Infinite Train
Chapter 678: Lucky Cruise Ship
The train sped forward unstoppably. The world outside the window was dark and barren, and the only sound was the even, rhythmic clacking of the wheels striking the tracks.
Inside the carriage, the ticket inspector’s figure had already gone far away. As its footsteps disappeared, the air warmed up, the darkness dissipated, and the suppressed lights gradually lit up again, illuminating the two figures inside the carriage.
Wen Jianyan looked around and chose a window seat to sit down.
He looked up at Hugo and raised an eyebrow:
“Not going to sit?”
Not far away, Hugo stood ramrod straight. He stared at Wen Jianyan without saying a word, his face completely devoid of expression, like a statue that kept people a thousand miles away.
“Whatever, you can stand if you want,” Wen Jianyan shrugged indifferently. “But I can’t guarantee how long this train will run.”
Hugo took a deep look at Wen Jianyan and finally moved.
He stepped forward, walked over to the seat opposite Wen Jianyan, and sat down.
“See,” Wen Jianyan said with a beaming smile, “Aren’t you quite reasonable too?”
After speaking, he propped his chin on his hand and turned to look out the pitch-black window.
In the lightless sky, the torn scar looked even deeper, like thick, un-dried blood. The red eyeballs rolled around inside it, seemingly searching for something without a moment’s rest.
“Ugly things,” Wen Jianyan narrowed his eyes. “I really wish I had a very long stick right now, if you know what I mean…”
With a certain childish malice, he raised his hand and made an upward poking motion.
“You shouldn’t have spared me.”
Hugo suddenly spoke up, interrupting him. His tone was as flat, straightforward, and inappropriately timed as ever.
Wen Jianyan paused and turned to look at him:
“Hmm?”
Hugo sat across from him, his face still lacking any superfluous expression. His tired, deep gray eyes stared at him, carrying a callous and unreasonable air.
“Once I regain my freedom, I will still complete my mission. That will not change.”
Hugo slowly leaned forward, placing his bound hands on the table. Even though his hands were empty and lacked anything that could serve as a weapon, they inexplicably carried an unsettling deterrence.
“You shouldn’t be so soft-hearted.”
“…” Wen Jianyan, however, didn’t seem to feel any threat at all, still smiling. “I know.”
Even though Anise was the more radical one who jumped around more actively, in this manhunt, Anise was at most a participant, whereas Hugo was the true mastermind—indeed, out of consideration for their past relationship, Hugo had given Wen Jianyan the option to surrender, and he hadn’t approved of Anise’s prisoner-abusing actions either—but this didn’t mean he was Wen Jianyan’s “friend,” or that he would let him off the hook over a little personal sentiment.
From the very beginning, Wen Jianyan knew clearly that in this encirclement, Hugo was far more dangerous than Anise.
“But, is it really necessary?” Wen Jianyan shrugged. “You make it sound as if after killing you, Nightmare won’t just send someone else to hunt me down… At least you are still somewhat controllable; if it were someone else, it would be hard to say.”
Admittedly, Hugo was very strong. Wen Jianyan wouldn’t have any chance of winning in a head-on clash with him. But equally, Hugo was a person with a very high moral baseline and was strictly lawful—between being hunted by someone with a high sense of morality versus a group of people with no morals at all, Wen Jianyan knew which option to choose.
“Besides, if I really had to kill someone, how should I go about it?” His tone suddenly shifted, and his expression became solemn, as if he were exploring some serious academic question.
“Suffocation? I really don’t want to strangle your neck until your face turns blue and your eyeballs pop out. Use a knife? That would get blood everywhere, and in the end, I’d still have to face your bloody corpse…” Wen Jianyan muttered while counting on his fingers. Toward the end, he couldn’t help but shudder involuntarily. “No, I’m too faint-hearted, I can’t do it.”
Hugo: “…”
He stared straight at Wen Jianyan sitting opposite him, his facial expression seeming to say:
How on earth have you survived in Nightmare for this long?
