Chapter 444: Sorrow-Forgetting Water

As I stepped out of October Carriage 23, the heavy stench in the air instantly weakened, and a cold, gloomy wind blew from the gaps between the train cars.

I took deep breaths of fresh air. Seeing my disheveled state, the conductress looked at me with a bit more suspicion.

Her gaze made me uneasy. I was likely the only living person on this train, so I couldn't act too differently from the other passengers.

'The dead don't feel sick,' I silently reminded myself. I quickly returned to normal, keeping my face stiff and void of any extra expression.

"Come in." In front of me was an unfamiliar carriage. It didn't have a number, as if this train only had seven carriages for carrying passengers.

I wanted to refuse, but I had no choice here. Gripping the Talisman Paper tightly in one hand, I followed the conductress into the unnumbered carriage.

The air was murky, filled with a strange, indescribable odor. It smelled like some unknown chemical, though it wasn't overly pungent. Breathing it in made my mind feel sluggish and slightly dizzy.

"What is this carriage for?" I opened my eyes and looked around. There were no seats or beds in the carriage. The space was large, and the walls were plastered with photographs, each with a name written on it.

"You can treat this place as your own home." The conductress's tone didn't sound like she was joking. "Most people leave a mark here after they die. The photos on this wall are their memories."

At that moment, I hadn't yet caught the hidden meaning in her words. I looked at the walls out of curiosity. The photos were palm-sized. They weren't standard photographs, just thin pieces of paper, but because the portraits drawn on them were so realistic, I had mistaken them for actual photos in the dark.

"Is this your collection? Are they the portraits of the deceased?" I muttered. Under the influence of that strange odor, my mind began to drift.

I reached out to touch the thin paper, and my fingertips met the texture of human skin. Even though I was touching a drawn image, my palm felt as if it were cupping a person's face.

It was too real. I even felt like the person in the drawing was looking right back at me.

"These aren't a collection, but train tickets. In other words, this is the price you pay to board the train," the conductress said very slowly, but it gave me a terrible premonition.

I started to recall what the conductress had told me since entering this special carriage. 'Her first sentence was about how the photos on the wall were marks left by the passengers, that they were their... memories?'

Sweeping my gaze around, I saw a bitter-looking middle-aged man next to a brand-new blank sheet of paper in the corner. It was exactly Lu Wenchang, who had just been taken away by the conductress.

As if suddenly understanding something, I withdrew my outstretched fingers and looked down the deep carriage with no end in sight. "The price of boarding the train is paying with your own memories?"

"A person's life is a journey, and the scenery you see is your memories. These things never belonged to you in the first place. Only when your memories are reclaimed can you be restored to your true self." The conductress led me forward through the carriage. The walls on both sides were densely packed with portraits. There were too many to count. They wore all sorts of expressions, all reflections of their life experiences.

Take Lu Wenchang, for example. This man seemed quite polite on the surface, taking meticulous care of his wife and child, but his true inner self was filled with sorrow. Believing in the Two-Faced Buddha didn't fundamentally change anything; it just gave him another way to deceive himself.

His life was still terrible. The heavy pressures of life and discrimination from all sides of society made this middle-aged man's face wrinkle together in distress.

His memories were bitter. He wanted to keep his child from suffering this unfairness, so he trained his child to eat and write with their left hand. To help the child, he mobilized the whole family to use chopsticks and pencils with their left hands. This was the persistence of an ordinary man. They had their own happiness, but the truth was, the bitterness in Lu Wenchang's heart had never lessened.

The stress of his child's education, his wife's medical bills, the toll of desperate overwork on his own health—everything piled up until he couldn't breathe, and only he knew his own sorrow.

No, to be precise, the moment my fingertips touched his portrait, I also understood what he had been through.

"It's a very mystical feeling. It turns out memories have a scent too." We walked a long way through this unnumbered carriage and saw a massive number of portraits on both sides before the conductress finally stopped. We had reached the end of the carriage.

I stopped as well. Even now, I still didn't know what she was up to. She seemed to have realized I was a living person, and she was acting very strangely.

"You must be curious why I brought you here," the conductress said, looking at the portraits on the walls. Then, she pushed open the door to the next carriage.

Unable to figure out her intentions, I leaned sideways to look.

Beyond the door was the next carriage, and its layout was exactly the same as this one: empty and plastered with portraits.

Under a faint glow coming from an unknown source, I could faintly see that beyond the door of that carriage were more carriages, stretching on endlessly.

The internal layout of all the carriages was identical, with portraits plastered across the walls, capturing every human emotion and desire.

"No one knows just how long this train is. It travels between life and death, commuting between illusion and reality. You can understand its final destination as the Underworld people often speak of, or you can consider the train itself to be the Underworld." The conductress pointed at the endless, repeating carriages. Imperceptibly, her facial features had shifted out of place. I had grown accustomed to the horror she casually exuded; to me, she was like a monster straight out of a nightmare—absurd, terrifying, and so powerful that she was impossible to resist.

"Perhaps this train itself is a nightmare, a nightmare that encompasses all departed souls."

"A dream? Using such a beautiful word to describe this train is obviously wrong." The conductress led me to the space between the two carriages, where a table sat in the aisle, completely blocking the path. A porcelain bowl rested flat on the table. Interestingly, no matter how much the train jolted, not a single drop of water in the bowl spilled.

"Besides a dream, I can't think of any other explanation." Becoming an Underworld Live Show Streamer had let me see things that ordinary people wouldn't see in an entire lifetime, but that didn't mean I had a deep understanding of this world. On the contrary, the more I knew, the more my heart filled with doubt and awe.

There were too many unsolved mysteries in the world, and what I had seen and experienced was merely a tiny fraction of it.

"Many passengers have asked me for the answer about this train. Actually, the true answer..." The conductress picked up the porcelain bowl from the table. "...is right in this bowl of water. Drink it, and you'll understand many things."

The conductress's tone suddenly turned incredibly gentle. I took the porcelain bowl, lacking any will to resist. Just as my lips were about to touch the rim of the bowl, a burning sensation suddenly flared up from my chest. The intense pain snapped me awake.

"Crap!" I instinctively threw the porcelain bowl away.

The porcelain bowl smashed against the floor, but it didn't shatter. What was even more bizarre was that not a single drop of the water inside spilled out.

"What were you trying to make me drink?!" If it hadn't been for the sudden flare of pain in my chest that jolted me awake, I probably would have fallen for the conductress's trick and drunk the water in the bowl.

"I'm doing this for your own good. Drinking this water can erase your worries and make you forget all your troubles. Drink it, and you can gain a new life." The conductress unhurriedly picked up the porcelain bowl once again. She didn't seem afraid that I would refuse.

My eyes darted around as I barely maintained my composure, though my mind was already reeling in shock.

What was in that porcelain bowl wasn't some Sorrow-Forgetting Water at all. It was Meng Po Soup! If I drank it, I'd probably end up just like Lu Wenchang—my memories erased, becoming a solitary portrait on the train wall!

"Drink it," the conductress said. The moment she opened her mouth, her voice echoed directly inside my mind. My consciousness was severely shaken, my thoughts were disrupted, and I instinctively reached out my hands.

"Drink it, and you will welcome a new life, beginning a brand-new journey." The conductress looked at me with a smile. "Humans, you see, are inherently a cycle of reincarnation—from nothingness to existence, and from existence back to nothingness."