Chapter 18: Back To Reality
The scenery outside the train window quickly disappeared as the train moved forward.
Leaving the platform, the view outside the train window plunged into a patch of darkness.
In her fatigue, Lu Jinzhao felt some curiosity: the tracks this train was running on, exactly what place were they laid in, that no matter where it went, it only took ten minutes of travel time?
Unfortunately, from the pitch black outside the window, she couldn’t see anything.
Lu Jinzhao leaned back in her seat, her body slouching lazily in a rather unseemly way. If possible, she even wanted to close her eyes and sleep right away, but she was afraid this train might overshoot the station or something like that.
“If only there were other people who survived.”
She still had many questions about the train, but now she didn’t know who to ask.
Moreover, according to what Jiang Yingzhi said, 【Ding】 level is clearly the lowest level, so logically the platform mission should also have the lowest danger level, yet everyone except herself was wiped out. Is this normal?
Lu Jinzhao couldn’t confirm, she only knew that in her understanding, as a newcomer, starting with this level of instance right away, wasn’t it a bit too overpowered?
Or perhaps, the train mission was already dangerous to this extent, even the lowest level could easily wipe out a train of passengers?
“Maybe next mission, I can ask other people.”
“No, best not to have a next time.”
In a daze, the train returned to the Yuncheng Underground Platform.
A prompt sound that she had only heard when boarding rang out.
【Dear passenger friends, this train has arrived at the station. Please disembark promptly. Wish you a safe journey, goodbye!】
Hearing the sound, Lu Jinzhao forced herself to perk up and stand, and after the train doors opened, the familiar Yuncheng Underground Platform appeared outside.
“Really… back.”
Even though the inside of this platform was still empty, Lu Jinzhao only felt an immense familiarity.
The instant she stepped off, the train behind her seemed to know there would be no more passengers disembarking. The doors closed with a boom, without any waiting time, and this train that had buried the lives of who knows how many passengers just sailed into the unknown darkness.
“.”
Lu Jinzhao didn’t want to think about future matters anymore. She was extremely fatigued now. Even though the pain in her body had been healed, her brain still kept sending waves of stabbing pain. Right now, she just needed rest.
However, when passing by the waiting room, Lu Jinzhao paused her steps. She didn’t choose to leave the platform directly, but instead walked into that waiting room.
As soon as she entered, it was empty inside.
This was only natural.
The screen in the waiting room had also gone dark; perhaps it would only light up the next time a train arrived.
Seeing this, Lu Jinzhao didn’t stay any longer and turned to leave.
She went up the stairs where she had encountered Jiang Yingzhi back then. Above was the ground-level platform of Yuncheng Train Station. When she crossed the door between the stairs, noisy and lively human voices suddenly entered her ears.
She had returned to the normal world where living people were.
Seeing the flow of people coming and going in the first floor lobby, Lu Jinzhao had a momentary daze. The crowd didn’t pay attention to a girl with a weary face. Lu Jinzhao quickly hailed a taxi outside the station and returned to the dormitory.
Before this, she had already thought up an excuse for her “disappearance” for so long, but… no one mentioned it.
When she returned to the dormitory, it wasn’t a holiday, and she hadn’t notified in advance, but her roommate’s reaction upon seeing her was as if she had just ordinarily gone to class and come back to the dormitory after it ended.
“…Looks like the train intervened?”
This abnormal reaction was just like how she back then, no matter what, couldn’t say Lin Zhao’s “last words.”
Fatigue surged up again, Lu Jinzhao didn’t want to think about anything else, lay straight down on the bed and fell into deep sleep.
This sleep lasted a full fifteen hours, during which she wasn’t disturbed at all.
When Lu Jinzhao woke up, the faint painful feeling in her brain had finally disappeared.
She sat up from the bed, and upon seeing the empty dormitory, her brain instinctively tensed, then she quickly looked out the window. Only after seeing the exceptionally normal scene downstairs at the dormitory and the classmates coming and going did she relax.
But it was also at this time that Lu Jinzhao’s normally functioning brain made her realize that she might have developed some kind of PTSD from the encounter on the platform.
She didn’t know if other passengers would have such a situation, but thinking about it, after encountering that kind of terror, very few people could return to daily life completely unchanged, right?
However, now with her thinking restored to normal operation, Lu Jinzhao could finally review the previous events.
“Still an issue of experience.”
She thought about it: because she was a newcomer and didn’t understand anything, in the 【Summon Ghosts】 mission, she had been very passive throughout. In the early stage, she didn’t know what to do or what might happen.
In the later stage, even though she guessed the key point of the mission, as an unarmed newcomer, what she could do was very limited.
Her survival was due in largest part to wisdom and calmness, but luck was also very important.
“Does this instance have any better cracking method?”
Lu Jinzhao began thinking.
“Delay the see a ghost ritual until right before the train is about to enter the station?”
“No, the result would be the same.”
Lu Jinzhao shook her head, negating this idea.
“Deliberately do one extra ritual, create two ghosts to counter each other? After all, the train only stipulates that the ritual must be completed, not that extra rituals can’t be performed.”
As she spoke, she shook her head again: “That won’t work either, risk too high. If not at the end of the road, doing that isn’t much different from suicidal.”
She thought of some other methods one after another, but all were negated afterward.
“Looks like the rules really have no loopholes to exploit.”
But… she came up with one last one, which wasn’t really a method, method.
“The most dangerous place on this platform is facing multiple ghosts’ interception when boarding. So if…”
“Right from the start, kill all the other people, so they can’t perform the see a ghost ritual, then no extra ghosts will be summoned.”
“The platform’s difficulty would drop greatly.”
Wanting to survive would be much simpler!
Lu Jinzhao just shook her head; this method was also something she could think of only now that she knew all the mission information.
Probably very few people could make such an inhuman decision right at the start of the mission.
During the review, Lu Jinzhao suddenly recalled one extremely important thing.
“…Train Ticket!”
Jiang Yingzhi’s train ticket was still with her.
When she reached into her pocket and felt the items, besides her own train ticket and that weird box, Lu Jinzhao indeed also felt another train ticket.
But on this train ticket… there was no information at all.
Both name and amount were blank spaces waiting to be filled.
Just like an ownerless train ticket.
Lu Jinzhao suddenly recalled what Lin Zhao said before dying.
Thinking about it now, she back then, whether she also put an ownerless train ticket in the storage locker.
And after she touched that train ticket, she was locked onto by the train and became a passenger?!
