Chapter 2048: Death by Blood Loss
The night passed peacefully. After the lights came on the next day, the Painting Woman immediately jumped out of the room and shook Xu Huo awake, demanding he take out her clothes so she could change into new ones.
"When did I bring clothes for you?" Xu Huo asked.
"They're packed with yours." The Painting Woman was referring to the suitcase Mr. Dong had packed for him, though Mr. Dong hadn't specifically mentioned it.
Xu Huo took out the suitcase and looked inside. Sure enough, there were clothes for her.
The Painting Woman picked out a purple dress, went to the bathroom to change, then stuffed her old dress into a laundry bag and tucked it into a corner of the suitcase. "The clothes are still good. I'll take them back to wash."
After that, she pulled out a bag of snack gifts from under the clothes.
Xu Huo glanced at it casually. "No wonder we needed three suitcases. Turns out the bottom is all your stuff."
Besides food and clothes, there were even toys and some bottles and jars of indistinct colors.
The Painting Woman looked a little proud. "These are all things I like. I have to bring them when I go out."
Then she quickly added, "You can't throw them away for me."
She was afraid Xu Huo would find it troublesome, so she had secretly discussed it with Mr. Dong.
Xu Huo was speechless. He went to the transition car at the back to wash up. When he came back, he found many players standing at the front door. The Painting Woman was also there. Spotting him, she immediately waved excitedly and quickly typed on her communicator: "Two people died hugging each other in here!"
The two players who died in the bathroom didn't have a dignified death. They had probably come out in the middle of the night seeking excitement. Their clothes and pants were almost completely off, and they remained in an embracing posture as they lay on the floor.
Being scantily clad or engaging in intimate acts wasn't worth much attention. Death itself wasn't a dignified affair, and plenty of people had become feed after dying. The players gathered here because the cause of their deaths was very strange.
Both had bite marks on their necks. The man's face, lips, and even his body were too pale, making it look like he had died from excessive blood loss. Although the woman also showed signs of blood loss, her skin was a bluish-gray color, indicating she had been poisoned before death.
Someone had already gone in to check. The final conclusion was that most of the blood in both bodies had been drained. The man had indeed died from excessive blood loss, while the woman had been poisoned. Apart from the bite marks and the strangulation marks on their necks, there were no signs of resistance.
In other words, these two had likely been killed without noticing anything unusual at all.
On a same-level train, being killed without any chance to resist wasn't a high probability, but it happened occasionally. What was surprising was that the killer seemed to have done it just to drink their blood.
"Vampire!" The Painting Woman immediately contributed her story knowledge. "Vampires in movies kill people like this!"
The atmosphere was silent for a moment. After a while, someone finally spoke up to ask, "No one heard anything last night?"
The two dead players were from Car 3. Everyone in their car knew they had left one after the other, but there was no movement after they stepped out of the car door. Achieving that wasn't difficult, but no third person had left Car 3.
"No one left Car 4." A female player from Car 4—the car Xu Huo was in—said, "All of us can testify to that."
"How strange. Neither the front nor the back car had anyone leave. Did the train crew come through the corridor to kill them?" A bald player from Car 3 said with an unpleasant expression. "Killing two advanced players in one go—people from Car 4 are really something."
The bodies were found in the bathroom of the transition car between Cars 3 and 4. The crew corridor generally didn't allow players to pass through, and the players from both cars were vouching for their own carmates. It seemed like everyone was innocent, but in reality, both cars suspected each other.
"Use your brain, for crying out loud," an oily-haired young man said. "No one in the cars knows each other. If someone can easily kill two advanced players, wouldn't everyone be afraid of being the next target? Who would cover for them?"
"That's not necessarily true." The bald player was adamant. "Anyway, I don't believe someone could kill without anyone noticing at all."
"Vampire! Vampire!" The Painting Woman reiterated her claim. "Didn't you see the teeth marks? Are your teeth that long?"
The people from Car 4 didn't want to deal with her. In a different setting, they might have called her stupid, but with Xu Huo present, everyone held back. Yesterday, she had been robbed, and the two of them had retrieved her things in less than five minutes. When had advanced players ever been so easygoing? It was simply because one side had overwhelming strength.
Car 3 didn't know that, so the bald player said impatiently, "Are you brain-dead? Where the hell do vampires come from? Haven't you seen people with secondary body evolution? Their teeth can grow long. If there are people who eat meat, why wouldn't there be people who drink blood?"
The Painting Woman didn't think her idea was wrong. Instead, she said, "What he was before doesn't matter. But now he's a vampire."
"You—" The bald player clenched his fist, clearly on the verge of exploding. At that moment, Xu Huo interrupted appropriately. "That's not wrong."
Meeting everyone's gaze, he continued, "If a certain car is covering for a player for some purpose, that situation is actually easy to solve. Everyone just closes their doors and calls it a day."
"But if it's a player who has evolved a trait similar to a vampire's ability, that's what needs special attention."
Xu Huo hadn't noticed how many people had left Car 3 last night either. The players at the front door had used space items to set up defenses, cutting off his perception.
However, he was certain that no one had left Car 4.
He glanced toward the crew corridor.
"You're not really suspecting the crew, are you?" The female player beside him noticed his subtle movement. "The crew is bound by the game. They have to follow the rules."
"That's just one possibility," Xu Huo said.
At that moment, another player noticed that the mask on the dead woman's face had loosened. He walked over and pulled at it. The fake skin came off, revealing the woman's true appearance.
"Whoa! That's really ugly!" The player who removed the mask was startled. "She tried to seduce me yesterday. I was wondering what kind of woman would actively offer potions to hook a man. Turns out it was because of this. Good thing I didn't fall for it, or I'd be disgusted!"
Clearly, he wasn't the only one shocked. Two other players from Car 3 showed expressions of barely restrained nausea.
"She's dead already. Have some decency," the female player from Car 4 said.
"Fine, you have decency. You collect their bodies then." The other player willingly gave up his spot.
The female player didn't move. She turned her head indifferently. "What's it to me?"
"Why overthink it?" A middle-parted man from Car 3 said. "It's just a day or two of travel. Just be careful."
Everyone thought the same way, so no one bothered to investigate further. The bodies were left for the crew to clean up.
"Would a vampire player sleep hanging upside down like in the movies?" After returning to the car, the Painting Woman asked Xu Huo.
"If they're imitating the teeth down to the last detail, maybe they really can." Xu Huo thought for a moment. "They might have even evolved some impressive acrobatic skills to avoid blood rushing to their heads."
(Chapter End)