Free Web NovelBai Liu’s figure vanished completely amid Mu ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ Shicheng’s frantic pacing and hopping in place.
Mu Shicheng bit his nails, circling anxiously around the spot where Bai Liu had disappeared. He crouched down, ruffled his hair several times, then crushed the lollipop in his mouth between his teeth. Finally, suffocated with frustration and gnashing his teeth, he clicked the icon for The Last Train to Blast Off on the screen and followed closely after Bai Liu into the game.
One second before entering, Mu Shicheng was still muttering to himself, “Damn it. Bai Liu actually made me curious. I’ve never entered a Level 2 game without any preparation before!”
[Game The Last Train to Blast Off has gathered two players. Five more players are needed to begin.]
Two minutes after Mu Shicheng disappeared, four players with nearly identical heights, builds, and appearances appeared before the screen.
Their faces were covered with eerie puppet-like painted masks, and they moved like marionettes being pulled by strings. Every step came with a strange pause at the joints. They looked like four identical puppet dolls crafted by a master artisan, almost indistinguishable to the naked eye.
The one in front—or rather, the puppet in front—asked in a low voice, “Bai Liu entered this game?”
When this “puppet” spoke, its mouth opened and closed in an exaggerated arc, like a stage puppet pretending to move its lips while being manipulated by strings. The low, hoarse voice seemed to come from the puppeteer behind it.
Another puppet, carrying a butcher’s knife on his back, had a flash of vindictive delight in his eyes. He bowed respectfully and replied, “Yes, Puppet Master-shao.”
“The Last Train to Blast Off, is it?” The painted eyes on the puppet’s face narrowed with lifelike realism. Finally, it let out a sinister laugh. “A Level 2 game. It seems that even if I don’t make a move against Bai Liu, he may not come out of this game alive. Such high talent would be a pity to waste in death. He’s just right to be made into my puppet.”
“Go.”
The four puppets moved in unison, clicked The Last Train to Blast Off on the screen, and vanished into the entrance together.
[Game The Last Train to Blast Off has gathered six players. One more player is needed to begin.]
A person who looked like a student appeared beside the screen at the entrance. He wore a pullover sweater and thick, flat-lensed glasses, and he held an extremely thick tome in his arms.
His square-rimmed glasses were as thick as the bottoms of beer bottles, so large they covered half his face. On the lower half left exposed beneath them, a scattering of freckles dotted the bridge of his nose. His head was timidly tucked into his sweater. If Bai Liu had glanced at him quickly, he might have mistaken this player for Jeff from Siren Town.
But he looked a little weaker than Jeff, and much more “normal.”
He looked like an ordinary student.
In the game, however, a normally dressed student looked exceptionally abnormal.
“Eh, let me see. Which game should I choose...” The player pushed up his glasses, leaning so close to the screen he looked as if he were wearing reading glasses. As he looked, he opened the management panel of his game manager.
His personal panel was clearly displayed.
[Player Name: Du Sanying (Little Parrot)]
[Today’s Rising Star Points Ranking: 3rd Place. You have surpassed the 4th-place Rising Star, Mu Shicheng, by 170,000 points. He absolutely cannot catch up to you in the short term. Please keep up the good work, widen the gap, and continue pursuing the players ahead of you.]
[Achievements Obtained: The Winner Who Does Nothing; The Sole Lucky Survivor; The Player Strangely Ignored by Monsters; The Fighter Whose Attacks Enemies Miss 100% of the Time.]
[The items you previously purchased from the Game Store are currently being discounted, dropping from 10,000 points to 1 point. Would you like to purchase them?]
[Congratulations to player Du Sanying for winning the top-tier Player Deluxe Gift Pack, with a probability of one in one hundred thousand. Would you like to claim it now?]
...
Du Sanying seemed to have long since grown numb to these windfalls. He did not claim a single reward or gift, simply scrolling through the interfaces all the way to the final page of his personal panel. He pushed up his glasses, almost pressing his face against the panel as he narrowed his eyes in search of the information he wanted.
[Luck Value: 100. You are still the luckiest person in the world today. You are the darling favored by the Goddess of Luck. Follow your intuition and choose the game you want! Whatever you choose will bring you the greatest luck!]
“My luck value is still 100 today?” Du Sanying glanced hesitantly over the entire screen. “In that case, I should choose by intuition. Then—”
His eyes swept across the area before finally stopping on the icon for The Last Train to Blast Off.
Du Sanying’s hand hovered over the icon. A sudden, hair-raising premonition welled up in his heart, as if clicking this icon would lead to something both extremely lucky and extremely unlucky. This was a feeling he had never experienced before while his luck value was 100.
In the past, he had always felt certain that choosing according to intuition would bring him good luck. So why did it feel like choosing this game would bring him many hardships, yet at the same time make him very lucky...
What kind of mess was this?
Du Sanying shook his head. After hesitating fearfully for a long time, he still tapped the icon for The Last Train to Blast Off twice.
[The players for The Last Train to Blast Off have been gathered. The game begins—]
A [FULL] tag popped up in the lower right corner of the burning-train icon on the giant screen.
In the next second, Bai Liu opened his eyes in a crowded subway station.
At the same time, seven small television screens lit up in the lobby. On one of them was Bai Liu’s calm, expressionless face amid the crowded subway station.
Wang Shun, who was standing in the lobby searching for Bai Liu, suddenly felt his game manager vibrate continuously.
[System Notification: The player Bai Liu, whose small TV you have bookmarked, has logged into a game~ Please go watch~]
[System Notification: The player Mu Shicheng, whose small TV you have bookmarked...]
[System Notification: The player Zhang Kui, whom you bookmarked... has logged into a game...]
