Chapter 184: Death Platform 【silence】
The stress level of the parchment is comparable to Lu Jinzhao’s when she initially wanted to fuse the Ghost Bone.
It seems it truly harbors deep malice toward the Passenger who turned it into a supernatural prop.
This couldn’t help but make Lu Jinzhao even more curious.
“So how did that person catch you?”
【Are you probing me?】
Under anger, the parchment’s nonexistent brain seemed to emerge.
【You want to probe me!】
【No way!】
【I won’t tell you anything.】
“I remember you said she was already dead, right?”
“Can’t even talk about a dead person’s matters?”
“A stupid, malicious person who died long ago, and you’re still so fearful of her that you don’t even dare mention her?”
Lu Jinzhao confused the concepts; she felt the parchment’s alertness was temporary, while its brain not working well was fixed.
Sure enough, as soon as she said this, the parchment immediately cast aside its earlier alertness.
【I don’t dare?!】
【I’m just disdainful!】
A ghost here was solemnly claiming to feel disdain toward a human.
Lu Jinzhao felt the parchment had gone completely mad.
But it had never been normal anyway.
Even so, it hadn’t revealed any useful information.
It was just madly, maliciously cursing, like an impotent voodoo doll.
“How long ago did she die?”
Lu Jinzhao really had no patience to listen to these endless curses, so she asked directly.
The parchment, which was cursing vigorously, paused for a moment and countered somewhat unhappily
【Why should I tell you?】
“What was her name?”
【How would I know?】
The parchment replied subconsciously.
Only after replying did it realize something and quickly added:
【Why would I pay attention to such a trivial matter?】
【A disgusting human’s name!】
“Ha.” Lu Jinzhao deliberately let out a short laugh: “Pretending what?”
She mercilessly exposed it: “So you don’t even know the name of the person who turned you into this state?”
“You’re so useless.”
【I’m useless?】
【I’m useless?!】
This sentence seemed to greatly enrage the parchment, plunging it into a near-obsessive state where it kept repeating those three words; the bright red characters filled Lu Jinzhao’s line of sight, the desktop, the wall surface, the floor, all constantly repeating.
【How could I possibly be useless?】
Finally, it seemed to calm down.
【You have no idea how powerful I am.】
【Humans, no matter how you compare, I’m more powerful.】
It stopped talking, seemingly wanting to unilaterally start a cold war again, but Lu Jinzhao needed only one sentence to break its less-than-one-minute pretense of aloofness.
“Oh, you’re so powerful, then why am I still alive after you so confidently said I was going to die?”
“Huh? That’s strange, how did I end up alive again?”
The tone was extremely sarcastic.
Constantly provoking.
【.】
The parchment’s nonexistent brain fell into a dilemma.
【What do you know.】
It decided to throw out this line first.
【If not for me, you’d be dead long ago!】
【Yes, that’s right, you think why you’re still alive and well? It’s all because of me, got it?】
The more it spoke, the more convinced it became.
“.All because of you?”
【What else?】
The parchment felt it hadn’t said anything wrong.
【You don’t even know what you did.】
It started pointing fingers.
【Without me, you would’ve definitely been invaded by that ghost and turned into a corpse for it to control!】
【You don’t even know how big a role I played.】
【If you knew gratitude, you’d offer me one-third of your soul right now.】
It grew more shameless as it spoke.
“Wait a second.” Lu Jinzhao interrupted it.
“So your meaning is, actually you didn’t want me to die, so you helped me?”
The parchment disgusted her with shameless words; she had to disgust it back.
【?】
【What nonsense are you spouting?】
【I didn’t want you to die???】
【I helped you???】
【Disgusting!!】
Good, the purpose was achieved.
Lu Jinzhao ignored the parchment and started unilateral cold violence.
At this moment, the deeply disgusted parchment was stuck in an awkward position; it frantically called out to Lu Jinzhao trying to clarify it never had such disgusting thoughts, but Lu Jinzhao completely ignored it.
As for the blood script phantoms appearing before her eyes, they were translucent anyway, so just ignore them.
