Chapter 423: Death Special Train

"Met before? In a well?" I picked out the key points in what he had said and started thinking back through everyone I had ever met. 'Someone connected to a well? Could it be the old couple from Anxin Hotel? No, they were taken into custody at the police station, and they aren't dead.'

I ruled out one candidate after another. Matching them against the voice on the phone, I slowly frowned. 'This voice really does sound somewhat familiar. Where on earth have I met him?'

Just as I was about to ask a few more questions, the caller's tone suddenly grew urgent. "You'll come, right? You'll definitely come!"

The call ended almost immediately. Baffled, I scratched my head. This person knew my name was Gao Jian, and his voice sounded very familiar, but for the moment I just couldn't remember where I had met him before.

"Ding!"

A new text message appeared in my phone's inbox. The Underworld Live Show task had come through.

"Beneath the city, it is deep and dim, and sinister things breed in the darkness. The Jiangcheng Subway runs through the city. Some say the final train on the subway is the Death Special Train, and its terminal station is the Underworld."

"Do you believe in the existence of the Underworld?"

"Board the train that travels through the past and see for yourself. You will find that the fears you experienced before are not worth mentioning. When you see everything you hated in the past return to you wearing the cloak of the future, only then will you understand that the one chasing shadows is actually a shadow themselves."

"Livestream Task: Enter Jiangcheng Northern Suburb Subway Station at midnight, board the final train under the identity of Lu Xing, and get off alive—that will count as a successful task!"

"Optional Task 1: Successfully disguise yourself as Lu Xing without arousing suspicion. Reward: five points."

"Optional Task 2: For every Double-Faced Buddha Statue destroyed, obtain one point."

"Optional Task 3: ?????"

"Optional Task 4: ?????"

"Note: The Underworld Live Show's special help hotline feature is now open... The first call is free; every subsequent call requires ten points."

My frown deepened as I finished reading the Underworld Live Show task message. "Death Special Train? I have to take the subway?"

A subway was different from a bus. If something really went wrong, you couldn't even jump off.

"This livestream will probably take place beneath the city, and the subway is just the means of transportation to get there. With the message making it sound so eerie, could I really be going to the Underworld?" Honestly, even though I had seen all sorts of ghosts and monsters, I still didn't believe the Underworld existed in this world.

"The Underworld Live Show also wants me to disguise myself as Lu Xing for the livestream, and it even listed a separate optional task for it—a five-point reward for a successful disguise. Coupled with the second optional task that rewards one point for every Double-Faced Buddha Statue destroyed, it looks like this livestream will likely pit me against the Two-Faced Buddha." I stroked my chin, thinking it over carefully. 'Going in under Lu Xing's identity to destroy the Double-Faced Buddha Statue... the Underworld Live Show is truly devious.'

I thought about it for a long while before letting out a bitter smile. It would be fine if the disguise worked, but if someone saw through it, things would probably end badly for me. "I don't even look like Lu Xing. How am I supposed to impersonate him?"

As I read the message over and over, one detail caught my attention. There were a full four optional tasks for this livestream, but the last two were nothing but question marks, showing no task details whatsoever.

I had never run into a situation like this in any of my previous livestreams, so for the moment I wasn't sure what to make of it.

"Familiar person, well, train, underground, Two-Faced Buddha." I wrote the keywords down on a piece of paper. After smoking half a pack of cigarettes, I still didn't have a single clue. Seeing that it was already almost 8:40, I finally turned on my computer and quickly searched for information about the Jiangcheng Subway.

"Uncovering the Haunted Incidents of the Jiangcheng Subway: Never Take the Final Soul Train."

"Ghostly Shadows Reappear: My Years Begging in the Jiangcheng Subway."

"The Return of the Twelve Deceased Subway Workers: A Real Ghost Sighting, Video Included!"

...

I clicked on a few posts at random to take a look. Most of them were made-up stories meant to grab attention; it took only a bit of logic to spot the holes in them.

I searched for over ten minutes and finally found something reliable on the website of the Passenger Service Department of Jiangcheng Subway Network Center.

