Chapter 140: Substitute
Zhou Zimo mentioned splitting up, and Qin Wan was the one least willing to do so.
Although she had supernatural items for self-preservation in her hand, in a B-grade instance, one or two supernatural items couldn’t save her life.
She was accustomed to treating teammates on the Yuncheng Station Platform with a friendly attitude, which was also a strategy. Usually, teammates would be willing to team up with her due to her attitude and ability, and help each other.
She wouldn’t do nothing, just like the transaction with Zhou Zimo—before getting off the train, she transferred luck in advance and reminded her teammates, borrowing Du Yu’s good luck so that teammates could kill her faster, etc. She would do her best to do what she could, but undeniably, her fate was not powerful enough when facing ghosts directly, putting her at a disadvantage.
After all, if a taboo was violated and a ghost targeted her, it couldn’t be escaped just with some good luck.
Good luck could make her targeted by a ghost a little later, let her live a few more seconds, minutes, or hours, but it wouldn’t make the ghost’s attack disappear.
She needed reliable teammates.
With teammates around, good luck could be utilized with maximum efficiency.
So, she was unwilling to separate from Zhou Zimo and Lu Jinzhao.
Spirit Possession was the most effective fate among the three of them when facing ghosts. Although Lu Jinzhao’s fate didn’t seem to have much effect against ghosts according to what she heard, she could tell that this newcomer who had just entered the high-level platform was very intelligent, at least smarter than herself. Having someone smarter than her around always made people feel more at ease.
Thus, Qin Wan spoke up: “Splitting up isn’t a good idea, right?”
“I think since another ‘us’ has appeared, it means substitutes already exist. We’ve all been targeted by ghosts. If we split up now, wouldn’t that give the ghosts more opportunities?”
She wasn’t just simply telling her teammates not to split up and act separately, but providing her own analysis.
Zhou Zimo had suggested splitting up only because it was the only method he could think of at the moment. Hearing Qin Wan’s words, he felt she made some sense, so he began to hesitate: “Is that the case?”
Qin Wan turned her gaze to Lu Jinzhao, her eyes carrying a bit of expectation, as if hoping she would say some affirming words.
Lu Jinzhao had finished thinking by now. She didn’t immediately respond to Qin Wan’s expectation, but approached from another angle: “I have a question.”
She said: “Our substitutes have already appeared, but why?”
Her question made Qin Wan and Zhou Zimo fall into thought too: “Yeah, did we do something?”
“Could it be that entering this platform guarantees a substitute will appear?”
“No.” Lu Jinzhao denied this guess: “If so, our morning wouldn’t have been so calm, and Qin Wan wouldn’t have tripped right after getting off the train.”
“Oh, right.” Zhou Zimo scratched his hair, feeling that they had now entered a time requiring brainpower, which he wasn’t good at: “Then what could it be?”
“Because we killed Du Yu?” Qin Wan guessed, then denied it herself: “But Du Yu hadn’t killed anyone before, and she was still targeted by her teammate.”
“Recall what she said: before her teammate Yan Xiaoyu showed abnormalities, she only knew that the other had gone to the restroom, and on the elevator, had given up her spot to someone else because it was full.”
Lu Jinzhao slowly voiced her guess: “Restroom, we’ve been there. Elevator, we’ve taken it too, but nothing happened.”
“But to distinguish which one caused the problem is easy, because Qin Wan’s good luck made her trip, delaying our entry into the company by one step. The elevator we took wasn’t full, no need to give up a spot.”
So, the problem was in the elevator segment.
“After the elevator, the entire morning passed without incident for us, but something happened on Du Yu’s side—not only the teammate who gave up her spot had a problem, but another teammate also became a substitute.”
“And Du Yu was targeted by them too.”
“We, who were fine all morning, produced substitutes after interacting with Du Yu and seeing her two teammates.”
Hearing this, Qin Wan said somewhat annoyed: “So, it’s like an infection?”
“The person in the elevator might have given up her spot to a ghost and been targeted, then it was the teammate close to her, and we had no interaction with them in the morning, so no incident.”
