From Su Cheng’s angle, she could just see Qu Yutong walking slowly toward He Zhou. The red mist on her body faded away, revealing her pale, ghastly face.
She wore a red slip dress, and her neck, arms, calves, and ankles were all covered in black cracks, resembling a shattered body barely pieced and glued together.
“Xiaozhou…”
Qu Yutong walked very slowly, as if her limbs were uncoordinated, advancing in a twisted posture.
The cuts on her body were still bleeding, exceptionally horrifying…
She was far more terrifying and real than any female ghost Su Cheng had ever seen in horror movies.
He Zhou’s pupils shrank violently. “Yutong… I-I’m sorry.”
“Xiaozhou… so painful… so painful…”
“So painful… so painful…”
Qu Yutong finally arrived step by step by He Zhou’s side. Wrapping her arms around him, she nuzzled her face against his.
They looked like an intimate, sweet couple locked in a loving embrace…
If one ignored He Zhou’s panic-stricken face and the blood dripping from the female ghost onto his body, that is.
“Yutong, I was wrong… I shouldn’t have listened to He Lie…”
“I wasn’t wrong! Both He Zhou and I wanted you, and splitting you in half was the only way to make it fair!”
“Yutong, spare me. After all, we once loved each other; I’ll atone for my sins properly from now on…”
“Yutong, He Zhou and I just brought you back to our hometown this time, and we were going to split your time evenly for the wedding! I love you…”
He Zhou and He Lie switched back and forth—one pleading, the other morbidly and fanatically obsessed.
Qu Yutong laughed with a chilling, demonic charm. “Hehehehe…”
The sharp laughter made one’s hair stand on end.
Caressing He Zhou’s body, she used her sharp red nails to claw out his eyeball. Amidst He Zhou’s shrieks, she curled her red lips high. “Then let’s stay together forever.”
Plucking out He Zhou’s eyeball, she chewed it inside her mouth. “So bitter, He Zhou. Your eyeball isn’t very delicious.”
“Chew, chew, chew… Your skin is so thick, a bit hard to chew. But don’t worry, I’ll eat all of it up…”
“Rip—click—”
He Zhou’s arm was yanked off effortlessly like pulling a radish from the dirt, emitting the “click” sound of bones separating…
“Ahhhh!”
Opening her mouth to reveal sharp fangs, Qu Yutong ate the arm bite by bite into her stomach. Licking away the blood stained at the corners of her lips, she whispered in a hollow voice, “Xiaozhou’s blood tastes fishy, but I like it very much…”
Watching this entire scene, Su Cheng couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat and averted her eyes.
He Zhou’s agonizing screams and pleas grew faint, and even his breathing stopped.
The sound of bones being chewed slowly ceased.
Taking a quick peek, Su Cheng saw that after a few minutes, Qu Yutong was merely licking her lips in satiated aftertaste.
On the floor were a miserable mess of blood and shattered bones, and even the head had been eaten…
Ugh…
The foul stench and blood-iron odor inside the carriage blended together. Clutching her stomach, Su Cheng felt an intense urge to vomit.
Suddenly, Su Cheng snapped to her senses: 30 seconds had already passed—why was the train still traveling inside the tunnel?
Had this mechanism been broken…?
Since Qu Yutong had already completed her revenge, why hadn’t she dissipated or left…?
With a deeply furrowed brow, a bad premonition suddenly welled up in Su Cheng’s heart. Her entire body tensed, stricken with an inexplicable, oppressive, and jittery tension.
Sensing something, she abruptly raised her head.
Right into Qu Yutong’s face, staring from the ceiling.
When did she get up there?!
Like a reptile, she clung to the ceiling, her four limbs bent at odd angles like a spider’s legs. Her long hair hung downward to obscure her face, yet it couldn’t hide her eyes brimming with pure malice!
“Your turn…”
!
Qu Yutong wasn’t just targeting her—there were other passengers, too.
Some passengers failed to dodge the red thread in time, resulting in an extra cut across their necks. Pushed along by the panic of those around them, their heads tumbled to the floor… The surviving souls of the dead passengers were swallowed up by the red mist the moment they left their bodies.
Lingering terror gripping her, Su Cheng backed away continuously, keeping her eyes locked on the entity’s movements. Swallowing hard, she demanded, “You’ve already had your revenge, why are you still killing people?!”
Qu Yutong tilted her head slightly and burst into laughter. “Hehehehehe…”
Locking onto Su Cheng with vicious malice, she hissed, “I’m going to eat everyone…”
Qu Yutong’s eyes were flooded with bloodthirsty desire. After devouring He Zhou, her soul-body had grown even more condensed, and the red mist swirling around her had grown denser… She seemed stronger!
She had completely lost all human rationality…
The red vines inside the carriage continued to spread and grow. Unaware passengers were pierced right through by the thin tips of the roots, and the blood pouring out became nourishment for the vines…
Su Cheng swung her dagger to hack apart a root tip that attempted to sneak attack her!