She already had very rich experience with this.
She didn’t rest but immediately started making the shadow puppet.
The skin she had just peeled from herself still needed processing, but the ghost’s skin was convenient and could skip the processing step, though she currently had no way to directly start using Tan Meng’s skin.
After her fate upgraded, her speed in making shadow puppets also increased; in just one day, she had already finished Du Yu’s shadow puppet.
But after finishing, Lu Jinzhao felt waves of fatigue from her brain; she couldn’t continue making and had to rest.
After thinking, she sent a message to Lin Lin, arranging to meet tomorrow.
Although she got a lot of information about the Death platform from the Divine Calculator, she wasn’t that familiar with her after all; Lin Lin was different—she could confidently chat about many things with her.
Lu Jinzhao slept a rare nearly ten hours; when she woke up, the faint swelling in her head from making the shadow puppet all night had dissipated, and on her mobile phone, Lin Lin had messaged half an hour ago that she had boarded the plane.
Calculating the time was about right, Lu Jinzhao simply washed up and got in the car to the airport.
Compared to Yuncheng Train Station, she rarely went to Yuncheng Airport.
The airport’s passenger flow was no less than the train station; soon after Lu Jinzhao arrived by car, Lin Lin’s plane also landed.
When Lin Lin saw Lu Jinzhao standing outside to pick her up at first glance, she immediately ran toward her and then tightly hugged her.
Lu Jinzhao was a bit surprised but still raised her hand to hug back.
Lin Lin took a deep breath, then released Lu Jinzhao and explained: “I thought I’d never see you again.”
This wasn’t because she thought Lu Jinzhao would die in the platform, but because she herself almost didn’t come back.
In fact, due to the platform’s influence, her family hadn’t proactively contacted her for a long time.
Even if she took the initiative to go home, her family’s emotions were quite flat, which once made Lin Lin feel pain.
One of the reasons many Passengers go mad is “sense of presence in reality disappears”; they doubt what meaning there is in continuing to persist and painfully struggle to survive.
Even if she nearly died in the special platform, her family wouldn’t care about her anymore; the terror in her heart had no one to confide in—does dying or living really make a difference?
Even if she becomes friends with a Passenger, the other might suddenly die in the next mission, bringing more pain.
But now, Lu Jinzhao had also become a Passenger; Lu Jinzhao wouldn’t ignore her or forget her anymore—Lu Jinzhao was very intelligent and, even as a Passenger, wouldn’t die easily.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Lu Jinzhao also deftly caught her emotion.
Yes, this person was always like this—exceptionally intelligent, skilled at observing all subtle details around her, giving different people different treatment, and Lin Lin always got the best share.
“It’s because of the Death platform.”
Since Lu Jinzhao was also involved, Lin Lin didn’t plan to hide anything from her anymore.
“I’ve been gone so long; you must have guessed what I was doing.”
The two walked out while talking; because of the thin “sense of presence,” people around would naturally ignore what they said unless they proactively approached to talk, but topics involving the train, even if proactively talking to ordinary people, the other would just think you’re talking nonsense.
This was the power of “rules”; no matter how much evidence you show, in the other’s cognition, you’re just going mad or fooling around.
“Death platform.” Speaking these words, Lin Lin’s voice still held lingering fear: “It was really too terrifying.”
“What did you encounter in there?”
Lu Jinzhao wanted to know more, including events in different Death platforms, to accumulate more experience for herself.
“The Death platform I entered was named 【Silence】—easy to understand, right?”
“The waiting information was also quite straightforward.”
【Shh, keep silence, it’s coming.】
“Last time I came to Yuncheng was because Yuncheng was selected for two First-class, while Capital Station had only me, and I have a close relationship with Yuncheng, so we discussed holding a meeting to figure things out and try to team up and cooperate inside.”
“On the surface, this Death platform’s taboo was actually very clear: keep silence, don’t make sounds, don’t speak.”
The two talked as they got into a car waiting in the parking lot, heading to Lu Jinzhao’s home.
“After entering the platform, we did exactly that—using sign language and writing for communication as much as possible.”