But the next second, he saw the young man sitting opposite him suddenly raise his head and stare fixedly over.
“Oh, right, there’s one more thing.”
“Before I kill you, there are still too many things I haven’t figured out.”
Wen Jianyan stopped bantering. The careless smile on his face vanished, and a highly penetrating gaze fell on Hugo, bringing an uncomfortable, sharp sensation.
“For example, what are you hiding?”
“…”
Under the light, Hugo’s eyes remained indifferent.
“You’re overthinking it.”
“Am I?” Wen Jianyan looked thoughtful. “Why don’t I think so?”
“Of course, I know you signed a much harsher agreement with Nightmare, and if you don’t fulfill the contract, you’ll pay a price, blah blah blah. And I don’t think that our relationship, which is purely based on clearing one instance together, is enough to make you willingly bear that kind of price,” he waved his hand dismissively, showing an impatient expression. “—That’s not the reason I think there’s a hidden truth.”
Wen Jianyan had indeed saved him a few times, but similarly, Hugo had done quite a few similar things in return.
It could be said that if Hugo hadn’t actively taken the damage in many situations, it would have been very difficult for them to clear that instance.
Teaming up to enter an instance inherently required entrusting your back to someone. If teammates couldn’t even help and cover each other, the team would have disbanded right at the beginning of the instance.
The two of them did have some camaraderie, but there were quite a few people with whom Wen Jianyan shared such camaraderie. To say that this was enough to make Hugo “break his contract for him” or “actively seek death”… was somewhat of an overstatement.
“What I really find strange,” Wen Jianyan propped his chin up, tilting his head to look at Hugo, “is why you signed the contract in the first place?”
Everyone has a desire to survive; this was true. But the problem was that the path of survival offered by Nightmare required throwing away all dignity and surrendering every bottom line to obtain.
Sign, and live; refuse, and die.
It was normal for Anise to agree; he was never a man of principles to begin with.
Gentleman refused—otherwise, Wen Jianyan probably would have run into him long ago—of course, this didn’t mean Gentleman was some noble person. That guy had his own logical value system; it was bizarre and twisted, but it was indeed self-contained.
Yet the clauses that even Gentleman could refuse, Hugo agreed to?
And just willingly pulled out his own fangs and claws to become Nightmare’s hound?
He always felt something wasn’t right about this.
“…” Hugo stared at him coldly, neither answering nor giving any reaction. Those eyes were calm and deep, like a bottomless lake without ripples, making it impossible for anyone to pry into even a fraction of his thoughts.
Wen Jianyan didn’t mind the other party’s non-violent, non-cooperative attitude either. He blinked and suddenly changed the subject:
“Right, if I remember correctly, it was starting from the Xingwang Hotel that you chose to travel alone, wasn’t it?”
Xingwang Hotel, the Sandbox.
At that time, Hugo wasn’t a lone wolf like he was now. On the contrary, he had a squad he fully trusted, teammates to whom he could entrust his back. Wen Jianyan remembered the silent trust and tacit understanding between them, and he had also seen a Hugo who wasn’t so reticent, weary, and world-weary.
“The only person who survived that instance… seems to be you?”
This was inevitable. The Xingwang Hotel instance was a massive meat grinder, existing specifically to twist the duties of the town and purge the town’s bloodline. Hugo was able to survive because Wen Jianyan had helped him leave his blood and portrait in the gallery—what about the others?
The answer was self-evident.
Hugo’s expression still didn’t fluctuate in the slightest. He coldly stared at Wen Jianyan, the temperature deep in his eyes dropping.
Wen Jianyan narrowed his eyes, a faint smile on his lips. He neither dodged nor avoided the gaze, maintaining a careless, leisurely demeanor.
