The eyes on his smiling face were only two long, thin slits, as if his upper and lower eyelids were glued together and couldn’t open further.
The corners of his mouth were curved so much that they reached his ears.
His flat nose almost blended into his face, except for the two nostrils.
He had slender hands and feet, and his loose clothes hung on him like they were draped over a frame of bamboo poles.
A scorched smell of burnt paper wafted into his nose.
Shen Qingcheng looked at him calmly, and even had time to think about the differences between the ghost in front of him and the train attendant.
If the train attendants were regarded as “people”, then the rough appearance of ghosts could only allow them to be considered dolls.
He wasn’t a train attendant.
After coming to this conclusion, he felt a little itchy; why did he get so close, wasn’t he aware he was ugly?
As soon as his hand, which had been in his lap, moved, another hand immediately covered it.
Shen Qingcheng looked sideways. Lu Qi, who had woken up at some point, shook his head at him.
Ok, he’d be patient and bear with it.
The stooped figure stood quietly in front of Shen Qingcheng for a while, strange smile plastered on its face, then straightened up and went elsewhere.
Once there was no longer a ghost in front of Shen Qingcheng blocking his sight, he suddenly realized that there was more than one smiling ghost like the one just now.
There were many of them, and their emaciated figures were densely packed in the car. Outside the window, the crowd of those who couldn’t squeeze in seemed endless at a glance.
They walked around in the car, and the rattling of bamboo poles rang out incessantly again and again, so engulfing it made the scalp tingle.
Other players had already woken up. They shrunk in their seats, either lowering their heads and closing their eyes to deceive themselves, or widening their eyes and covering their mouths, not even daring to take a deep breath.
Some were even afraid enough to scramble under their chairs, such as the male player who was supposed to sit last.
He lay still on the ground, the narrow space forcing him to curl into a ball as much as possible.
Da. Da. Da.
Slender legs passed in front of his eyes, wide trousers kicking up a cold breeze that chilled him to the bone.
They came towards him.
Something hard and cold pressed against his arm. The man turned his head stiffly, and found a bright red smiling face right next to him.
The other party bent over and smiled at him, under the chair, his hand clasped tightly on his arm.
Ah!
The man opened his mouth and let out a silent howl, and crawled out from under the chair.
The sound of the bamboo poles suddenly accelerated, and countless smiling ghosts swarmed the man who had climbed out.
The man was soon submerged in the shadowy ghosts.
Shen Qingcheng looked at Lu Qi, his lips opened and closed: I can’t hear his voice!
After speaking, he found that he couldn’t even hear his own voice.
He frowned and asked: What’s going on!
Lu Qi shook his head, silently: Wait for me here.
!
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.
Lf rtbbx tlr tfjv wbgf nlbifcais, ugjyyfv Oe Hl klat tlr batfg tjcv, jcv jrxfv: Qtfgf jgf sbe ublcu?
Oe Hl vlvc’a rqfjx. Lf ugjyyfv Vtfc Hlcumtfcu’r kglra jcv kjixfv ab atf ogbca gbk ab jnblv atf rwlilcu utbra.
Rba abb ojg jkjs, jcbatfg ofwjif qijsfg ktb kjr reqqbrfv ab rla ja atf yjmx klacfrrfv jii atlr jcv mbiijqrfv mbwqifafis.
She didn’t want to die, she didn’t want to be taken away by ghosts.
The woman struggled to get out of her seat, crying and begging everyone around her. She pleaded with them to save her, she didn’t want to die.
She didn’t want to die!
She saw Lin Wen, who didn’t avoid her gaze.
Yes, that person would save her, he was a good person, he would definitely save her!
But there were too many ghosts blocking them, and she couldn’t get through.
Just when the woman was almost in despair, she saw Lan Xiu’er, holding her child, and she rushed over as if she had seen her last hope.
The laughing ghost behind her had already touched her shoulder, and she held onto Lan Xiu’er like a life-saving straw, eagerly saying: Help me, please help me…
Tears kept pouring from her eyes.