“But soon, Du Yu came to us, creating a connection.”
“In that case, the best method in this platform is actually to have no interaction with anyone?” Zhou Zimo asked.
“But that’s impossible.” Qin Wan shook her head: “Such a small company, and we still have to go to the mourning hall—completely avoiding any contact with people around is too difficult.”
“Just a guess.” Lu Jinzhao didn’t delve deeper into the topic: “But most likely, there are now six substitute ghosts inside the platform.”
“If we split up, six ghosts—do you have confidence to withstand them alone?”
“Most importantly, have you thought about why this platform is called Substitute?”
Lu Jinzhao explained why she mentioned so many key points first: “Did Yan Xiaoyu experience anything unusual before Du Yu noticed something was off?”
“According to Du Yu, no.”
“She was silently replaced.”
“The same for that person called Bai Xunyan.”
“Du Yu didn’t, because she noticed something wrong and immediately came to find us, staying with us.”
“Perhaps because of that, she temporarily preserved her life.”
“Yan Xiaoyu briefly separated from them due to the elevator, and for Bai Xunyan, Du Yu said she instructed Bai Xunyan to take Yan Xiaoyu to the rooftop to test her, so at that time, she briefly separated from those two.”
“I guess the appearance of substitutes is like contagion—as long as we interact and stay together, we’ll be targeted by ghosts, but death might be related to being alone.”
“If Du Yu didn’t lie, when Bai Xunyan took Yan Xiaoyu to the rooftop, at that moment, it was actually just her and one substitute ghost together.”
Afterward, Du Yu found them and was no longer alone.
“In that case… we better not split up.” Qin Wan couldn’t describe her current mood—she felt a bit relieved, yet also found this platform’s ghost too weird and hard to deal with.
But what she admired more was that Lu Jinzhao could quickly connect these suspicious points—possibly clues—into a truth.
“Then the problem circles back: we need to confirm that all three of us are human now.” Zhou Zimo said.
“It’s actually already resolved.” A hint of ease appeared on Lu Jinzhao’s face.
She had been thinking about this issue just now, feeling her brain was almost overheating.
“Huh?” Zhou Zimo was puzzled.
“If my guess is correct, after substitutes appear, being alone means being replaced and dying. If you can confirm you’re living people, then you definitely weren’t alone.”
“In other words, at least two of us three are living people.”
“Right.” Zhou Zimo nodded: “But I just went downstairs with Qin Wan, so maybe you’re the substitute, and we two weren’t alone.”
Lu Jinzhao raised an eyebrow: “Then I should already be dead.”
She pointed to the office area in the distance, where the three of them were still chatting inside, like a replica of their current selves.
“If I’m the fake one now, then that me should be the real one, right?”
“She was alone with two substitutes—shouldn’t she already be dead?”
“Moreover, if I were a ghost, why would I tell you all this? When you suggested splitting up to act alone, I could have just agreed.” Lu Jinzhao said helplessly.
“Seems like it! Then we three shouldn’t split up anymore. If we don’t go alone, this mission should be much simpler, right?” Zhou Zimo was somewhat surprised.
Lu Jinzhao, however, was not optimistic about this.
Was it just a matter of not being alone?
If it were that simple—just discover the rules and stick together—why would this platform be B-grade?
Perhaps not being alone was just a prerequisite for survival?
“What do we do now? Leave here?”
Standing in the office area were three substitutes. Watching people identical to themselves moving not far away—this weird feeling made Zhou Zimo’s heart crawl with unease.
He was really afraid those three would suddenly notice something and look toward them.
He didn’t notice that when asking this, he was subconsciously directing it toward Lu Jinzhao, not Qin Wan.
“Let’s go first, to a place closer to the station, find a simple and open area to stay, preferably without too many people around.”
Lu Jinzhao always felt this platform’s ghost was more insidious than those she’d encountered before— no direct confrontation, even detecting danger required extra thought.
There would definitely be more problems.
The three left the company building. The security guard was still nowhere to be seen, and there were sparse pedestrians on the street, but they had no intention of talking to them, even deliberately avoiding these pedestrians.
