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

The lettering on the iron plate is in the old Blue Star standard font, outlined in white paint. It hasn't been repainted in fourteen years, and fine cracks have appeared on the edges.

"Welcome home to the first buffer zone of the Great Wall defense line."

The engravings on the back are shallow, and the handwriting is consistent with the 009 steel plate on the platform in front.

"Hand over all weapons."

Wang Hu stood in front of the iron sign, a wrench in his left hand and a handful of lime powder in his right. He didn't speak; the powder leaked through his fingers and landed on the rails. The powder wasn't sucked up or shaken into ripples; it just settled. He took two steps forward and sprinkled another handful. The powder spread out, covering the seams between the floor tiles.

Thin, dark silver threads seeped from the cracks in the floor tiles. As thin as a hair, they emerged from the cracks, touched the lime powder, and immediately retracted, disappearing deep into the cracks, leaving behind tiny, damp marks.

"There's something there," Wang Hu said.

The broadcast came on. It was a female voice, with a standard voiceprint and a gentle tone, with a 0.1-second interval between each word—the standard certified voice of the old Blue Star.

"Armed formation detected. Please store all weapons in the temporary storage lockers on the right. The supply passage will automatically open after weapon disinfection. The buffer zone provides drinking water, medical supplies, fuel supplies, and rest areas for the formation."

The sound paused for a beat.

Welcome home.

The announcement volume was just right, neither harsh nor oppressive. The overhead lights in the waiting area were warm-colored tubes, their surfaces dusty, giving the light a yellowish tint that shone on the floor tiles with the hues of an old photograph. The platform was sixty meters long and twelve meters wide, with six sets of weapons storage lockers embedded in the right wall. The locker doors were made of old Blue Star standard engineering plastic, with snap-on opening and closing mechanisms, and pale blue disinfection lamps shone through the gaps in the doors.

To the left is the supply passage, with boxes of supplies covered with tarpaulins piled up at the entrance. Further into the waiting area are temperature-controlled water dispensers and medical cabinets; the glass doors reflect light, obscuring the view inside.

Everything seems normal.

The small torch scanned the image onto the auxiliary screen. The pseudo-skeletal countermeasure detection module flashed red from the side of the 012 protective shell, once every three seconds. The red warning light shone on Wang Hu's gloves, turning his knuckles a dark red.

"There's something underground," Xiao Huo said. "Three meters deep. A dormant signal from living metal."

The secondary screen switches to the underground scanning image.

Red. Not just a few dots—it's a whole patch. The signal extends from the waiting area entrance into the depths of the platform, covering the entire paved area, the bases of the six temporary storage lockers, the foundation of the supply passage, the cement platform of the temperature-controlled water dispenser—everything is covered by red dots. The red dots overlap, their edges blurred, and the numbers on the screen keep jumping around.

"Quantity," Su Yuan said.

"Currently, there are 42 dormant nodes per square meter," Xiao Huo said. "In total, there are over 2,000. All of them are in low-power standby mode."

Qin Yan's metal plate made a sound. He pounded on the stretcher in cabin 013 with great speed and force, the metal plate striking the metal handrail with a vibrating sound with each strike.

"The buffer zone does not exist," he typed. "Fourteen years ago, this place was called the weapons decontamination line."

Tang Lan pressed the brake lever down half a notch. Her left hand reached for the pistol grip, her fingers resting on the outside of the trigger guard, not reaching inwards. The two wounded soldiers inside compartment 013 had already woken up; their eyes still twitched from the nerve-induced field of Station 53 when they moved, but they both did the same thing at the same time—re-fastening their wrist straps.

"What is a weapon sterilization line?" Wang Hu asked.

Qin Yan slowed down his tapping of the iron plate, each tap sounding as if he were tapping with his fingertips.

"The passing vehicles put the weapons into the sterilizer. The sterilizer reads the weapon's serial number, model, and rifling data. This data is uploaded to the Great Wall Defense Weapon Database. Then—then the database knows your entire firepower configuration." His metal plate paused for a moment. "But that's not the point. The point is the electric arc inside the sterilizer. The electric arc is from the same source as the arc in the door seam of Station 55. When the weapon is put in, the electric arc penetrates the metal surface, and the living metal follows the arc's path into the weapon's interior. When the weapon is returned to you, it already contains dormant fragments. The next time you fire, the barrel will explode from the inside out."