“When we went in, it was desolate all around; from the memories transmitted by the train, we got the background: the place we arrived at was a long-abandoned city where, due to its invasion, many residents died, and the surviving ones had moved away.”
“We needed to survive in this abandoned city.”
“At first, we were terrified, cautiously staying in place and not daring to move much.”
“But soon, we discovered that in this city, our hunger would increase, emotions become acute—irritable, easily startled—and with increasing hunger, this emotional loss of control became more obvious, even uncontrollably wanting to scream.”
At this point, Lin Lin’s tone darkened.
“This meant we had to go out to find food.”
“During the process of finding food, someone inevitably made noise, even if not made by her personally, but because it was caused by her, she was targeted by the ghost.”
“She died.”
“After that, we had to be even more careful.”
“But soon, another bad thing was discovered: after eating the food here, we’d feel sleepy within an hour; if not sleeping, the sleepiness would cause illusions, unconsciously making sounds.”
“And this sleep had to be at least four hours.”
“After four hours passed, we’d start feeling hungry again!”
Lu Jinzhao listened and frowned.
Just up to here already felt tricky to her, but intuition told her this wasn’t over—there must be even more despairing, malice-filled rules.
“Constantly appearing missions prevented us from staying in one relatively familiar place; we had to keep going to the next location, with constant reduction in numbers during this process.”
“In the first half month, everyone was still trying to encourage each other and find a way to survive.”
“By one month, everyone was disheveled and exhausted from fleeing.”
“At one and a half months, someone developed mental issues; even just companions’ footsteps would make her mentally sensitive, and the sound of fingers touching a packaging bag would make her think she was about to die the next moment.”
The silent city, the rule of keeping silence, deliberately amplified negative emotions, and the assault of hunger and drowsiness—even First-class Passengers couldn’t maintain a healthy mental state long-term in such an environment.
If it were just hours or even days, this platform wouldn’t be so hard to endure.
But Lu Jinzhao remembered this platform lasted a surprisingly long time, even surprising people on the forum.
This was practically prolonged mental torment.
“And I was relatively lucky; my fate was perfectly suited to this platform.” Lin Lin said with a slightly fortunate bitter smile.
【Silence】 was her fate.
In Lu Jinzhao’s memory, she was a lively charmer, a talkative childhood friend; she often talked more, while Lu Jinzhao talked less.
But in the impressions of people at Capital Station, she was quite silent, even overly cold in her silence.
Just by keeping silence, she gained a certain degree of exemption.
This was a powerful fate: as long as she kept silence long-term, closed herself off long-term, she could live longer.
Whether hunger or illusions, though they affected her too, compared to other Passengers in this platform, the impact on her was undoubtedly much smaller.
Even so, she still nearly died in the platform—not just because her fate wasn’t strong enough compared to the platform’s ghost, but also because at the end, they made a despairing discovery.
“When the countdown appeared, we knew that if we held on, we could leave alive.”
“But after everything was fine before, on the last day—precisely the last day when nothing happened—people around started dying one by one.”
“Finally, we confirmed an utterly despairing fact.”
“Keeping silence means not making even the slightest sound, or else it’s violating the ghost’s taboo.”
“And those sounds include heartbeat, include breathing, also include the sound of blood flowing.”
As long as you’re living people, from the moment you step into this platform, you’ve already violated the taboo.
“Then what about the way to survive?” Lu Jinzhao asked.
If violating the taboo right upon entering the platform, then where was the way to survive?
Mentioning this, Lin Lin’s expression worsened.
“The Death platform’s way to survive isn’t for everyone.”
She said slowly: “The rules changed here—not everyone can use the way to survive to live on; this path is only provided to a few.”
“The only thing favorable to Passengers in this platform is that the ghost only goes on a killing spree on the last day; before that, it’s more about torment.”
“On the last day, it starts killing from the one who made the loudest sound, even if it’s breathing.”
“But its killing speed is limited.”
“This is the way to survive.”
A path that encourages Passengers to kill each other and pit others to seek survival.
Two chapters’ worth
