Volume 11: The Days of Traveling on a Train
Tunnel
The Person Who Died Suddenly
Her long-term experience with instance dungeons1 had given Shen Maomao the habit of overthinking, so as soon as she heard Zhan Zhi say that, she couldn’t help but let her mind run wild—
Is Zhan Zhi reminding me to go to bed early? In what capacity is he reminding me? Can I trust him?
She looked into Zhan Zhi’s eyes, and he shyly averted his gaze. “I’ll get going, then. If you have any problems, you can come find me.”
Shen Maomao had no choice but to say, “Sorry to trouble you. I will.”
After that, she went to the restroom before lights out. When she returned, she thought about it for a moment before crawling into her quilt, preparing to rest early.
Soon, the lights in the entire train car went out. Naturally, the poker game couldn’t continue. The few people nearby packed the cards back into their box, quietly entered their own compartments, and climbed onto their bunks, making a series of rustling sounds.
Once the surroundings quieted down, the sounds from farther away became more distinct. A few people were still talking—it sounded like three men who were planning to turn on a flashlight and play for another two hours.
For modern people, it was indeed a bit early to be sleeping. Most of those lying in bed right now weren’t necessarily asleep; they were likely huddled under their quilts playing on their phones. But to make noise when everyone else was staying quiet was a bit inconsiderate.
But those three were all men. Even if someone was unhappy about it, they probably wouldn’t go out of their way to provoke them, so the trio played on without restraint.
Shen Maomao turned over in her bed, facing the compartment wall. The sounds of “fighting for the landlord,”2 “three with a one,” and “pass” echoed in her ears as she closed her eyes again.
The three men were some distance from her, so their voices weren’t too grating. The only reason she couldn’t sleep was that it wasn’t her usual bedtime; her biological clock simply wouldn’t allow it.
Normally at this time, she’d be lying in Lou Jingmo’s arms playing games, but right now, she had no desire to play on her phone.
She kept feeling that the poster’s slogan, “Say goodbye to your phone, sublimate yourself,” was a very obvious hint.
Everyone had been on their phones during the day and nothing seemed to have happened, but day and night in a game had always been two different worlds. Plus, Zhan Zhi had specifically reminded her to sleep early…
She had a feeling something was going to happen to those three card players, but she couldn’t be sure. After all, they were playing poker, not using their phones, which didn’t quite match the death flag3 she had deduced.
With this thought in mind, Shen Maomao lay there for over an hour, listening to them for just as long. Their voices rose and fell but never stopped. The three men were like living dragons and lively tigers4; they could probably play for another two or three hours.
Did I overthink it?
Just as she was thinking this, the sound of the train suddenly grew much louder in an instant. It not only completely drowned out the three men’s voices but also made her ears tingle and her head buzz.
We must have entered a tunnel. The sound of the train gets reflected by the tunnel walls, which is why it’s so deafening.
The noise was shaking her ears, causing her to want to be deaf,5 a roar that lasted for so long that Shen Maomao had almost gotten used to it before it finally stopped.
The world instantly became quiet. Compared to the racket from a moment ago, the normal sound of the moving train was practically negligible.
Shen Maomao lowered the hands that had been covering her ears, her eyes staring at the bottom of the bunk above her, her mind blank for a second.
Something’s felt wrong ever since we left the tunnel…
She pricked up her ears and listened for two seconds, only then realizing that the sound of the three men playing cards had vanished at some point!
Maybe they thought the tunnel was too loud to hear each other, so they packed up and went to sleep?
Even as she thought this, a chill gradually crept into her heart, causing a row of chicken skin bumps6 to rise on her arms. She instinctively curled into a ball under the quilt, trying to draw warmth from her own body.
This isn’t right. After clearing so many instance dungeons, she had long since stopped getting chills from mere supernatural phenomena.
But for some reason, today she was once again experiencing this feeling of her whole body growing cold7…
Something’s probably going to happen tonight.
She should probably stay vigilant. If worse came to worst, she could always catch up on sleep the next day.
