Global Ghost Stories: I'm Investigating Ghosts in My Nightmare!

Chapter 107 Underworld
The cold, sharp metal ticket pliers, imbued with an absolute sense of "rule," were magnified infinitely in Bai Yu's pupils!
That was not a simple physical attack, but a conceptual obliteration that directly affected the level of "existence"!

What it wants to "cut off" is not his flesh and blood, but his identity as a "smuggler" and everything that this identity carries!
Once touched by it, Bai Yu had no doubt that she would be completely erased from this eerie carriage, just like that Japanese girl named "Hasumi," like a sand sculpture weathered by the elements, leaving not even a trace of her existence!
The aura of death, like the icy tide of the deep sea, surged wildly from all directions, trying to freeze his already incredibly weak soul completely!
Their strength was suppressed, and their escape route was cut off.

This is a doomed situation.

However, just before the serrated, smiling ticket pliers were about to touch his brow, all the emotions in Bai Yu's eyes, which were slightly wide with shock, receded like a tide, leaving only a calmness as cold as absolute zero!
His brain entered an unprecedented state of overclocking at that moment!
Since the other party's rules are based on "tickets".

Since he was identified as an "illegal immigrant" because of the "whirlpool eye" mark on the back of his hand, the rules of this train recognized him as having another "extra ticket".

So……

What if you took out another "super ticket" that didn't belong to this train system, but came from a higher dimension, a more chaotic and unreasonable one?

An incredibly bold and insane idea exploded in his mind like a thunderclap!

Bet!

Bai Yu did not hesitate at all!
He suddenly raised the hand that had been tightly gripping the black train ticket!

But he didn't hand over the ticket that represented his "existence"!
Facing the slamming ticket clippers that were about to fall, powerful enough to cut everything, he resolutely opened his palms!

In his palm, a white card made of an unknown black material, with a clown's smiling face drawn on it, appeared out of nowhere!
It was that clown card from the "tragic artist," filled with twisted and insane concepts!
The moment the card appeared, a chaotic force of rules from a higher dimension, filled with "self" and "appreciation," exploded like a depth charge thrown into a calm lake in this carriage shrouded in deathly silence and order!
"Crack——!"

The smiling ticket-checking pliers, filled with sharp serrations, did not cut the clown card as Bai Yu had expected the moment they touched it.

Two powerful forces from different dimensions and rule systems collided violently in the most direct and brutal way!
"Zzzzzzzzzzz—!!!"

The extremely piercing sound of energy friction was like countless red-hot steel needles piercing Bai Yu's eardrums!

The lights in the entire carriage started flashing wildly in an instant!

The tall, thin ticket inspector's body began to convulse and twist violently, like a robot injected with high-voltage electricity!
On his pure white mask, between the huge smiling face representing "rules" and the clown card representing "chaos," bursts of visible electric arcs erupted!
His "logic system" for enforcing the rules encountered an unprecedented and fatal bug when it came into contact with the Joker's cards' illogical "tragic aesthetics"!

"Alarm...alarm..."

"Found...unknown...ticket..."

"...Unable to...identify...unable to...check ticket..."

"...System...Logic...Error...Error...Error..."

A series of loud and chaotic electronic synthesized sounds emanated intermittently from beneath the ticket inspector's pure white mask!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The entire train began to shake violently due to the ticket inspector's "system crash"!
The darkness outside the car window surged wildly like boiling water!
After a blinding flash, the incandescent light on the ceiling of the carriage exploded with a loud bang!
The entire world was plunged into absolute darkness and chaos!
As the instigator of all this, Bai Yu's situation was also extremely bad.

The energy aftershocks from the collision of the two high-dimensional forces, like the sharpest blade, raged wildly in his sea of ​​souls!
He felt as if his already incredibly weak soul was about to be torn to shreds by this force!

The intense pain caused his vision to go black, and his consciousness once again went blank for a brief moment.

Just a moment before he was about to completely faint.

Amidst the chaos, the overhead loudspeaker blared once again.

That was no longer the cold, electronic female voice from before.

Instead, it was a male voice filled with anxiety and anger.

"Warning! Warning! 'Contamination source' detected in carriage number three! The system is about to... forcefully eject it!"

"...Next stop...Platformless..."

"...The train...has made an emergency stop..."

The moment the words left his mouth, Bai Yu felt the seat beneath him suddenly shake violently!
An immense and irresistible repulsive force surged wildly from all directions, as if an invisible giant hand had violently thrown the train off the verge of going out of control!

……

I do not know how long it has been.

It may be just a moment, or it may be eternity.

A rhythmic clanging sound, like an ancient pendulum, pulled his consciousness back from its near-disappearance.