“Having your entire squad wiped out and being the only one left alive must feel terrible. But this kind of thing isn’t considered rare in Nightmare. The vast majority of people, after such an event, would form a new squad, join a new guild, make some new friends, or something… But what about you? You’re quite different.” Wen Jianyan propped up his chin, smiling as he looked at Hugo opposite him. “You don’t form any squads, don’t make any friends, and don’t join any guilds.”
“You are the only person I’ve seen in Nightmare who works solo.”
Wen Jianyan looked thoughtful.
“Because of what? Guilt? Post-traumatic stress disorder? …None of those seem quite right.”
He narrowed his eyes: “Or maybe—in a certain sense—you feel that they aren’t completely dead yet?”
This time, Hugo’s eyes finally changed. His gray eyeballs locked fiercely onto the young man not far away, like a heavy stone smashing into the surface of a lake, causing the deep, black sludge to surge up from beneath. If the bindings from the university weren’t still in effect, Wen Jianyan had no doubt that he would directly pay the price for his indiscreet words, just like Anise had on the train.
“Hah, if that’s the case, then the truth is much clearer.”
Wen Jianyan smiled radiantly, continuing as if he weren’t afraid of death.
“Nightmare used their resurrection as a bargaining chip, in exchange for you willingly becoming its hound? Selling your life for it? …Wow, how touching.”
“…Shut up,” Hugo said, his eyes ice-cold, emphasizing every word.
Wen Jianyan likewise retracted his smile. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the seat, his eyes very calm as he said:
“Deluding yourself.”
Hugo couldn’t possibly not know what he was doing.
Phrases like “Nightmare will never let you achieve your wish,” or “If Nightmare occupies everything and invades reality, everything will be meaningless,” or “Even if those dead people could truly be resurrected, would they want to see the ensuing consequences?”—Wen Jianyan didn’t plan to say a single word of these. Because he knew the other party was already aware of all these things, but… no one can save someone who is deluding themselves and willingly drowning in a falsehood.
Just like you can never wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
“…How foolish.”
Even as he said this, his eyes carried no contempt, nor the slightest condescending pity, but only a faint sorrow akin to nostalgia. His tone was very light, like a sigh.
But perhaps because of this, it was even more unbearable.
“Shut up!!!” Hugo gritted his teeth, a low, furious roar tearing from his throat.
And this time, the usually talkative Wen Jianyan actually obediently shut his mouth.
He shrugged, withdrew his gaze, and turned to look out the window. His tone and expression had already returned to normal:
“Our journey probably isn’t even halfway done yet. The road ahead is still long, let’s get some rest.”
With that, Wen Jianyan crossed his arms, adjusted himself in his seat, and then closed his eyes of his own accord.
The train rumbled, traveling through the darkness. A weak bean of firelight flickered inside the carriage, illuminating the young man curled up on the seat who seemed to have already fallen asleep, and also illuminating the pitch-black figure opposite him, motionless, silent, and rigid as a sculpture.
An unknown amount of time passed.
“Clang!” The train wheels and tracks collided with a massive sound, and the carriage vibrated accordingly. Accompanied by tooth-aching, squeaking friction sounds, the train speed, which had just been moving steadily, suddenly slowed down.
Wen Jianyan opened his eyes. His gaze was clear, showing no sign of having been asleep at all.
He sat up straight. “What is it? What happened?”
Hugo sat opposite him without moving an inch. His sitting posture hadn’t changed in the slightest compared to before Wen Jianyan closed his eyes. His body was hidden in the darkness, and on his cold, hard-lined half-face, no trace of his previous loss of composure could be seen.
But Wen Jianyan didn’t expect him to answer his question anyway. He leaned over and looked out the train window.
A familiar station appeared before his eyes.
This was exactly the first station Wen Jianyan and the others had arrived at after being washed ashore.
—And it was the farthest distance the train could take them.
The train slowly pulled into the station and came to a halt.
Wen Jianyan stood up.
“Let’s go, we’re getting off.”
