilantly staring at the restroom and watching out for anything emerging from inside, Su Cheng reached into her pocket for the Soul-Guiding Needle. Just as she did, a heavy force slammed fiercely into her.
Staggering back a few steps, Su Cheng stepped across the threshold with one foot, and the door slammed shut with a heavy bang.
Damn it!
Cursing inwardly, Su Cheng pushed hard against the door, only to find someone blocking it from the outside to prevent it from opening.
At that moment, everything became crystal clear.
Xun Fang and the youth had teamed up to set her up.
Xun Fang had feigned an accidental shove to direct her attention toward the restroom, while the youth had covertly moved in to lock her inside.
When on earth did these two collude with each other?
“What are you two doing?”
From behind the door, Su Cheng heard Chen Renping’s voice.
“Why doesn’t the ghost kill the two of you? You’re accomplices…”
Xun Fang was arguing sophistically.
Rumble, rumble—
Bzzzt.
The lights went completely dark, and the train entered the tunnel once again.
Was this Xun Fang and the youth’s objective?
To isolate her and let the ghost target her this time?
Su Cheng sneered. They certainly calculated a clever scheme.
In the darkness, however, the mirror surface was bizarrely refracting a faint light originating from God knows where.
Su Cheng’s Soul-Guiding Needle was still pointing straight at her.
Slowing her breathing, she clutched her dagger and crept step by step toward the mirror.
The mirror reflected her.
And perched upon her shoulder was a long-haired, red-skirted female ghost with a crooked neck…
Chilliness crept down Su Cheng’s neck, blanketing her entire back as the ghost’s sub-zero temperature infected her skin.
Gripping her dagger tight, she felt no murderous intent—only bone-chilling cold—and the answer clicked in her mind:
“Is—Is that you?”
“Mu Ling?”
The female ghost slowly raised her head, revealing a lifeless face amidst her shroud of black hair.
Her eyes were rolled back, and the bright red knife scar on her neck was still seeping blood, staining her original yellow dress…
The visual shock of confronting a supernatural entity made Su Cheng’s heart flutter. Swallowing hard, she forced her weak, trembling legs to stand straight to clear her blank mind.
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
Mu Ling remained completely motionless, as if she couldn’t hear her at all.
“Click, click—”
The Soul-Guiding Needle suddenly began to spin.
“Click, click, click, click, click—”
The long needle went haywire, spinning faster and faster without any intention of stopping, as if it had malfunctioned.
The air in the washroom plummeted in temperature instantly—a cold mixed with nether-world chill, as if seeking to seep directly into human bones…
It wasn’t that the Soul-Guiding Needle was broken; another ghost had arrived.
Su Cheng’s teeth chattered as she clamped her jaw. A ball of red mist materialized in the corner of the restroom.
The malice radiating from the red mist was as sharp as piercing needles.
It was the very ghost that had been killing all along!
Mu Ling, who had been resting on Su Cheng’s shoulder just moments before, floated away. Letting out a low howl, her disheveled long hair rapidly grew and lunged like spears toward the red mist!
The red mist expanded aggressively in response, and a pair of invisible hands within the vapor savagely ripped at Mu Ling’s hair.
“Ah—!”
Mu Ling’s scalp tore as she emitted an angry shriek. More hair sprouted from the bald spots, frantically piercing toward the red mist once again.
The two ghosts entangled in combat, kicking up a gust of ghostly wind that knocked over the trash can.
The cramped space grew colder and colder. The mirror shattered, and frost crept across the walls.
Mu Ling’s form began to grow faint and translucent, whereas the red mist only dimmed slightly.
Shivering from the cold, Su Cheng felt a rising sense of urgency.
It was obvious that Mu Ling was at a disadvantage in this duel; she had to find a way to help her.
Glancing sideways via the mirror, Su Cheng spotted something stuck to her shoulder!
Reaching back, Su Cheng grabbed the yellow object—wasn’t that the talisman paper Xun Fang had distributed earlier?
Without a doubt, Xun Fang must have slipped it onto her back while shoving her earlier!
“Playing dirty, are we?!”
The fiery anger inside Su Cheng surged instantly, overpowering her fear of the supernatural and warming her body by several degrees. She crumpled the talisman paper into a ball and tossed it onto the floor.
In that brief window of time, the hands inside the red mist had grabbed Mu Ling, tangling with her black hair.
Mu Ling’s form grew thinner and thinner…
The red mist was devouring her!
Gritting her teeth, Su Cheng hurled her dagger straight toward the red mist.
Upon piercing the red mist, the dagger didn’t punch through to embed in the wall; instead, it hung suspended in mid-air as if stabbing into a solid body.
The red mist warped for a fraction of a second, and Mu Ling seized the opportunity to use her long hair to sever the red mist’s hand, quickly devouring the severed limb.
Mu Ling’s form solidified slightly. Flailing her long hair, she pressed her advantage and wrapped around the red mist…
“You’re… courting… death!”
The red mist burst forth with a potent wave of deep resentment, snapping the surrounding hair strands and causing the dagger to clatter to the ground.
“All of you… must… die… die…”
The red mist spat out blurred, angry words.
Even though the red mist lacked eyes, Su Cheng felt as though it were staring directly at her. A wave of chill washed over her back, as if she had been locked onto by some hazardous predator!
Rumble, rumble, rumble—
The red mist abruptly dissipated.
Casting one last glance at Su Cheng, Mu Ling vanished right along with it.
The wooden bead bracelet materialized on Su Cheng’s wrist out of nowhere, flashing with a red light that grew searingly hot for a split second.
“Bzzzt.”
The lights flickered back on.
