The "Survival on the Train" game has bugs, it's really laggy!

The doors to station number 54 were closed.

It wasn't a gate, nor a blast door; it was a pair of double brass doors used in the old Blue Star standard crew member's belongings storage room. The door was 2.5 meters high and 1.8 meters wide. The brass panel had been polished, and the metal surface, untouched for fourteen years, reflected a blurry light. A seal was affixed to the middle of the door seam, the seal intact, with a blue sealing wax stamp on it, the inscription "011 Crew - Confirmed Death in the Line of Duty".

A small torch projected a floor plan onto the main screen. The platform had a simple structure—a rectangular space, twenty meters long and eight meters wide, with walls lined with cabinets containing personal belongings, each door labeled with a number and the date of death. In the center sat a translucent quartz coffin, with temperature-controlled pipes running along its bottom. The coffin was clean, with no dust on the quartz surface.

The broadcast came on. It was a female voice, with a standard voiceprint, and no tape noise in the background; it was the system's original audio.

"Station 54 - Relics Storage of Fallen Crew Member. The memorial pendant for the deceased crew member has been detected on Route 009. Please transfer the remains to the central sealed coffin. Once the DNA verification within the coffin is successful, the prerequisite for Great Wall Defense Line certification will be automatically unlocked - the last part of the key code will be displayed on the inside of the coffin lid."

The sound paused for a beat, then resumed.

"The handover period is 180 seconds. If the handover is not completed within the time limit, the artifact protection agreement will be activated at Station 54, and all exit passages will be closed."

Wang Hu flipped off the side of the 012 protective shell. His feet landed on the rails, and lime powder leaked through his fingers and fell to the ground. The powder wasn't absorbed or shaken into ripples; it just settled. He took two steps forward and scattered another handful. The powder spread along the inside of the bronze door, stopping thirty centimeters in front of the base of the sealed coffin.

"There's no suction around the base," Wang Hu said. "The ground is solid."

He took another step toward the coffin. Lime powder was scattered to the edge of the coffin lid, falling and leaving a few beads that stuck to the inside. Not adhering—they were damp. Water droplets. There were condensed droplets on the inside of the lid, transparent and unevenly distributed, with the largest clustered slightly to the left of the center, corresponding to the area above the thoracic cavity of the skeleton inside.

"There's something in the coffin," Wang Hu said.

Switching to thermal imaging, the quartz coffin walls attenuate infrared light, but the image is still clear—a complete human skeleton lies flat inside. The bones are neatly arranged, hands folded in front of the chest, skull facing upwards, and jaw closed. The bone surfaces are clean, with no soft tissue residue or clothing fibers, and the ligaments at the joints are completely decomposed. The temperature inside the bone marrow cavity is uneven—normal bones should maintain a constant temperature in a constant-temperature environment, but this skeleton has residual low-temperature conditions in its bone marrow cavity. There are signs of rapid freezing at -40 degrees Celsius, with pinhead-sized ice crystals forming on the inner wall of the bone marrow cavity. The intact ice crystal structure indicates that the rapid freezing time was no more than 48 hours.

「DNA标籤。」小火把棺内侧壁的旧蓝星识别屏数据放大。识别屏亮着绿灯，滚动显示一行字：「乘务员姓名：纪云。编号：011-7。殉职日期：长城历14年3月17日。DNA比对通过。」

Wang Hu stared at the words, his fingers tightening on the lime powder container. "A person from fourteen years ago, whose bone marrow cavity was frozen for forty-eight hours."

Inside cabin 013, Qin Yan's metal plate struck the metal. He struck it heavily and urgently on the stretcher, the metal plate hitting the metal handrail with each thud.

"An artificial route," he typed. "Ji Yun followed an artificial route. There's no turning back on an artificial route. Her remains couldn't possibly be inside the Great Wall. This skeleton is fake."

Tang Lan pressed the brake lever down halfway. She didn't speak, her left hand finding the pistol grip, her fingers resting on the outside of the trigger guard. Inside compartment 013, the two frostbitten soldiers still had their eyes closed, their eyeballs rapidly moving beneath their eyelids—the residual neural field from Station 53 was still affecting them, their brainwaves hadn't fully recovered. But their right hands were both loosened from their wrist straps, their fingers unconsciously curled, and goosebumps rose on the backs of their hands.