Base 04 control room. The technician switched the view to the inside of the temporary storage cabinet on the right.

Inside the cabinet are three sets of high-voltage arc sterilization racks. The racks are old Bluestar standard models, with copper core coils, ceramic insulated bases, and capacitor casings marked with a 40,000-volt withstand voltage. The base of the rack is embedded with a grounding copper busbar, which runs downwards and connects to the ground.

"The arc is the same model," the technician said. "The arc on the gate frame of station No. 55. The power supply busbar, capacitor, and discharge gap are completely identical."

The veteran engineer sat at the control panel, took off his glasses with his right hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his left thumb and forefinger. After pinching it a few times, he lowered his hand and pushed the glasses back in.

"Putting the weapon in that cabinet," he said, "is like handing over the electrical path. An electric arc strikes the weapon's surface from the shelf, and living debris crawls along the arc. When the weapon is brought back—"

He didn't finish speaking. The electric arc sterilization rack on the screen said it all.

The loudspeaker blared again.

"Please surrender your weapons. Time limit: 120 seconds. Failure to surrender within the time limit will result in automatic revocation of buffer zone resupply privileges."

The door of the first set of temporary storage cabinets on the right automatically popped open. The door flipped open, and the disinfection rack inside lit up. A pale blue arc of electricity danced on the copper core coil, and the sound of the current was very faint, like a fingernail scraping against a metal mesh.

Wang Hu raised the wrench. He glanced at Su Yuan.

"I'll give it a try," he said.

Su Yuan didn't stop him.

Wang Hu walked to the temporary storage cabinet. He grabbed a wrench with his right hand and pushed open the door with his left. The electric arc from the sterilization rack reflected off the wrench, the blue light dancing along the chrome-vanadium steel plating. He put the wrench in. Not put it in—he threw it. The wrench landed on the sterilization rack, the metal striking the ceramic insulating base with a crisp sound.

The sterilization rack locked instantly.

It's not a mechanical lock—it's an electromagnetic lock. When the copper core coil is energized, it generates a strong magnetic field that attracts the wrench to the shelf. The wrench surface contacts the coil, and an electric arc jumps from the coil to the wrench surface. The 40,000-volt arc breaks through the chrome-vanadium steel plating, sending blue sparks flying and landing on the bottom of the cabinet.

Dark silver tentacles seeped from the bottom of the cabinet.

Tentacles emerged from the drain at the bottom of the cabinet and climbed upwards along the path of the electric arc. Their speed was slow, less than two centimeters per second, but their direction was clear—towards the gap in the plating on the wrench's surface, pierced by the electric arc. The tips of the tentacles probed into the plating crack, and a dark silver liquid seeped into the chrome-vanadium steel.

Then it shrank back.

It wasn't because the tentacle gave up—it was because Wang Hu took a half-step back. As he stepped back, his right hand remained in the wrench position, but his fingers had loosened. His eyes were fixed on the dark silver tentacle, his pupils constricted.

"It recognizes weapons," Wang Hu said.

Tang Lan drew her gun. She stood up from the door of cabin 013, the pistol gripped in her palm, the muzzle pressed against the metal armrest of the door. She didn't put the gun in the storage cabinet. She looked at the two wounded soldiers inside cabin 013, their fingers also gripping the pistol grip, their knuckles white.

"No one," Tang Lan said, her voice not loud, but each word clearly enunciated, "must not surrender their weapons."

No one moved inside cabin 013. The two wounded men pulled their pistols from their holsters, held them to their sides with the muzzles pointing downwards. Their wrist straps were fastened tightly, and their heart rates jumped from 85 to 98 before stabilizing.

The broadcast paused for a moment. The voiceprint remained the same, but the tone was adjusted.

"You must surrender your weapons to activate supply access. If you don't surrender your weapons, your drinking water, medical supplies, and fuel supplies will all be locked."

The doors of the six temporary storage cabinets on the right popped open simultaneously. The electric arcs on the disinfection racks all lit up, illuminating the entire wall with blue light. Wang Hu turned to look at Su Yuan.

"It's threatening us," Wang Hu said.

Su Yuan didn't look at the temporary storage cabinet. He stared at the sensor data on the wounded soldier's wristband inside compartment 013. Heart rate 98. Blood pressure slightly elevated. Skin resistance decreased. These data weren't fear—they were shame. The wounded soldier felt ashamed of his earlier thought of "surrendering his weapons in exchange for supplies."