Hugo stood up and followed him without a word.
The entire world seemed to be covered in a faint layer of red light, looking exceptionally ominous. But because of this, Wen Jianyan quickly found the small path they had walked on before.
Following the small path straight ahead lay the coastline of the Dead Sea.
The sea was calm and pitch-black. Wen Jianyan could almost smell the cold, damp aura blowing in from the sea surface. The boundary stone with the word “Pier” written on it—which they had seen when they first came ashore—was right by the sea, jutting abruptly out of the flat sandy beach.
Wen Jianyan raised his eyes and looked into the distance, his heart suddenly skipping a beat.
On the blood-dyed surface of the sea, a massive pitch-black ship sat quietly. It was tilted, floating silently on the sea surface, like the gigantic, craggy corpse of a whale.
…The Lucky Cruise Ship.
“…”
Wen Jianyan stood on the empty, cold sandy beach, gazing distantly at that giant black wheel that symbolized death.
Everything looked exactly the same as when he had fallen off the ship’s rail, making one dizzily almost forget the long stretch of time that had passed in between.
On that ship lay the hope of destroying Nightmare, the innocent blood spilled, the friends forced to stay behind, and… an old God, who bore his name as a scar, imprisoned for many years.
Crack!
Suddenly, a crisp cracking sound came from overhead.
Wen Jianyan instinctively looked up, only to see the wound tearing across the sky split even deeper. Swollen red eyeballs crowded together, bulging and dropping down from within, seemingly trying to squeeze into this world from the outside.
His heart dropped, and an ominous premonition arose within him.
Wait, could it be…
As if to verify his conjecture, a rumbling, muffled sound suddenly came from the surface of the sea not far away.
The sea, which had been calm and silent as death just a moment ago, grew restless. The black seawater whipped up waves, each higher than the last. Pale corpses loomed indistinctly within them, carried by the surging seawater, rushing toward the shore all together!
The seawater crashed onto the shore with a boom, kicking up high sprays of water.
In wave after wave of these massive swells, trying to swim to the cruise ship in the middle of the ocean was simply a fantasy, a fool’s dream!
Wen Jianyan’s pupils shrank slightly.
Just like how the moon can affect the tides, those eyeballs above were also affecting the Dead Sea.
…Nightmare was trying every possible means to stop him from boarding the ship!
In the mere dozens of seconds he stood there stunned, the sea level had already surged over the coastline, rolling toward his direction with an unstoppable drive. In the ink-black seawater, pale, stiff faces floated, rising and falling layer upon layer in the mountain-like waves, making one’s scalp tingle.
At this rate, it wouldn’t take long for it to swallow the entire area.
“Fall back!!” Wen Jianyan’s expression was grave. “Back to the train, hurry!!”
Fortunately, they hadn’t left the train for very long, and the train hadn’t departed yet.
Panting, Wen Jianyan retreated to the middle of the carriage and turned to look out the window.
In the distance, the black cruise ship still towered over the sea surface, but under the onslaught of one massive wave after another, it looked so very small—even though it was only a few hundred meters away, it felt so far that there seemed to be absolutely no hope of crossing it.
Wen Jianyan cursed softly in his heart.
He had thought that Nightmare might try to stop him, but when this situation actually happened, it still caught him off guard, making it impossible to move a single step.
Behind him, Hugo still maintained his bound state. Ever since arriving at the station, he had remained silent; whether he was being led off the train by Wen Jianyan or brought back onto the train, he didn’t utter a single word.
He looked at Wen Jianyan, scrutinizing his expression.
As if asking:
—What other ideas do you have now?
“…”
Standing in the middle of the carriage, Wen Jianyan gritted his teeth, his chest heaving rapidly, his eyes flickering slightly.
He did have a backup plan, but this plan wasn’t reliable.
And the success rate was extremely low.
Taking a deep breath, he raised his hand and opened the live broadcast room interface.
Hugo watched his movements, his eyes flickering.
