Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 624 Desert Remnants on the Train
However, there's no point in dwelling on this now. Sun Hang switched to a spare subway card, swiped it, and then boarded the ghost train carriage.

With Zuo Jun's "escort," the other members of the team also boarded the train safely—except for the subway card that Sun Hang had at the beginning, none of the other subway cards had insufficient balance.

As the carriage door closed, Old Wang immediately stood up from his seat and walked to the adjacent carriage.

She walked up to a standing passenger phantom, looked at it for a moment, and then walked straight through it.

"Hey, that's interesting," Old Wang said with a smile. "It feels like a holographic projection. Maybe there are even projection lenses hidden in this carriage."

"Are those people...ghosts?" Watching the playful Old Wang pass through the phantoms, Bai Lingqiu turned to Sun Hang and asked in a low voice.

"In a sense, yes." Sun Hang nodded.

"Tsk, I didn't feel it before, but now that you mention it, I feel a chill running down my spine as I walk through them, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end." Old Wang said, but her hands were busy—a tiny flame, the size of a grain of rice, ignited at her fingertips and she sent it directly into the chest of a phantom.

However, nothing happened. The phantom was still standing there perfectly fine, one hand holding the pull ring and the other holding a bulging briefcase, letting the flame that could melt steel continue to flicker in its chest.

"Where did they come from?" Bai Lingqiu asked again.

“According to those people in white coats, the phantoms on the ghost train are basically unlucky people who, for some unknown reason, mistakenly boarded the ghost train and didn’t get off at the correct station,” Sun Hang said. “Once they miss the chance to get off, they become these wandering ghosts, forever trapped on the train.”

“There’s another theory: these people are actually dead, and the phantom is just a piece of information that remains in the carriage,” said Zhulong, who had been studying the ghost train with the researchers at Tian Shu Tower. “However, given what happened last time, I’m more inclined to believe what Sun Hang just said.”

"What happened last time? What happened last time?" Bai Lingqiu couldn't help but ask.

"The advance team members who were wiped out because their subway cards ran out of credit were crushed by the Ghost Train, but they left behind an identical phantom that entered the carriage," Zhulong said. "This is probably the origin of the word 'ghost' in Ghost Train."

"Insufficient balance on your subway card?" Bai Lingqiu subconsciously touched the pocket containing her subway card, a hint of lingering fear flashing in her eyes.

“However, with that person here, this kind of thing shouldn’t happen again.” Zhulong said, looking at Zuo Jun sitting next to him.

Zuo Jun was holding a paper book and reading it as if no one else was around... He seemed to have an inexplicable addiction to reading, and even during breaks from missions, he would use all his spare time to read.

This reminded Sun Hang of those high school seniors who would do practice problems while squatting on the toilet—Sun Hang didn't know if he had ever been to high school, but shortly after he woke up, he saw a somewhat comical news report on TV: a high school senior in Tianfu City was so engrossed in doing practice problems on the toilet late at night that when he finished a set of papers and tried to stand up, both his legs had gone numb, and he fell straight into the toilet bowl, resulting in multiple fractures of his hip and a dislocated lumbar vertebra…

However, this top student was also lucky. The college entrance exam, which was originally less than a month away, was postponed for several months due to the arrival of the Eternal Night… By the time the exam finally started, he had probably already recovered and been discharged from the hospital. It's just unknown whether this incident will leave any psychological trauma on this unfortunate student.

“Ghosts can also be considered a kind of residual information.” Zuo Jun closed the book. “Both interpretations are actually correct. Or rather, everything in the material world can be deconstructed into the most primitive form of information.”

"Are ghosts considered part of the material world?" Sun Hang asked casually.

"If you can see it, then so be it," Zuo Jun replied.

Just then, Nur, who was looking towards the other side of the carriage, suddenly started shouting in broken Xiazhou language, "Here! There's! A! Settlement! People!"

Everyone immediately looked in the direction he pointed, and saw a shadowy figure dressed almost exactly like a desert survivor standing in the aisle between the two carriages, looking around in fear.

"Is he from your settlement?" Sun Hang asked immediately.

Nur shook his head: "He should also be a hunter, but the totem on his body is not from our settlement, nor does it belong to any settlement I know."

"So, this guy probably accidentally bumped into a ghost train that was stopping at a station while he was hunting the giant sand worm. Driven by curiosity, he boarded the train and was caught fare evading because he didn't swipe his card. He was then eliminated by the rules of the ghost train and became one of the ghosts on it." Sun Hang immediately analyzed the whole story.

"If the other party has a subway card... could they use the Ghost Train to enter the territory of the Xia State Federation?" Zhulong frowned.

"Where did they get the subway card?" Old Wang returned to the carriage where Sun Hang and the others were. "Wasn't that place completely destroyed by the giant sand worms? Even if there were some remnants of the old civilization, finding a subway card from the Xia State Federation is just too difficult..."

“No…yes.” Sun Hang shook his head. “Not only do I have them, but they’re all newly issued cards with plenty of balances…”

"You mean the advance team?" Zhulong immediately realized.

"I don't know why, but I have a bad feeling," Sun Hang murmured. "I hope I'm just worrying unnecessarily."

"Are you worried that those desert survivors will attack the advance team, steal the subway card, and then attack the Xia State Federation?" Old Wang raised an eyebrow. "What a joke... Their technological level is about the same as that of primitive people. Even if they can really get to Xia State via the Ghost Subway, even without sending out monster hunters, a modern army would be enough to wipe them out!"

"Ordinary desert dwellers are indeed similar to primitive people... but don't forget, each of them has latent monster memes within them," Zhulong said solemnly. "The most urgent task is to immediately contact the advance team at the outpost..."

(End of this chapter)