First were two complaint posts. The first was from a Mr. Wu, who had gone to take the subway home one night in a drunken daze. According to his account, the lighting was very dim at the time. He happened to catch the final train, but just as he was about to squeeze aboard, someone who looked like a staff member pushed him off. The train then pulled away, leaving Mr. Wu to sleep in the subway station for the entire night. When he woke up the next day, he was bruised all over, had caught a chill, and fell seriously ill.

The second post was from a mother whose daughter had run away from home and disappeared without a trace. After she reported it to the police, they discovered that the last place her daughter had been seen was a station on the Jiangcheng Subway. The police spent three days reviewing every surveillance video without spotting the girl. Only at the very end did they manage to confirm one thing: after entering the subway station, the girl had never come back out.

"These two posts are pretty interesting. A drunk gets pushed off the train and catches a chill with symptoms identical to Yin energy invading the body; and in the other, a girl runs away from home, enters a subway station, and never comes out again. That's worth thinking about."

I kept searching, surprised that I had actually found what I was looking for on the official website. As I went through the posts one by one, I realized that many strange things had happened at the Jiangcheng Subway stations.

For example, residents living near the stations had seen people heading inside late at night. Others claimed that lights were always flashing inside stations that had closed for the night, accompanied by noisy commotion.

But the strangest and most widely circulated story of all was that after subway service had ended—once every station had put up its closed signs and even the broadcasts had stopped—another train would still pass through underground. This was the legendary ghost train.

"Interesting." I gathered the Great Divine Mantra of the Big Dipper, the Complete Set of Clear Brilliance Moon-Chanting Talismans given to me by Blind Liu, and the few Suppression Talismans I had gotten from Lu Jin, keeping them all on me. I pinned on my Brooch, grabbed my Large-Screen Phone, and made sure I hadn't forgotten anything before leaving the shop.

By the time I arrived at Jiangcheng Northern Suburb Subway Station, it was already 9:30 PM. I rarely traveled by subway; after all, for someone in my special line of work, subways and buses were too restrictive.

The subway station in the Northern Suburb was very small, nothing like the ones in the city center. I walked down the stairs and through a corridor about ten meters long before the space suddenly opened up in front of me. Several ticket machines stood in the most prominent spot, while an ATM, a coin exchange machine, and food and beverage vending machines were arranged haphazardly on the other side. The place wasn't large, but it had everything it needed.

"Excuse me, do you need any help?" Noticing that I had been wandering around aimlessly, a staff member walked out from the information desk. There weren't many people in the station at this hour, so my odd behavior stood out.

"It's nothing. I'm just here to pick my daughter up and take her home. It's her first time taking the subway alone, so I'm a little worried."

I made up an excuse hoping to brush him off, but to my surprise, the well-meaning staff member didn't leave. Instead, he pulled me aside. "Sir, you don't look very old yourself. How old is your daughter? We have clear regulations that children under eight aren't allowed to ride the subway alone."

"Oh, my daughter is eleven—she's in the fifth grade. I just look young for my age." After casually making up a lie, I looked away and sat down quietly on a bench to wait for the time to pass.

"Your daughter is already eleven? I really couldn't tell." The staff member flashed a white-toothed smile and chuckled softly. "I'm really sorry. We had some incidents here a while ago, so everyone's a bit on edge. My apologies."

As the staff member turned to leave, my eyes shifted toward him. "Wait, what kind of incidents happened here? Will it be unsafe for my daughter to ride the subway alone?"

"Rest assured, there's absolutely no problem with passenger safety." The smile on the staff member's face slowly faded. "However, for the time being, it's best not to let your daughter ride the subway by herself."

"What's wrong?" I glanced at his name tag; his name was Feng Minglong.

"Strictly speaking, this doesn't really have much to do with the subway station itself." Feng Minglong forced a strained smile. "Just a few days ago, someone came into the station late at night to commit suicide—and it wasn't just one person."

"Suicide?!" What surprised me was that I hadn't seen any mention of it online at all. The police had probably locked down the news already.