The chemical composition of the ice crystals in the bone marrow cavity was extracted and compared. The comparison results popped up on the main screen: the dissolved organic residue in the ice crystals was completely consistent with the fragments of the water jacket of the No. 7 locomotive at Station 50, the incubator fragment at Station 51, and the incinerator fragment at Station 52. The metabolic byproducts of the in vivo metal cryogenic induction fluid included dark silver ion complexes, ferromagnetic tracer particles, and condensate inclusions.

"The living metal used a low-temperature induction fluid to revive this skeleton," Xiao Huo said. "It was flash-frozen, and the ice crystals in the bone marrow cavity are remnants of the induction fluid. The DNA data source—" It paused for 0.3 seconds, accessing the backend logs of the neural induction field at Station 53, ""The source is the neural induction field at Station 53. When the induction field pulled the injured person into a deep sleep, it simultaneously read the memory recall of Ji Yun from the injured person's brainwaves. The memory contained Ji Yun's physical characteristics data, and the living metal used this data to synthesize the DNA sequence."

"It steals her image from the minds of living people," Wang Hu said.

The broadcast above the sealed coffin had a different voiceprint. It was no longer the system's female voice—it was Ji Yun's recording. The tape had heavy static, with a low-frequency rumble from the No. 52 incinerator in the background, exactly the same environment as the recording in the real brain video. The voice was soft, the speech was slow, and there were breathy pauses between each word.

"If 001 reaches Station 54," the recording says, "place my bones in the sealed coffin. The inside of the coffin lid will reveal the last part of the code. This is a prerequisite for Great Wall defense line authentication."

Xiao Huo analyzed the audio source. It wasn't the external speaker on the 009 memorial rack—the sound source was located 43 centimeters below the base of the sealed coffin, within the temperature-controlled piping layer. There was an old speaker there, the same batch as the one used for the feed inlet induced broadcast at Station 52. There were remnants of living metal on the speaker's surface, a thin, dark silver layer still slowly wriggling, maintaining the real-time calibration of the sound signature simulation.

"The recording is real," Xiao Huo said, "but it wasn't played by Ji Yun's device. It was played by something sealed under the coffin."

Tang Lan drew her gun and pressed the muzzle against the metal handrail next to the door of compartment 013. She looked at the two wounded soldiers who were still unconscious, her fingers on the trigger guard, not reaching in. The wounded soldiers had even more goosebumps on the backs of their hands, and the edges of their frostbite purplish spots were beginning to turn white.

The countdown has 120 seconds left.

The condensate droplets inside the sealed coffin began to move. Not downwards—they climbed upwards. The droplets rolled slowly along the quartz coffin wall, less than a centimeter per second, but in a clear direction. Each droplet stopped at the edge of the recognition screen inside the coffin lid, gathering there and slowly forming a shape. A human facial outline. The facial outline formed by the condensate matched Ji Yun's face in the real brain video—forehead height, cheekbone position, jawline—exactly the same. However, when the image from the small torch was overlaid on the real brain video for comparison, a 0.2-millimeter asymmetry was found in the outline. The left cheekbone was 0.2 millimeters higher, and the right brow bone was 0.2 millimeters lower.

"It has never seen her in person," Qin Yan typed out. "It can only piece together the memories of the wounded. And memories are prone to error."

Inside the sealed coffin, the left hand of the fake skeleton moved slightly.

It's not bone displacement—it's a dark silver substance from the medullary cavity seeping out from the inside of the bone wall, crawling outwards along the trabeculae, forming a thin liquid film on the bone surface. This film covers the phalanges, metacarpals, carpal bones, radius, and ulna, spreading all the way up the upper arm. The bones of the left arm begin to bend after being enveloped by the dark silver tissue. It's not joint movement—it's overall skeletal deformation. The dark silver liquid film forms hydraulic support on the bone surface, maintaining rigidity with internal pressure, mimicking the shape of muscles and tendons.

The pseudo-skeleton sat up.

