Hide-and-Seek

Before those gunmen could squeeze their triggers, Chen Chuan moved first, his form surging forward in an abrupt dash. Yet these men seemed just barely able to track his movements, and muzzle flashes erupted instantly from their gun barrels. Chen Chuan merely raised an arm to shield his face and head, paying no heed to the rest of his body. As the bullets struck him, he felt only a faint twitch at certain spots on his protective coat before round after round dropped away. Gripping his saber, he spun sharply. A flash of blade-light burst forth, accompanied by a sound like the shearing through flesh, firearms, metal, and leather all at once. Along both carriage walls, a clean slash appeared in an instant. The row of gunmen ahead stiffened before their upper bodies toppled forward in unison, along with everything they carried, severed cleanly along a flawless, smooth plane. Chen Chuan kept his eyes fixed ahead and sprang forward, blade-light cloaking his body as he tore through like rolling snow. By the time he planted his foot to a halt, the carriages behind him were already littered with severed limbs and shattered remains. By now, he had reached the rear carriages. Yet despite being shoved around like this, those corporate representatives continued repeating their own words one by one. The members of the resistance organization had initially found it amusing, but now they only felt irritated, itching to shoot them all and be done with it. Bao Yuan stood behind the crowd, staring at Chen Chuan with shock and uncertainty, his teeth clenched tight. Everything had already succeeded—he had even sent off the telegram. He had never expected someone who seemed to be— He was unsure whether this person had originally been assigned by Yangzhi City to guard the train or if this had been planned all along, but he did not need to dwell on that now. At any rate, the most important hostages were already in his hands. He shouted, "Stop! Are you with the Yangzhi Municipal Government? These are corporate representatives! Take one more step and they're dead! You're fast, but we aren't slow either. You can gamble on whether we pull our triggers faster, or you move faster!" He was not entirely bluffing. The moment gunshots had broken out outside, the elites among their group had promptly taken their drugs. Now their eyes were bloodshot, and they were in a state of heightened acuity and excitement, just barely able to keep up with Chen Chuan's movements. Chen Chuan, however, seemed not to have heard him. Sweeping his long saber aside, he continued walking forward. Seeing that he was unmoved, Bao Yuan immediately raised his muzzle and fired with a bang, shooting one of the corporate representatives dead. He snarled, "I am not joking! These are representatives of foreign companies! If they die here, you cannot bear the responsibility! Back out right now, or not one of them leaves alive!" The drug's duration was limited. If they did not show Chen Chuan their resolve and simply waited here until the effects wore off, they would be dead without question. Chen Chuan glanced over, stopped in his tracks, and then slowly backed away. The crowd watched him tensely, but seeing him retreat, the knot in their chests loosened slightly. Chen Chuan's expression was calm. He needed to resolve this as quickly as possible. Esoteric rituals also carried an erosive effect; if this dragged out for too long, even if those passengers were fortunate enough to wake afterward, it would likely cause irreversible damage. Compared to the passengers in front, the corporate representatives before him were only a minority. If they could be saved, he would save them; if not, there was nothing he could do. If they stayed locked in a stalemate, everyone would be dragged down. Striking now, on the other hand, gave them at least a sliver of hope to survive. Therefore... By now, he had retreated to the doorway, opening a little distance from Bao Yuan. Then he kicked off hard with his feet; the wooden floorboards beneath him cracked instantly, the panelling near the carriage doorway twisted and deformed, and his entire form shot forward like a sharp arrow! The instant he moved, the resistance members fired without hesitation at their targets. And amid the gunfire, Chen Chuan slammed right into them. Whether it was the shields obstructing the front or the human bodies behind them, anything that made contact with him was sent flying, crashing down with shattered bones and ruptured organs. The blade-light of the Xuejun Saber bloomed in his wake; wherever it passed, severed heads flew into the air. Standing at the rear, Bao Yuan was filled with shock and fury at Chen Chuan's reckless slaughter. With a furious roar, he threw a punch straight at Chen Chuan. The drug he had taken was undoubtedly the finest, and his own strength was the greatest among them; this strike was executed with flawless accuracy and power. Chen Chuan glanced over and saw that the skin on the back of Bao Yuan's hand was a bruised cyan, something beneath it bulging as though about to burst through. Realizing something was wrong, he did not slash directly with his blade. Instead, he drove his elbow outward while parrying upward with the saber's hilt, using a supple force to deflect the arm aside. Yet at that moment, another sudden shift occurred. With a sharp hiss, three tongue-whips shot from Bao Yuan's mouth—one thrust straight from the front, while the other two ripped through his cheeks, stabbing at Chen Chuan's head from both flanks. Chen Chuan merely