The two of them headed back in the direction of the train.
At that moment, the train tracks were extremely quiet; it seemed that it would still be some time before the train arrived. Although the clock in the station had stopped and they couldn’t check the time, according to the timetable they saw, the interval between trains wasn’t more than half an hour.
In short, they just had to wait a while.
Neither of them spoke. In the silent station, only the sound of dripping water and their footsteps resounded in the emptiness.
All of a sudden, the scent of fresh blood reached them in a wave.
Xiao Lan looked in the direction of the smell and realised that it was coming from the tracks. In the light of the flashlight, they saw a puddle of blood with body parts in it. The body parts still had pieces of clothes on them, and blood and bits of flesh were splattered everywhere, dyeing the surroundings with specks of blood.
It looked like the scene of a suicide on the tracks.
These were clearly traces left by a living person. The only living people in this game seemed to be the players. In a normal situation, players wouldn’t get so depressed that they would lie down on the rails, so this person… had been ensnared?
When examining the surrounding environment, Xiao Lan noticed that this place was extremely familiar. “This seems to be where we saw the newspaper and that old man in a suit.”
Luo nodded. “Mn, the place where we saw the newspaper is just two meters up ahead.”
The flashlight shifted. Sure enough, they saw the chair where they had met the old man.
But the newspaper and ticket that had originally been placed on the seat had disappeared without a trace, and the meticulously dressed old man was gone as well.
The new bloodstained area also just happened to be in front of where the old man had been sitting. When Xiao Lan walked a little closer, he finally discovered a trace of the ticket among the minced meat. The ticket was already dyed red with blood and was lying quietly on the ground.
It turned out that this was the consequences of taking the old man’s train ticket. Looking at the miserable situation on the ground, Xiao Lan felt his body ache a little.
“You guys… absolutely must not board the train ah…” There was a voice in the distance.
It was another warning for players not to board the train.
Xiao Lan lifted his head to look, and saw a girl wearing a short red dress. The girl’s voice was soft and she was watching them from where she was hiding timidly behind a pillar. Looking at her pale skin, it was clear that this wasn’t a living child either.
Xiao Lan spoke to her and tried to obtain some information from her. “Little friend, can you tell me why?”
“Because…” The girl opened her mouth and said a few words, but the train entered the station right at that moment. The rumble of wheels and the screech on the tracks drowned out her voice.
After a while, the train stopped and the doors slowly opened. The lights in the train lit up the pitch-black platform and instantly made it a little brighter.
“Oh —” The little girl’s expression, however, instantly turned alarmed. She stared at the train and backed away, her mouth repeatedly saying, “Disturbed, disturbed… Sorry, sorry…”
After that, without waiting for Xiao Lan to ask again, the girl disappeared from sight.
Xiao Lan turned his head and looked suspiciously at the train.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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The girl had probably seen this man just now, which was why she left in a panic.
The man’s gaze swept over Xiao Lan and Luo. There was no fluctuation in his eyes, which carried a deep sense of death, as if he was looking at two corpses. He looked quietly at them like that for a while, then turned his gaze away as he walked to the front of the train.
After a few steps, this man’s figure disappeared into thin air.
Seeing the man disappear, Xiao Lan let out a quiet sigh of relief. When he met the man’s eyes for an instant just now, he had felt a hair-raising pressure. His battle instincts told him that this man was extremely dangerous. It was a sense of danger that was far more intense than what he had felt from any of the other bosses he had faced before.
“Sir, do you still want to board the train?” Luo quietly asked.
Xiao Lan stared at the silent and wide-open doors, then gritted his teeth before he said, “Let’s board. If not, we’ll definitely miss something.”
After all, they hadn’t seen this man when they searched the train previously. Was his appearance a declaration that something had already changed on the train?
The two boarded the train once more. With a beep of the buzzer, the doors closed and the train left the station.
This time, they still didn’t see anyone in the train. The complete emptiness at first glance seemed no different from before.
Xiao Lan and Luo continued forward while also paying attention to any movement around them.
