Chapter 12: Monster

“Keep your voice down! What if you alert those monsters again!” the middle-aged woman hissed in a panic.

“Those things don’t seem to react to sound,” Yan Jiayu said. “Every carriage had movement yesterday, and they didn’t react. It was only after the third-class carriage turned on its lights…”

So that was what the rule about turning off the lights meant. The second-class carriage had only been hit by a stray beam of light and it had already attracted several monsters; the third-class carriage must have been completely wiped out.

“Isn’t this just a trap?” the middle-aged woman complained. “What kind of crappy train is this? They don’t explain anything clearly. It’s obvious they’re just sending us to our deaths. Who would dare go to the bathroom in the dark at night? Everyone is going to turn on the lights eventually…”

“Are those monsters really players who transformed?” the woman in heavy makeup asked, ignoring her. “How could perfectly normal people suddenly turn into monsters?”

The bone-chilling sound of swallowing from outside the carriage hadn’t ceased. It was bad enough that they had to board this train as players and fight for their lives against Red Players, nearly becoming food for monsters, but to think they could also turn into those mindless, grotesquely shaped creatures? No one could accept that!

The carriage fell into a deathly silence. After a while, Xu Huo finally spoke: “Liu Jia, my arm is injured. Come help me.”

Liu Jia hurried over. Just as she touched the table, her hand was grabbed.

As Xu Huo traced characters onto her palm, he said, “Most of those things outside the window are mutated players, but that doesn’t mean every player will turn into one.”

Actually, even without Liu Jia saying anything, he could have guessed the true identity of those “monsters” just from what he had seen. Their forms were similar to humans, but their hands and feet were abnormally long, as if they had undergone a second growth spurt. Although their bodies were withered, their speed and strength were extraordinary; in essence, they were very much like evolved humans.

“I suspect that only Red Players who don’t eat after boarding the train will mutate.”

They had all eaten the food on the train, so the problem didn’t lie there. It had to be related to the specific nature of the Red Players.

After the woman with the oval face died, three people had eaten. If the old man wasn’t among them, then that was the key to the mutation.

“The old man was a Red Player? How do you know?”

“How do you know he didn’t eat?”

Yan Jiayu and the woman in heavy makeup asked one after the other.

“The angle of the bite wound on his shoulder. If someone had attacked him from the front, it should have left a mark.” It wasn’t just the wound; the scent, the fabric of his clothes, and even the length of his hair were all pieces of information that could be captured. But the old man had only mentioned being bitten and said nothing else, so the tooth marks were likely self-inflicted to suppress his urge to feed.

“Perhaps he was one of the ones who bit a chunk of flesh off that woman last night. As for the bite wound, there’s another reason for that,” the woman in heavy makeup said, clearly unconvinced.

“If eating also caused mutation, there should be more than just him in our carriage tonight,” Xu Huo said coldly.

“He saved my life even while in a state of mutation. I believe in that old gentleman’s character,” Professor Han said.

The woman in heavy makeup sneered, “He was a Red Player, after all.”

“He saved someone,” Wang Xiaohui said this time.

“Regardless, the person is dead. There’s no point in arguing about this anymore.” Now that she knew the monsters were once human and that she wasn’t at risk of mutating, the middle-aged woman’s courage suddenly returned. She even clicked her tongue in pity, “It’s just such a shame about that young girl, He Yang. So young and beautiful, and now she’s gone.”

Li Fei had been killed by Yan Jiayu, the old man had turned into a monster, but He Yang had vanished without a sound, leaving not a single trace behind. It was impossible to tell if she had been killed by a monster or murdered by a Red Player in the chaos.

“Compared to the dead, the most pressing issue is the monsters outside, isn’t it?” the woman in heavy makeup said. “Heaven knows if they’ll come in again?”

“Those dense swarms of them…” She suddenly shifted the topic to Liu Jia. “Have the monsters decreased in number?”

“I don’t kn—” Liu Jia answered instinctively, but caught herself halfway through and immediately corrected, “No, they’re all still crouching there, not moving.”

After a two-second pause, the woman in heavy makeup said with a smile in her voice, “Your ability is quite impressive, being able to see in the dark.”

Liu Jia’s heart leaped into her throat.

Yesterday, she had been terrified by the things outside the window and had only seen Chen Yi attacking Xu Huo. By the time she regained her senses, the woman with the oval face was already dead. She had only managed to see the woman in heavy makeup stepping back from her, wiping something from her lips, and then the bloodstains had vanished without a trace.

She didn’t dare speak recklessly, so she only told Professor Han about it. The woman in heavy makeup must have guessed that her ability had a time limit and was probing her; she would definitely try to kill her to protect herself!

Liu Jia was terrified. She forced herself to stay calm and gestured to Xu Huo about the woman in heavy makeup. She also mentioned that there seemed to be a protective film around Wang Xiaohui that could repel attacks; a monster had actually bumped into her earlier, only to be bounced away.

This actually surprised Xu Huo. Whether it was a trait or an item, it was far stronger than simple physical enhancement. However, given Wang Xiaohui’s physical condition, it would be hard for her to survive with just raw strength; this was a case of adapting to the individual.

The train rules forbade entering other carriages at will. Wang Xiaohui had violated this, and he wondered what the consequences would be.

But since she could still protect herself, it was clear the punishment hadn’t reached a life-threatening level.

“Just how many Red Players are there in one carriage?” Liu Jia couldn’t help but ask. She didn’t dare trust anyone easily now, and she even regretted her moment of weakness in agreeing to let Wang Xiaohui in.

“About half and half,” Xu Huo said. “Six Red Players, six ordinary players.”

“Then how many Red Players are left here?” the middle-aged woman chimed in.

“There should be two left,” Yan Jiayu said. “The two who died last night, plus Li Fei and that old man, were all Red Players.”

“The woman who was killed might have been a Red Player too,” the woman in heavy makeup said.

That was hard to say, as she had been the one killed.

“Liu Jia, did you see anything yesterday?” the woman in heavy makeup threw the question out.

Liu Jia felt a surge of tension, but after receiving a subtle signal from Xu Huo, she said, “I didn’t see. I was too scared at the time, and since Mr. Xu and Chen Yi were right there, I was only focused on watching them.”

The woman in heavy makeup didn’t respond. Xu Huo immediately followed up, “I’m inclined to think that woman was a Red Player, too. She had a very strong smell of blood on her when she boarded.”

“But there’s an extra person in our carriage now,” the middle-aged woman noted.

“I’m not a Red Player,” Wang Xiaohui explained. “I can’t stand or walk!”

A faint rustle of fabric sounded in the darkness. After a few seconds, Professor Han said, “There’s one Red Player left. We don’t need to worry too much; there are six of us.”

He said this, but Professor Han remained anxious. The reason he hadn’t let Liu Jia talk about the monsters was that he feared players might act blindly in extreme situations; the self-destruction in the third-class carriage was an example.

Knowing the woman in heavy makeup was a Red Player, and that the corpses in the carriage had been taken by the monsters, he wasn’t sure if she had fed earlier. Now, he was most worried about Liu Jia.