The ghost didn't find Shi Yu in the back carriage, so he chased him towards the front carriage, moving forward from the 14th carriage, but ran into two other people at the connection between the front driver's cab and the second passenger carriage.

When the two sides met, they only felt the gaze of the ghost opposite them sliding over them as if it was real, and then the figure suddenly approached, and the ferocious ghost hand grabbed directly at the two of them.

Tan Wang immediately lowered his head, and the ghost hand hit the wall of the train close to his head, and one punch made a dent in the wall.

Qiao Yan had already dodged behind the ghost and kicked it in the shoulder and neck. The half-ghost grabbed him with its backhand, while Tan Wang in front of him directly picked up a clay pot and smashed it hard on the top of its head.

The half-ghost paused, but Tan Wang had already slipped through the ghost energy under him like a loach and escaped to the third carriage. The ghost energy cut the earthenware jar like a blade, and there was a loud noise.

The white smoke suddenly expanded and spread.

Qiao Yan was faster than the smoke, and he opened the door and ran. Tan Wang put on his thermal imaging glasses and passed through the smoke and the passengers' screams, all the way back until the fifth carriage, where his vision began to clear. He took off his glasses and was about to speak, but then he saw Qiao Yan's face suddenly change in front of him.

“Get out of the way!”

The half-ghost caught up.

Tan Wang didn't hesitate. He stepped onto the seat beside him and pushed hard. His whole body shot towards the ghost's back like a bullet chamber against the ceiling. The place where he was originally standing and the area several meters in front of him were directly sunken by the impact of the ghost's energy.

Qiao Yan had already reached the passage leading to the sixth carriage. Tan Wangluo went back to the door of the connecting passage to the fourth carriage and pulled it, only to find that the door was locked.

The half-ghost knew that he couldn’t catch up with Qiao Yan, so he attacked him directly.

The train was too narrow to do anything, but if weapons with a wider range were used, there was a chance that the surrounding passengers would be injured.

Tan Wang laughed for no reason, and a bunch of talismans appeared in his hand. He took one out and stuck it on himself, and threw the rest at the ghost.

“Bang!!!!”

Suddenly, white light surged, smoke and dust flew, and the glass on both sides of the car was shattered.

The huge explosion startled everyone in the carriage, but the train itself did not even stop for a moment, and continued to roar along the track at an incredible speed, with strong winds blowing out of the windows.

The screams were endless.

Tan Wang fell and hit the passage door behind him. He wiped the blood that was flowing to the corner of his mouth with his fingers, and grabbed a handful of talismans. The next second, he saw that the fifth and sixth carriages in the distance were smashed open.

He paused, and the talismans disappeared immediately.

Gu Jinchao didn't see the half-ghost, but she knew that the ghost must have been there not long ago, because when she came over, the door between the fifth and sixth carriages was locked. She looked past the messy carriages and saw the boy on the ground.

"Sister Chao."

Gu Jinzhao stopped in front of him and frowned: "Where are you hurt?"

Tan Wang crashed into the door due to the impact of the explosion. One of his hands was dislocated when he was trying to support himself on the ground. The blood from the cut on his head flowed down to his chin. His face was covered with gray smoke. He shook his head and said, "I'm fine. When the ghost exploded just now, I used props to defend myself."

【？ 】

[Ghost explosion? ? ]

[…I suspect that what I was watching was a fake live broadcast.]

Gu Jinchao went to help him, his hand touched his shoulder, but the next moment he suddenly passed through.

They were both stunned. Tan Wang suddenly remembered how he got here. He looked at her for a long while before asking, "Why are you here? Isn't this a murder dream created by ghosts?"

Gu Jinzhao was stunned: "Dream?"

※

Shi Yu jumped into the carriage, walked through the thirteenth carriage, opened the window of the passage connecting the thirteenth and fourteenth carriages, and the golden silk thread quickly rolled up the body of the carriage and then wrapped around his waist.

He lowered his head, climbed out of the car window without hesitation, and pushed the glass closed with his backhand.

Just as he disappeared out of the window, the half-ghost chased after him and ran back.

Shi Yu came to the roof of the train, and soon he heard the sound of fighting coming from the carriage below. He landed at the height of the window again, and saw through the glass that the half-ghost had just left the fifteenth carriage.

Then Gu Jinzhao chased the ghost forward, but the remaining six players on the train were still gathered there, with the body of a player broken into two pieces lying next to them.

He returned to the carriage, and at that moment, there was a loud explosion in the carriage in front.

Qiao Yan stopped at the sixth carriage, looked up and saw his figure, and subconsciously called out: "Shi Yu?"

Shi Yu nodded and walked forward.

This time, Qiao Yan didn't hear the desire for destruction in his voice, and thought to herself, is it because the props have expired?

Because of the explosion just now, the passengers in the fifth carriage fled to other carriages like crazy. Those sitting by the window seats who could not escape could only shrink themselves deeper and looked around in confusion. The whole carriage was noisy and chaotic.

When Tan Wang saw them appear, he immediately asked, "Is this really just a dream?"

