Gou Zai Punishment Division

Chen Mo leaned against the moldy seat back, his eyes twitching in the reflection of the greasy and mottled car window.

The corpse whose fingers he had just forcibly pried open was slowly rising up as the carriage tilted.

The bluish-gray knuckles, still bearing traces of adipocere, moved haltingly in mid-air. The silhouette in the reflection was approaching him, frame by frame.

Chen Mo clenched his back teeth tightly to keep himself from making a sound.

He doesn't believe in gods or Buddhas, nor does he know how to exorcise evil spirits. His brain can only instinctively apply the logic of daily report processing to deal with the madness in front of him: find patterns and avoid risky items.

This thing moves stiffly and makes a cracking sound when its joints are dislocated.

There was also the sticky, squeezing sound of footsteps sinking into the muddy water, drawing ever closer.

It has no sight, and relies on smell or sound?

Chen Mo slowed his breathing.

Inhale.

The musty, cold air clung to the back of my neck, raising a fine layer of goosebumps.

In the instant when fear reached its limit, he heard an extremely faint murmur coming from the depths of the shadow beneath his feet:

"escape……"

The moment that sound rang out, Chen Mo felt a nerve in his brain called "fear" being forcibly snapped by a cold hand.

It's not calmness.

It was a chilling sense of "detachment." It was as if a piece of code had been forcibly inserted into his body, forcibly covering up the panic that a living person should have.

His knuckles, gripping the briefcase tightly, had turned white.

His gaze was involuntarily drawn to the wall of the carriage.

The yellowed, curled missing person notice, with its broken round holes from a punch and a dark red seal across the edges, looked as if it had been repeatedly torn and pasted back on.

At the top, the large title transformed into an official approval document: 『South Sea Passenger Transport Offering Allocation Order』

The face in the photo is Chen Mo himself.

I just paid the toll, and this car was stamped with a "scrambled" seal?

This is illogical.

call--

Chen Mo gently exhaled a breath of stale air.

The overloaded nerves began to malfunction in a strange way.

The sounds of collisions and wind around him were instantly amplified, as if separated by a thick film of water. His left eye flickered uncontrollably, the colors faded, and his vision turned into the rough, static image of an old black-and-white monitor from the 80s.

In the gray-white field of vision, a single, absolutely still image flashed by—

The gap of less than half a meter next to the front row of iron chairs became the only absolutely safe coordinate with a solid shadow in this gray and white world.

There was no time to think about where this visual illusion came from.

The muscle memory for survival made a gamble before the brain could make a decision.

Use your legs to exert force.

The cheap suit fabric made a tearing sound. Chen Mo slid off the leather chair in an instant, like a slippery eel, and precisely slipped into the gap.

The metal pen clip in the inner pocket of his suit jacket dug hard against his ribs.

The sharp pain, ironically, became a sobering agent that kept him grounded in the world.

Almost at the same second.

"Bang!"

As Chen Mo slid into the gap, his shoulder slammed hard into the corpse blocking the opening.

The rotten wooden planks cracked with a sharp sound, splashing yellow muddy water. The corpse, struck by the impact, was thrown into an ergonomically contorted position, hurtling deeper into the passageway.

As luck would have it, they bumped into a bloated monster that happened to be walking by.

With a muffled thud, a large number of copper coins collided inside the tin box, emitting a piercing mechanical alarm.

The monster paused.

Chen Mo huddled in the shadows under the seat, covering his mouth and nose.

The chest heaved violently.

The monster slowly turned towards the corpse.

The old newspaper covering the face was torn into tiny tears by the breath. From beneath the bulky uniform, a huge, webbed, grayish-white hand emerged and pressed heavily on the corpse's head, like a quality inspector stamping a reject stamp.

The corpse's flesh and bones instantly collapsed and folded inward.

As the monster turned its faceless head, it stuffed the corpse into its costume as if cleaning up defective waste.

Chen Mo watched this scene, his mind racing.

The monster's behavior logic is single-threaded. It is currently processing "interference items," which is a perfect blind spot and time difference.

He even calculated the distance precisely: his position was only five rows of green seats away from the windproof door at the end of the carriage.

If you can crawl over during the ten seconds it takes to devour the corpses, you can escape this carriage.

Chen Mo relaxed his tense shoulders.

He braced himself against the rotten wooden plank with one hand, preparing to exert force.

But he blinked his dry eyes.

In my line of sight, the green seats that were originally five rows away... have become seven rows.

Chen Mo froze in mid-air.

Without a sound of any physical movement, the carriage was like a wildly elongating appendix. The rusty green seats silently "proliferated" in the shadows, pushing the escape door further and further away.

With each glance he took, the length of the carriage seemed to increase.

The car had no intention of letting him walk to the door.

The brief sense of security and logic that had just been established was instantly crushed by the malice of this absurd space.

The gray filter on my left eye faded as if the power had been cut off, and hearing and color flooded back into my senses.

Chen Mo slumped back into the shadows. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back.

He stared at the muddy puddle on the ground.

In that instant, it wasn't that he anticipated the danger. Rather, it was that he forcefully pried a crack into something that should have been stable.

On the rusty roof rack, a screw slipped off with a "thud" and fell into a muddy puddle in the aisle.

An unknown chain reaction is spreading in the shadows along with this ripple.

The foul-smelling, muddy water around them quickly overflowed, filling the drag marks on the ground.

Chen Mo suddenly felt a chill in the inside pocket of his suit.

He reached out and pulled out the old-fashioned train ticket he had just risked his life for.

On this ticket, which reeks of pungent ink, several lines of short, blood-stained sentences have appeared out of nowhere.

The bloodstains were not completely dry, showing a dark red color.

『...allocation approved...target label: Sacrificial offering to the deceased in the river...』

"...Status: Unauthorized Containment..."

『...Tracing the origins: The River God takes a bride...Sacrificial offerings...』

Turning it over, there was only a blank space.

The paper was as rough as sandpaper, with a slight static electricity, like a blank death document awaiting the approval of the highest authority.

He folded the train ticket and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

Chen Mo leaned back in the moldy chair and turned to look out the window.

The car windows next to the other corpses revealed only pure darkness outside, with the only sound being the sparks from the friction of the tracks.

But the car window next to Chen Mo was the only one with the glass slightly bulging inwards, as if it were under tremendous water pressure.

In the darkness outside the window, a few dark green water plants floated faintly, pattering against the glass.

The window "recognized" him.

The label on the ticket reads "Sacrifice to the Fallen River".

The old, sooty smell from the air conditioner vents suddenly disappeared.

Instead, a cold, heavy pressure, carrying mud and sand, silently washed over his mouth and nose. Although he was sitting on a dry leather chair, Chen Mo's lungs began to spasm uncontrollably, and his eardrums heard a muffled hum of deep water pressure loss.

Inhale.

But he couldn't breathe in any oxygen.

A distinctive fishy stench and a tearing sensation, characteristic of river water, rose from deep within my throat.

This train carriage is forcing him to "experience" the way of dying by drowning in the river ahead of time.

The green train roared through the darkness, heading towards its next stop—the Temple of Ximen Bao.

Even through the shirt, the rough train ticket exuded a lingering chill.

It felt like an unresolved official document weighing on my chest.

Just as his lungs were about to burst, the ink on the ticket seemed to writhe and recombine as if alive:

Passenger: Chen Mo

Destination: Nanming City

Ticket type: One way