Players, Please Board the Train

Many people, when faced with pain, tend to avoid it. Even if they can confront it head-on, they won’t repeatedly chew over and savor it—let alone turn the place that made an entire clan suffer into an amusement park.

That sounds more like hatred.

”For revenge,” Teacher Pan sighed. ”Back then, only ten of the main culprits involved in this incident were executed. The rest were sentenced to death with reprieve or life imprisonment for crimes like kidnapping, assault, rape, child abuse, and conducting human experiments. But in the end, only ten people were actually put to death.”

”Those people’s families and relatives used their connections to pull strings. Once the heat died down, they kept getting their sentences reduced. Some who had lighter sentences got out in two or three years.”

”At the time, there was a huge news story. One criminal who raped a Shang family woman and got her pregnant was sentenced to five years. Because of good behavior, he was released early. After getting out, he retaliated against the victim and her family. The victim acted in self-defense and pushed him down the stairs, leaving him permanently paralyzed.”

Without Xu Huo needing him to spell it out, he could guess. As those perpetrators were gradually released from prison, they and their relatives would endlessly harass the Shang family descendants. Even though the Shangs themselves were victims, some descendants even had murky blood relations with them.

The number of people involved was too vast. Even if the Shang family tried to hide in the shadows of society, they’d still be targeted.

”The Shang family wouldn’t just sit back and take it,” he said.

”So the Shang family rebuilt the Museum City,” Teacher Pan said. ”The person who rebuilt this Museum City wasn’t a descendant of that Doctor Shang, but a child born in the Museum City. He left when he was four, was taken abroad by Doctor Shang to study, and successfully became an entrepreneur before returning.”

”Nearly twenty years later, the Shang family members who were persecuted went mad or committed suicide. The children who grew up all had varying degrees of psychological and physical issues. This one was the only one who turned out relatively okay. But that was only on the surface.””After the Museum City was rebuilt, it brought significant economic benefits to the area, successfully boosting tourism and turning an entire city into a tourist hotspot. In a tourist hotspot with all sorts of people coming and going, it’s way too normal for people to go missing. Just like that, that Shang descendant killed almost all the children of those main participants from back then.”

”Actually, not all of them happened in the Museum City. Some went missing in different ways. For example, one disappeared after racking up huge gambling debts, another ran off with a lover after failing to divorce her husband. At the time, no one found it strange. It was only later that it was confirmed.”

”Confirmed?” Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. ”The Shang descendant himself admitted to the murders?”

”With so many missing people in the Museum City, some families knew each other and knew about the Museum City’s past. The matter blew up.”

”But without finding the bodies, these people couldn’t do anything to the Shang descendant. Instead, some of them were arrested for picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

”At that point, that Shang descendant could basically have called it a success and bowed out. But he didn’t. Instead, he anonymously sent videos of the victims before their deaths to their families.”

”Those people were also tortured before they died. Many died from exhaustion after being injected with experimental drugs. They seemed to know why they were kidnapped, and every single one of them, before dying, was filled with hatred for the family members who had once committed crimes.”

”The victims’ families didn’t dare to publicly condemn the Shang descendant with those videos. When the police received the reports, they couldn’t do anything about him either. There was no evidence, and he even had alibis for when many of the people went missing.”

”Before the police could come up with a plan, those videos were posted on the Shang descendant’s social media account.”

Teacher Pan paused here. ”The sight of those victims, hoarse and hysterical, repenting on behalf of their fathers or uncles, made people dig up the whole story of the Shang family incident from back then. Committing such inhumane acts, those perpetrators could still start families and have children, then repeatedly harass the Shang descendants. Plus, some of them had committed other crimes after getting out of prison, and their kids were no good either. In this age of the internet, no bystander forgave them. Even the young people who died so miserably didn’t get any sympathy.”

”An eye for an eye, huh.”

”This Shang descendant wouldn’t really be stupid enough to turn himself in, would he?” Xiao Ling was also listening nearby.

”Of course not. He was detained for investigation. Later, it was found that his account had been hacked by someone from a chaotic little country. The Shang descendant had backing from capital, so he was released after a few days in custody.”

”But he was the killer,” Yu Guangnan said. ”Even without evidence, there must be plenty of people who wanted him dead.”

Teacher Pan nodded. ”That’s where the climax of this story is. That Shang descendant committed suicide two months after returning home.”

”Beautiful.” Xu Huo commented without any emotion. ”He was originally a sinner, but being forced to death could earn him sympathy.”

”That’s right,” Teacher Pan said with emotion. ”After he died, some institutions and people he had funded spoke up for him. He had depression and was receiving treatment. He’d also attempted suicide before... Someone like that, tormented by his childhood experiences, had been donating to society nonstop throughout his life. His part-time job earnings during his school days, his salary after work, the substantial fortune he built as an entrepreneur—he spent very little on himself and donated most of it to welfare homes and places like that.”

”After the Museum City incident came to light, he moved many times but still couldn’t escape death threats. Especially after the video incident, all his contact information was leaked. There was almost no channel where he could be completely free from harassment.”

”His company partner released a video of him before his suicide. He killed himself after watching a video of the Shang family being abused from back then. That video was sent by someone who was once a perpetrator but now a victim’s family member.”

”You can imagine the wave that followed. Those young people who were killed were completely ignored, while those perpetrators, even including their relatives, were all dug up. Those who still held positions of power naturally lost them. Going to jail was considered a good outcome. Others had their companies shut down and lost their jobs. Under immense pressure, they got into a few public conflicts with passersby, and after those were made public, they became completely reviled.”

”Thanks to the development of technology, they could be found wherever they went. Someone even created a tracking system specifically to track and expose their current situations. Every move they made was magnified, even elevated to the level of criminal genetics.”

”At that point, the revenge was complete,” Xu Huo said. What did it matter if those people were still alive? Even if they weathered this storm of public outrage, countless more hardships awaited them. Every time they tried to survive quietly and make life a little better, someone would definitely bring up the past. Then they’d become rats in the gutter—people could forget them and they’d live in the shadows, but when remembered, they’d be sinners who could be attacked without any reason at all. Until death.