It sat up from the bottom of the coffin, its vertebrae enveloped in a dark silver liquid membrane, each segment capable of bending independently. Its cervical vertebrae rotated, turning its skull towards the Devourer. The eye sockets were empty, but the dark silver liquid membrane seeped upwards from the base of the skull, coalescing into two globules within the sockets. The surfaces of these globules reflected the cold light from within the coffin, resembling eyeballs—but not in focus. Inside these dark silver globules were no pupil structures, merely two globules of liquid metal with surface tension.

It stood up. Its left hand rose and reached out of the coffin. The movement of its arm joints was smooth, without any friction—not the sliding of bone joints, but the continuous deformation of a rigid body maintained by the internal pressure of liquid metal.

"Give me the timer." Its voiceprint was exactly the same as Ji Yun's, even the rhythm of its breathy pauses was identical. "The last digit of the password check code is inside. Give it to me, and the password inside the coffin lid will be fully displayed."

Wang Hu's hand rested on the 009 commemorative hanger. The independent timer modified by Ji Yun still hung in its original position, the countdown stopped at seventeen seconds, untouched for fourteen years. The timer's casing was made of ordinary engineering plastic, and the internal circuit board was an old Blue Star standard component; the chip model was from the same batch as the control board of the No. 51 station constant temperature chamber. There was no encryption module, no storage unit, and no physical structure capable of holding a password. It was simply a countdown timer.

"It's lying," Wang Hu said.

Su Yuan stood up from the driver's seat and walked to the 009 commemorative hanger. He took the timer off the hanger and held it in his hand. The plastic casing felt cool to the touch, and the edge of the sticker from fourteen years ago was curled up, revealing the metal clips underneath.

"Wang Hu," Su Yuan said, "hand the timer to it."

Wang Hu turned to look at Su Yuan. Su Yuan's face was expressionless. He tapped the timer casing twice with his fingers, producing two hollow plastic sounds.

Wang Hu took the timer and walked towards the sealed coffin. He stopped half a meter in front of the coffin rim, extending his right hand to hold the timer. At the same time, the pseudo-skeleton's left hand reached out, fingers spread, palm facing up. A fine ring of sensory patterns formed on the palm of the dark silver liquid film—marked by Xiao Huo on the thermal imaging, it was a capacitive sensing array that could predict the contact position of objects.

Wang Hu let go.

It wasn't a handshake—it was a release. The timer fell freely from his palm. The pseudo-skeleton's fingers closed prematurely—before the timer even touched his palm. Slow-motion replay showed that the fingers closed 0.4 seconds before the timer touched his palm. Prediction failed. The timer hit the edge of the coffin, bounced up, and Wang Hu caught it with his left hand.

"It can only predict movements," Xiao Huo said. "It reads the electrical signals from your muscles when you reach out and predicts that you will place the timer in your palm. But you didn't—you let it free fall. Its prediction algorithm can't keep up with unexpected physical trajectories. The reaction delay is 0.4 seconds."

The pseudo-skeleton's fingers hovered in mid-air, loosely clenched, its palm empty. Ripples spread across the surface of the dark silver liquid film, as the prediction algorithm recalibrated.

"It's fake." Qin Yan's tapping came from cabin 013. "Her timer is just a timer. The password isn't in there."

Su Yuan pressed the communication button. "Refining furnace. Dark gold conduit. Insert it into the bottom power supply layer of the sealed coffin and extract the constant temperature liquid."

The mobile refining furnace unfolds from the side panel of the vehicle, its opening aligned with the base of the sealed coffin. Three dark gold conduits extend from below the furnace opening, skimming the ground and probing into the bottom of the sealed coffin. The conduits are then replaced with thinner four-millimeter tubes, their ends stopping at the constant-temperature pipeline flange, aligned with the main power supply pipe. The inner wall of the conduits is then switched—not for injection, but for suction.

The constant-temperature liquid was drawn from the pipes. It was a dark silver liquid, 26 degrees Celsius, with a viscosity higher than water. During the suction, the vibration frequency of the pipe walls matched the peristaltic rhythm of the living metal. The constant-temperature liquid surged from the bottom pipes of the sealed coffin towards the refining furnace, causing the liquid level to drop. Without the internal pressure support of the constant-temperature liquid, the dark silver structure inside the sealed coffin began to destabilize.