But as she was thinking, an irresistible wave of drowsiness suddenly washed over her. She couldn’t stop herself from letting out a huge yawn, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier… and soon, she lost consciousness.
…
When she woke up again, the sky wasn’t fully bright yet, but the train had already stopped.
Light seeped in from behind the drawn curtains. The sounds of people walking, talking, and luggage wheels rolling on the ground all filtered into the car.
Shen Maomao sat up with a jolt, nearly hitting her head on the middle bunk. She paid it no mind, however, instead immediately looking over at Auntie Ning in the next compartment.
Auntie Ning was still sleeping. She was lying in a perfectly straight posture, her hands folded over her abdomen, her chest rising and falling. She looked fine.
Only then did Shen Maomao relax and start thinking about last night—I didn’t want to sleep at all! Why did I suddenly get so tired?!
The time on her phone read 4:05, only five minutes past the stop time Zhan Zhi had mentioned.
The entire number five car was filled with people from the “Tiantang Dao Travel Group,” so no one should be getting on.
But for some reason, she felt a faint sense of crisis in her heart.
She sat in her spot for a while, and for some reason, that sense of crisis grew stronger and stronger. When the door at the far end of the car let out a creak, her anxiety reached its peak.
Without thinking, Shen Maomao immediately followed her instincts and lay back down.
Not two seconds later, a series of footsteps passed by the foot of her bed, then faded into the distance before coming to an abrupt halt.
New passengers have entered this car, and they haven’t left.
Judging by the sound, it seemed to be exactly three people, which made it impossible for her not to overthink.
She squinted, leaving a tiny slit to observe the situation, while her hand gripped the Lou Jingmo-brand dagger, ready to fight a you die, I live8 battle if anything happened.
But nothing happened. Ten minutes later, the train started moving again, continuing its journey north. Shen Maomao hugged her bag, pretending it was Lou Jingmo, and let out a long sigh of relief.
No need to think about it. Those three guys have probably gone cold.9 I just don’t know if they were players or npcs.
Players shouldn’t be that stupid, right?
…
After six o’clock, the sky brightened considerably. Auntie Ning woke up, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. “I don’t know why, but I slept so soundly last night… It’s been a long time since I’ve slept for so long,” she said softly.
Shen Maomao yawned. “Are you hungry? Want something to eat?”
Auntie Ning said, “I’m not hungry yet. Don’t worry about me. If you’re tired, you should sleep a little longer.”
Shen Maomao replied, “Alright then, you can entertain yourself for a bit.”
Auntie Ning smiled.
Shen Maomao wearily closed her eyes for a moment, but not for long, because a scream suddenly came from the front of the car.
Startled awake again, she knew something must have happened. Forgetting about her drowsiness, she told Auntie Ning to wait there, put on her shoes, and ran out to see what was going on.
A large crowd was gathered up ahead, blocking the aisle that water can’t leak through.10
Shen Maomao stood on her tiptoes at the very edge of the crowd and heard the female tour guide inside shouting, “Don’t crowd around!” and “Make way!”
Gawking is human nature. She yelled until her throat was raw, but not a single person would listen to her.
People were murmuring amongst themselves, guessing what had happened. Shen Maomao listened in and gathered that the three men from yesterday seemed to have died suddenly.
Zhan Zhi and two other male guides came over to disperse the crowd. “Excuse me, everyone, please move and spread out. Don’t block the conductor’s path!”
Shen Maomao looked back and saw that a line of people had already formed behind her, all of them poking their heads and poking their brains11 to get a look. Two men in conductor uniforms were stuck at the very back, unable to squeeze through.
She was just about to help shout a few words when she heard the female guide at the front take a deep breath, sinking qi into her dantian,12 and roar, “What’s the use of all of you crowding here? Are you all deaf? Can’t you understand what I’m saying? Hurry up and make way for them! Starting from the back, everyone return to your compartments! Don’t make me say it a second time!”
Shen Maomao immediately took the lead and returned to her compartment.
The two conductors were finally able to move forward. Auntie Ning asked, “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Shen Maomao said, “It seems like someone died. Last night, three men were playing cards after lights out, and this morning they seem to have died suddenly.”