Who knew if these were real people or fakes?
However, though Lu Jinzhao felt something would still happen, she didn’t expect the mishap to come so quickly.
Just as they left the company building and stepped out the door, the phone rang.
All three’s complexions changed, because after entering the platform, the mobile phone signal had consistently disappeared—no calls should come in.
Moreover, as a precaution, all their phones were on silent.
And the ringing now was the system default ringtone.
“…What’s going on?”
Zhou Zimo hesitated to take out his phone. Lu Jinzhao paused too, but still took out hers.
The moment she saw the number, even though prepared, her heart still chilled.
Because she was very familiar with that string of numbers, remembered it clearly.
It was her own number.
Undoubtedly, this call was from a ghost.
She hung up without answering.
Zhou Zimo saw her action: “…Is it okay to just hang up?”
He hadn’t even taken out his phone, and the ringtone kept ringing continuously.
Lu Jinzhao said she didn’t know, and while at it, added the number to her blacklist.
But the system prompted “This number does not exist,” unable to add to blacklist.
However, after hanging up, it didn’t call again.
“Maybe you two should pay attention to it?”
Lu Jinzhao looked up and gestured with her gaze. The two followed her eyes and saw that due to the continuous ringing, the pedestrians who had been walking indifferently were now slowly turning toward them.
“…”
Zhou Zimo didn’t dare delay anymore and immediately hung up the call.
Qin Wan hesitated, wondering if to answer and see, but looking at that familiar number, she still chose not to court death.
Once hung up, the phone went quiet. Zhou Zimo just thought this ghost wasn’t that hard to deal with, but about a minute later, he heard the mobile phone prompt tone again.
Ding-dong three times— all three phones received it, the text message prompt tone.
His complexion changed, immediately retracting his previous thought.
“What do we do?”
He asked: “Should we look?”
“Wait a bit first.” Lu Jinzhao wasn’t sure either.
In previous platforms she’d experienced, she hadn’t encountered this type of ghost, no experience in dealing with it.
They walked toward the direction the train came from. Not long after, ding-dong three times again.
Then, increasingly fast and urgent text message prompts, as if if they didn’t look, the texts would keep coming, keep coming.
Practically no different from the ringtone!
“Really persistent…”
Helplessly, Lu Jinzhao could only take out her phone. Just lighting the screen, she saw over a hundred unread texts!
“Seems we have to look.” Qin Wan also took out her phone. She felt her hands turning ice-cold, waves of palpitations in her chest. Clearly not facing a ghost directly, yet this persistent shadow kept entangling her, like misfortune attached to her body.
She felt very bad.
Lu Jinzhao opened the text interface—all the texts were just one photo each.
That photo was of herself.
But the content was extremely horrifying.
It was a photo of her death.
It looked extremely gruesome, face bluish-purple, eyeballs bulging, like death by suffocation. Besides that, her belly was sliced open, just like what she did to Du Yu.
“Telling me I’ll get retribution?” Lu Jinzhao looked at the photo, a cold smile tugging at her lips: “Too bad, I don’t buy it.”
“Yours are photos too?”
She asked Qin Wan and Zhou Zimo, whose faces were slightly pale.
“Yes.” The two nodded.
“Is this some precognitive ability?”
Their photos were no surprise—photos of their deaths, each different.
“I don’t think so.” Lu Jinzhao denied immediately.
“If it really had precognitive ability, would it need these tricks to kill us?”
A ghost with precognition would at least be A-grade, right?
“Then sending these photos… plans to kill us like this?” Zhou Zimo frowned.
Death method arranged by the ghost—this feeling of being despised, besides the rising fear and shock in his heart, Zhou Zimo even felt a bit unconvinced.
Maybe just intimidation, but Lu Jinzhao didn’t say that.
She heard the faint anger in Zhou Zimo’s tone and thought it was a good thing.
Appropriate anger could give people more courage.
“Let’s go, find a place with no one around.”
These pedestrians’ reactions when the ringtone kept ringing were truly unsettling.