[System Notification: ...Du Sanying has logged into a game...]
“No way...” After checking the notifications on his game manager, Wang Shun sank into an unprecedented daze. “What the hell. Bai Liu, the 3rd and 4th rankers on the Rising Star list, and even Puppet Master all entered the same multiplayer game. This is going to be a battle of gods...”
***
The moment Bai Liu opened his eyes, he received a system notification.
[Welcome, player, to The Last Train to Blast Off.]
[You are a passenger. Players, please use the ticket in your pocket to enter the station within ten minutes and wait to board the last train that is about to explode.]
Bai Liu reached into the pocket of his suit pants and pulled out a thin, stiff subway ticket. Printed on it was: [Subway Line 4: Antique City → Antique City].
Bai Liu raised an eyebrow in faint surprise.
The departure station and destination station on this ticket actually had the same name. Unless this was a case of two different stations sharing one name...
Bai Liu turned to look around the subway station, attempting to find a route map. Soon, he spotted one beside the ticket booth.
Line 4 was marked with a very conspicuous red line. Bai Liu found it on the map at a glance.
“As expected. Line 4 is a closed-loop subway line.” Bai Liu looked with understanding at the red Line 4 that circled the city. “The starting point and end point overlap. They’re both this station—Antique City.”
Bai Liu walked around the subway station for a while. Aside from studying a few more advertisements, he found no additional information. The only thing that felt discordant was the station’s design.
Generally speaking, both the exit and entrance should have escalators.
Conventionally, for passengers’ convenience, the exit escalator should move upward while the entrance escalator should move downward. But the design of this subway station was reversed, making Bai Liu feel faintly uncomfortable.
There was one more thing Bai Liu found strange.
He glanced at the LED clock hanging from the station ceiling. It displayed [07:34].
It looked quite normal at first. But after Bai Liu checked the time several more times, he realized it was not moving forward.
It was moving backward.
In the blink of an eye, it became [07:12], and Bai Liu reacted quickly.
“This is a countdown clock, not a clock.” Bai Liu thought to himself. “And it seems to be counting down for me. It means I have six minutes left to enter the station.”
Although only six or seven minutes remained, Bai Liu was not in any hurry.
He walked out of the subway station once and discovered that the outside was pitch-black. There was no sound, no light, nothing at all. The passengers who exited and walked into that darkness also vanished.
Bai Liu did not try to walk out. After turning back, he found that the countdown on the subway clock had already reached [03:02].
Bai Liu leisurely returned to the map. This time, he focused on memorizing the names of the stations along Line 4.
The station before [Antique City] was [Reservoir]. A few stops away, a station called [Mirror Museum] caught Bai Liu’s attention.
“Mirror Museum...” Bai Liu’s gaze settled on the name, and he fell into thought as if something had occurred to him. “I feel like I’ve heard this name before...”
Just as Bai Liu was trying to remember where he had heard it, a male voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Damn! Bai Liu! Why haven’t you gone in yet?!”
Mu Shicheng looked back from the platform and saw a certain “smart person” touching his chin while squinting at the subway map. He walked over, speechless.
“There’s only one minute left. What are you doing here? Memorizing the map?”
Bai Liu was not at all surprised that Mu Shicheng had followed him in.
He glanced at the red LED clock, which had already begun counting down second by second, and gave an unhurried “Mm” before answering Mu Shicheng.
“I was thinking about whether I’ve been to this place before.”
Mu Shicheng was startled. “You’ve played this game?” But he quickly denied it himself. “Impossible. You’re definitely a newcomer.”
“Yes, I haven’t been to this place in a game,” Bai Liu admitted.
Mu Shicheng frowned at Bai Liu. “Then how could you have been here before...”
“I haven’t been here in a game, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been here at all. I think I may have been here in reality.” Bai Liu withdrew his gaze from the subway line.
“Reality?!” Mu Shicheng was shocked. “You’ve been to this subway station in reality? How do you know?”
“If I’m not mistaken, this should be a horror game adapted from a real-life event. Have you heard of the [Jingcheng Explosion Case]?”
“The social news case about two thieves who hid a bomb inside an antique mirror, planning to use a bomb threat to rob a local museum while delivering it there, only for the bomb to lose control on the way and blow up the entire subway?”
As Bai Liu spoke with Mu Shicheng, he walked forward. He took out his ticket and beeped it at the entrance gate, successfully entering the station.
“I studied the layout and the subway map just now. This game was most likely designed with the [Jingcheng Explosion Case] as its prototype.”
“I’ve heard of it...” Mu Shicheng also pulled out his ticket and followed him into the station. “But even knowing that is useless, right? That case had a huge impact, and because no one knows how the criminals hid the bomb in the mirror and bypassed security, a lot of information was never released to the public.”
After analyzing this, Mu Shicheng shrugged and scoffed noncommittally.
“Even if we know the prototype of the game is that case, we’re still completely ignorant about what’s going to happen on this exploding last train we’re about to board. We don’t know the specific details. Just knowing the source of inspiration is totally useless.”
“I might actually know what will happen on this train...” Bai Liu rubbed his nose and gave Mu Shicheng a kind smile. “I was on that subway that day. I got off at the station right before the explosion.”
Mu Shicheng: “...”
Bai Liu shrugged innocently and spoke kindly to the stunned, wooden-faced Mu Shicheng.
“Does this count as obtaining important information for clearing the game?” freёwebnoѵel.com
“Of course, Mu Shicheng, I can tell you everything I know.”
Bai Liu smiled.
“But not for free. If you don’t believe me, you can verify whether I’m telling the truth. I remember you have an item that can detect lies.”
