MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 296 The Dark Shadow Outside the Window (2)

Old Li looked conflicted. He glanced at Fang Zheng, then at his apprentice beside him, and called out, "Xiao Zhang, take this thief inside first. I have something to discuss with Zhang Kun."

The young train police officer also tensed up, glanced at Fang Zheng instinctively, and asked, "Sir, should we take him out with us?"

"No need," Old Li shook his head. "They're here to deal with that thing. You hurry up and click it down."

"You know these taboos, and it's not a good thing that you've heard about them."

Looking at the time on the wall, Old Li poured two cups of tea for the two of them and said, "There's still some time before departure. Sit down and let me explain..."

Old Li pondered for a moment, picked up his teacup, took a sip, and slowly spoke, with a touch of vicissitude: "To talk about this 'thing,' we have to go back a long, long time ago, perhaps hundreds of years ago."

"Construction of this railway began about 130 years ago, at the end of the 19th century. You can imagine, building railways in those days was no easy task."

“Those ‘piglet’ far to the west were treated like livestock. Their blood and bones are buried under every section of the railway along the western line.”

"The railways in our Northeast region are no better; they are also soaked in blood."

Old Li shook his head with some emotion, "According to my great-grandfather's generation, when they were building the railway, accidents happened every few days. Someone would get sick or someone would die. The workers were always seeing things they shouldn't have seen."

"For a long time, the railway was almost completely shut down because of the high death toll. The Russian overseers didn't care about the lives of the prisoners and Chinese laborers, but many of their own soldiers died, and some even went insane, so they had to step in."

"They spent a lot of money, and I don't know what kind of powerful sorcerer they hired to perform rituals, and only then did things calm down for a while, and the railway was finally barely completed."

"But...the strange things didn't end after the railway was completed."

"Especially when trains are running at night, they often stop for no reason on certain sections of the track, and no matter how much you check, you can't find the cause."

“Every now and then, a few passengers in the carriage would run up to the train attendant and say that they thought they saw some strange, tall, dark shadows on the mountain outside the window.”

According to legend, those dark figures are the spirits of prisoners and workers who died during the construction of the railway.

"Wait!" Zhang Kun suddenly raised his hand, interrupting Lao Li. "This legend has been around for over a hundred years, how come I've never heard of it? I've taken this train dozens, if not thousands, of times, and I've taken the night train many times, how come I've never encountered it?"

Old Li paused for a moment, looked at him with a complicated expression, and slowly said, "Because those who say they saw shadows may... not be living people at all."

"Over the past 100 years, this railway has experienced wars, been bombed, and rebuilt. The train station has also been renovated time and time again on the old foundation. Generations of workers have come and gone, but the residents of nearby villages and towns have passed down those old stories from generation to generation like seeds."

“From the day the railway was completed, during night shifts, sometimes more frequently, every few days; sometimes less frequently, every year and a half, or even two or three years. In short, the staff on the train would often hear passengers talking about it in private, or someone would run up in fright to report that some unusually tall and dark shadows had appeared on the mountain outside the window.”

"But strangely, in the past 100 years, and with countless flight attendants, not a single one of them has ever seen the dark figures described by the passengers."

"And what's strange is that over the past 100 years, there have always been a few people who either don't believe in superstitions or are particularly serious about it."

"After hearing these rumors, they started paying attention to reports of the shadowy figure. When they encountered passengers who claimed to have seen it, they would carefully question them about the specific details, such as which mountain the shadow appeared on and the exact time." The result? Everyone gave different accounts—time, location, size of the shadow—with no discernible pattern.

What's most chilling is that every morning, when the flight attendants tried to contact the 'witnesses' again to verify the details, they found that those people...

It's as if it never existed in the first place.

“After daybreak, those who claimed to have seen the shadowy figures would mysteriously disappear. But no matter how much they checked, they were not on the passenger register at all, as if they had never boarded the train, as if they had never existed in this world.”

"Gradually, perhaps out of fear of getting involved with something unclean, or perhaps out of fear of being haunted by vengeful spirits, an unwritten rule formed among the flight attendants—during the night shift, no matter what kind of passengers they encounter, and no matter whether or not their registration information can be found, they should try not to interfere. Even if they say they saw something, they should just brush it off and not investigate further."

"And so, with its ups and downs, it has managed to live peacefully for over 100 years."

"At least, in the stories passed down by generations of flight attendants, in the past 100 years, not a single registered passenger has ever been truly harmed by those strange shadows."

“Until recently… the situation changed.”

Old Li swallowed hard, then continued, "I've encountered night trains stopping unexpectedly and passengers reporting seeing dark figures several times when I was younger. But since I was transferred to the platform guard post five years ago, I haven't heard of it again."

"But when I called to find out what was going on, I learned that in recent months, the frequency of reports of seeing a dark figure has been alarmingly high. Almost every two or three days, the night bus attendants receive complaints from passengers saying they have seen a dark figure."

"Even more serious, just last month, a night shift attendant reported hearing screams coming from the carriage at night. When the train arrived at the station during the day, a large amount of blood was found in the carriage."

"Strangely, no one on the registered passenger list is missing. After receiving the report, the higher-ups thought that it was probably someone who boarded the train at night to avoid paying for a ticket and accidentally got into trouble. In order not to affect the railway's reputation, they suppressed the matter and did not want to make a fuss."

"But even though they didn't want to make a fuss, they probably knew something was wrong with this thing, so they came to you."

"Oh?" Zhang Kun frowned slightly after listening to Lao Li's account, then nodded. "I see. Those passengers who claimed to have seen the shadowy figure at night are probably not ordinary people. However, if the number of registered passengers is indeed not small, but a large amount of blood was found at the scene..."

He raised his head, his gaze sweeping over Old Li and Fang Zheng in turn, and began to voice his guess: "This is probably not a simple case of ghosts haunting us. Those things are looking for people to act as 'substitutes'! They kill people and then silently replace the corpses with passengers, making it impossible to find the missing persons when investigating!"

Zhang Kun breathed a sigh of relief, his tone much more relaxed: "Thank goodness, it shouldn't be any major problem that can't be solved. They're just a few dirty bastards who know how to find body doubles, a piece of cake for me!"

However, Fang Zheng suddenly pulled out a cell phone without warning.

Zhang Kun stared in disbelief, wondering what kind of thing this phone with such a large screen was.

Several photos flashed across the large screen. He held them up in front of the two men and said in a calm tone, "The shadow you're talking about, it must be this."

"What?" Zhang Kun was taken aback, looked at Lao Li, and asked with some confusion, "Didn't you say there were only passengers..."

(End of this chapter)