Relying on the dagger possessed limited utility. Su Cheng tried using the iron shovel from her bag, only to discover that ordinary weapons had a negligible effect on the root system and couldn’t even chop them through.
She dared not take out the boning knife, fearing that seeing one of the tools used to dismember her body would drive Qu Yutong into an even greater frenzy.
With no other choice, Su Cheng could only use her dagger to deal with the occasionally stabbing vine tips while staying on guard against the red threads that kept appearing out of nowhere…
Meanwhile, Qu Yutong sat upon a seat, watching everything inside the carriage quietly.
It was as if she were observing ants struggling desperately beneath her fingertips, while she stood high above, crushing them down with absolute power.
“Squelch—”
A vine pierced right into Su Cheng’s calf!
Su Cheng hacked off the vine branch. Even when severed into two pieces, the tip of the vine kept wriggling, trying to burrow inside her leg!
“Ah…”
Excruciating pain.
Gritting her teeth, Su Cheng quickly dug out the branch tip that had already burrowed in, then slashed away two other stabbing root tips.
She couldn’t keep going like this.
With her own strength, she simply couldn’t resist a malicious ghost’s attack!
Su Cheng remembered the Soul-Suppressing Nails in her pocket!
Why hadn’t Qu Yutong felt any apprehension because of them?
Clearly, she had previously bypassed Xun Fang and shifted targets to the bald man beside her precisely because of those items…
Was it because she had grown much stronger and no longer feared them…?
Cold sweat poured down Su Cheng’s skin.
Seeming tired of playing, Qu Yutong stood up expressionlessly and teleported right in front of Su Cheng.
A chill spread from Su Cheng’s heels to her entire body, and she trembled uncontrollably!
Like a weak animal confronting a formidable apex predator, genuine terror arose from the bottom of her heart, rendering her incapable of even uttering a plea for mercy…
This was the overwhelming pressure of a malicious ghost!
Qu Yutong reached out her sharp hand. The moment her blade-like fingernails touched Su Cheng’s neck, they stopped abruptly.
A pale, chilling hand appeared on her shoulder.
It was Mu Ling.
The 15 passenger ghosts and Chen Renping had all arrived!
Staring in unison at Qu Yutong, both sides locked into a stalemate.
The bone-chilling cold on Su Cheng’s body abruptly receded, and she hurriedly backed away to dodge the fingernails at her neck.
Qu Yutong gripped Mu Ling’s hand that held her shoulder, wisps of black smoke rising into the air. “I’ll just eat you all together…”
Mu Ling’s form grew two shades fainter.
Whipping her long hair, she entangled and mixed with the red mist.
The remaining passenger ghosts swarmed forward, throwing themselves into the fray…
Yet even facing 16 opponents alone, Qu Yutong showed not a shred of fear. The red mist surged wildly, and the two sides fought evenly, trading blows back and forth…
Su Cheng didn’t let her guard down—Qu Yutong was simply too powerful; she had to do something more!
Crouching low, she crept stealthily to the seat containing He Lie’s scattered bone fragments. Slashing through layers of vines with her dagger, she dug out the hidden suitcase beneath.
The reek of rotting meat assaulted her nasal passages directly.
Holding her breath, Su Cheng rapidly tore apart the layers of sealed plastic wrap.
The more she unraveled it, the stronger the stench grew…
Every inhalation was a torture to her nasal cavity.
The head was the easiest to find, but there was only half of it…
The murderer had pursued absolute fairness: half a head strictly divided along the center line, with the side’s brain matter and brain tissue already decomposed, and yellowish-red slimy fluid smearing onto Su Cheng’s hands…
“Ugh…”
So disgusting…
Dry heaving, Su Cheng continued tearing open the plastic wrap to rummage through it…
“Is this the thigh part…?”
Looking at a lump of blackened rotten meat with a white bone fragment stuck in the middle, Su Cheng wondered if it was an arm instead.
Her fingertips trembling as they brushed against the foul-smelling fluids, she continued rummaging without stopping for a second.
“This is the left hand!”
Su Cheng pulled out the left palm.
The severed palm was stiff and covered in postmortem lividity, feeling exceptionally cold in her grip…
Dropping it quickly, she found the left sole of the foot among the film-wrapped corpse chunks…
What about the right side?
Where was the right half of the body?
Wielding her dagger, Su Cheng slashed through the vines on the luggage rack, recalling He Zhou’s expression when she had previously touched those boxes…
In a flash of inspiration, she selected a white suitcase.
Dragging it down to smash open the lock, she indeed found the other half of the body: half a skull separated from the center, with the remaining limbs pushed together.
These two brothers really were something—each taking half, one black and one white.
Swiftly locating the other half of the hands and feet among the pile of corpse parts, Su Cheng unwrapped the surrounding plastic wrap.
Glancing back, she saw the passenger ghosts swarming all over Qu Yutong, biting and tearing at her, while the red mist had already dyed the passenger ghosts half-red…
Assembling Qu Yutong’s head halves together, the corpse’s originally closed eyes flew open wide, the chaotic, gloomy pupils staring unblinkingly!
