Players, Please Board the Train

Only Xu Huo and Bai Wenxian remained. They exchanged a glance, and Bai Wenxian said, ”I’ll tell the last story.”

Xu Huo looked at the wax figure beside him, its head already burned off, then pulled out the ”Similarity Seeker” to check it before nodding for him to begin.

The stories in Strange Tales at Night continued. Meanwhile, upstairs, Xie Ling had also obtained a clue.

The envelope containing the clue hung in the hall outside the story room, held by a wax figure. Another wax figure stood beside it—one they hadn’t noticed when they first entered, but now it was there, apparently also delivering clues.

”I knew Long Aotian’s story was unreliable. Looks like he never got a clue at all.”

”Could he have gone looking for Xu Ruosi?” Xie Ling peered toward the Wax Figure Hall, hesitating for a moment before deciding not to leave. Instead, she opened the envelope. But when she saw the contents of the letter, her pupils violently contracted. She hurled the thing away and stumbled backward several steps.

As the discarded letter fell facedown on the floor, the lights in the hall suddenly went out. She spotted a few fluorescent words on the back of the paper. The letter was folded, and from her position, she could only make out the words ”true clue.” Just as she bent down to retrieve it, a faint glimmer flashed from the direction of the Wax Figure Hall. She instinctively looked up—and saw a small figure dart past the doorway!

Xie Ling’s body jerked to a halt. The next second, a pair of tiny hands pressed against her lower back and shoved her toward the Wax Figure Hall!

*

”...Li Ping closed the door, locked all three deadbolts, and even dragged a table over to brace it shut. Pressing his ear to the door panel, he heard the footsteps outside gradually fade away. He breathed a sigh of relief and was about to pour himself a glass of water. But the moment he turned around, he saw that red dress draped over his sofa, its sleeves swaying in the night breeze, as if waving hello to him, just like before...””Story over.”

Bai Wenxian paused, then grinned at Xu Huo. ”How about you tell one too?”

The room had already begun to rise. Xu Huo said, ”I’ll pass.”

Both of them understood perfectly: staying here alone only increased the risk. So after Xie Ling left, only one story slot remained for the two of them—and even that came without getting a clue.

The room stopped, and the two walked out one after another. The hall was pitch black, and they first spotted a faint glow on the floor.

Bai Wenxian pulled out an illumination item, picked up the letter, and shielded the light to read the text on the back: ”Find these twins, and you’ll find the real clue.”

He flipped the letter over. The front was scrawled with crayon—a crude drawing of a pair of children holding hands, a boy and a girl. Their clothes had the same pattern. They had no facial features.

”Twins?” Bai Wenxian blinked in surprise. ”Why...!”

Xu Huo saw it clearly too. He furrowed his brow slightly. The twins’ strange tale was one Xie Ling had just told—yet it eerily matched the clue she’d received.

”Could Xu Ruosi and Long Aotian, who left first, have overheard her story somehow and used this method to scare her?” Bai Wenxian immediately suspected the two who had gone ahead.

Even though they’d agreed to act together, it wasn’t impossible that the earlier ones had gotten clues and wanted to slow the others down. Plus, Xie Ling was easily frightened.

”The story room is underground. There shouldn’t be another way down, and they didn’t leave any items in the room,” Xu Huo said. ”If someone ahead was trying to scare Xie Ling, she should have been waiting for us outside.”

The room had indeed descended underground, with no gaps around it. But this Wax Figure Hall they’d come up to—that was the problem.

”Maybe something happened, and she dropped the envelope here,” Bai Wenxian said. ”Under normal circumstances, she’d never just throw away a clue, right.”

”It’s also possible Xie Ling is putting on an act herself,” Xu Huo said after a moment of thought. ”To put psychological pressure on us.”

Bai Wenxian mulled it over and nodded. ”Well, a free clue is a free clue. Let’s get out of here first.”

Xu Huo paused, said nothing, and the two retraced their steps back to the Wax Figure Hall.

The lights in the Wax Figure Hall were also all out. Without Xie Ling’s string of illumination items, the light in Bai Wenxian’s hand seemed feeble, barely reaching a few meters.

”This is getting creepy.” Bai Wenxian turned to ask Xu Huo, who was behind him, ”Do you have any illumination...”

Before he could finish, he saw Xu Huo with his back to him, gripping a long sword and slashing forward!

A barrier of sword energy pierced through the corridor, shrinking and vanishing at the far end. The next second, the two approached and discovered a wax figure standing at the corner, its head half-severed. The figure’s body remained frozen in a pose of sneaking, leaning against the wall to spy ahead.

”Is it... following us?” Bai Wenxian raised an eyebrow. ”I remember when we came through earlier, there wasn’t a wax figure in this pose in the Wax Figure Hall.”

”There wasn’t.” Xu Huo kicked the wax figure’s head into the farewell room, listened to the successive thuds echoing inside, and then stepped in.

Several wax figures in the farewell room—some kneeling, some standing, bidding farewell to the deceased—had been knocked over. But aside from these, most of the other wax figures had shattered into fragments, even the wax remains of the dead. The walls and floor bore traces of battle.

”Something really did happen.” Bai Wenxian took a look.

Just then, from the room ahead with the cremation ovens, a ”clack, clack, clack” of footsteps suddenly rang out. Xu Huo shot to the doorway in an instant, tossed his illumination item inside, and the room blazed with light. Yet even so, he couldn’t pinpoint the source of the sound. Instead, the mobile platform of the cremation oven suddenly retracted into the furnace body, and a fierce burst of flames erupted!

”Xie Ling?!” Bai Wenxian arrived a step too late, catching only a glimpse of a head. He lunged forward, but Xu Huo stopped him. ”It’s a wax figure.”

Bai Wenxian looked again. Through the gaps in the flames, he could indeed see the ”person” on the platform melting.

”Something’s wrong,” he analyzed quickly. ”Xu Ruosi and Long Aotian wouldn’t go to the trouble of making a fake Xie Ling and putting it here. It makes no sense.”

”Those strange footsteps we just heard, the twin drawing on the clue Xie Ling got—they all match up with the stories we told. It’s obvious: besides the five of us, there’s someone else in this venue!”

”Not necessarily someone,” Xu Huo said. ”I’ve only done one or two D-rank dungeons. I’ve rarely come across dungeons with special items.”

The two were thinking the same thing. Bai Wenxian said, ”This does increase the dungeon’s difficulty, but I’m not sure if it’s a dungeon boss or an independent special item. It’s not unusual for a single dungeon to have multiple entities hunting players.”

”Clack, clack, clack...” The footsteps sounded again from the corridor. The two exchanged a glance, each gripping their items, and approached the corridor from opposite sides.

The footsteps maintained a steady rhythm at first, but as they got closer, it suddenly quickened—as if someone was running. Bai Wenxian charged in immediately. Just as Xu Huo was about to follow, a hand suddenly reached out from behind and landed on his shoulder!