Chapter 78

“Brother—” Before Xie Chang’an could ask his next question, Jiang Cuo deliberately dragged out the final syllable and looked at him with eyes full of curiosity. “You’re paying so much attention to this. Don’t tell me there’s actually an infected person among the people you know?”

“I... don’t.” The fingers hanging at Xie Chang’an’s side suddenly curled.

But Xie Chang’an’s reaction clearly did not dispel Jiang Cuo’s suspicion. Stroking his chin with one finger, Jiang Cuo leaned in with a smile. “Don’t deliberately hide it from me, brother. I’m not one of those noble family people who’ve been brainwashed completely. I’m just curious, that’s all!”

A whole string of arguments came bursting out of Jiang Cuo’s mouth in rapid succession.

Xie Chang’an’s face immediately turned deathly pale. No matter how many times he insisted that he did not know, Jiang Cuo, once he entered one of his fervent moods, simply could not hear anything at all.

A pleading look was quickly thrown toward Ji Qing.

Ji Qing met Xie Chang’an’s gaze with complete indifference. This was exactly why he had not wanted to explain in the first place. The more one said, the easier it was to expose what one cared about. The current situation could only be summed up as: Xie Chang’an was still too simple.

Moreover, Jiang Cuo’s way of thinking was clearly different from Xie Chang’an’s. On one hand, Xie Chang’an would have a hard time persuading him. On the other, there was no guarantee the two would not clash over it later. Thoughtfully, Ji Qing reflected: of course, he was not about to take sides.

But as the team leader, it was also time for him to cut things off.

“That’s enough. Don’t waste any more time.” Ji Qing gave the order in a flat tone. “Continue the search.”

His voice was not loud, yet in the open snowy wilderness, it sounded exceptionally clear.

“Received!”

Jiang Cuo turned back with a grin and even threw him a mock salute.

As a transfer student, he had already more or less figured out the temperament of this top student from Class S. The top student did not like having proper business delayed, so Jiang Cuo had better not do that. After all, there would still be chances for him to cooperate with this top student on other team missions later on.

Xie Chang’an, on the other hand, suddenly let out a sigh of relief.

Although Jiang Cuo’s jumpy personality could quickly bring teammates closer together, in most situations it was also extremely easy for him to offend them.

Another kind of Zhou Que, then? Xie Chang’an felt rather conflicted about it. He thought, Maybe I’m just not good at getting along with this kind of person. But speaking of Zhou Que, I wonder how Lingxue’s getting along with him...

Xie Chang’an remembered that Gu Lingxue and Zhou Que were on the same team.

The three continued their search, splitting up to cover the areas they were each responsible for.

Ji Qing directly used his ability to float himself up onto the elevated railway tracks.

The elevated rails, which had been used year-round, had long since become mottled with rust under the erosion of wind and rain, but they were still extremely hard and stable. Every few years, the Federation’s Railway Bureau sent personnel to maintain the safety of the rail lines, while also arranging trial trains to test whether they could still be used.

And even so, the number of rail lines approved for operation was still decreasing year by year.

The railways used in the wasteland world had all been modified from ordinary railways that existed before the apocalypse. The current Federation lacked the capability to lay tracks on a large scale the way humanity had before the apocalypse. The initiative of railway workers was one issue, and mutant species attacks were another.

“The person who first proposed improving the railways must have been impressive.”

Ji Qing walked steadily along the suspended rails, sighing with a hint of wistfulness. Using the existing rail infrastructure really had been the fastest way to reconnect the towns and cities after the end of the world, but it inevitably brought one difficult problem: how were railways in dangerous areas supposed to be maintained?

That question still had no answer to this day.

Human safe zones, and the transport routes humanity relied on to survive, were all shrinking year after year. This was the kind of extreme and vicious environment in which the people of the wasteland struggled to survive.

The cold wind howled past Ji Qing’s ears.

The higher one stood, the stronger the surge of the wind.

Ji Qing brushed aside a few unruly strands of hair and calmly walked along the tracks. He remembered the contents of the photos that had been taken of the crashed train back then, so now he was also searching along the route for the landmarks in those pictures:

A detached crashed train. Three or four pine trees. A nearby hill covered in snow. Farther away, an expanse of pure white without a trace of gloom.

Ji Qing suddenly stopped walking.

Thoughtfully, he opened his terminal interface and compared the accident photo with the scenery before him. There was no wreckage of a train here, but there were the broken stumps of snapped pine trees, and there was a hill buried under snow. Farther away, meanwhile, was... a cliff?

Ji Qing stood at the edge of the cliff, troubled.

He checked his terminal once again and pondered inwardly: maybe it was because of the angle the photo had been taken from. Snow reflected light under sunlight, so it was already rather strange that the distant snowfield in the photo showed no glare. But even if that were the explanation, where had the train wreck gone?

Ji Qing’s gaze instinctively dropped to the bottom of the cliff.

The base of the cliff was a sheet of blank white snow, showing no trace at all of any train wreckage. But Ji Qing did not believe that a single glance could settle the matter. He intended to go down and see for himself. With his gravity ability, going back and forth would be extremely convenient.

Besides... he did not think there was anywhere else the wreckage could be hidden.

Fifty-seven days of snowfall was not enough to completely bury a massive train wreck. So Ji Qing used his ability and leapt neatly off the cliff. The sound of his descent was very, very light, as though he were deliberately avoiding disturbing the souls buried beneath the snow.