…
A chill washed down Su Cheng’s spine. Hastily pulling out the Soul-Suppressing Nails and Soul-Suppressing Hammer from her pockets, she didn’t dare look into the corpse’s eyes any longer, aligning an iron nail precisely with the space between its eyebrows.
“Tap, tap…”
Holding the iron nail steady with one hand, Su Cheng hammered it with the other.
The soul-suppressing nail drove smoothly right into the corpse’s brow, meeting virtually zero resistance.
“Ah—!”
Su Cheng heard Qu Yutong’s shrill scream!
Without turning to look at the battlefield, Su Cheng continued hammering the iron nails sequentially into the corpse’s palms, the soles of its feet… and finally, into its decayed heart!
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Qu Yutong shrieked in even greater agony.
Inside the suitcase, her shattered corpse parts moved and pieced themselves back together autonomously, assembling into a complete torso in sequence.
The corpse’s previously lifeless eyes were stained with resentment and unwillingness. Screaming toward Su Cheng, she struggled as if bound by something, unable to lurch forward!
Locked into the white suitcase in a twisted posture, the corpse shrieked, “No!——”
“Click.”
A jade pendant bounced out of the suitcase.
The damaged lock on the suitcase automatically clicked shut, turning the white suitcase into a blood-red one.
Silence returned entirely.
Catching her breath, Su Cheng collapsed onto the floor.
When she picked up the jade pendant, her hands were still trembling slightly…
It was the other half of the Double-Fish Jade Pendant.
After merging the two pieces of jade, she placed them into a storage slot:
[Double-Fish Jade Pendant: Supernatural weapon category. Effect: Long-term wear warms and nurtures the body, exerts a deterrent effect on malicious ghosts and below, and neutralizes spiritual attacks from malicious ghosts and below. Weight: 0.04 kg]
Su Cheng thought silently: Truly a good item.
[Ding ~ Side quest “The Redundant One” completed. Rewarded 800 points; settlement will occur upon leaving the instance.]
Finally, it was over.
Closing her eyes, Su Cheng negated her previous thought.
No, until she got off the train, it wasn’t over.
Raising her head, she looked at the ghost passengers, who had thinned to a semi-transparent state. “Thank you.”
If they hadn’t stepped in just then, even with the Soul-Suppressing Nails, Su Cheng would never have found the opening to drive them into Qu Yutong’s corpse.
Chen Renping walked over and shook his head. “We helped you to help ourselves.”
Continuing his explanation, he said, “After I died, I learned that during the three years after the passengers died, no ghost-inflicted murder cases ever occurred. They hadn’t harmed ordinary people; they were simply waiting for the right moment for revenge.”
“Until He Lie brought the red-mist female ghost onto the train, her resentment infected the other souls on board. But her power wasn’t this strong when she first boarded—she grew this way because she devoured living souls.”
“After killing every living person inside the carriage, her next target would have been devouring all the ghost passengers…”
“She wanted to completely control the carriage and head out to harm even more people…”
Recalling Qu Yutong’s savage appearance, Su Cheng realized she had been corrupted by resentment, turning into a mindless malicious ghost.
The red mist infecting the passenger ghosts was her very resentment…
Sighing, Chen Renping said, “Also, Mu Ling didn’t want to harm you; she simply couldn’t control herself.”
Raising her head, Su Cheng looked at Mu Ling, who was still cowering and keeping her head down at the very back. She appeared to be the most severely injured, her semi-transparent form looking as though it might dissipate at any second…
“…Thank you for just now.”
Mu Ling tilted her head, and realizing Su Cheng was speaking to her, gave a slight, faint shake of her head.
Pointing toward the train door appearing on the right, Chen Renping said, “Get ready to get off.”
His gaze landed on the red suitcase. “We will guard this suitcase until we dissipate.”
Looking at Chen Renping, who had completely lost his human breath, Su Cheng opened her mouth to speak, hesitating. “You…”
As if reading her mind, Chen Renping offered a faint smile. “After my wife died, I had nothing left to attach myself to. Because of the mistake I made back then, I always felt guilt and indebtedness; staying here is my destined fate to atone.”
[Tick-tock, tick-tock ~ Dear passengers, please note that the train you are riding has arrived at its destination. Please pack your belongings…]
The long-awaited broadcast sound finally chimed.
Carrying the headphone girl, who had been frightened into fainting, Su Cheng walked toward the opened train door. The other living passengers had all died—body and soul—at the hands of the red-mist female ghost… They were the sole two survivors of this journey.
The train doors slid open, and Su Cheng carried the girl off the train.
Reaching the platform, she settled the still-unconscious girl onto the ground beside her.
Turning back, she saw the 15 ghosts inside the train windows waving goodbye to her.
They each pulled off a standard smile, the stiffness of their faces rendering the expression bizarrely creepy…
Even knowing they harbored no malice, Su Cheng still found it hard not to break out in goosebumps.
Wait, 15?
Including Chen Renping, shouldn’t there be 16?
Author’s Note: Revised~ Previously, the red-mist female ghost was referred to by a general title, which has now been updated to her real name.