"Gather the weapons," Su Yuan said. "Place them on top of the 012 protective case. Gather all the guns, knives, wrenches, crowbars, and anything that can conduct electricity."

Wang Hu turned around and pulled an empty ammunition box from the toolbox on the side. He placed the ammunition box on the rail and spread it out.

The wounded soldier in compartment 013 handed out his pistol. Two standard-issue pistols, chambered and magazines ejected, were placed in an ammunition box. Tang Lan put his own pistol in as well, but left a short knife tucked inside his boot.

Wang Hu emptied all the wrenches, crowbars, pipe wrenches, and screwdrivers from his toolbox into the ammunition box. He also removed a spare crowbar from the side of the 012's protective casing and put it in as well. Inside the third compartment, the veteran mechanic handed over his welding torch and spare batteries.

Small fire count: Forty-seven items.

"Refining furnace." Su Yuan pressed the communication button. "Scrap alloy powder. Spray it onto the top of the 012 protective shell."

The mobile refining furnace unfolded from the side panel of the Devourer. The furnace opening was aligned with the top of the 012 hull, and the slag discharge port opened. Grayish-black alloy powder, as fine as flour, sprayed out, landing on the ammunition boxes and weapon surfaces. The powder was the waste residue from the refining furnace—scrap armor from Station 12, wheel rims from the wrecked locomotives of Station 50, and bone fragments from the pseudo-skeletal remains of Station 54. The powder contained trace amounts of metal and had an electrical conductivity thirty times stronger than air.

Dark silver tentacles peeked out from the cracks in the floor tiles.

Not just a few—but a whole swarm. Tentacles surged from the cracks in the brickwork, each one more active than before. The tips of the tentacles no longer probed, but instead crawled directly toward the 012 protective shell, at speeds of three centimeters, five centimeters, seven centimeters per second. They crawled along the track surface, not shrinking back even when they encountered lime powder, but stretching straight toward the weapons pile.

But there is one place without whiskers.

Isolation box No. 005.

The tentacles stopped a meter away from the 005 emplacement. Each tentacle turned and bypassed the fan-shaped area upon contact with it, crawling outwards along the fan-shaped boundary. The bypass distance was accurate to the millimeter—the small torch's thermal imaging magnified the image, showing the tentacles piling up in a ring at the edge of the fan-shaped area, with the dark silver liquid repeatedly writhing at the ring's boundary, refusing to cross it.

Blank area. Fan-shaped blank area. Radius one meter. Center is the second compartment from the right of isolation box number 005.

"It's hiding," Wang Hu said.

Control room of Base 04. The technician switched the view to the thermal imaging of the outside of the 005 pod. Living metal tentacles had accumulated to a thickness of three centimeters at the fan-shaped boundary, with layers of dark silver liquid. The thickest tentacle had swollen to a diameter of one centimeter, but it could not touch the boundary—the tip of the tentacle that touched the boundary would instantly dehydrate, turning from dark silver to grayish-black, then freeze, fall to the ground, and crumble into powder.

Lu Mingyuan stood up. He pushed the chair back, the wheels hitting the table leg. He picked up the communicator and pressed the broadcast button.

"Isolation box No. 005. Contraband. Natural repulsion source for living metal. Tentacles automatically deactivate at a radius of one meter. Not mechanical repulsion—it's frequency repulsion. The radiation frequency band of the contraband is in the same frequency band as the control signal for living metal, but in opposite phase."

He released the communication button and added another sentence.

"Marked 005 is the core of anti-live contamination".

No one spoke in the control room. The technician stared at the blank fan-shaped area on the screen, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, forgetting to type. The older engineer took off his glasses, wiped the lenses on his cuff, and put them back on.

Qin Yan struck the metal plate. The rhythm was slow, each strike seemingly made with all his might.

"She knows what's in the box," he typed.

The broadcast voiceprint has been switched.

It was no longer the system's female voice. It was Ji Yun's recording. The tape had a lot of static, and there was a low-frequency rumble from the No. 52 incinerator in the background. The voice was soft, the speech was slow, and there were breathy pauses between each word.

"If you reach the buffer zone," the recording says, "hand over something that has never been opened. Place it on the bottom shelf of the temporary storage locker. It will activate the real supply route."