Suddenly, Xiao Lan stopped walking and looked to his right.
As the train forged ahead, the grab straps that had nothing hanging from them should be swaying rhythmically, but they were currently slanting to the right, like someone was pulling on them, and swaying irregularly.
However, no signs of anyone could be seen, either with the naked eye or in the reflection on the glass.
Xiao Lan carefully avoided this row of straps and continued to the other end.
A small patch of condensation suddenly appeared on a window up ahead, like someone had puffed onto the glass. After that, handwriting appeared in a place where not a soul was to be seen. A dash, a stroke, then many more, finally formed the words: 【Don’t get out at the station】.
The handwriting was delicate and pretty, and looked like it had been written by a woman.
Now this was interesting. The ghosts on the platform constantly warned players not to board the train, while the ghosts in the train opposed them with equal measure, warning players not to get out at the station.
Could this be the meaning of the prompt’s ‘come… this side…’? To make the players choose between the platform and the train?
As for the cost of choosing wrongly, naturally, it was being unable to clear the game.
When contemplating the choices, one was a train of the dead that had once been in a major accident and the other was a strange platform where danger lurked everywhere; both sides didn’t seem safe.
After entering a new carriage, an object that had been placed on one row of seats drew Xiao Lan’s gaze.
It was a large bouquet of white chrysanthemums bundled up in white wrapping paper.
Generally, white chrysanthemums were only used when offering sacrifices to the deceased, to convey grief for the dead. Next to the flowers rested something that was rolled up and tied with a ribbon; it looked like a newspaper.
Xiao Lan picked up the newspaper and unrolled it to discover that it was a newspaper cutting:
“Xth of X(month), 23:44, there was a subway station explosion in the city. Three explosions occurred within 15 minutes of each other and caused a large fire. As of the time of publication, there have been 344 deaths, and 35 of the 67 who are being treated in the hospital are staff members with severe injuries.
Following the accident, the fire department and hospital went to assist. Currently, the police are carrying out an investigation into the cause of the accident.”
An image was also attached to the report. Right in the middle was a subway station that had already been razed to the ground. It was hard to discern what it looked like originally.
It turned out that an accident had also occurred at the station! Moreover, the death toll was far greater than for the train accident reported in the news.
Xiao Lan looked at the newspaper in his hands and felt that it was kind of weird.
Although no year was given for this newspaper clipping, the quality and texture of the paper both felt newer; it wasn’t like the yellow and brittle newspaper they had seen on the platform which carried traces of the years.
This had probably been issued in recent times. Why would it suddenly appear in this environment that was in a nineties or eighties style?
The clues they had found in the station and train were now similarly indicating that an accident had occurred with the other party and had caused a great number of casualties.
The platform was saying, You guys shouldn’t mix with them ah, the train is full of dead people!
Conversely, the train was saying, Don’t listen to their bullshit, the station is actually also full of dead people!
The only difference was the era in which the accidents happened. Could it be that this was two groups of ghosts from different times and space? They were in an accident at the same station at 23:44 of different years, then were put together by the Advent World?
Xiao Lan made a random guess.
Then, if both sides were all dead people, which one was considered the right side?
Choosing a side between two groups of ghosts was just choosing between two deaths…
“Sir, look at this.” Luo’s voice interrupted Xiao Lan’s train of thought.
Xiao Lan looked over at Luo and saw that he was holding a wrapped book. The packaging was folded back and looked like it was about to fall off.
Xiao Lan easily accepted it and tore away the tattered wrapping. As a result, he directly saw the big block letters ‘Aniki no Himitsu’ on the cover page. The font was extremely dazzling, and the colours were vivid and contained a sultry and coquettish spirit. Paired with the images of muscular men, it was a little painful on the eyes.
Oh, hey, this was a pretty explicit adult magazine about male homosexuality.
Xiao Lan gathered his courage and flipped through it.
“Yi…” Three seconds later, he closed the magazine, feeling like his eyes had been offended. Although he didn’t care about sexuality, this content was still too… What sort of person would bring this type of magazine to a subway station ah?!!