"It depends on who you are with." Shi Yu walked through the fifth carriage and came to the connecting passage. He looked at the atmosphere between him and Gu Jinchao and said, "You two can see each other, but you can't touch each other now?"

Gu Jinzhao: “Yes.”

"That's very simple," Shi Yu turned his gaze to Tan Wang, "I previously judged that you were in a dream based on the fact that your body remained on the seat but your consciousness was trapped in the situation of lying on the railway tracks. I didn't consider the situation that your consciousness was real and your person was fake."

"Once a player on train CK4865 falls asleep, their soul will be pulled by the ghost with only the upper half of its body to the track where the train passes. Because the ghost died while lying on the railroad tracks, if the player attempts to lie on the railroad sleepers to escape death, they will be forcibly trapped on the rails once they touch the rails and will be crushed to death by the moving train. The damage will be inflicted on the body after death."

Gu Jinzhao was stunned: "CK4865?"

"Um."

Shi Yu opened the window a little, and the cool breeze blew into the carriage, blowing away the floating explosion dust: "There are twenty players in this game, two trains, one CK4865, from Wudao Station to Luyi Station; one CE7763, from Manpo Station to Xiyin Station. There are ten players in each car."

Qiao Yan suddenly interrupted, "What about the selection of players? The two players who died at the beginning were both nobles. The ghosts shouldn't select people randomly. Then why were you pulled here even though you are poor? Why is Jiang Ze, who is a noble, still alive?"

"Jiang Ze is not a noble."

"Why?"

"I saw it." Shi Yu said, "The four tickets he had were printed with the name of the female player who died in carriage 14."

"But I threw away her ticket after I found it..." Qiao Yan paused.

Shi Yu said: "The female player was staying in a sleeper berth, and she was actually the one who bought the four tickets. It is estimated that Jiang Ze found her shortly after the game started and took away the extra three tickets just in case. Later, he took the four tickets and pretended to be a noble, but he threw the tickets out of the window in front of everyone without waiting for the conductor to check, also to prevent others from exposing him, because everyone knew that his tickets had been thrown away, and even if someone suspected him afterwards, he would have a good reason to refuse to verify it."

Only then did Qiao Yan understand what he had meant when he said to Jiang Ze in the previous battle, "Those four tickets are not yours, right?"

Shi Yu finished explaining Jiang Ze's identity and continued, "It's true that ghosts don't choose people randomly, but this doesn't conflict with the fact that players will encounter someone lying on the railway tracks as long as they fall asleep."

Qiao Yan didn't understand what he meant for a moment.

Shi Yu: "I've said before that if a ghost kills people in a certain way, it's probably because it happens to have, or only has, the ability to use that method. For example, the ghost you just met has the ability to induce people to sleep. The condition of falling asleep on the tracks and dying is actually valid for all players, but ordinary players will not fall asleep at the beginning of the game - they will be even less likely to fall asleep easily after the death appears because they are worried about the dangers that may exist somewhere. The ghost just happens to choose the players with noble status to induce them to sleep, so they will be the first dead on the train."

The wind was blowing in the narrow connecting passage, the wheels hit the tracks, and the sound of machinery was in the air, blurring the human voice.

"But other people will think that only players with noble status are picked by ghosts because of survivor bias."

…and then let your guard down.

Qiao Yan felt a chill on his back.

Gu Jinchao didn't know what happened on their train, but combined with his own experience, he could probably guess most of it. After thinking for a while, he said, "But the ghost wants to kill the players in your car, so it needs to wait until you fall asleep and pull you over to attack. It's normal, but what about the people in our car? It can just show up and kill us directly."

Shi Yu glanced at her and asked, "Did the ghost kill any of you just now in the fifteenth carriage?"

Gu Jinzhao was stunned.

"It didn't. It even left without waiting for you to resist. Either it knew it couldn't do it, or the price it would have to pay after it did was beyond its ability to bear."

Shi Yu said: "So the ghost could only attack the players on the other train, so when it met the two of them, it wanted to kill them. Then you came over, and it was probably afraid that the battle would affect you and break the rules, so it disappeared."

"But there are also players in our car whose bodies were cut into several pieces after they died."

Gu Jinchao said, "If the ghost can only kill the players in your car, then what about the players who died in our car? Didn't they die because they lay on the railway tracks?"

As soon as she asked the question, she realized something.

"They did die by lying on the tracks, and their condition before death was the same as that of the players on the other train."

Shi Yu looked at her calmly: "If the player in the other car falls asleep, he will be crushed by the wheels of this car. Correspondingly, if the player in this car falls asleep, he will be crushed by the wheels of the other car."

"There are barriers on both sides of the track, so you can't leave. If you bend down, you'll be trapped on the track. The only way to avoid the train is to wake up in time or find a way to get inside the train. In this way, the ghosts originally guarding the roof will kill these escaped fish. Correspondingly, there should be a ghost guarding the roof of the other car as well."

Tan Wang finally interrupted: "There are two ghosts in this game?"

"Strictly speaking, there is only one." Shi Yu said, "Remember what the ghost you just encountered looked like? Its body was broken into two parts from the waist, and only the upper part is on this car. As for the lower part, I guess it should be on the roof of another car."