The sound cut out briefly; static from the tape covered a word, then resumed.

"Believe me."

Wang Hu placed his hand on the 009 commemorative display stand. The timer on the stand was still stopped at seventeen seconds, unchanged for fourteen years. His fingers gripped the timer's casing, his knuckles bulging.

"She told us to hand over 005," he said.

The small torch locked onto the audio source. The voiceprint source wasn't the 009 hanger—it was an old speaker under the temperature-controlled water dispenser in the waiting area. The speaker model was from the same batch as the one at the bottom of the sealed coffin at Station 54, and there were living metal remnants on the surface, with a thin, dark silver layer still wriggling, maintaining the real-time calibration of the voiceprint simulation.

"The recording is hers," Xiao Huo said, "but it wasn't played by her device. It was something under the water dispenser. It recorded her voice."

Inside cabin 013, Qin Yan pounded the metal plate with tremendous force. Each strike hit the armrest, causing the armrest screws to loosen.

"She wouldn't let anyone hand over 005. Before she went through the manual line, she personally sealed the second compartment from the right of 005. She affixed the seal herself."

Su Yuan stood up from the driver's seat. He walked to the windshield and looked at the fan-shaped blank area surrounding the 005 emplacement. Dark silver tentacles formed a ring at the boundary, and the liquid metal surface reflected the yellow light of the overhead lights, making it look like a ring of molten mercury.

"It's afraid of 005," Su Yuan said. "So it wants us to hand over 005. Not to activate the supply—but to destroy that box."

He pressed the communication button.

"Give up nothing. Refining furnace, dark gold conduit. Pierce into the underground dormant layer. Reverse activation using the idle rhythm of the Mountain-Suppressing Core."

The mobile refining furnace deployed its second set of conduits. Six dark gold conduits extended simultaneously, sliding along the track surface, their tips pressing against the joints of the floor tiles. The inner walls of the conduits switched modes—not suction, but pulse. The Zhenshan core's idle speed signal was channeled into the ground through the conduits. Low-frequency pulses, 120 beats per minute, with their phase offset from the control frequency of the living metal by half a beat.

The floor tiles began to shake. It wasn't an earthquake—it was a riot of tentacles.

The dormant nodes were reactivated. More than two thousand dormant nodes awoke simultaneously, and dark silver tentacles surged out from the cracks in the floor tiles. Not the tentacled, slow crawling of before—it was a spray. The tentacles spewed from the cracks, and the dark silver liquid spread across the track surface, forming a lake of liquid metal.

But it can't touch 005.

The fan-shaped blank area is still there.

The tentacles surged to the fan-shaped boundary and then turned, piling up layer by layer. The liquid metal piled up from three millimeters thick to five millimeters thick, and then to eight millimeters thick. The tentacles at the boundary became inactive and crumbled into powder, and then the tentacles behind them surged up again.

Su Yuan let the refining furnace swallow it.

Six guide tubes simultaneously switch suction modes. The dark silver tendrils exposed on the rail surface are sucked into the guide tubes, forming six silver vortices at the tube openings. The tendrils vaporize inside the high-temperature furnace chamber, and a high-frequency vaporization sound is emitted from the slag discharge port. The silvery-white metallic vapor is sprayed onto the rail surface and solidifies into a gray-black powder.

The refining furnace continued to devour everything. Arc sterilization racks, temporary storage cabinet lock beams, supply channel sensors, and constant-temperature water dispenser bases were all dragged into the furnace opening. Copper core coils were melted into alloy ingots, ceramic insulation bases were crushed into powder, and capacitor casings were pressed into metal plates.

The broadcast voiceprint has crashed.

Ji Yun's recording first became distorted, with breathy pauses turning into mechanical breaks, and the interval between each word increasing from 0.3 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Then the voiceprint reverted to the original system audio, with the female voice effect stuck on three different frequencies before finally breaking into electrical noise.

The overhead lights in the waiting area flickered three times and then went out. The platform was plunged into darkness, with only the pile of alloy powder on the 012 hull still reflecting the white light from the headlights of the Desolate Ship.

The darkness lasted for seven seconds.

The overhead light came back on. Not a warm color—it was white. The cool white light shone from the tube, making the track surface blindingly white.

