Nightmare Despair

Chapter 54 Subway Line 1

Chapter 54 Subway Line 1
"Old Li, there are signs of a fight in the woods. You'd better come and take a look."

A hundred meters away, several beams of flashlight pierced through the night fog, casting bright circular spots on the churned mud.

The communicator hanging on his chest was buzzing, and a colleague's call came through.

Li Xiangqian sighed and patted his nephew on the shoulder.

"Stop jinxing it! We've got a lead, haven't we? Let's go!"

A group of police officers walked through broken branches and rotten leaves toward the depths of the woods where Zhou Kai and Qiu Ping had fought fiercely.

Everyone's expression was tense, a mixture of exhaustion and anticipation...

As long as you don't leave empty-handed.

This is a camping park in the northern suburbs. The nearest houses are a kilometer away, very remote, and there isn't even a security camera that can capture ghostly images.

If clues can be found, the subsequent investigation will be much simpler.

As they trudged forward, one of the young policemen next to Li Jiahao suddenly lowered his voice and said, "Boss, I feel like things are getting weirder and weirder lately. This is the third one this week, right? We used to only encounter this kind of strange thing once a month..."

……

"Fifth death. How does it feel?"

Ding San leaned against the wall, arms crossed, scrutinizing Chu Siwen, who was on the verge of collapse.

Her attitude was colder than before, perhaps because Chu Siwen's nightmare type was "realistic nightmare".

【Real-life Nightmare】is different from 【Past Nightmare】; the former is extremely dangerous.

Huang Zhang and Park Hyo-yoon surrounded Chu Siwen, blocking Ding San's unfriendly gaze.

Park Hyo-yoon forced a smile and said, "You...you're still in good health, you should...still have a chance..."

"Come on, Yezi, help me write this down so we can sort out the situation together."

"We will definitely find a way, we definitely will."

Chu Siwen's face was ashen white, and her once shiny black hair was now dry and brittle like a clump of weeds, with split ends and yellowish-brown tips.

He looked like a lump of mud with his bones removed.

Just a few days ago, she was secretly pleased with this inexplicable nightmare.

She easily lost five pounds despite the weight that had bothered her for years.

But after her weight dropped abnormally by 14 pounds, she could no longer smile.

The reflection in the mirror looked like a corpse being dried out.

"Thank you... I've had a great time these past two days."

Chu Siwen did not immediately describe the dream, but instead struggled to twitch the corners of her mouth to make her expression look normal.

She looked at Park Hyo-yoon.

"Thank you for playing with me. I didn't know that the lives of the rich are so good... In my next life, I also want to eat at the mall every day... I really... never want to eat that nine-yuan combo meal again."

In the past two days, Park Hyo-yoon has been almost always obliging to Chu Siwen's requests. Apart from those high-end and luxurious projects, she has helped Chu Siwen experience almost every kind of food, drink, and entertainment that can be paid for.

The cost was that the funds provided by Ding San were exhausted, but Park Hyo-yoon didn't care; he would make up the difference himself.

Huang Zhang sighed heavily and said, "Child, don't give up so soon. According to the pattern, you have at least three or four more days."

"There will always be a way."

Chu Siwen shook her head, her gaze still stubbornly fixed on Park Hyo-yoon: "If only I had known you when I was in school... I..."

She tried to say something, but was interrupted by a violent cough, and the rest of her words were stuck in her throat.

The air fell into a deathly silence.

Park Hyo-yoon secretly breathed a sigh of relief. The burning intensity in the girl's eyes made him feel both scared and powerless.

“Every night, I wake up at Wanggang Station on Metro Line 1. I’ve tried running, trying to get back to the surface, but all the exits are blocked by cement.”

Chu Siwen began to describe her nightmare.

Ye Zi skillfully opened her laptop. Although she could record audio, she preferred to type by hand, her beautiful, slender fingers flying across the keyboard.

“You’ll die if you stay on the platform too long. There’s a monster there, I can’t describe it well… it’s like four or five corpses sewed into a single piece of skin, and it’s still wriggling. If I stop, they’ll crawl out of the tunnel, smell me, find me, and then… eat me.”

“There are many people in the subway, thousands upon thousands, but they have no faces. They are all dressed in suits, like a group of moving mannequins, just getting on and off at each station, over and over again.”

"Today is the longest I have ever lived."