The washroom returned to tranquility. Aside from the scattered debris and shattered mirror, it looked as though nothing had happened at all.
Su Cheng picked up the crumpled yellow talisman paper from the floor.
The ghost was gone.
Turning her gaze toward the door, Su Cheng drew her chainsaw. Now, it was her turn to return the “courtesy.”
Pulling its cord, the chainsaw revved to life with a buzzing vibration.
With a powerful bang, Su Cheng kicked the door wide open.
Amidst everyone’s stunned silence, chainsaw in hand, she marched straight toward the youth without a word and slashed downward.
“Y-You!”
Panicking, the youth tumbled backward out of his seat.
The chainsaw bit into the seat, leaving a deep, gaping gash!
Su Cheng planted a kick squarely on the youth’s head. “Trying to ambush me?”
Spitting out a mouthful of blood, pinned beneath Su Cheng’s boot as she heavily pressed down on his chest, the youth glared hatefully at Su Cheng, a look of bitter resentment in his eyes as he glanced at the still-buzzing chainsaw.
“What are you glaring at? Unconvinced, are you?”
Wielding the chainsaw, Su Cheng looked ready to carve up his face!
The remaining passengers were thoroughly terrified by Su Cheng’s sudden frenzy, freezing in place and not daring to step forward to intervene.
With dilated pupils and all color drained from his face, the youth screamed, “Wait!”
Su Cheng sneered. “I thought you weren’t afraid to die!”
Pulling back the chainsaw, Su Cheng delivered kick after kick.
“Ah—”
Crack went the sound of shattering bone.
Su Cheng crushed his kneecap.
As for how many ribs were broken in his chest, there was no telling.
Spitting out a mixture of blood foam and broken teeth, hiding all the venomous malice deep within his eyes, the youth collapsed miserably onto the aisle floor.
Su Cheng hadn’t acted earlier primarily out of concern that it might disrupt the collection of side-quest intelligence, but now that someone had plotted against her right to her face…
Continuing to swallow it would turn her into a doormat!
“Weren’t you very protective of your suitcase?”
Realizing what Su Cheng was about to do, the youth shook his head in panic. “N-No…”
Amidst his desperate pleas, the black suitcase was yanked forward, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
The suitcase featured a combination lock, but Su Cheng had a chainsaw.
With a brutal slash of the chainsaw, the suitcase burst open, and the moment it split apart, wisps of a rotting stench drifted outward…
Su Cheng took half a step back, fighting down a wave of nausea.
So the rotting stench she had been smelling all along originated from this!
No wonder the youth insisted on sitting next to the restroom: firstly, to guard the luggage rack, and secondly, to use the restroom’s stench to mask the foul odor emanating from inside the box.
The suitcase cracked open entirely, revealing a half-skull, arms, and thighs sealed tightly beneath layers of plastic wrap… body parts, piece by piece!
Dismembered corpse!
Su Cheng was startled.
“Ah…”
The surrounding passengers let out low gasps of shock.
With his secret exposed publicly in front of everyone, facing the myriad gazes fixed upon him, the youth roared at the top of his lungs, “Why did you open it?!”
Seemingly subjected to extreme psychological trauma, he stood up as if completely uninjured and pulled out a boning knife hidden beneath his seat cushion.
He had endured all those heavy blows earlier without breaking…
Yet exposing his secret was what drove him to pull a knife and strike back?
Transforming as if into a completely different person, the youth lunged at Su Cheng with the blade. He appeared to have trained in professional combat techniques, dodging Su Cheng’s chainsaw with precise, well-timed maneuvers on multiple occasions.
However, Su Cheng was no pushover either. Leaving aside her trials through two previous worlds, her physical conditioning had upgraded significantly.
Moreover, following her genetic lock breakthrough, her enhanced five senses made the youth’s movements appear visibly slowed down in her eyes.
Su Cheng brought her chainsaw down on the youth’s thigh, kicked away his knife, and swiftly brought an end to this brief counter-attack.
Su Cheng confiscated the boning knife that had clattered to the floor.
[Boning Knife (Enchanted Version): Supernatural weapon category. Effect: Imbued with resentment and karma, possesses a natural deterrent effect against ordinary ghosts. Weight: 0.15kg]
It seemed this boning knife was the youth’s murder weapon.
“Ah…”
Crying out in agony, the youth collapsed onto the aisle floor, clutching his bleeding thigh and finally forced into complete obedience.
Su Cheng: “What’s your name?”
The youth stayed silent.
Stepping directly onto his wound, Su Cheng ground her heel down.
“He Lie!” he squeezed out through gritted teeth, entirely stripping away his previous aloof and melancholy persona.
“Who is in the suitcase?”
Staring intently at him, Su Cheng had originally assumed that the red-mist female ghost who kept killing people was, like Mu Ling, simply a passenger who had died in the old case.
Yet, seeing He Lie’s box of dismembered remains, she overturned that previous hypothesis.
Perhaps the red-mist female ghost who kept killing people was actually this female corpse itself! That explained why Mu Ling held such exceptionally intense hostility toward her.
She wasn’t a passenger who had died on the train back then, but rather someone He Lie had smuggled aboard!
Su Cheng felt quite confident in this deduction, though she required further intelligence to confirm it.
When the conversation shifted to matters concerning the female corpse, the youth fell silent once more.
No matter how Su Cheng ground her heel into his wound, refusing to utter a single syllable despite shaking from the pain, his eyes remained filled with a venomous, toxic hatred.
“Even if you don’t talk, I’ll figure it out sooner or later.”
With this issue settled, it was time to move on to the next one.
Turning her head around, Su Cheng fixed her gaze upon the nervous figure of Xun Fang.