A piece of steel fell out of the wreckage of the temporary storage cabinet. The steel piece slid out from the interlayer of the cabinet's bottom plate, its edges burned by an electric arc, but the marks were still clear. Wang Hu squatted down and picked it up.

The front features the old Blue Star standard platform sign. Station No. 56.

There is a line of text engraved on the back.

"Station 57 is the real welcome station. But the key isn't in your hands. The key is on the wreckage of 011."

The handwriting matches that on the 009 steel plate. It's Ji Yun's.

The broadcast from Base 04 went off across all channels. Lu Mingyuan's voice was lower than usual, but every word was steady.

"Station No. 56 rules are invalid. Buffer zone marked gray. Dormant layer of living metal has been exposed. Tentacle samples recovered from the refining furnace are sealed for future countermeasures research and development."

He paused for a moment.

"The location of the wreckage of the 011 crew has been confirmed. It is located in the waste sea within the Great Wall Inner Ring Road. It is in deep water."

The old engineer cursed in the control room. Not out of anger—it was the kind of subconscious reaction one has when hearing an old unit designation. He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses twice on his cuff, and his hands trembled.

"011," he said. "He died in the line of duty twenty years ago. The entire carriage sank into a sea of ​​rubble. Nobody tried to salvage it. Nobody could."

Qin Yan tapped the iron plate very lightly.

"011 crew. Six people. All killed in action. The commander locked the carriage and sank it into the rubble. The key was inside the carriage."

Wang Hu looked at the words on the back of the steel sheet, his fingers touching the burrs on the edge of the engraving.

"The key is in the junkyard. How do we get into Station 57?"

The small torch's scanning direction shifted to station 57. The screen switched back to the main screen.

Station 57 is 400 meters ahead. The platform is lit with warm yellow lights, and the old Blue Star standard welcome song is playing over the loudspeaker. The melody is gentle, repeating in a 16-bar loop, and it's the song that the flight attendants play during shift changes.

The platform is very small.

It's not the normal length—only four meters. A platform four meters long can only accommodate one carriage. There are boarding and alighting steps at the edge of the platform, but the steps are only wide enough for one person to stand sideways. The platform ceiling is the old Blue Star standard arched ceiling, with three ceiling lights emitting a warm yellow light. The light tubes are clean and free of dust.

The metal sign hangs on the side pillar at the platform entrance. The front reads "Station No. 57 - Great Wall Defense Line Crew Shift Change".

There are words on the back. These aren't old engravings—they're new. The engravings are extremely fine, with no oxide layer; they were just engraved.

"Car 001 will enter the station alone. The rest of the trains will remain in the buffer zone."

Wang Hu stared at the words. He picked up the wrench; the plating on its surface, pierced by the electric arc, still bore scorch marks. He wiped the dust off the wrench handle onto his trouser leg.

"Only one carriage is allowed. This forced us to disconnect carriages 013, 005, the third carriage, and 014. All external attachments were lost."

Tang Lan pushed the brake lever all the way. The No. 013 braked hard, the brake pads jamming against the wheel flange, a metallic scraping sound echoing into the cabin. She turned from the hatch, the muzzle of her gun still pressed against the handrail.

"013 won't take it off."

The young survivor stood up from the side of compartment 005. He was clutching a boron lead plate, the surface of which was sealed with the second cargo compartment seal from the right. His hand was steady.

"005 won't take it off."

In the third compartment, the veteran mechanic tapped the coupling lock pin with a wrench. The tapping sound traveled from the third compartment to 013, then to 005, and finally to the Devourer's cockpit.

"Don't take it off in the third quarter."

Su Yuan didn't look at station number 57. He was looking at isolation box number 005.

The second compartment from the right.

The cold white light from the overhead lamp shone on the outside of compartment 005. A drop of black condensate seeped from a gap in the cargo compartment sealed by boron-lead plates. The liquid slid down the edge of the seal and landed on the floor of the compartment.

Then knocking sounds came from inside the isolation box.

A clear metallic clang. Three short, two long. Three short metallic clangs, followed by two long ones. The rhythm was perfectly synchronized with Ji Yun's countdown timer, perfectly synchronized with the rhythm of all the road signs on the 009 steel plate, and perfectly synchronized with the rhythm of her heartbeat in the real brain video.

It's not a police report.

It's a greeting.

The prohibited items inside quarantine container 005 have, for the first time, actively sent a signal.