Chapter 96

Ji Qing quickly caught up with the other two.

Before that, he swiftly changed out of his pajamas and back into the casual jacket and cargo pants he had worn when he arrived. Since he had not planned to stay at school for long, Ji Qing had never changed into his uniform. A second before leaving his dorm, he lowered his head and checked Yancheng’s weather forecast.

Tonight’s temperature would stay between 11 and 2 degrees Celsius.

Not bad at all, Ji Qing judged.

Then, with practiced ease, he vaulted over the railing and jumped straight from the fourth-floor dormitory corridor into the school’s landscaping below. Ignoring the astonished stares of the students he passed, he ran quickly toward the school gate. It was now 4:45 p.m., and sunset was drawing near.

Aberrants appeared more frequently at night, and they were more dangerous as well.

According to Federal Railway Bureau statistics, survivors of a wrecked train still had a 47 percent chance of surviving during the day, but at night that figure dropped as low as 17 percent. If the three of them wanted to rescue the surviving passengers, they had to reach the crash site before sunset.

The train let out a sharp whistle.

With that whistle, the single-carriage trial train sped toward the wrecked train. Compared with the ordinary trains Ji Qing had taken before, this trial train was clearly much older.

It looked remarkably like an old green train, the sort with windows you could still slide open midway through the journey to let in the wind.

Ji Qing could smell kerosene lingering in the carriage, mixed with the foul stench of something rotting.

No wonder the Railway Bureau had been so cooperative.

Standing at the carriage door, Ji Qing calmly leaned his head out and observed that all the defensive systems around the train had been stripped away. This trial train, already on the verge of being scrapped, was not just outdated. It was a naked shell.

The three of them were its only line of defense.

So Ji Qing decisively headed to the front of the train to inspect the situation. If the trial train ran into trouble midway, not only would they fail to reach their destination, their own safety would no longer be guaranteed.

Ji Qing had no intention of wasting effort.

While Ji Qing moved about the train, Xie Chang’an on the other side was trying to comfort Gu Lingxue beside him. He bent down carefully and said, “Lingxue, don’t be afraid. We’re already on our way.”

“I know.”

Gu Lingxue was calm to an abnormal degree.

She felt as though her head were empty, her limbs no longer belonged to her, and even the foul smell in the carriage was something she could endure. Everything felt just like that day when she had suddenly awakened in the trunk of the kidnappers’ car.

On that day, just like today, Gu Lingxue had neither broken down nor cried. She had simply sat there in silence.

But back then, she knew that as long as she managed to escape, she could go home. The present Gu Lingxue, however, could no longer think clearly about the situation at all. Her hands unconsciously clenched at the hem of her clothes, and her whole being was in disarray.

At that moment, Gu Lingxue could not even put her feelings into words.

She hated her parents. She hated that they had never once tried to understand her, hated that they had taken it upon themselves to prune away her life. The classes she loved, the sports she loved, the friends she loved... all of them had vanished from Gu Lingxue’s life because her parents disliked them.

She loved her parents too. Her mother taught her the piano she loved. Her father took her to the amusement park she loved. The three of them had shared countless warm moments together. When other children were worrying about how to survive while their parents left them to fend for themselves, her parents had patiently helped her and guided her.

But they should not have belittled her friend right in front of her. How could they drag her through so much humiliation?

Gu Lingxue’s thoughts tangled themselves into knots.

She looked up at Xie Chang’an, wanting to tell him of her confusion and distress. But the moment she clearly saw his face, the first thing that rose in her mind was her parents’ unreasonable shouting at her and their absurd, powerless contempt toward Xie Chang’an.

Gu Lingxue could not tolerate any of it.

Precisely because she could not tolerate it at all, she had shouted before parting, “I never once asked to be your daughter! You were the ones who chose to give birth to me!”

Those were words that would break a parent’s heart.

Though the instant the words left her mouth, Gu Lingxue had regretted them, what she felt even more was a twisted sense of release. Her connection to her parents, and their connection to her... all of it had turned warped and grotesque because of that shared blood.

She hated her parents, just as her parents hated her.

She loved her parents, just as her parents loved her.

“No. I can’t keep thinking about this...”

With her head full of muddled thoughts, Gu Lingxue got up and took a few steps forward. She did not walk steadily. She looked exactly like a newborn child, tottering through its first step, then its second, then its third under its parents’ watch...

Her world suddenly sank into a strange silence.

Gu Lingxue suddenly said, “I need something to do. I need to do something, or I’m going to lose my mind...”