Bai Yu suddenly opened her eyes.

What came into view was no longer that dark and chaotic carriage.

He was lying on a dilapidated, desolate open-air platform.

The entire platform is made of thick, darkened sleepers eroded by time, with clumps of incredibly resilient gray moss growing between the sleepers.

A cold gust of air, mixed with the smell of damp earth and decaying wood, entered his nostrils, bringing a sliver of clarity back to his mind, which had been somewhat dazed from lack of oxygen.

"Clang, clang, clang..."

The old train that had thrown him off didn't stop. Like a ghost that had completed its mission, it slowly drove into the endless darkness ahead amidst a mechanical roar, and finally disappeared completely.

The whole world was once again plunged into a suffocating silence.

Bai Yu struggled to prop himself up from the cold, hard sleepers, his body feeling like it was falling apart.

He looked around.

This is a station standing alone in endless darkness.

Behind him was a one-way railway track that stretched into the darkness, its surface covered with a thick layer of rust, as if no train had passed through here for hundreds of years.

Before him lay an unknown region shrouded in a thick, impenetrable gray fog.

In the center of the platform, a lone, rusty iron lamppost stands. At the top of the lamppost, a dim, yellowish incandescent bulb emits a faint, will-o'-the-wisp light, barely illuminating a small area around it, creating a "safe zone" filled with a sense of loneliness.

Below the light, a wooden bus stop sign hangs, its paint mostly peeling off.

Above the bus stop sign, two somewhat blurred Chinese characters are written in a calligraphy style that evokes a sense of age.

—Like the moon.

Kisaragi Station.

A hint of seriousness flashed in Bai Yu's eyes.

He immediately checked his physical condition.

Very good, no missing limbs.

However, the high-tech combat suit from the Investigation Bureau has been replaced with this ordinary casual wear at some point.

The specially made tactical watch on his wrist had also turned into an ordinary digital watch, with a completely black screen and no signal.

He subconsciously touched his pocket.

The white card with the clown's smiling face drawn on it, and the old sextant obtained on the "ghost ship," are still there.

This is the only thing he currently possesses that comes from the "real world".

It was also his last trump card.

He slowly closed his eyes, trying to mobilize the "nothingness" power within his body.

However, his soul, which was as deep and unfathomable as a black hole, was now like a lake that had been completely frozen, and no matter how he called out, he received no response.

His power was still forcibly suppressed deep within his soul by a power of rules he could not comprehend.

This is a terrible start.

Bai Yu did not make any more futile attempts.

He turned his gaze back to the station, a place filled with the unknown and the eerie.

He walked to the lonely railway track, squatted down, reached out and gently touched the cold rail.

There was no temperature, nor any residual energy.

It's just like a real, ordinary railway track that's been abandoned for hundreds of years.

He walked to the edge of the platform and looked into the darkness shrouded in thick fog.

The thick fog was like a wall built of the "unknown," completely isolating him from the outside world. The moment his senses came into contact with the fog, they were like stones sinking into the sea, receiving no response whatsoever.

Bai Yu's brows furrowed tightly.

He knew that he had fallen into a "domain" that was more stable and had more obscure rules than the previous "ghost train".

What are the core rules here?
Is it "waiting"?
Or, "leave"?
Bai Yu did not make a choice immediately.

He simply stood quietly in that "safe zone" shrouded in dim yellow light, like a silent sculpture in the darkness, calmly observing everything around him, waiting for the world to reveal its first "flaw" to him.

Time, in this deathly silent space, seemed to have lost all meaning. How much time had passed, no one knew.

Just as Bai Yu's nerves, which had been stretched to the limit by absolute silence, were about to relax slightly.

A faint, almost inaudible tinkling sound suddenly drifted from the depths of the thick fog.

"Ring... Ring..."

The sound was so soft, so ethereal, yet in this absolutely silent environment, it sounded incredibly clear and incredibly jarring.

It was like a tempting bait, luring him, this "fish" who had strayed into this place, towards the unknown, dark depths.

It was like a warning from hell, reminding him that within this seemingly calm fog lurked a terrifying being capable of completely devouring him.

A cold glint flashed in Bai Yu's eyes.

He knew that the world was finally beginning to show him its first "fangs".

He was not fooled by the strange bell sound.

He also did not choose to remain on this seemingly "safe" platform and passively wait.

He made a bold choice, one that was also most in line with his style of doing things.

He took a step, walked down from the platform bathed in light, and stepped onto the cold railway tracks leading to endless darkness.

He did not walk in the direction from which the bell sound came.

He simply followed quietly behind the sound of the bell, maintaining an absolutely safe distance, like a top hunter silently tracking his "prey".

