Chapter 860: Strange Death
But the evolution rate had indeed increased, and just like last time, it had gone up by a full 10 percentage points. It couldn't really be that Dr. Wu had tampered with the potion, could it?
Of course, it wasn't necessarily the potion's fault. The Holy Sword Society player had left a mark on him earlier, and that person was also a Super Evolver. There might be other hidden factors at play.
Xu Huo looked up at the severed-finger player ahead, who was also resting.
Xu Jinfeng, on the other hand, had been dozing off when he suddenly jolted awake. Seeing that Xu Huo wasn't asleep either, he shifted his body slightly to avoid facing him directly.
Xu Huo dozed off for a while longer until it was time. The people in the carriage took turns resting.
He got up to stretch his body and walked to the back of the carriage to light a cigarette.
The rising smoke slightly blurred his vision. He glanced at each person in the carriage one by one. When he saw the player who was never without a cigarette staring at him, he handed over the remaining half pack.
The man reached out and took it, then simply walked to the back to stand beside him and smoke. He introduced himself, "You Si."
They didn't exchange any more words. After finishing their cigarettes, they each returned to their seats.
Before the lights went out, the players in the carriage began taking their potions.
"I can't hold out anyway. I can't sleep during the day, so I might as well pop some pills." Xiao Xianglin grinned at Xu Huo. "Brother, don't worry. If you accidentally fall asleep, I'll definitely call you."
The sky outside quickly darkened, plunging into complete blackness within just a few breaths.
Xu Huo had switched spots with Xiao Xianglin during the day and was now sitting by the window. He observed the other players in the darkness. Except for the man in the raincoat, everyone else was equally on guard.
"...So Wang Sen had just escaped from the mass grave and, without a moment's pause, hopped onto the last bus that happened to be stopping at the sign. Trembling, he fished out two yuan and dropped it into the fare box. Just as he was about to find a seat and rub his shaking thighs, he heard the driver say: 'Young man, your money is no good.'"
Click.
The female player stopped her watch.
After a moment, Xiao Xianglin asked, "Why did you stop?"
"I'm afraid of disturbing everyone's rest," the female player said with a chuckle.
"Maybe you should keep playing it," Xiao Xianglin said curiously. "Why is his money no good?"
The female player started it again. "How could two yuan be counterfeit? Even if you were going to fake it, you'd make a hundred-yuan note! Wang Sen was about to argue when he heard the driver say: 'If you have no money, get off.'"
"Wang Sen certainly didn't want to get off. Gazing into the distance, he saw ghostly flames flickering deep in the woods, seemingly drawing closer. He immediately hugged the seat post and shamelessly said, 'I'll give you a hundred later. I'm not getting off even if you kill me!'"
"The bus started moving. Seeing the mass grave getting farther and farther away, Wang Sen breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to look at the fare box, only to see that aside from the two paper bills he had thrown in, everything else was actually spirit money!"
"Then he looked at the driver's seat. The driver's arms were completely still, sitting there like a dummy, yet the bus could turn on its own. And up ahead, there were several people waving for the bus to stop, but the money they were waving was also spirit money!"
"Wang Sen's legs were trembling. He didn't dare to shout, so he just reached out to open the window. But the dozen or so passengers sitting behind him all stretched their heads forward at the same time. A pale hand reached over from the back seat and grabbed his shoulder: 'Hey, there's a living person here!'"
The story ended abruptly there. The female player clapped with relish. "Brilliant!"
Just as the tension reached its peak, she suddenly stopped, leaving the rest to endless imagination.
"This ghost story is really boring. It has no resolution. What's the point?" Xiao Xianglin muttered.
"Everyone can guess the ending. Saying it outright would be boring," the female player said, clearly in the mood to chat. "It's like reading a novel. Compared to the protagonist's ending, the process that leads to that ending is what makes you more curious. Anyway, I know he's going to die."
"No..." Xu Jinfeng suddenly spoke up. "Is it just my eyes, or did I just see someone waving outside?"
"How could anyone be waving near the tracks?" Although they knew it was impossible, the others still instinctively looked in his direction. Outside the tracks was pitch black, and the scenery hadn't changed much from what they'd seen during the day.
"I really did see it. Two people, holding spirit money." Xu Jinfeng stood up abruptly and pointed at the female player. "It was you who did something!"
"Use your brain. I told that ghost story in front of everyone," the female player said warily, looking around. "Is it another hallucination after the sleeping one?"
"Ah..." A miserable scream suddenly came from up ahead. Then the sealed carriage door at the front was opened. A player covered in blood rushed to the front door of Xu Huo's carriage, pounding on the window frantically. "Open the door! Help!"
The female player and the burly player sitting in front immediately backed away. The locked door might not be secure, but no one was actually going to step forward and block it at this moment.
But in the next second, the person at the front door seemed to be dragged away, suddenly disappearing downward. The burly player, standing close, leaned in to look and then said, "He's dead."
The person had already stopped breathing when he was dragged down. What exactly dragged him away wasn't clear, but the skin on his back, from his shoulder to his buttocks, had been completely peeled off.
Then the front went silent again. To be safe, Xu Huo and the burly player moved two tables together to block the door.
"What good are two iron plates?" the female player said.
"It's better than doing nothing," Xu Huo replied.
Xiao Xianglin and Xu Jinfeng also thought he had a point and came over to use their props to help nail the tables to the carriage wall.
They decided not to sit down anymore and stood guard at the front door until dawn.
Once the light came up, Xu Huo immediately went to check the front carriage.
The door hadn't been properly closed last night. As soon as he pulled it open, a player from the front carriage also came to the door. It was the one he had seen sitting cross-legged and meditating earlier. They exchanged glances and then each checked the condition of this carriage from their respective doorways.
All the players in this carriage were dead.
The bodies from the first night were piled in a corner, covered with white cloth. They had died from sharp weapons, their deaths not too gruesome, and no one had been decapitated.
But those who died last night were in a much worse state.
Two people had been chopped into three pieces, their organs spilling all over the floor. One had apparently been bitten to death alive, missing his right cheek and neck, with a hole opened in his chest and his heart gone. The remaining half of his face had its eyes wide open in fury, as if the emotion from the moment before his death hadn't yet dissipated.
Then there was the one from last night whose back had been skinned. He was lying in the middle of the aisle, and drag marks of blood could be seen ahead of him.
Xu Huo walked in to examine his body. There were no scratch marks or ligature marks. However, the body lying next to him was covered in scratch and bite marks, with the blood vessels in both hands ruptured, leaving behind a large pool of coagulated blood.
After finishing his examination of this person's body, he frowned slightly: The cause of death was actually excessive blood loss.