CH 89

The two men move on in the train.

Although the carriage still seems empty, every now and then along the way you can see handrails that move, the sound of tapping glass and the like, showing that they are not the only two people in this space.

After entering another new carriage, a line of bloodstained footprints appeared ahead of us, the one that was a little messy, all the way to the carriage where it had been placed before.

Xiao Lan knelt down and observed the blood, which was somewhat coagulated but not yet dry, and had obviously not been left for long.

A bit of dark shadow covered a bit of blood as Luo drove on, after a moment Luo said, "It's a male, around thirty years old, in substantially better physical condition than the average person, it should be from a player."

"Follow it up and see." Xiao Lan said, standing up and walking in the direction where the blood trail extended.

--

Following the blood trail, the two men made their way to the last carriage.

When they reached the door of the carriage, the blood disappeared.

This carriage is completely different from what we have seen before. The pure white colour with the metallic seats and the minimalist shape of the carriage give it a modern feel in both material and design.

Xiao Lan is convinced that this is a carriage that has not been seen before.

This carriage is brand new, with traces of splicing to the original carriage, and must have been added later, as no such carriage was previously seen from the outside.

"Is it ...... the second time you get on the bus to get in here?" Xiao Lan speculated, "Or does this change appear based on time? Or maybe it's the ...... ticket?"

The reasons for the change are not known, but soon Xiao Lan will have no more time to think about it.

For after a few steps forward, a body appeared.

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It was a man in his thirties who had fallen to the ground with his back against the door of the car, the joints of his limbs turned over in an unnatural gesture, his face tilted upwards with a creepy, odd grin.

He was wearing the most common clothes found in the Advent Worlds system shop, torn open at the chest and abdomen, his stomach had been hollowed out and his insides were missing, yet there was no blood on the ground.

" Luo, was the blood from before his?" Xiao Lan asked.

"Yes." Luo nodded, affirming the suspicion.

Xiao Lan went up to examine the body and saw handprints all over the joints of his limbs, which were of different sizes and overlapping each other, as if a number of people had broken his joints at the same time.

And his missing entrails were not nearby, nor was there much blood on the ground.

It is possible that what attacked him took away the entrails, or that he was not attacked here, but as for more, I am afraid only the victim himself knows.

Xiao Lan closed the player's eyes and then put his body aside to avoid the possibility of him falling directly onto the tracks below when the train arrived to open the doors and ending up crushed.

No one can predict how they will end up dying, nor can they prepare for the aftermath in advance. Every game, every danger can be the end of their lives, and it is already a luxury to leave a body intact at the end.

What happens to the bodies of the players after the game is over is anybody's guess, and Xiao Lan is just doing what he can to give the dead players the dignity of being alive.

Xiao Lan fished a towel prepared by Luo out of the storage space and covered his face as a final embolism.

After the body moved, a square object appeared from the body's original position.

Luo picked it up, wiped the dust off the surface and handed it to Xiao Lan: "It's a wallet, sir."

Xiao Lan took it and looked at it carefully. It was a plain black leather wallet with an excellent texture and an understated, minimalist design, but the rigorous workmanship and meticulous hardware showed that it was definitely worth a lot of money.

Players generally do not have a wallet unless they have a particular hobby.

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The reason for this is also simple, because the world of Advent does not require the use of money. Unless there is something special to remember or a prop, most players will not carry such useless things into the game.

Xiao Lan looked at the wallet, which should have been classified as a luxury item, and then at the corpse of the player next to him wearing the most common clothes produced by the system, all of which were plain and even a little unkempt, which didn't look like something the other man would own.

So, it was acquired in this game?

Xiao Lan opened his wallet, which contained a number of cards and otherwise only a few brand new notes with no change, which he had put in as a backup and hadn't had a chance to take out for a long time as a result, typical of a modern wallet.

As he did so, a black object rolled down from his wallet, round and coin-shaped with an embossed '13' on it.

Xiao Lan asked Luo to bring out the ticket they had found earlier for comparison and, apart from the colour, it was exactly the same as the one they had found earlier.

Xiao Lan frowned, "I can't believe there are two kinds of tickets."

This makes it even more obvious that it's a choice of two, not only between trains or stations, but also between black or white tickets.

But which side is the right option?

Putting the ticket aside, Xiao Lan continued to check the contents of her wallet.

A group photo of a man and woman is placed on the side of the wallet.

Their movements are intimate as they lean together, presumably as a couple or husband and wife, but the faces of the two people in the photo are blurred, as if they have been processed beyond recognition, except that the man in the photo is tall and the woman is fair-skinned and slender.