Before Auntie Ning could speak, the man in the bunk above her poked his head out. “What the hell? That’s intense. All three of them died?”
Shen Maomao said, “I don’t know.”
The girl in the bunk above Shen Maomao also poked her head out. “Then what about the bodies… The train is still moving. They’re not going to stay here until the next stop, are they?”
Shen Maomao again said she didn’t know.
The girl found it boring and pulled her head back in.
The atmosphere in the car grew tense. With such a major incident, all three tour guides were up front dealing with it, and no one was managing the rest of the tourists.
After a while, they seemed to have finished their discussion. The two conductors left first, taking with them the other two people who had been staying with the three men, but they didn’t take the bodies.
Once the conductors left, someone asked impatiently, “What’s going on? Aren’t they going to do anything about the bodies? We’re not going to have to stay with dead bodies, are we?”
The female guide said, “It’s not convenient to move the bodies. The tools on the train are limited, and we can’t determine the true cause of death. The police are already waiting at the next station. Please, everyone, remain calm.”
“So when is the next stop?”
The female guide replied, “Tomorrow morning.”
Shen Maomao thought, …If those three don’t have a corpse reanimation13 tonight, I’ll take your last name.
The others were also quite dissatisfied with this outcome. “So we have to stay with dead bodies for a whole day? Who can stand that?”
The female guide said, “This isn’t something we wanted to happen either. Space on the train is limited, and there are too many of us to move anywhere. It’ll be fine once we reach the next station. Please try to be considerate of each other and bear with it for a while.”
With things put that way, even those with complaints felt too embarrassed to say anything more. They could only try their best to ignore the bodies and pretend they didn’t exist.
The female guide led the people from the first four compartments to the dining car, and Zhan Zhi came over to find Shen Maomao again.
Shen Maomao put on a curious expression. “What exactly happened? Did you get a clear look up front?”
The people nearby also cast curious glances her way.
Zhan Zhi said, “Those three seemed to have food poisoning… I can’t really say. The whole thing is very strange.”
Shen Maomao asked again, “Then why did the other two leave with the conductors? What about the last one?”
Zhan Zhi said, “Those two were too scared to sleep with the bodies. The other one said he wasn’t afraid and couldn’t be bothered to move, so he stayed.”
The girl in the upper bunk was shocked. “No way? He’s that brave? What’s his name? I’ve got to meet him.”
Zhan Zhi said, “Sigh, let’s not talk about this. It was supposed to be a nice trip. How could something like this happen? How is our company supposed to do business in the future?”
Shen Maomao said, “This has nothing to do with you guys.”
“Reasonable people know it has nothing to do with us, but most people are still muddle-headed… Sigh.”
The entire morning passed amidst Zhan Zhi’s sighing sounds and breathing out sorrows.14
Poker went from a form of entertainment to a virus. For the rest of the day, not a single person mentioned playing cards again. The atmosphere in the car was exceptionally strange. People stopped talking, stopped interacting, and just played on their phones by themselves.
Shen Maomao didn’t stay idle either. She took Auntie Ning for a stroll through the other cars.
The train had thirteen cars in total. Cars seven and eight were soft sleepers,15 and the five cars behind them were hard seats.
The soft sleeper cars were also full, but the hard seat cars weren’t very crowded. At a glance, they even seemed more spacious than the hard sleepers.16
It just so happened that she needed to tell Auntie Ning about her discovery, so she found an empty seat with her in the last hard-seat car and roughly explained her deductions.
As expected, Auntie Ning didn’t know about the scavengers.
Shen Maomao gave her a brief explanation, then said, “When we get back, lend me that copy of 《A Midsummer Night’s Dream》. I want to look for clues in it.”
Auntie Ning readily agreed.
From her, Shen Maomao learned about her previous instance dungeon. That one had been relatively simple, and there were a few veteran players inside. Auntie Ning had seen a few time-travel dramas and thought she had time-traveled too. The other players saw that she was old and a newcomer, so they naturally didn’t bother trying to win her over. So, she just lived a normal life in the instance dungeon by herself, eating and sleeping as she should. One day, she noticed a white light appear beside her, and out of curiosity, she reached out and touched it, thus exiting the instance dungeon.