Cracks appeared on the surface of the pseudo-skeleton's left arm. It wasn't a bone fracture—it was the dark silver liquid film losing its hydraulic pressure and contracting, unable to cover the bone surface. The film peeled off the bone wall, exposing the white bone beneath. Dark silver tissue within the bone marrow cavity also began to seep out, oozing from the pores in the bone wall and dripping down the bone surface. Each drop that landed at the bottom of the coffin made a very faint metallic tapping sound.

The fake skeleton's face collapsed. On the left cheekbone, 0.2 millimeters higher, the dark silver liquid film peeled away first, revealing the irregular bone surface beneath. Then came the right brow ridge—0.2 millimeters lower—where the liquid film contracted, making the difference between the bone contour and Ji Yun's real face even more pronounced. It wasn't an error; it was a patchwork.

"It hasn't seen her." Qin Yan knocked again, this time hitting the metal sheet harder than before.

At the bottom of the sealed coffin, the Dark Silver organization huddled together, attempting to escape back to the power supply layer through the constant temperature pipeline interface. Wang Hu was already squatting beside the power supply maintenance port, holding the recast living metal cryogenic suppressor from Station 51. He aimed the suppressor nozzle at the pipeline interface and activated it.

The cooling mixture at -55 degrees Celsius was sprayed into the pipes. The constant-temperature liquid residue instantly froze into ice crystals, clogging the inner walls of the pipes. The dark silver tissue collided with the ice layer, and its surface active layer became brittle due to the low temperature, cracking into fragments. The fragments were then frozen by subsequent cooling sprays, sticking to the inner walls of the pipes and ceasing to move.

The pseudo-skeleton collapsed.

The skeleton scattered, crashing to the bottom of the coffin, bone fragments shattering into dozens of pieces. A film of dark silver liquid peeled from the bone fragments, shrinking along the seams at the bottom of the coffin towards the constant-temperature pipes, its speed decreasing progressively. The dark gold conduit of the refining furnace continued to draw in, emptying out all the remaining constant-temperature liquid. The internal temperature of the sealed coffin dropped from twenty-six degrees Celsius to minus three degrees Celsius. The last wisp of dark silver tissue stopped at the pipe interface, its surface movement ceasing, turning into a grayish-black, lifeless mass.

The recording of Ji Yun on the radio was still looping. The tape was getting increasingly noisy, and the voiceprint was starting to distort—after the constant temperature liquid supply was cut off, the voiceprint simulation calibration of the old speaker at the bottom of the sealed coffin failed. Ji Yun's breathy pauses became mechanical breaks, and the interval between each word changed from 0.3 seconds to 0.5 seconds, and then to 0.8 seconds.

"The inside of the planting cover will display—the password..."

The voiceprint broke down. The last word turned into a metallic, fricative sound.

The real brain access capsule lit up.

It wasn't a red light—it was a faint blue glow. The independent data reading port on the side of the access pod automatically activated, and the storage chip status changed from "full" to "reading." A notification popped up on Xiao Huo's main screen: The true brain container storage chip has detected a new trigger signal. The trigger source—in the direction of the sealed coffin—was the last set of neural induction pulses released at the moment the living metal pseudo-skeleton collapsed.

"It triggered the real brain," Qin Yan typed out. "The living metal was trying to steal the password from the real brain. When it used the fake skeleton to trick the key, it simultaneously sent a neural signal reading request to the real brain—disguised using the induction frequency of the calibration station at station 53. It thought the password was stored in the real brain."

The reading indicator light on the real brain access pod flashed rapidly. It wasn't stolen—it was actively released. A 144-bit decimal code was extracted from the primary memory layer of the real brain container and connected to the main screen via a neural protocol conversion chip. The code wasn't purely numerical—it was raw memory data mixed with neural signal waveforms. Each set of numbers was followed by a peak heart rate waveform record. The heart rate waveform and the numerical code were bound together as a checksum.

The waveform is pulled out using a small flame. The heart rate waveform is not a standard electrocardiogram—it is a raw neural signal recording, with a peak value of 144 beats per minute, which is exactly the same as Ji Yun's heart rate when he speaks in the real brain video. The peak position of the waveform corresponds to the start and end positions of each group of numbers, forming a complex encrypted sequence.