Can’t you read it at home?!?!
In the confined and unoccupied subway carriage at that moment, two men stared at an adult magazine and sank into silence.
Only the train continued to rumble on.
After a while.
Meeting Xiao Lan’s indescribable and embarrassed gaze, Luo broke the silence. “This… is something I found between the cracks of the seats. Nothing like this appeared before.”
There was also some rare awkwardness in Luo’s tone. He also didn’t expect there to be such stimulating content under the respectable packaging.
It had to be said that human literature truly was many and varied ah.
It was still humans who knew how to have fun.
Xiao Lan picked the magazine up with two fingers and held it further away from him. In any case, however, this thing was a clue, so it still couldn’t be discarded.
He reluctantly scrutinised the cover, and in the midst of his disdain, finally discovered a problem.
This magazine had been published in recent years. Regardless whether it was the characters’ hairstyles, their scanty clothes, or the environment in the photos, they didn’t appear to be from the nineties.
A magazine like this was a little incompatible with the whole old-fashioned train.
“Give it to me ba.” Luo reached out and took the magazine. Although he also disdained it, it was still better for him to hold this thing than if it was left with Xiao Lan.
Xiao Lan didn’t refuse, and they proceeded onwards, tacitly agreeing to forget this matter.
The author has something to say:
Last night, I kept thinking about ‘Serving you is my honour and privilege.’ This sentence is just too suitable for NSFW text.
I’m helpless since I live in Jinjiang where only the neck and above can be written.
I also don’t want limited edition silver little bracelets and uncle policeman’s special dropoff taxi service QAQ…
Baobao Notes
About the aniki thing… I don’t know either… For those who know anime and manga, we all know aniki is a very respectful term for older brothers or bosses in gangs and etc. But I also found out that aniki is a nickname for a gay pornstar. Also, for some reason, China (?) seems to use 兄贵(Aniki) to refer to bara men.
Jules: I hate that I know this, but it might have to do with this
…the plot is confusing me….,
Thanks for the chapter~
D..did the ghosts of the train give them a gay porn book… as a peace offering? like “see! We accept your relationship! We aren’t like those old people, join us!” XD
JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAA
Qué excelente interpretación!!, 🤣🤣🤣
wheezing helplessly right now- * idk why… but why does this make sense somehow…?
Welp— I meant to make this my own comment
I like that the clues are left in such a way that they’d be easy for men to discard haha. I guess they have to decide which era they’re “actually” in to figure out which side they should stay on? And the soot does kind of imply that it’s the station that burned. Or there’s some other, third option they’ll discover
Thank you so much for translating! <3
I guess Luo can analyze the magazine to discover what he will have to do in the fut- I mean, to search for clues
Thank you for the chapter!!! ❤️❤️
So… we will just have crab parties later, eh? D:
Thx for the ch (≧▽≦)/ I’m a bit confused but well, that’s normal xD
“Xiao Lan picked the magazine up with two fingers and held it further away from him.” – I laughed at this. I can vividly imagine the look on his face while trying to keep contact with the thing to a minimum. XD Oh, and now that Luo kept the magazine it’s bound to be discovered by another player (the girl probably), and they’ll think XL and Luo are into “that”… XD
The station being burned was obvious from the soot. The two different time periods in which the accidents happened are totally confusing though. This instance seems to have a ton of mysteries.
Oh so it has to do with what time stamp they are in, for example at the station he said the turn stile might be for tickets from different eras, so maybe they have to find the correct era, like what if they aren’t in the pass or the so called future, and it’s another time stamp
thanks for the chapter <3
I followed Jules’ link and went down a rabbit hole I never wanted to experience
i wanted to check out the link but it says “closed wiki”…. guess i’ll stay in the questioning section…
I copied the link address and it said Sanshin of Fairy Philosophy. I think it talks about wrestling (?)
What rabbit hole was it? The link sent me to a closed wiki page T T
Me too T T
Adult magazine?? This is fate telling you two to kiss already! Haha Jk 😂😂