After hearing her explanation, tears fell from Shen Maomao’s eyes.
What kind of ultimate European Emperor17 is this???
Are we even playing the same game?
Auntie Ning said, “I’ve had good luck since I was a child, but unfortunately…” She paused here, not continuing, and only let out a long sigh. “Sigh, everyone has their own fate. If it gets too dangerous in the instance dungeon, don’t worry about me. You’re a good kid, and you still have a long road ahead of you…”
Shen Maomao said, “Don’t say such discouraging things! I may be a vegetable,18 but I’ll do my best to get you out of here. You just keep using your European Emperor advantage, and leave solving the instance dungeon’s puzzles to me!”
Auntie Ning asked, “What’s a European Emperor?”
Shen Maomao said, “It’s a compliment, for being lucky.”
Auntie Ning looked as if she had learned something. “Oh, oh, so that’s what it is.”
…
Around noon, Shen Maomao received a phone call from Zhan Zhi.
It wasn’t strange for a tour guide to have a tourist’s phone number, but who the hell knew how Zhan Zhi managed to make a call on a train with only one bar of signal.
She answered the call. Because the signal was so poor, the person on the other end spoke intermittently, “Quick… eat…”
Shen Maomao guessed he was telling her to eat, so she replied directly, “It’s too laggy, I can’t hear you clearly. We’ll be back soon, hanging up now.” After saying that, she immediately led Auntie Ning to the dining car.
When they arrived, they saw the familiar faces of the tour group, as expected. Zhan Zhi was distributing food. He was happy to see her. “What a coincidence! You came over just as we were about to eat?”
The smile on Shen Maomao’s face vanished. “Weren’t you the one who called me?”
Zhan Zhi said, “Huh? I don’t have your number saved.”
Shen Maomao immediately took out her phone but couldn’t find any trace of the recent call.
Her expression turned grave as she put her phone away. “How could that be?”
Only then did she realize that she had never saved Zhan Zhi’s number. The caller ID for the call just now had shown Zhan Zhi’s name. What was going on? And what did he mean by “Quick… eat”?
Seeing her troubled expression, Zhan Zhi comforted her, “Maybe someone dialed the wrong number? His voice sounds like mine, so you had a ‘first to enter becomes the master’19 moment and just assumed it was me?”
Shen Maomao forced a smile. “Maybe…”
Zhan Zhi said, “Then should we exchange numbers? That way we won’t get mixed up.”
Shen Maomao didn’t refuse.
Zhan Zhi said, “My hands are full. Give me a call, and I’ll add you as a contact when I get back.”
Shen Maomao dialed the number he gave her. Once his phone rang, she hung up and then, as usual, carried her and Auntie Ning’s meals back.
She opened her phone while eating and added the number she had just dialed to her contacts, casually typing in Zhan Zhi’s name.
The checkmark for a successful save popped up. Shen Maomao’s hand paused, as if she had figured something out in that instant.
Auntie Ning asked her, “What’s wrong? Does the food not suit your taste?”
Shen Maomao pushed her surprise down. “It’s nothing… I just thought of something. We’ll talk about it outside after we finish eating.”
After hastily finishing their meal in a few bites, the two of them started walking away again.
Shen Maomao looked at her phone as she walked, still unable to figure out what the Zhan Zhi on the phone had been saying.
When she was saving the contact just now, a theory had suddenly formed in her mind—before this, her phone didn’t have a contact for Zhan Zhi. If the call showed his name, it meant one of two things: either the caller was a fake trying to trick her, or the call came from the near future, with Zhan Zhi trying to warn her.
But Zhan Zhi’s allegiance was still unclear, and Shen Maomao didn’t dare to bet her life on an unsolicited phone call.
She explained her theory at length, finally punctuating it by opening a bottle of mineral water and taking a huge gulp. “Ning-yi,” she asked, “have you noticed anything strange on this trip?”
