A Manual for Surviving a Weird World

Chapter 408: Take precautions before they happen

The girl giggled, her rosy cheeks looking innocent and carefree, but in this atmosphere, it seemed particularly eerie and chilling.

Suddenly, with a muffled thud, the girl's head separated from her body and fell to the ground with a thud. The head, with its two little braids, rolled across the carriage and landed at Miao Miaomiao's feet, freezing her giggling smile on her face.

Miao Miaomiao opened her mouth, but couldn't utter a sound. She sat there blankly, a sign of extreme fear, unable even to scream.

Feng Yushu kicked the girl's head to the opposite side of the carriage and asked softly, "Do you want to keep her alive?"

Ning Zhe shook his head slightly: "Kill them all."

Then another head fell to the ground—the head of the middle-aged woman who had been holding the girl. The headless bodies of the mother and daughter collapsed to the ground one after the other, but strangely, no blood flowed from the severed necks.

Ding Wei's right hand, holding the camera, trembled slightly. [Ye Yao]'s movement speed was close to the limit that the human eye could capture. The high-speed camera captured the blurry afterimage and displayed it on the screen.

It was a distorted, inhuman-looking humanoid shadow that flashed past the camera, and the heads of passengers fell off one by one. The carriage was filled with a ghostly atmosphere. In the blink of an eye, all the passengers in the carriage were killed, and the corpses were piled up haphazardly in the aisle.

Ning Zhe bent down and picked up a head, and saw the face on it wink at him.

"Let's go to another carriage." Ning Zhe casually tossed the head he was holding aside and walked straight towards the aisle door.

Feng Yushu hurriedly followed him. The vengeful ghost that had just wreaked havoc had already crawled back into her trouser leg. Ding Wei stared blankly at her voluptuous and beautiful back, and suddenly realized something:

"There is no shadow beneath this woman's feet."

Realizing this, Ding Wei quickly reviewed the video and rewound the timeline to when the two had just entered the museum and first encountered Ning Zhe and Feng Yushu: "At that time, she had already disappeared, but I hadn't noticed."

Just as he was feeling uneasy, Miao Miaomiao suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him forward.

"Miaomiao, what's wrong?"

"Catch up with them! Those two aren't ordinary people. Only by staying close to them will we have any chance of getting off the train alive!" Miao Miao grabbed her boyfriend's hand and quickly stepped across the desolate carriage littered with corpses.

The four were originally in carriage 103, while the Zhang brothers and Xu Beicheng were at the back of the line and eventually entered carriage 104.

After Feng Yushu killed everyone in carriage 103, Ning Zhe did not choose to meet up with Xu Beichen and the other two. Instead, he moved forward one carriage and came to carriage 102.

It's safe now.

Ning Zhe handed his phone to Feng Yushu, which displayed a WeChat chat interface with a pre-typed message in the input box:

The passengers in this carriage haven't seen my ticket, so there's no need to kill them.

Feng Yushu nodded and returned the phone to Ning Zhe.

Under the watchful eyes of the other passengers, the two found a corner seat and sat down. Ding Wei and Miao Miaomiao sat opposite them, separated by an aisle.

"Thank you," Miao Miaomiao said in a low voice.

"I did it for myself." Ning Zhe shook his head, refusing her thanks, even though he had objectively helped her—Feng Yushu had slaughtered all the passengers in carriage 103, beheading everyone who had seen Ning Zhe's ticket or Miao Miaomiao's. The two of them, unaware of the rules, had their tickets seen by these inhuman passengers, and the journey should have been bloody from the start. However, thanks to the power of the upgraded beings, this small mistake was quickly and forcibly erased.

Keeping Feng Yushu on her guard, Ning Zhe leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began to 'recall' as quickly as possible.

When Ning Zhe first saw the train on the platform, he felt a vague sense of familiarity. This familiarity did not come from Ning Zhe himself, but from someone whose identity he had stolen.

Since mastering Taiyi, Ning Zhe has stolen numerous identities. The vast sea of ​​memories, as boundless as the ocean, contains an immeasurable amount of information, making it an enormous task to retrieve the specific information he needs.

The train traveled smoothly, and before arriving at the station, Ning Zhe finally found the information he wanted.

Opening his eyes, Ning Zhe reached behind his aunt and gently pinched her.

"Ah..." Feng Yushu was startled: "Ning Zhe?"

Ning Zhe didn't speak, but pointed with his eyes to Miao Miaomiao and Ding Wei sitting opposite him, and then wrote two words on her back with his finger: Be careful.

Feng Yushu understood immediately: "You want me to be careful of them? Does that mean there might be a hidden Ascendant among them? Or..."

Suddenly, the dark carriage lit up, and sunlight streamed in through the black windows on both sides, illuminating the interior and instantly brightening the heart that had been feeling oppressed for so long.

A clear, melodious flute note rang out.

"The train has arrived."

Ning Zhe looked up at the scrolling display screen above the car door; the first stop was:
【mortuary】

"It sounds like an ordinary village with a strong rural atmosphere." Feng Yushu asked with some doubt, "But isn't our target station Huaichuan?"

“That’s the final stop, and the mortuary is just a temporary stop on the train.” Ning Zhe said, standing up and walking towards the train door. Feng Yushu quickly followed behind him, and the two of them got off the train together.

Outside the train was a vibrant, golden forest bathed in sunlight. Fresh air drifted into the carriage from outside, carrying the pleasant scent of grass and trees, which dispelled the originally gloomy and oppressive atmosphere.

There was a winding path in the woods, marked with ruts from repeated tire movements.

Every meter or two along the path, a bamboo pole is planted, with a long, colorful rope tied to it, sandwiching the winding dirt road in the middle and extending along the road, like a divider or a fence.

Each pair of bamboo poles is connected by a knot made of colorful rope, similar to a Chinese knot, but cylindrical, with tassels at the bottom resembling ears of rice, which flutter in the wind.

Awei and Miaomiao followed Ning Zhe and got out of the car. The camera captured Ning Zhe walking to the bamboo pole and picking up the colorful rope that surrounded the road to look at it.

"Hey buddy, what are you looking at?" Ah Wei mustered up his courage and stepped forward to ask.

"Five-colored Vajra thread," Ning Zhe said. "It's a Buddhist item used to ward off evil spirits."

Upon hearing this, Feng Yushu also looked down at the colorful rope and discovered that the thick rope was woven from thin ropes of five colors: red, yellow, blue, green, and purple.

(End of this chapter)