Xie Chang’an stared in surprise.

Just as he was about to say something, Ji Qing’s clear laughter drifted down from the roof of the carriage.

“In that case, go handle the defensive systems at the front of the train.”

A question mark slowly rose in Xie Chang’an’s mind.

He immediately climbed awkwardly onto the seat by the window and stuck his head out to look at the top of the carriage. Ji Qing was sitting cross-legged on the roof, one hand propping up his chin while the other toyed with a coin he had fished out of the driver’s cab.

Seeing Xie Chang’an’s astonished expression, Ji Qing could not help shrugging.

A careless curve rose at the corner of his mouth as he joked, “Haven’t you noticed? This train is practically stripped down to an empty shell. If Aberrants attack later, the only ones who can deal with them are the three of us.”

Xie Chang’an snapped awake.

His gaze instantly shifted to the tracks the train was running along. There were no Aberrants around the train at the moment, but for all he knew, some might already have appeared earlier and been driven back by Ji Qing...

Xie Chang’an only excelled at close combat.

In a fight to protect a moving train, the blade skills he specialized in were at an inherent disadvantage, so Ji Qing had not brought it up before, much less gone out of his way to remind Gu Lingxue, who had just suffered a major blow. But now that Gu Lingxue herself had spoken, he casually mentioned it.

For a moment, Xie Chang’an’s gaze toward Ji Qing filled with awe.

Ji Qing was incredible.

Xie Chang’an felt himself almost won over by the Valedictorian’s sheer charisma. This kind of calm, untouched by any outside disturbance, was exactly the quality he had always longed to possess.

But before Xie Chang’an could get out a full sentence, Ji Qing’s eyes suddenly turned cold.

“Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Even if you want to turn yourself into a target for Aberrants to chew on, don’t put on a show right in front of me. It’ll only make me think you’re stupid.”

Xie Chang’an was terrified. “...”

That razor-sharp rebuke sobered him up instantly. He hurriedly pulled his head back into the carriage and at the same time babbled, “Okay, okay, I’m going back right now.”

Xie Chang’an felt that he had just embarrassed himself again.

On the road to provoking the Valedictorian’s anger, no one was more successful than he was, much as he himself resented that success.

Gu Lingxue, who had stuck her head out as well, quickly withdrew back into the carriage.

The moment she saw Xie Chang’an inside, dejected as a stray dog, she could not help letting out a quiet laugh.

It was the first time since hearing about her parents’ accident that her expression had eased. Though heavy storm clouds still hung over her heart, she was in a better state than before.

***

On the other side, near the Yancheng-Spring City rail route.

Hidden inside the overturned carriage, Gu Yueqing held his wife firmly beneath him, shielding her with his body. Because of inertia, the front carriage they were in had shot off the elevated tracks and rolled down to the border of a Danger Zone along the route.

Because the airbags built into the seats had deployed, neither Gu Yueqing nor his wife had been injured.

Once the carriage settled, Gu Yueqing immediately pulled his wife into the toilet at the innermost end of the carriage. The overturned carriage had trapped them, but it had also spared them from being hunted down by the flock of Mutated Birds.

Creak... creak...

The carriage gave off faint rocking sounds, and the drops hanging from the sink trembled incessantly.

His wife trembled in his arms, but Gu Yueqing could not even lift a hand to pat her shoulder right now. The glass window of the carriage toilet had long since shattered from the violent impact, and a cold wind blew in from outside, thick with the smell of blood.

The wails of survivors rose and fell in broken bursts.

The southward-migrating flock of Mutated Birds was patiently circling the wrecked train like woodpeckers searching for grubs. Even without seeing outside, Gu Yueqing knew there was at least one Mutated Bird, perhaps two or even more, perched on top of their carriage.

They were probably wondering why this particular carriage held no food.

Sweat seeped into Gu Yueqing’s palms. Out of the corner of his eye, through the gap in the toilet door, he saw the blood-soaked corpse of the attendant on one side of the carriage. He wrestled with the thought: If he put the body somewhere the flock could find it, would they leave?

The Chengfeng train the Gu parents had been riding had eight carriages.

Because of the season, the number of passengers on the train had been quite low. In fact, Carriage No. 1, where Gu Yueqing had been seated, had contained only him and his wife.

The moment his wife saw how empty the carriage was, her expression nearly changed.

When they had first boarded, his wife had complained, “There was no need to buy seats this expensive. The chances of anything happening on southern trains are very low. That damned girl isn’t even going back with us anyway. It’s better if the two of us save where we can.”