ducked into an agile dive. In a single step, he not only evaded all three tongue-whips, but slipped past Bao Yuan's side. At the same time, his blade came up against Bao Yuan's neck, drawing across with his forward momentum and immediately producing the harsh screech of friction against something hard. Beneath the sliced skin, a black chitinous subdermal plating was exposed. Chen Chuan's expression did not waver. Pivoting at the waist, he applied force into a trailing drag of his blade! This time, the plating could no longer hold. As the blade sheared through, the head was torn clean off, bouncing once against the wooden floor before rolling aside, while the three tongue-whips continued to thrash wildly. Seeing no living enemies left around him, Chen Chuan straightened up. He gazed at the tongue-whips, recognizing the origin of these implants. "These are... Secret Snake Cult implants?" He had seen Tan Wang's implant shopping list, which included this very item. The Secret Snake Cult seemed to provide surgical implants for their own people as well as products to outsiders. There was no telling whether this man was personally connected to the Secret Snake Cult or had merely purchased implant services from them. Regardless, it had nothing to do with him. He retracted his gaze, took a few steps, and placed his hand on the handle to the carriage door behind him, intending to check whether any resistance members remained behind. Yet the moment he pulled the carriage door open, his gaze hardened. Across from him lay several familiar bodies: one smashed to pulp against the carriage wall, and another opposite with its head blown open by a pebble. On the adjacent carriage door, the slash mark from his blade was clearly visible. This was unmistakably the scene from when he first boarded the train— Yet he was clearly in the train's final carriages now! He looked out toward... His thoughts raced. He pulled the door shut, turned around, and looked back the way he had come, only to find that the sight before him was identical to what he had just seen. Though he had turned in the opposite direction, there was no difference at all. Even if an esoteric ritual could exert an influence, it was mostly spiritual, with relatively weak physical effects. So this was not an esoteric ritual, but... an urban legend! Esoteric cults could bind and utilize urban legends through specific rituals—such as the Two-Faced Heart Monster, the Mountain Ghost of Mount Xie, and now this one before him... He might not understand much about esoteric rituals, but when it came to urban legends, this was his familiar territory. He thought through it calmly. This urban legend could not have been created out of thin air by a ritual; no esoteric ritual was capable of that at present. It had to have been drawn from Mount Xie as its source and subsequently bound. Searching his memory for a moment, he found an extremely similar entity within the Legends of the Three Mountains—the Hide-and-Seek Path. Legend held that there was a mountain path on Mount Xie. Once someone wandered onto it by mistake, whether they walked up or down, they could never reach the end, only circling endlessly along that stretch of trail until they died trapped there. And in the lore of this urban legend, an imp was playing hide-and-seek with travelers. To escape, one had to hide in a place where the imp could not find you; only then could you find your way out. Yet if one truly searched for a hiding spot, they would likely never escape. There was only one real way. He closed his eyes, reached out to take hold of the door handle beside him, turned it open, and stepped through. When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in a carriage he had never set foot in before. Upon encountering the Hide-and-Seek Path, all one needed to do was close their eyes. That counted as hiding where the imp could not catch you, allowing you to walk down the mountain. Yet the hardest part was that on a mountain trail, no one would dare walk with their eyes closed; doing so would almost certainly lead to falling to one's death. Here on a train, however, there was no such worry. Naturally, this was because he knew the solution. Anyone else would likely have found it impossible to escape anytime soon. The most dangerous aspect of an urban legend was not the phenomenon itself, but its ceaseless erosion; delaying even slightly longer could push a person past their breaking point. Yet stepping out of it did not mean the matter was resolved. He had shaken off the effect, but the others were still deeply trapped. To resolve it, he had to break the urban legend—and doing that required finding the ghost! He observed his surroundings. This was likely the second-to-last carriage. The issue was that even if there were no passengers here, given that it concerned their own route of retreat, under normal circumstances they would have stationed at least one or two people to guard it. Considering the nature of the urban legend, he already had his answer. He continued forward until he reached the final carriage. Closing his eyes, he grasped the door handle, turned it to open, and then opened his eyes. The carriage ahead had no passenger seats, only various luggage and cargo stacked about. Sitting atop a crate in the middle was a person whose face was painted with esoteric ritual patterns. Seeing Chen Chuan open the carriage door, the person looked up in shock, then scrambled up in panic and backed away, stammering, "H-How could you possibly have made it here? Y-You, stay back!"