"The password is in her head." Qin Yan tapped the metal plate extremely slowly, each tap seeming to be made with all her might. "She wasn't dead when she wrote the password into her backup brain. The night before she went through the artificial connection, she performed a final neural conduction calibration on her backup brain. During the calibration, she bound each digit of the old crew number of 011 to the peak value of her own heart rate waveform and wrote it into the primary memory layer of her backup brain. This is neural memory—not data storage. It can only be read if the backup brain itself is willing to release it."

On the main screen, the 144-bit code began to be reassembled. The first half was a 126-digit number—the old crew number 011, each digit corresponding to the number of a deceased crew member. The second half was an 18-digit check digit—the integer result of Ji Yun's heart rate waveform peak value, taken as 144 times per minute, combined with the last digit of the old number to form the final verification sequence.

Xiao Huo connects to the Great Wall Defense Authentication Front-end Node. The authentication interface reserved fourteen years ago is still there, physically isolated, not passing through any main network platform, and is an independent neural signal verification channel. The 144-bit code is kept stable through a 014 liquid nitrogen cooling pipe, at a temperature of minus eighteen degrees Celsius, and the signal attenuation is controlled within three per thousand.

The authentication node responded. A green confirmation box popped up on the main screen, and a line of text appeared word by word:

"011 Crew's old ID number + Ji Yun's peak heart rate - complex password verification passed. Great Wall Defense Line certification prerequisites unlocked. Certification subject: Devourer Ship - Mountain-Suppressing Core Parallel Stability 91% Authentication time: Great Wall Calendar Year 14 - "

The date is followed by the current timestamp. A record from fourteen years ago and the current timestamp appear together in the confirmation box, with an interval of more than 5,100 days.

In the control room of Base 04, the technician projected the confirmation information onto the main screen. Lu Mingyuan stood up, pushed his chair back, and the wheels hit the table leg. He didn't speak, picked up the communicator, and pressed the all-channel broadcast button.

"The trap at Station 54 is now defunct. The Great Wall key password has been obtained. The password was personally stored in the primary memory layer of the backup brain by flight attendant Ji Yun fourteen years ago, without relying on any transfer of remains or verification at any station." He paused, lowering his voice, "Ji Yun's remains were not placed in the Great Wall, but the password was written into the backup brain the night before she took the artificial line. It hasn't changed in fourteen years."

The old engineer took off his glasses and placed the frames on the control panel. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his left thumb and forefinger a few times, then lowered his hand and pushed the frames back in. The green confirmation box on the screen was still flashing. He looked at the date, his lips moved, but he didn't say anything.

The refining furnace has started producing parts.

The first component is a neural signal key shielding shell. It was recast using fragments of pseudo-skeletal remains, living metal blocks, and remnants of the quartz inner wall of the sealed coffin. The shielding shell is semi-circular, with an inner layer inlaid with a boron-lead anti-adhesion isolation layer of living metal cryogenic induction liquid, and an outer layer of quartz composite armor. The shielding shell is fitted over the outside of the real brain access capsule. Once locked in place, the neural signal output of the access capsule is completely shielded—it can only be transmitted through the dedicated channel of the authentication node and cannot be detected by any external induction field.

The second component is a countermeasure detection module for the pseudo-remains. It was recast using remnants of the constant-temperature pipeline at the bottom of the sealed coffin, ice crystals from the bone marrow cavity of the pseudo-remains, and fragments of the logs from the background of the neural induction field at Station 53. The module is mounted on the chassis of the 012 forward probe trolley and can scan the residual cryogenic induction fluid of living metal at the forward platform in real time, with a detection depth of three meters and an accuracy down to the milligram level.

The third item is a live metal cryogenic induction fluid formula analyzer. This analyzer uses chemical composition data from dark silver ion complexes, ferromagnetic tracking particles, and condensate inclusions separated from the constant-temperature fluid in a refining furnace, combined with recasting data from fragments in the constant-temperature chamber at Station 51 and remnants from the incinerator at Station 52. The analyzer screen displays the complete formula for the induction fluid: the main components are dark silver ion complexes and a cryogenic borate buffer solution, requiring activation with neural induction pulses of a specific frequency at -40 degrees Celsius. The formula concludes with the shielding condition—a boron-lead anti-adhesion isolation layer—which perfectly corresponds to the boron-lead technology seized at Fuel Station 13.

