Gou Zai Punishment Division

The words on the old train ticket were pieced back together to their original form.

The overhead tungsten filament light flickered twice, turning a dim yellow.

Perhaps this was the color it was originally meant to be.

Chen Mo looked down and found that his shadow was much darker than usual, like a puddle of spilled ink stuck to the edge of his shoe.

"Boom—" The old green carriage came to a sudden stop, the wheels grinding sharply on the rails.

Chen Mo was thrown forward by inertia. He instinctively curled up to protect his head, and his shoulder hit the iron chair.

The chair seat shook, and a lot of paint and rust chips fell off.

He blinked, and his vision in his left eye suddenly blurred for a moment.

He blinked instinctively.

hit.

That last bump must have hit his head.

...It should be.

Vision has been restored.

But for some reason, he didn't feel relieved.

He was out of breath and couldn't stand up for a moment.

The cold sweat on my fingertips stained the red ink on the ticket.

He calmly and carefully tucked the ticket, which he had obtained by paying the toll, into the innermost pocket of his body.

Before he could even steady himself, a heavy, muffled thud came from ahead.

The overweight ticket collector stopped and casually slammed the moss-covered coin box he was carrying onto the floor.

The passageway was blocked by a dark figure.

The ticket collector reached into his uniform and took out an old-fashioned ticket clipper.

He pressed the handle of the pliers twice, and the pliers made a dry, grinding sound, with rust falling down.

The ticket collector tightened his grip, and the pliers made another scraping sound.

The skin and flesh at the edge of the uniform swelled up, oozing yellow fluid.

The stench was close by, but the sounds Chen Mo heard were very faint.

Chen Mo's back was pressed tightly against the cold metal of the train carriage, his mind racing:

Ticket check? All the passengers on this train are dead. Even if I, a living person, have a ticket, I probably wouldn't be able to get through this checkpoint.

The shadow... moved again.

Chen Mo stared at the edge of the shoe, his breathing momentarily erratic.

wrong.

It is an illusion.

The carriage was swaying, and so was the light—the shadows were moving, which was normal.

...but it's not shaking.

It is "shrinking".

It's like they're hiding from something.

The yellow water had already reached the edges of the shoes.

His throat suddenly went dry.

Only living things will hide.

That identification card was the only thing that didn't change after he got on the bus.

Cold and clean, it seemed not to belong to this carriage.

His hand was already raised.

But it stopped in mid-air.

What if I make a mistake?

What if this thing isn't meant to be used for concealment?

The ticket collector's footsteps stopped.

...Too close.

He dared not think any further and abruptly ripped off his identification badge.

He pressed the plastic card as close as possible to the thick, dark shadow beside the shoe—his only anomaly related to the car.

As soon as the card touched the shadow, a thin layer of frost formed on its surface.

The face in the headshot was covered by frost, making it impossible to see what it originally looked like.

He mimicked the stiff posture of a corpse, handing over his identification card, the frosty hanging rope swaying slightly in mid-air.

The shroud, smelling of damp, moss-like dampness, stopped in front of him. Chen Mo's hand did not move.

The ticket collector didn't take anything, but his head snapped off with a "snap" and draped over his shoulder.

Bone was exposed at the severed neck, and black blood was seeping out.

The gurgling sound of a drowning person before death leaked out through the gap in their flesh.

The icy river water splashed onto the back of Chen Mo's hand.

The ticket collector paused for a few seconds, like a machine that had failed to read data.

Then he slowly turned his broken neck, no longer facing Chen Mo.

Instead, he turned to the tightly closed cast iron door next to him—as if something there had finally caught his attention.

Just as the chill was about to penetrate his skin, the dark shadow on the sole of his shoe bulged slightly as if it were alive.

Silently, it blocked the spreading corpse energy outside the semicircle.

The dull thud caused the entire carriage to shake violently.

As the iron gate groaned, its hinges flew off, and the ticket collector's violent force tore a narrow gap filled with iron spikes through the deformed door frame on the left.

The moment the cold wind rushed in, that blurry feeling returned—not like the dizziness after an impact, but more like something being opened up.

The loud crashes around them seemed to be shut out by the glass.

The dim yellow light and the dark red rust faded quickly in his eyes, turning into a lifeless gray-white.

Suddenly, a very thin golden line appeared in the white field of vision.

That wasn't an illusion. The line was so stable it didn't resemble any visual afterimage.

The line ignored the walls of the carriage and went directly outside—it drew a picture: Chen Mo squeezed through the crack in the door, jumped into the darkness, and was unharmed.

The golden lines are solely responsible for displaying this unique "survival outcome".

But the golden thread didn't tell him—

What is the cost of this "result"?

The line didn't sway.

That's too stable.

It's so stable it doesn't seem real.

—What is this?

Hallucination?

Or... should I lead the way?

If it's wrong—

He would die right outside the car.

The train carriage shook violently again.

The ticket collector is turning his head.

He doesn't have time.

--bet.

His brain didn't even have time to think, he didn't even have time to judge whether it was a trap, his legs had already moved.

A force pushed him from his leg, causing him to slide out of his seat and fit perfectly into the spot marked by the gold line.

The sound of a suit jacket being torn by barbs was drowned out by the wind.

Using the immense centrifugal force of the train as it rounded a bend, he decisively leaped into the boundless rainy night.

His body crashed heavily onto the wet asphalt road.

He instinctively curled up to release the force, rolling around in the floodwater a few times.

The air in my lungs was briefly depleted, and cold, stagnant water entered my nasal cavity.

Before he could even fully stand up, the blinding, cold white light of the high-powered explosion-proof flashlight pierced through the rain, enveloping him with an undeniable sense of oppression.

The dense, uniform military boots stepped into the puddle, instantly blocking all his escape routes.

Beneath the dark green heavy-duty rubber protective suit, the dull whirring of the filter valve could be heard, like an old bellows spitting out humid air.

Someone swept a flashlight around him, and the beam paused on his face for a moment.

"...Is it Chen Mo?"

The walkie-talkie crackled with static, and a man speaking in a rough accent said:

"Caught one alive. Not tainted with any malevolent energy—lucky them, they just happened to be short of filler lines. Take them away."

Without any verbal warnings or unnecessary subjugation maneuvers, two hazmat suited team members stepped forward, their movements mechanical and numb.

The cold, heavy iron handcuffs snapped shut on Chen Mo's wrist.

A rough, black cloth bag, reeking of cheap mothballs and disinfectant, was shoved directly over his head.

My vision was plunged into absolute darkness.

Chen Mo didn't understand the meaning of those two words, but the other person's tone told him that they weren't good words.

The chemical protective suit unit was like a piece of industrial waste that could be disposed of at any time, brutally cutting off its connection with the outside world.

They treated him more like an unwanted object than a ticket collector.

As he was being escorted into the darkness of the rainy night, Chen Mo's steps were slightly unsteady, but his mind was exceptionally clear.

Through the tattered suit, he could feel that the old train ticket in the inner pocket was still intact.

The smell of ink mixed with the smell of rain on the old train ticket was the only thing he could still hold in his hand.

Through the black cloth bag, the rough fabric and the pungent smell of disinfectant completely isolated me from the outside world.

Vision should have been plunged into absolute darkness.

But Chen Mo discovered that the golden line was still clearly visible.

It ignored the black cloth covering it and swayed slightly in the boundless darkness.

That line extended out from deep within the pupil of his left eye.