There is no doubt that both men are dressed in modern clothes and the photograph is not yellowed, so it is clear that this is a recent photograph.

Xiao Lan took the photo out and tried to check the back, but received a system prompt.

[On that day, my mother gave you her favorite brooch with her own hands, and you looked beautiful wearing it and smiling at me]

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[Triggered by the plot task: Passing Thoughts]

[Mission Statement: Find the Brooch]

[Mission Reward: Random Rare Item*1]

【Hint: Plot tasks cannot be abandoned, they are crucial to the progress of the game, so please treat them with care】.

When Xiao Lan saw the system alert, she turned her attention back to the front of the photo, which indeed had a brooch on the woman's chest. The brooch was old, but beautifully crafted, with a beauty that would not be lost to the ages.

The plot mission, ah, looks like they found something crucial, but the mission doesn't say who to give the brooch to after they find it, and I don't know how it will be considered completed.

He looked at the very tall man in the photo and thought again of the man in black with a strong sense of oppression he had seen earlier when he got into the car, could it be him?

But ...... Xiao Lan's heart is cold when he thinks about that random rare item, after all [Zhang Dong's autograph] is a rare item too.

He looked at the valuable wallet and liked the fact that the guy who posted the quest was being generous, I guess. But it didn't seem to help that people were generous, after all, the word random was too much of a cardinal sin for non-coms.

Anyway, let's find the brooch first.

As it stood, they still had to go back to the platform again, not only to find the brooch, but also to find more clues that would allow them to judge whether to choose the train or the platform, or neither.

Xiao Lan is standing still and thinking about the situation, Luo is watching him quietly and does not make a sound to help Xiao Lan think.

Suddenly, a harsh sound of nails scraping hard against the glass came from the side.

The sound was harsh as hell and carried a distracting frequency that even the roar of the train could not suppress.

Xiao Lan turned his head and saw a ghastly white, puffy and bloodstained hand scratching at the glass, a dirty hand that looked like it had just picked up coal and had a number of black stains.

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After the piercing sound, the hand changed its approach and it rapped on the door as if it was trying to enter the carriage from the outside.

The tapping was stiff and slow, kept at a stereotypical frequency.

As both Xiao Lan's eyes shifted in its direction, the hand's flapping range changed from the door to the window, but no matter how many times it changed positions to appear, it always remained above the elbow, never revealing any other part.

This thing is surprisingly dejected, but it looks like it's weak.

Although this copy didn't attract danger by speaking out, there was no guarantee that this thing wouldn't attract the attention of something else if it kept up the noise. Like the danger that had killed the player on the floor, or the tall, black man he'd seen earlier, the man who exuded a sense of menace that made Xiao Lan not want to go up against each other unless he had to.

Letting this hand go on like this was always going to be a problem.

Xiao Lan walked over to where the hand was, and when he saw it approaching, it stopped tapping on the glass and settled down on the window, tapping its fingertips against the glass as if to signal him to come over and play with him.

It's not even cute to look at yourself, short and puffy and dirty.

Xiao Lan stepped forward with an expressionless face and extended her hand in the direction of the one outside the window.

Then - the middle finger was raised.

Possibly titillated by this operation, the hand at the window paused in its knocking on the glass.

Xiao Lan then made a chopping motion at the hand, signalling to the other man: make more noise and I'll kill you.

The hand had obviously not expected to reap such a reaction; who among the players had not backed away in fear at the sight of it, or left cautiously, who dared to threaten him?

The hand suddenly slapped the window with some fury, thumping the glass with a sort of thud.

"Heh." Xiao Lan gave it a snort of "You're so ungrateful".

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Xiao Lan then yanked the railing of the car and ripped it off in front of the other man, twisting it into a twist and throwing it in front of the window in a matter of seconds.

Then he pointed to the door of the train, gestured with a "3", then squeezed his fist and pointed down to the metal twist on the floor.

The meaning is clear: after the doors open at the end of the day, you are the next twist.

The hand froze as it slapped against the window, moved downwards, moved again, as if comparing its hardness to the train bars, and finally - decisively - slipped away.

Don't play no more, this guy is so mean boing boing boing boing ......

Xiao Lan smiles contentedly.

Luo watched Xiao Lan as he continued to study the back of the photo in his hand, feeling that his husband was becoming more and more skilled at threatening ghosts and monsters, with the aura of an earthly bully.

And himself, the lapdog behind that bully.

Well, it's quite a match when you think about it.