Wang Hu pried out the iron plaque from the bottom of the sealed coffin. The plaque was a standard old Blue Star station plaque, with the front reading "Station 54 - Relics Storage of Fallen Crew Members." The back had five lines of text carved with a knife. The first and second lines were in Ji Yun's handwriting, the carvings deep and the edges showing signs of oxidation: "Station 55 is the first verification gate of the Great Wall defense line. Behind the gate is not a wasteland—it's the true physical blockade ring of the Great Wall." The third line, also in Ji Yun's handwriting, was shallower: "The key is in place."

The fourth and fifth lines are new. The scratches are extremely fine, with no oxide layer, indicating they were made by bone fragments during the collapse of a living metallic pseudo-skeleton. The handwriting is crooked, but clear:

"The door locks recognize every weld on this train."

"Don't bring traitorous welders through the door."

The small torch turned its scanning direction towards Station 55. Station 55 was 400 meters ahead, and its platform structure was larger than any of the previous stations. Ice-blue, high-temperature electric arcs emanated from the four door gaps, burning the accumulated ash in the rail gaps into glass beads as the arcs swept across the rail surface. The frequency of the arc sweeping was unrelated to the idling speed of the Devourer—it was a physically sealed loop with an independent power supply, which had been operating in standby mode for fourteen years.

An electric arc swept across the front beam of the Devourer.

Three welds on the front beam glowed red-hot simultaneously. These three welds were reinforcements made at Armored Maintenance Platform No. 12 after the battle—at that time, the outer protective plates of the enemy armored train were shattered, and the front beam of the Devourer was damaged. Wang Hu removed three heavy armor plates from the enemy wreckage and welded them on. The welding technique was correct, and the weld inspection passed. But the material was problematic. Those three armor plates came from scrap contaminated by the enemy armored train, and the alloy composition contained metal from the enemy train's frame. This metal was marked as "non-original" by the Great Wall Defense Line at Station No. 12—it was not the original structural material of the Devourer, and the welding trajectory did not match the original material of the Devourer.

"It recognizes the weld." Xiao Huo magnified the thermal image of the weld. The red-hot area of ​​the weld was exactly along the path of the electric arc, with the temperature rising from room temperature to 120 degrees Celsius, and then to 200 degrees Celsius. The base material at the edge of the weld also began to heat up, and the heat was transmitted along the front beam to the rear, only 40 centimeters away from the core energy-conducting pipe of Zhenshan.

If the arc power continues to increase, the weld will melt first, and then the front beam base material will be cut by the arc. Once the front beam breaks, the core energy-conducting pipe loses its mechanical support, and the vehicle's power will be interrupted.

In the direction of station 55, the electric arcs intensified simultaneously through all four door gaps. The ice-blue color turned white, the sound of electricity emanated from the door gaps, a low-frequency hum vibrated the rail surface, and the quartz sand on chassis 012 jumped up half a centimeter.

Inside the 020 isolation box, the knocking sound rang out again. The rhythm and the real brain pulses synchronizing with the successful password verification—a muffled knocking, as if through lead sheets. (Translated by Xiao Huo)

"When she walked past station number 55, the electric arc hadn't started yet."

Qin Yan tapped the metal sheet, but the rhythm was lighter than before, as if his fingers had lost strength.

"When she walked on the manual line, station 55 was closed. The locks recognized the welds—but she had no welds. She was just bones."

Su Yuan looked at the three red-hot welds on the front beam and pressed the communication button.

"Wang Hu. Mark the locations of all the scrap armor plates seized from Station Twelve. Low heat, scan the entire formation, and find all non-original welds. Refining furnace on standby—before entering Station 55, we need to recast all the traitor welds."

He released the communication button and looked towards Station 55. The electric arcs from the four door gaps illuminated the platform with an ice-blue hue, and the rhythm of the arcs sweeping across the tracks was faster than a heartbeat.