This time, he finally spoke:
“…You’re going to use an item?”
“How is that possible,” Wen Jianyan didn’t even look up. “Nightmare isn’t so benevolent as to let me use the items it provided under these circumstances.”
On the interface, a lush, green apple tree appeared before his eyes. Because it hadn’t been picked from for far too long, it was laden with heavy fruit, its branches bent so low they almost touched the ground.
“…What I am going to use is my Innate Talent.”
But this time, perhaps because he had blocked all connections with Nightmare, the familiar mechanical voice did not appear.
After Wen Jianyan silently recited the lie he wanted to manifest in his heart, the red fruit twisted and transformed before his eyes, ultimately turning into a glittering, shiny dice.
Above the dice, a tiny, semi-transparent number floated.
Wen Jianyan knew that this represented his success rate—5%.
The dice rolled toward the void.
Clatter.
The dice slowly stopped rolling, and the number on it came to a halt in front of him.
Failure.
The dice began to fade.
Wen Jianyan tried a second time—unsurprisingly, it was a failure again.
This time, the dice had faded to an almost semi-transparent color.
The third time… still a failure.
The dice vanished.
…Damn it!
Even though he had already guessed how difficult it would be to realize, when the reality was displayed before him so bloodily and nakedly, it was still hard to accept.
As the Fruit of Lies was used up, the apple tree in front of him began to turn ethereal, representing the arrival of the cooldown period.
And this time, without Nightmare’s prompt, Wen Jianyan wasn’t sure how long he had to wait for the cooldown to end.
He turned his head to glance outside.
The black seawater had already spread to the station, submerging the tracks and wheels. There were no corpses in the shallow water for the time being, but if the sea level continued to rise, then this situation probably wouldn’t last long either.
The time left for him was running out.
Wen Jianyan pressed his lips tightly together, burning with anxiety.
Suddenly, a low, unfluctuating voice came from behind him:
“Your time in Nightmare is still too short.”
Wen Jianyan froze and turned his head to look.
Hugo had sat down at some unknown point. He leaned against the back of the seat, his bound hands resting in front of him. More than half of his face was bathed in darkness, and a pair of gray, gloomy eyes stared at him: “I thought you knew the true meaning of Innate Talents.”
Wen Jianyan replied: “Of course I kno—”
He seemed to realize something and abruptly stopped.
Innate Talents were not bestowed by Nightmare. On the contrary, they inherently existed within everyone’s soul, and Nightmare was merely “helping” them manifest it.
It was exactly because of this that the types of Innate Talents were so diverse. Even a single Innate Talent could birth multiple forms of expression, and its abilities could even change following the arrival of certain major events—because they were living, human souls to begin with.
As unique as a person, and as changeable as a person.
And those stats, those upgrades, those various word games, were nothing but methods Nightmare used to control and confuse them.
…No wonder.
Hugo had no limits when using his Innate Talent.
Because they didn’t exist.
They were the manifestation of your soul itself. As long as you were willing to pay the price to use them, then they were your inexhaustible, endless resource.
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, gazing fixedly at the apple tree before him. He slowly took a deep breath, closed his eyes, raised his hand, and slowly reached forward.
Rustling leaves brushed past the back of his hand. The next second, his fingertips touched something cold, hard, and perfectly round.
His fingers tightened, and a soft snap of a stem breaking sounded in his ears.
Wen Jianyan opened his eyes.
A fruit as red as blood rested in the palm of his hand.
—This was the first time he had personally touched his own Innate Talent with his own hands.
The fruit twisted and transformed in his palm, ultimately becoming a blood-red dice.
He raised his hand and tossed the dice out.
The dice fell into the void. Wen Jianyan tasted a sweet, metallic flavor welling up in his throat, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
First roll, failure.
Wen Jianyan retrieved the dice and threw it a second time.
