Chapter 13: Beating to Death

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There was still some time before dawn.

The windows had to be blocked, and the front and rear doors guarded as well. After discussing it, they decided to take turns.

“But there’s still a cannibal player among us. What if…” Liu Jia murmured.

“If we let whatever’s outside the windows in, everyone will be in danger. No one would be that stupid,” Xu Huo reassured her.

Professor Han found that reasonable. He was only guarding against the possibility, so he volunteered to watch the windows with the heavily made-up woman.

She had no objections.

Wang Xiaohui and the middle-aged woman guarded the doors. Xu Huo, “injured,” rested for the time being, while Liu Jia and Yan Jiayu took the first shift. Two hours later, he would replace them. He specifically asked Yan Jiayu whether she wanted to rest.

“I used to haul water and chop firewood all the time. I’ve got plenty of stamina. Let Liu Jia go guard the front door,” Yan Jiayu said. The person guarding the door could rest for a while.

The carriage fell silent once more.

To test whether Liu Jia truly could no longer see, the heavily made-up woman deliberately held her breath and crept toward Professor Han in the darkness, opening her mouth as if she were about to bite him. There was no reaction from that side.

Three minutes later, she struck!

The table in her hands suddenly dropped. Professor Han immediately realized something was wrong, but he did not dare let go of the table. Turning his back and bracing it with his body, he shouted, “Liu Jia, watch out!”

The heavily made-up woman sneered. So that little girl did know after all—she had only lied to keep her guard down. Once dawn came, she would probably become the target of everyone’s hostility!

Someone had to die.

Liu Jia first, then Professor Han!

She had memorized Liu Jia’s position. A simple lift of her hand would have eliminated the threat, but she had not expected to meet Liu Jia’s soft neck. Instead, a massive, solid metal table came crashing toward her!

Bang!

It struck the heavily made-up woman squarely in the face!

Her vision swam, her head rang, and she staggered several yards backward. Before she could steady herself, she felt wind approaching from the right. In a panic, she raised her hands to shield her head, but the table—unyielding as a stone wall—smashed into her and shattered her shoulder bone!

She screamed in agony. A moment later, another blow struck her back, and she spat out a mouthful of blood.

“The cannibal player is attacking me!” she roared.

But no one answered. The pounding did not stop for even an instant. The heavily made-up woman felt as if every bone in her body had been broken.

“Who are you? Xu Huo?”

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She could not hear the slightest sound of her attacker’s movements and had no way to determine where the person was.

“It’s me.”

Yan Jiayu’s voice suddenly came from behind her.

The heavily made-up woman turned around in shock, but the metal table had already crashed down onto the crown of her head. This time, she heard the sound of her own neck snapping apart…

After the heavy thud of a body hitting the ground, Yan Jiayu announced a few seconds later, “Amitabha. This female benefactor has gone to hell to atone for her sins.”

The teeth-grinding, skull-numbing sounds of blows and cracking bones continued to reverberate in their ears. Trembling in the corner, the middle-aged woman asked, “Why did you kill her?”

“She was a cannibal player,” Yan Jiayu replied. “Xu Huo said she was the last cannibal player, and she tried to kill Liu Jia just now.”

“So that’s what happened!” The middle-aged woman sounded delighted. “Mr. Xu really is capable!”

“Wonderful! We can spend the remaining day in peace!”

In the darkness, Xu Huo said mildly in her direction, “Yes.”

Just before eight o’clock, the train trembled lightly, as though it had cast off a heavy burden, and then settled into a smooth rhythm.

Dawn had arrived.

Ding-dong!

“Welcome aboard…”

The announcement came as scheduled, and everyone in the carriage breathed a sigh of relief.

After two days and two nights, the train was eerily deserted. There was no sound from either direction. After peering toward the front and rear and confirming that no one was there, Professor Han and the others sat down to rest where they were.

Their nerves had been stretched taut all night, and Xu Huo was somewhat exhausted as well. He rubbed his arm, dragged the heavily made-up woman’s corpse into a corner, and then looked toward the third-class carriage.

The blood-smeared doors were twisted and deformed, their entire surface covered in raised scratches that had almost pierced through the metal. Such strength was beyond human comprehension.

Through the warped gaps, he could see that every pane of glass in the third-class carriage had shattered. All that remained was a sheet of metal hanging from the rear of the train, covered in dried blood and fragments. As the train moved, it creaked and scraped.

The complete annihilation of the third-class carriage had been entirely unexpected. He had assumed that the six people remaining there could at least hold out until the third day. He had not anticipated that cannibal players who failed to feed successfully would undergo a mutation on the second night, causing the carriage to fall.

The monsters that had appeared yesterday still retained the general shape of human beings, but their forms had already broken completely free of anything human. They possessed no reason at all; their sole purpose was to feed. They appeared at night and were awakened by the lights. Once awake, they remained active for a certain period, though they seemed somewhat insensitive to sound and scent.

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These things were far more dangerous than cannibal players. Although they lacked reason, they also confirmed what the heavily made-up woman had said: the more humans a cannibal player consumed, the stronger their abilities became.

But there had been too many of them. Could all those monsters have been cannibal players who had failed to feed successfully?

How long had evolved players even existed?

Wang Xiaohui came to his side. Xu Huo glanced at her.

“Don’t look.”

Her eyes reddened. “If he had come over yesterday too, perhaps…”

Xu Huo’s expression did not change. “Don’t be foolish. He couldn’t have gotten in.”

Under the woman’s astonished gaze, he continued, “You were allowed in because you’re disabled.”

One more player meant one more risk. Even if Xu Huo could forcibly hold off the other players, he would never rashly let an unknown danger inside. Wang Xiaohui’s physical condition had clearly reduced that risk, which was why the others’ opposition had not been particularly strong.

Wang Xiaohui seemed to have difficulty accepting this. After a while, she lowered her head and said, “I violated the train’s rules. The duration of my trait has been reduced by one-third. If I stay in the second-class carriage until the terminal station, the game will permanently deduct that one-third of the remaining time.”

With that, she maneuvered her wheelchair away. Xu Huo said nothing. This had been his purpose from the beginning. There were not that many purely good people in this world.

“There’s a farewell letter in his pocket.”

Nearby, Yan Jiayu was setting the overturned tables and chairs upright when she found the old man’s coat. Perhaps worried that he would be unable to deliver the letter himself, he had left an address on it.

“It’s in the capital. My grandmother’s family lives in the capital. I’ll deliver it,” Wang Xiaohui said.

Liu Jia held up He Yang’s little backpack. “I’ll deliver this one.”

One had saved his life; the other could barely be considered his student. Professor Han’s eyes reddened, and his breathing grew heavy.

Xu Huo, who had been searching through the heavily made-up woman’s clothes and shoes nearby without finding anything, suddenly raised his head and stared at him.

“Your wound may be infected.”

“Evolved players recover quickly. I should be fine, shouldn’t I?” Professor Han froze for a moment. He pulled open his collar, only then discovering that the flesh on his shoulder had nearly been chewed into minced meat. It had turned purplish-black, and dark brown pus seeped from the torn wound.

“Is he going to turn into a monster too?” the middle-aged woman cried, stumbling backward. “That’s how it always happens in zombie movies! Anyone who gets bitten turns into a zombie!”

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