Gu Yueqing had disagreed. “The trip back to Spring City is too long. It’s better to be safe.”

“Hasn’t your company been doing badly lately?” his wife had complained even more unwillingly. “And now that damned girl is causing trouble for us too. I really regret giving birth to her.”

But even after saying she regretted it, Mrs. Gu had never once said anything as cruel as cutting ties with her daughter.

At the time, she had sat down unhappily in the seat her husband bought for her and suddenly said, “If Lingxue would just come home, we could save this seat money and spend it on a quarter’s worth of piano lessons for her. She really likes piano.”

Their daughter really did like the piano.

Gu Yueqing had agreed wholeheartedly with that. But now, trapped inside the overturned train, he could not help thinking that his daughter seemed to like martial arts too. But because martial arts did not quite fit high society’s expectations for a young lady, he had never enrolled her in it.

During winter break, Gu Lingxue had also complained to them, “If I’d known I’d have an Ability, I would’ve learned more practical combat skills.”

Gu Yueqing had dismissed it at the time. Now, however, he could not help feeling differently.

Piano, ballet, musicals... all those cultivated hobbies prized by high society were of no help at all in a life-and-death crisis. He had signed Gu Lingxue up for so many extracurricular classes, yet very little of it would ever truly help her in the future.

After all, Gu Yueqing’s wife had been raised by her parents in exactly the same way.

A hint of wavering suddenly appeared in Gu Yueqing’s heart. He still remembered the day Gu Lingxue had displayed her Ability in front of them. Her eyes had shone brightly, just like when she had adorably offered them a bouquet back in kindergarten.

But the first thing he had thought then was: Wonderful. This way, she’ll be able to marry someone even better in the future.

It was not that he wanted to curry favor with the powerful, nor that he meant to use her. Gu Yueqing had simply wanted his daughter to live better in the future. The wasteland they lived in was brutally harsh. Right now, he still had the ability to shield his wife and daughter from the wind and rain, but what about after he died?

His child would have to live ten years, perhaps more than ten, without the protection of her parents...

Gu Yueqing had felt it was his duty to choose an excellent husband for his daughter before he died. But he seemed to have forgotten that his daughter might live unhappily. And if his daughter was unhappy, then what value did anything he was doing now truly have?

Creak-creak—

The carriage suddenly shook violently.

His wife clutched Gu Yueqing in fear, and he instinctively held her back. Gu Yueqing knew she was terrified, but no matter how afraid they were, he knew they could not make even the slightest sound now.

It would be the herald of their deaths.

Crash-crack—

The outer windows of the carriage shattered under the blows of enormous, razor-sharp beaks.

One beak, then two, then three stabbed their way inside. The flock of Mutated Birds crowding around Carriage No. 1 had finally grown impatient and was using those sharp beaks to search for food within.

Gu Yueqing’s pupils contracted violently.

His gaze drifted involuntarily to the outer window of the toilet where the two of them were hiding. If the flock continued smashing the windows one by one, sooner or later they would reach the toilet. Gu Yueqing thought: He had to stop them.

So Gu Yueqing looked once more toward the bloodied corpse of the attendant nearby.

Birds were not especially intelligent. The reason they kept circling this carriage was probably the smell of blood hanging inside it. Neither he nor his wife was injured, which meant that as long as the birds were allowed to get at the corpse, they would leave this place.

And most importantly, night was drawing near.

Without the protection of the carriage, they would not survive in the Danger Zone, let alone receive rescue. Gu Yueqing struggled with the thought: Even if he could not live, at the very least, his wife had to survive. He had to protect her.

“Honey?” Mrs. Gu, suddenly pushed aside, flailed in confusion.

But before Mrs. Gu could make another move, Gu Yueqing quickly raised a finger for silence. Once his wife had calmed down a little, he crept lightly toward the corner where the attendant’s corpse lay.

Years of life together allowed Mrs. Gu to grasp her husband’s intention almost immediately.

She knew his decision was the correct one.

As the wife of a businessman, she should always be her husband’s steadfast support, taking care of all the trivial household matters for him.

But faced with those sharp beaks probing for food, Mrs. Gu’s heart would not stop trembling.

Her worry for her husband instantly twisted into resentment toward her daughter.

Mrs. Gu thought resentfully: It was all that damned girl’s fault. If she had not insisted on attending that wretched school, would they ever have ended up in a situation like this?