And the facts proved that Ji Qing had guessed correctly.

Ji Qing slowly crouched down and tapped the steel beneath his feet with his fingers. A dull metallic thud immediately rang out beside his ears, carrying the distinctive hollow resonance of an empty interior.

Ji Qing’s expression turned serious at once.

He quietly stood back up and sorted through the details he had just observed. The rescue team definitely would not have pushed the crashed train into a cliff for no reason, and the steep slopes around it also could not have caused such a massive thing to slide down. Which meant—

“Did someone do it deliberately after the rescue team left?” Ji Qing murmured.

That result was not really beyond Ji Qing’s expectations.

After all, You Xingluo had already warned of this possibility in class. Judging from the current situation, the infected passenger had most likely returned to the crashed train after the rescue team left to gather supplies they might need, and then pushed the train to the edge of the cliff.

“That’s quite a lot of strength,” Ji Qing sighed inwardly.

But for an infected person, that was actually rather normal. As Ji Qing mentally reviewed the outer structure of the train, he also searched for a suitable place to enter the carriage.

In the end, he found a window that was fairly close to the surface.

Break off branches, chop through the trunk, dig away the snow near the window, and finally clear out a pit large enough for him to get through... Only after finishing all that did Ji Qing belatedly remember his two teammates.

I should send them a message first. Ji Qing let out a dispirited sigh.

He opened his terminal, sent each of them his location, and briefly informed them of the crashed train’s situation. After that, Ji Qing reversed the direction of gravity and jumped straight into the train.

The inside of the carriage was dim and dark. Only a little light shone into the interior through the window Ji Qing had broken open.

Darkness and the unknown were always the two things humans feared most. From the moment Ji Qing entered the carriage, his senses had remained in constant vigilance. So, without showing it, he formed a gravity barrier around himself and began walking toward the front of the train.

Before Class S set out, Li Xuehua had specifically explained where the black box was located: beneath the driver’s seat in the engine car.

Ji Qing did not know which carriage he was in at the moment, but by common sense, he knew that the engine had to be at one end of the train, and it had to be the end where the seat numbers ran forward.

After illuminating several rows of seats with the light built into his terminal, Ji Qing quickly identified his destination.

The inside of the train was extremely messy. One of the carriages was even half-buried under fallen snow. But the carriages beyond this one finally had a bit of light in them, and Ji Qing quietly let out a breath of relief: at least he had not run into any corpses.

The rescue team had probably taken the bodies away.

It was just that, at the time, they had been focused on taking away the survivors and the corpses, and had not thought to take the black box. No, that was not quite right either... Ji Qing lowered his head in thought. Before the Railway Bureau released its report, they probably had not believed there was anything suspicious about the accident.

After all, train accident rates in the wasteland were fairly high.

When he reached the first carriage, Ji Qing suddenly stopped in his tracks. Scattered under his feet were fragments of valuable items that looked as though they had been dumped out of suitcases. After the train’s violent impact with the ground below the cliff, the objects had already been smashed beyond recognition.

But Ji Qing could still tell the reason from them.

He keenly realized that the infected person had once rummaged through suitcases here. Perhaps that was why they had chosen to push the train down into the cliff. Rescue team members would not casually open passengers’ luggage, and that just happened to conceal the fact that they had survived.

Very well done, Ji Qing praised inwardly.

The remaining problem for that infected person had been how to blend into a town. But considering all of this had happened fifty-seven days ago, Ji Qing felt he was unlikely to run into them.

What remained after that was simple.

Ji Qing carefully pried open the bottom of the driver’s seat and retrieved the black box required by the Railway Bureau. At this point, the only step left was to hand over the black box. Perhaps the manga protagonist’s tendency toward accidents had already been exhausted in Ning City.

Ji Qing’s mood inexplicably brightened.

The sooner he completed the mission, the sooner he could move on to the plan to seize the World Book.

Right—

He still had to find an opportunity to manufacture an alibi for himself.

If he did not do it soon, then the terrifying future where manga readers confirmed on the forum that “the two identities are actually the same person” might really come to pass. Ji Qing quickly left the crashed train with the black box in hand. The way out was much simpler than the way in.

Ji Qing returned to the sunlight once more, except this time the black box was in his right hand.

The sunlight was brilliant, though it carried a trace of chill.

Ji Qing instinctively frowned and used his free left hand to shield himself from the sudden brightness. Then he keenly noticed something: the terminal that had gone unanswered the whole time inside the train was now flashing repeatedly.

That warning only appeared when messages had gone unprocessed for a long time.

Seeing it, Ji Qing instinctively glanced back at the carriage he had just come out of and thought to himself: the thick snow cover must have weakened the signal reception. No wonder he had not received any response from his two teammates...

Ji Qing lowered his head and checked the terminal messages.

What surprised him was that the very first unread message had been sent by Shao Huayu. And if he remembered correctly, Shao Huayu’s team was the one responsible for the train that had crashed seventeen days ago, wasn’t it?

Ji Qing frowned tightly and tapped the message open at once:

Shao Huayu: 【We just encountered infected people. It has already been confirmed that there are other infected accomplices still at the scene. They should be heading your way. Be careful on your side. Lastly, I’ve already informed Song Xiaoran first.】

“Damn it...” Ji Qing immediately cursed under his breath.

My teammates. You two absolutely must not start fighting each other!