"I discovered that as long as I wasn't afraid and blended in with those faceless monsters, they wouldn't attack me. But... it's not always the case... to be honest, this time I had no idea how I died."

After Chu Siwen finished speaking, she leaned back, collapsed, and closed her eyes.

That's... all.

"I want to rest."

Ye Zi stopped typing on the keyboard.

Ding San turned and left without saying a word.

Park Hyo-yoon and Hwang Jang exchanged a glance, their Adam's apples bobbing, and in the end, they could only whisper, "Goodnight."

Park Hyo-yoon closed the bedroom door for the girl. In the shadows where the door was sewn shut, he quickly pulled a folded paper packet from his pocket, gathered a lock of the girl's long hair, carefully wrapped it up, and stuffed it back into the deepest part of his pocket.

……

Are you just going to leave like that?

"What I mean is, I want to go see Miss and let her know I'm safe."

Yang Hao scratched his head and said somewhat kindly, "Don't let her sharp tongue fool you, she's actually very kind-hearted. She must be worried sick about you since we haven't heard from her for so long."

“They’re all innocent kids. Look, it’s only been a few days, and they already consider you one of their own.”

Zhou Kai remembered the warning text message.

Indeed, without that text message, he wouldn't have been able to detect the murderous intent so quickly.

Some corner of my heart was finally touched.

“Okay.” Zhou Kai nodded.

Metro Line 1 is like an underground artery running through Xishan City from north to south.

At the northernmost point is the long-abandoned Vitas Health Park. Heading south, you eventually reach Jiangkou Station, the old town at the southernmost tip of the city.

This is the oldest subway line in Xishan City, and it has been in operation for nearly thirteen years.

Today, Zhou Kai was supposed to take Line 1 to the middle of the line and then transfer to Line 4 to go to the Falcon Wing Boxing Gym.

But Yang Hao's invitation made him change his mind at the last minute.

Finally, after letting the group of young masters and ladies know that he was safe, Yang Hao drove Zhou Kai directly to the entrance of the boxing gym.

……

Line 1 monitoring room.

The office staff member on duty bobbed his head in front of the screen, like a chick pecking at rice.

Although he was very sleepy, he didn't dare to actually fall asleep... after all, there was a camera behind him, and someone was watching him.

Just as his head was about to hit the table, he shuddered and immediately snapped back to reality.

The duty officer took a sip of tea, realized he had neglected his duty, and immediately began to carefully observe the surveillance footage.

The security guard responsible for monitoring him was a classmate from the same year as him, and he wouldn't be evaluated based on just a few minutes of fishing.

He did this simply because he felt he could somehow make up for something.

It seems like I should be a responsible, diligent, and dedicated young person serving the people.

But less than a minute later, the duty officer's eyelids started to droop again.

Humph……

The soft snoring echoed in the quiet monitoring room.

Just then, when the surveillance footage labeled Wanggang B4 was played in rotation, the screen seemed to be covered with a layer of dead gray.

Countless tiny particles swirled within, like black ashes from a fire, their shadowy forms seemingly playing out scenes from another world.

……

Shangpinzhai Tea House.

Wang Yuanzheng's office was brightly lit, but he was wide awake.

He was a clean freak, to the point of being obsessive-compulsive. He was also an extremely self-disciplined person, to the point of being rigid.

On the desk, next to the precious inkstone, sat a thick little booklet, with each line neatly arranged and each character almost the same size.

He would check off each item by indicating how much water to drink each day, what time to get up, what time to go to bed, how long to walk, and how long to sit.

But today...

"From 7:00 to 7:25, jogging, ×".

"Lie down at 9:45 PM and fall asleep within ten minutes, ×."

"If you do not get up at night, and if you do get up, do not drink water or eat anything, ×."

He sipped his tea stiffly, one sip at a time.

A screen next to me is lit up, displaying a message.

Qiu Ping has logged off; reason unknown.

Qiu Ping was dead, and even the transmitter implanted in his flesh was completely destroyed by some force, which naturally angered him.

But what he found even more unbearable, pushing him to the brink of collapse, was...

"Everything's in chaos... Everything today is a mess."

Wang Yuanzheng stared intently at the three large "X"s on the notebook, feeling his mind buzzing.

One more chapter! Thanks to FlyP for the donation and to Mo m for the 11 monthly tickets.