It felt as if his internal organs had been smashed by some heavy object. Creaking sounds rang in his ears, like the sound of ribs snapping under heavy pressure. Intense pain wrung his abdomen, and he used almost all his strength just to suppress a scream.
Second roll, still a failure.
Wen Jianyan gritted his teeth fiercely and threw it a third time.
The dice tumbled and spun in the air, then lost momentum bit by bit. On its bright, blood-red surface, a number appeared.
And this time…
He succeeded.
The dice turned into specks of light and gently dissipated. Wen Jianyan’s knees gave out. If he hadn’t reached out in time to grab the back of the seat, he would have almost face-planted straight down.
He gritted his teeth and swallowed the sweet, metallic liquid in his mouth. The veins on the back of his hand bulged as he hauled his body into the seat.
“Sit tight!”
Almost the instant Wen Jianyan’s voice fell, the train beneath them let out a running roar. The black water covering the tracks seemed to be influenced by some unknown force, rippling layer upon layer. The entire train vibrated more and more violently, increasingly intensely—even though the tracks ahead had reached their end and could not advance even a single step further, at the instant the kinetic energy accumulated to a certain node, the train jolted and actually started moving!
The earth shook, the mountains swayed, and fierce winds whipped up tempestuous waves.
The violent black seawater battered against the windows, like an untamed beast roaring to destroy the iron train.
Wen Jianyan gripped the table tightly with both hands so his body wouldn’t be flung into the air.
The tracks did not exist.
The train’s operation had nothing to do with space or time.
What truly had an impact was the “Station.”
The reason the train stopped at the “Pier” station was that it was the farthest stop it could reach. So what if there was also a station on the Lucky Cruise Ship?—A brand-new station built from a Lie, rising from the ground.
Then, not even the Dead Sea could stop their arrival.
The entire world was shaking violently. The train seemed to have burst off the ground. A strong sense of weightlessness turned the entire interior of the train into a total mess. Mechanical roaring filled his ears, and terrifying forces tore at it from the outside, seemingly intent on ripping this small iron carriage to shreds.
Finally—
“BOOM!!!!”
Accompanied by a massive explosion, the front of the train smashed down viciously.
The tremendous impact caused Wen Jianyan to lose his grip. He rolled heavily on the floor a few times, his back slamming into the interior of the carriage, forcing him to cough up mouthfuls of blood.
Everything in the carriage had been destroyed. Tables and chairs were piled up in a chaotic mess everywhere. The oil lamp had extinguished, leaving the surroundings pitch black. It was unknown whether the windows had blown out during the journey or exploded at the moment of impact; the edges were twisted, making it difficult to even recognize their original shapes.
“Cough, cough cough, cough cough cough!”
Coughing violently, he propped himself up on the floor beside him and crawled out of the nearest window.
Behind him, the long train lay across the deck, the exterior of the carriages covered in shocking scratches. Its front end had smashed heavily into the deck. Now devoid of power, it billowed thick smoke outward.
Wen Jianyan, covered in dirt and dust, stood up and looked down at his palms, which had been cut by glass.
In the impact just now, at some unknown point, he had been forced to let go of the one end of the rope that was his only means of controlling Hugo—if he wasn’t mistaken, that guy had probably regained his freedom by now and had re-established contact with Nightmare. The brief, peaceful coexistence from earlier had vanished like a bubble.
Their stances were as incompatible as fire and water. The next time they met, it would inevitably be a life-or-death struggle, with no room for compromise.
He had to get out of here quickly. In this incomparably spacious area with absolutely no cover, if he ran into Hugo here, it would not end well.
Wen Jianyan looked up and gazed forward.
On the deck, the ship’s skeleton stood silently. Beyond the ship’s rail lay the boundless, pitch-black ocean.
The eyeballs overhead turned, silently staring at him.
The rain had stopped. The deck had returned to normal. There was no one around, and everything was exactly as it was in his memory.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and stepped forward.
—Yes, he was back.
