Endless Tunnel
Jiang Yu stood before a door that looked like that of an old-fashioned steam train carriage. The sign on the door was a rusty metal plaque that read "Endless Tunnel - Train of the Dead." The air was thick with the smell of coal smoke and rust, and from inside came the mournful wail of a train whistle and the rhythmic clanging of wheels.
He pushed open the door, revealing a dimly lit, retroly decorated but dilapidated carriage. A chilling cold filled the air, and several translucent, expressionless ghostly passengers sat in their seats. At the connecting point between carriages, a blurry, resentful ghostly conductor, wielding ticket tongs, blocked his path, repeating in a hollow voice, "Ticket...please show your ticket..."
In another carriage of the train, a team of four elite players was on the verge of collapse. The captain, "Rock" (a defensive warrior), held up his shield, protecting his pale-faced teammates behind him.
"Doctor, how is 'Shadow'?" Rock asked anxiously. The team's scout, "Shadow," was currently being haunted by a black resentment after trying to force open a door marked "No Entry," and his health was steadily declining.
The healer in the group, a female doctor, shook her head, her voice trembling with tears: "No! This curse effect cannot be dispelled! The rules say... those who violate the taboo will be devoured by the 'conductor's wrath'!"
The last team member, analyst "Fox," quickly said, "The rules have changed! Originally it was just 'survive for 12 hours,' but now the mission has been updated to 'find the truth behind the train accident and appease the train conductor's resentment!' This is a mission where death is certain! No one in history has ever completed such a deep decryption mission!"
Just then, they sensed an unusual fluctuation coming from the back of the train. All the ghost passengers turned their heads to look at the rear carriage, and even the resentment clinging to the "shadow" paused for a moment.
"What happened next?" The fox keenly sensed the change in circumstances.
Jiang Yu looked at the ticket inspector; he didn't have a ticket. He immediately brandished his rusty machete and calmly said, "I'm here to collect rent; I'm looking for the train conductor."
The ghostly ticket inspector let out a piercing screech, the lights in the entire carriage flickered wildly, and the temperature plummeted. It brandished its ticket-checking pincers and lunged at Jiang Yu, the power of the rules attempting to tear this unlicensed intruder to shreds.
Jiang Yu didn't try to take the hit head-on, but instead dodged to the side, seemingly casually slashing the machete against the carriage wall. A piercing metallic scraping sound rang out, and a shallow white mark appeared on the carriage wall, but the entire train shuddered painfully! All the ghost passengers let out wails.
“I hate complicated rules.” Jiang Yu frowned slightly. He could sense that the “rules” of this train were far stronger than those of the previous two instances. Forcibly breaking them would lead to unpredictable consequences and might even damage the value of the “rent” itself (for example, if the train conductor, a collection of resentment, were violently dispersed, its core value as “rent” would be gone).
He needed a more "compliant" way to meet the train conductor.
At that moment, he heard the exclamations and curses of players coming from the carriage ahead. He sensed the resentment emanating from the player "Shadow" who had violated the rules, and... the connection between that resentment and the train's core.
"A breakthrough." Jiang Yu muttered to himself, carrying his knife as he walked toward the carriage where the players were. Wherever he went, the ghost passengers gave way, as if they were afraid of the unassuming machete in his hand.
When Jiang Yu pushed open the door of the player's carriage, Pan Shi and Fox were on high alert. They saw a boy carrying a rusty knife walk in, his gaze falling directly on the "Shadow" who was entangled in resentment.
"Who...who are you?" Pan Shi asked nervously.
Jiang Yu didn't look at them, but stared at the resentment emanating from "Shadow," as if speaking to its source: "Your tenant broke the rules and is about to die. I'll make a deal—I'll help you solve your 'trouble,' and you pay off the rent you owe. How about it, Mr. Train Conductor?"
The resentment that clung to the "shadow" churned violently, and a voice filled with endless pain and anger echoed in the carriage, directly responding to Jiang Yu:
"Messenger...can you...resolve my resentment? If you can't...then stay here forever with these intruders!"
Jiang Yu's words elicited a direct response from the train conductor, which meant that the core rules of the instance had been triggered—Jiang Yu accepted the task of "pacifying the resentment".
The train conductor agreed to give Jiang Yu a chance. Suddenly, the entire train carriage began to distort and change, as if time were flowing backward, pulling Jiang Yu and the other players' consciousness into a fragmented memory—
It was a night of torrential rain, and an old-fashioned train was passing through a long tunnel. Suddenly, signs of a landslide appeared ahead, but due to scheduling errors and the greed of some people (such as cutting corners and concealing risks), the train failed to brake in time, resulting in a horrific accident... Countless wronged souls were trapped in the tunnel, and over the years, they merged into the current "vengeful train conductor," who repeats this death journey day after day, resenting all those involved and all the "living" intruders.