Lan Xiu’er hesitated for a moment, but when her gaze reached the woman’s hand, grabbing her swaddled child, she suddenly woke up and pushed the woman away with all her might.
One was pushing, the other was clinging on, and the baby soon began to cry under the tugging.
The child’s howl was soundless, and its small body was crying to the point of twitching and trembling. From Shen Qingcheng’s perspective, he could even see the vibrating vocal cords in the little brat’s mouth.
He walked over and pulled the woman’s hand away.
The woman whose body was half submerged by the smiling ghosts immediately grabbed Shen Qingcheng’s wrist with both hands. Her eyes were red from crying, and she begged hysterically: Help me!
Shen Qingcheng was going to save her. He had already grasped his summoned silver needle in his other hand.
Lu Qi held his long knife with a single hand and slashed behind the woman; the knife attack was sharp and fast.
With a swoosh, the long knife cut through the air, the blade penetrating through the ghost’s body.
The silver needle stained with Shen Qingcheng’s blood also flew out of the shadowy ghost’s body.
Shen Qingcheng was stunned.
In this frozen moment, the woman was surrounded by smiling ghosts. She shook her head and cried silently, but she could only helplessly let the smiling ghosts crowd and push her.
The ghosts who had completed their task receded like a tide, and soon, all the ghosts disappeared without a trace, both inside and outside the carriage.
It was still as quiet as death, but there were two living people missing from the carriage.
Da.
Da.
Blood oozed from the wound on his wrist that the woman had created as she had grabbed him, and dripped slowly to the ground.
Shen Qingcheng swayed. His eyes subconsciously found someone he was familiar with, and his lips moved: Lu Qi…
A wave of tiredness struck, and Shen Qingcheng’s vision went dark.
…
Kuangchi kuangchi~ The train with vermilion patent leather traveled ever forward on the desolate tracks.
In the train car, Shen Qingcheng woke up from his chin bumping on Lu Qi’s shoulder.
Lu Qi: “You’re awake.”
Shen Qingcheng’s vision was hazy. He reached out and rubbed the side of his forehead, and out of the corner of his eyes he caught a glimpse of something white on his wrist.
A bandage was wrapped around his wrist.
The memories of last night flooded back into his mind.
He sat up straight, first looking at the sky outside the window: the sky was still gloomy, and it was probably morning.
He looked at the seats in the front row. The players were still sleeping.
Finally, he looked back at the door of the carriage, and there were indeed two bloody corpses hanging there.
Their deaths were the same as the previous player.
Shen Qingcheng looked back and asked, “What happened to me last night?”
“You fell asleep,” Lu Qi said. When he saw his brows had furrowed, he added, “Not just you.”
He had just fallen asleep faster than everyone else.
Shen Qingcheng’s attention was not on that; he was thinking about why his blood had failed.
The appearance of the laughing ghost last night was obviously because the two players hadn’t followed the rules, not because of him.
Blood was innate, and the functions in his blood had been there since birth. Since the game hadn’t sealed them, why had they failed?
“Under what circumstances would your knife become useless?” He asked.
Lu Qi: “The props in the mall are specially designed to deal with ghosts. If they can’t cause damage, there will be a situation like that of Ying Ying from the previous copy.”
When the knife slashed Ying Ying, her shoulder had directly dented.
Shen Qingcheng: “Then what about if it goes through?”
Lu Qi didn’t answer, just looked at him calmly with inscrutable eyes.
Shen Qingcheng nodded and answered himself, “It doesn’t exist.”
The knife would go right through, because the ghost itself did not exist.
He began to feel strong self-doubt towards himself.
Two people had died, and the number of players had dropped sharply to 12. This time everyone accepted their deaths more calmly than before.
The bodybuilder used the luggage handle to get the two bodies off the train, collected their luggage and returned to his place.
There were many players who were jealous of the luggage he had, but because Bodybuilder-xiansheng had beaten up a group of people the day before, no one dared to raise objections for the time being.
It was the fourth day of the copy, and there were less than 3 days left before the 7-day time limit.
This afternoon, the first player who exhausted all their luggage appeared: it was He Mei.