Before asking the question, Shen Maomao hadn’t expected to get a reply, but to her surprise, Auntie Ning actually answered her. “I saw a pattern. It looked a bit like the one on the cover of 《A Midsummer Night’s Dream》… but I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses, so I didn’t see it clearly.”
Shen Maomao was instantly excited. “Where? I’ll take a picture with my camera, and we can compare it when we get back.”
Auntie Ning said, “It was on a door, but I don’t remember which one specifically.”
That was easy enough to solve. There were only so many doors on the train. As long as they checked them one by one, they were bound to find it.
The two started walking back. When they reached the train conductor’s office, Auntie Ning called out, “This is it! Look, this pattern.”
Shen Maomao first took a picture with her phone, then leaned in to look at the pattern.
The conductor’s office wasn’t large. There was an oval window on the door, and the pattern was stuck to the bottom right corner of the glass. You really wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t looking closely.
The overall pattern was a circle with a complex design in the middle. At first glance, it looked like a blooming flower.
Auntie Ning said, “It’s the love-in-idleness flower,20 which is a three-colored violet.21 In 《A Midsummer Night’s Dream》, the magical flower juice is extracted from this flower.”
Shen Maomao asked, “How did you recognize it at a glance?”
Auntie Ning said, “I’ve grown three-colored violets before, so I’m sure of it. I saw it when I was reading the book earlier and spent a long time comparing it to the pattern on the cover.”
When they got back, they compared it with the book, and the two flowers were indeed identical.
But what did this mean?
What did the plot of 《A Midsummer Night’s Dream》 have to do with the conductor’s office? And what did it have to do with the plot of the entire instance dungeon?
She had already scoured the entire train today but hadn’t found any useful information other than that flower. Perhaps the time wasn’t right yet, and some important plot points hadn’t been triggered.
Thinking this, she was no longer in a hurry.
Worst case, she could still try to figure something out from the scavengers. All she had to do was protect her boss.
…
Once a person starts paddling water,22 time flies. In the blink of an eye, it was evening.
Shen Maomao and Auntie Ning were both quite full, so they didn’t go to the dining car for dinner, instead staying in their compartment to wait for the others to return.
She had spent the day reading 《A Midsummer Night’s Dream》 and had a general understanding of the comedy’s plot: the story was about an ‘I love you, you love me, but he also loves me, and she loves him’ situation. The key item throughout the book was the magical “love-in-idleness flower juice.” In the play, the one responsible for dropping the flower juice was the sprite Puck.23 If there was a corresponding figure in reality, who was doing Puck’s job? And what did the love-in-idleness flower juice represent?
And there was another very important question: why did Auntie Ning have this book, which was so closely tied to the plot?
Thinking this, she asked the question directly.
Auntie Ning explained, “I borrowed it from the tour guide. After we got on the train, I saw Guide Zhan reading a book, so I couldn’t resist borrowing it for a look.”
Zhan Zhi’s book?
Shen Maomao still had some doubts, so she asked, “Do you remember the plot?”
Auntie Ning nodded. “I’ve read it before, so I can remember the gist of it.”
Shen Maomao said, “Then I’ll return the book to him and test him out at the same time.”
Auntie Ning nodded in agreement.
Shen Maomao wanted to test not only Zhan Zhi but also this Auntie Ning.
Ever since entering the instance dungeon, this Auntie Ning had been far too calm. She had been fixated on the idea that the scavengers were the three tour guides. Could it be that she hadn’t thought things through enough?
She walked on, lost in thought, and didn’t realize she had gone too far until she saw the door to the next car and started to head back.
Speaking of which, those three men should be around here…
She glanced out of the corner of her eye. In compartments three and four, three beds were empty. The other three beds had quilts on them, and underneath the quilts were bulging shapes. Those must be the three bodies.
And the remaining person…
She walked past without looking directly, then glanced back at the man sitting on the chair in front of compartments three and four. The man was constantly shaking his leg, his hands rubbing together anxiously. He didn’t look at all like someone who would dare to stay in the same room as three dead bodies.
Then this person must be one of the players.
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