The player team watched with trepidation, but they understood that simply "knowing" the truth wasn't enough; the key was "how to resolve it." The root of the resentment lay in injustice, greed, and the lives lost. They were powerless to change it.
But Jiang Yu's perspective is different. Having spent fifteen years by the side of the Supreme God, he has witnessed the birth and death of the universe and heard countless tragic stories. His way of looking at problems is closer to "rules" and "transactions."
The memory flashback ended, and the scene returned to the ghost train. The train conductor's voice was filled with sorrow and rage: "Do you see? Those greedy and foolish bastards ruined everything! How can my resentment be appeased?! Unless time can be turned back, unless the dead can be brought back to life!"
The players looked on in despair; this was simply an unsolvable task.
Jiang Yu shook her head, her tone still calm: "Time cannot be reversed, and the dead cannot be brought back to life. These are basic rules, even the Supreme God cannot do them."
"Then you..." The train conductor's anger flared up again.
“But,” Jiang Yu interrupted, her gaze sharp as she looked into the void, as if piercing through the train to see something deeper, “is your resentment really just because of that accident and those sinners?”
He paused, then uttered a shocking statement: "What you resent is perhaps the very act of being 'trapped here.' You resent this endless cycle, resent that you've gone from being a victim to a perpetrator who imprisons more souls. What you truly desire may not be destruction, but rather... 'liberation.'"
This sentence was like a key, precisely piercing the deepest core of the train conductor's collective resentment, a core that even he himself might not have been clearly aware of.
The entire train fell into a deathly silence. The players held their breath.
After a long silence, the train conductor's angry voice, for the first time, carried a complex and indescribable emotion as he asked, trembling, "...Relief? How...how can I be relieved?"
Jiang Yu raised the machete in her hand, the rust on the blade seeming to flow in the dim light: "I don't want your resentment, the rent you owe. What I want is—your contractual right to be 'bound' to this tunnel. Give it to me, and I will sever this endless cycle. You, and the vengeful spirits of these passengers, will find peace."
Jiang Yu's proposal hits the nail on the head. He doesn't want the train conductor's power, but rather to liberate it, and the "price" (rent) of liberation is the contract that binds it.
The train conductor's resentment churned violently, weighing the options between endless pain and utter liberation. Ultimately, the desire for "end" overwhelmed his attachment to "existence." A vast and complex energy, interwoven with rules and resentment, was extracted from every inch of the train's steel and every wisp of ghostly spirit, coalescing before Jiang Yu into a tattered, ominous ancient parchment scroll—this was its "contract" deeply bound to this land.
“Take it… Messenger… Give me… liberation!” The train conductor’s voice was filled with exhaustion and a longing for release.
Jiang Yu accepted the contract scroll, sensing the heavy curse and power of rules contained within it. Without hesitation, he raised the rusty machete high in his hand. This time, the machete was no ordinary weapon; beneath the rust, an indescribable light emanated. The light was not dazzling, but it carried a supreme power that severed cause and effect and separated rules.
"cut."
With a soft shout, he brought the cleaver down. There was no earth-shattering crash, only a faint, ringing sound, like a snapping string.
In an instant, the entire ghost train trembled violently, then began to fade into the ethereal. For the first time, peaceful expressions appeared on the faces of the ghostly passengers, their bodies gradually dissipating into specks of light. Ahead of the endless tunnel, a long-awaited, real light appeared—the final stop had arrived.
The train conductor's blurry figure appeared in the driver's cab, bowed slightly in Jiang Yu's direction, and then turned into specks of light and completely disappeared.
The player team stared in disbelief. The "Undead Train" dungeon, which had plagued countless players and been considered an insurmountable obstacle, had just been... "cleared"? Not through brute force, not through strategy (at least not in the way they understood it), but through... a method that resembled "deliverance" and "trade"?
What did that boy just do? It seems he... made a deal with the Boss, and then "severed" the very foundation of the instance's existence with a rusty knife?
As the light faded, the players found themselves standing in a normal, abandoned railway tunnel, a mission completion notification ringing in their minds. The mysterious boy, however, had vanished without a trace.
"Who...who exactly is he?" the doctor murmured.
The fox looked at the extra quest reward in his hand—a talisman engraved with the train emblem (originally the highest reward for quelling resentment)—and his voice was dry: "What he said... collecting rent... could it be true? The dungeon boss of the Infinite Game... is actually... a tenant?"
"The Undead Train has been given a proper rite of passage by a landlord..." Rock took a deep breath. "If this news gets out, the entire player forum will explode."
Jiang Yu returned to the Endless Corridor. On the list, the status of "Endless Tunnel - Train of the Dead" changed to "Settled (Contract Dissolved)". The contract scroll in his hand turned into a stream of light and was absorbed by the list. He could feel that the list itself seemed to have solidified a little, and the clues left by the main god became clearer.
He looked deeper into the corridor, where even more powerful "tenants" awaited him. And the legend of the "rent collector" would surely spread among the surviving players, creating even greater waves in the world of the infinite game.
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