He Mei had used everything possible to exchange for food, even trying to exchange the coat she was wearing, but alas, the flight attendant would only trade for each player’s initial luggage.
Shen Qingcheng took the opportunity to note that there was no blood on the cuffs and trousers of the flight attendants who exchanged food with them during the day.
He Mei endured for 7 hours. Judging from the speed at which they usually exchanged for food, she had gone 5 to 6 meals without eating, which was equivalent to two days of starvation for a normal person.
When it was getting dark outside the window, He Mei couldn’t help it–she began to borrow luggage from the people around her.
It was said to be a loan, but everyone knew that she would not be able to pay it back.
The first person He Mei found was a girl with short hair. She whispered, “Please, I’m really hungry, just lend me a little, just a little!”
She made a small gesture.
The girl shook her head in embarrassment, “I don’t have anything extra to lend to you.”
She didn’t have a lot of luggage, and after the things she picked up at Zhonglou Station had disappeared for no apparent reason, she had also been trading frugally these days.
Whether she herself could eat enough was already a problem, how could she have the ability to lend to others.
He Mei was anxious, “I’m starving to death, so what if you lend me some? Are you going to watch me starve to death!”
The girl who still felt a little guilty immediately became firm, and she said, “I really don’t have anything, you can go ask someone else.”
He Mei reached out and grabbed her bag.
“What are you doing!” the girl exclaimed, immediately grabbing the bag.
“Give it to me!”
“It’s mine, let it go!”
The two made a lot of noise. Lin Wen next to him was still immersed in self-blame for not having been able to save the woman yesterday, but now he had to get up and walk towards the two.
He stopped each of them with one hand and persuaded, “Don’t rob, don’t rob.”
No one listened to him.
Lin Wen stopped coaxing them with a hiss.
He Mei’s fingernails had made a cut on his face.
He endured the pain, “Stop grabbing it, I’ll lend some to you!”
He Mei immediately stopped and asked with her eyes shining, “Really?”
Lin Wen sighed and said helplessly, “Really, but I don’t have much.”
He Mei finally got a piece of food the size of her palm. She devoured it and returned to her seat happily.
The train attendant who finished exchanging the food did not disappear. He stood behind the door, a sinister smile on his face that had triggered the players’ psychological shadows from the previous night.
This train attendant had blood on his cuffs and trousers, more blood than the day before.
His hoarse voice said, “Tonight…there are no rules…”
If there were no rules, didn’t that mean they don’t have to fill in the players they suspected, and no one would die, despite voting or being voted for?
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Shen Qingcheng: “There are no rules, but it doesn’t mean that no one will die. Even if the seats are not adjusted, some people will still sit at the end.”
That made sense!
The players turned their heads to see who the last unlucky player was, and secretly made up their minds: even if they had to tie them up, they would make sure this person remained at the end. They didn’t want to experience what had happened last night again.
Many pairs of eyes stared at the back of the train car.
In the 11th row, Shen Qingcheng raised his bandaged hand and waved it. He smiled and said hello: “Hi, how are you tonight? I’m doing great~”
That was right, after the last one had died yesterday, the new last ones were Shen Qingcheng and Lu Qi.
According to the previous rules, if there were players who would die that night, then they were the most likely ones.
…
On the fifth day of the copy, the number of players in the copy “Death Route” was reduced to 11.
Oh, this girl dead!
Thank you for your translation 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
Ooo I wonder how something that doesn’t exist is managing to kill so many? Hallucinations and their actually offing themselves? Wild.
Thank you for the chapter🧡🧡
whoa…this copy is truly scary…😰
Thanks for the chapter!
Scary instance! Thanks for the update ❤️❤️❤️
I get the feeling lu qi and shen will fight off the ghosts or rather the nonexistent killers
The goal is to turn players on each other. Hopefully no one turns to cannibalism
This is hard to read 🫣
Thanks for the chapter!!! 🩷🙃
I really like the way this author write’s and the translators nice’ translation 😊. Thank you for the chapter!♡><
god it’s so confusing! dawg I can’t keep up… Σ(°△° ꪱꪱꪱ)