He wanted to see for himself what kind of being was making a sound in this desolate world.

……

On both sides of the railway tracks were withered trees that looked like ghostly figures with bared fangs.

The grayish-white mist, like a living venomous snake, slowly swirled around his feet.

The cold smell in the air, a mixture of damp earth and decaying wood, grew even stronger.

Bai Yu's footsteps were very light, making almost no sound.

His deep eyes, like the most sophisticated night vision devices, calmly scanned every shadow that might be hiding danger in the surroundings.

"Ring... Ring..."

The eerie bell sound continued to ring slowly and steadily not far in front of him, like a patient guide leading him down the road to hell.

I don't know how long it took.

Just as he was about to cross the desolate, barren forest, a one-legged man carrying an old lantern slowly emerged from the thick fog ahead.

He wore a worn-out railway worker's uniform, its original color long since unrecognizable. His face was expressionless, numb, and empty, like a puppet whose soul had been ripped out.

His left leg was empty, leaving only a tattered trouser leg fluttering in the wind.

He relied solely on his one and only right leg to mechanically repeat this monotonous action, hopping and leaping across the cold rails.

The old lantern in his hand jingled rhythmically as he swayed.

He seemed unaware of the silent "stalker" behind him.

He simply continued along the seemingly endless railway track, hopping and leaping forward into the deeper darkness.

Bai Yu immediately hid his body behind a huge withered tree, concealing all his aura to the extreme.

His eyes were fixed on the one-legged man who exuded an eerie and ominous aura.

Is he the first "NPC" in this area?

Was he on some kind of "patrol"?

What is his purpose?
Countless questions flashed wildly through Bai Yu's mind.

Just then, the one-legged man hopped past the dead tree where he was hiding.

A crumpled, yellowed old newspaper silently slipped from his tattered pocket and fell onto the cold railway tracks.

The man didn't seem to notice.

He continued hopping and skipping slowly into the darkness ahead, until he finally disappeared completely into the thick fog.

Bai Yu did not step forward immediately.

He remained standing quietly in the shadow of the withered tree, like a patient sculpture, calmly waiting.

Until that eerie bell sound completely disappeared into this deathly silent world.

He slowly emerged from the shadows.

He walked to the old newspaper that had fallen onto the tracks, slowly squatted down, and picked it up.

The newspaper paper has become incredibly fragile due to its age, as if it would shatter completely at the slightest touch.

The ink on it had long since faded and become blurry.

But Bai Yu's specially enhanced eyesight allowed him to clearly discern the headline printed in bold black font on the front page of the newspaper.

On July 7, 1946, a major accident occurred on the Kisaragi Railway Line, and a railway worker went missing.

Below the title is a similarly blurry black and white photograph.

In the photo, a young man wearing a clean railway worker's uniform, with a simple and honest smile on his face, is waving his arms at the camera.

A unique-looking amulet bell hung from his waist.

Next to the photo was a brief report about the accident.

"...According to our reporter, late last night, a train derailment occurred on the Kisaragi Railway line on the outskirts of the city for unknown reasons. The accident resulted in minor injuries to three passengers, and a railway worker named 'Suzuki' mysteriously disappeared after the accident. During the investigation of the accident scene, the police only found his left leg, which had been crushed by the wheels, and a bell that he always carried with him as a talisman..."

Bai Yu's heart sank suddenly.

He finally understood.

That one-legged man was Suzuki, the railway worker who tragically disappeared in an accident decades ago.

He was trapped here forever.

He was trapped on the day of his accident.

Day after day, year after year, he repeated his final "patrol" on this long-abandoned railway track.

And that eerie bell sound was the final lament of his soul, filled with resentment and obsession.

This world is made up of countless souls like "Suzuki," forgotten by time, filled with unwavering obsession.

Each and every one of them is part of the rules of this world.

They were both "prisoners" and "prison guards".

Just as Bai Yu figured it all out.

"when--!"

Once again, the distant and ancient sound of the bell slowly drifted from the depths of the thick fog.

As the bell rang, the thick gray fog that had been shrouding the surroundings, resembling solidified cement, began to surge and dissipate violently!
An enormous, almost exaggerated silhouette slowly appeared before Bai Yu after the thick fog dissipated.

It was a... gigantic torii gate, as large as a mountain.

It is constructed entirely of an unknown dark red wood, and its surface is covered with strange patterns that resemble blood vessels.

It stands silently in this gray world, like a giant gate leading to hell, exuding an unsettling and eerie atmosphere.

Behind the torii gate is a path made up of countless stone lanterns emitting a faint green glow, which extends upwards to the mountaintop shrouded in even deeper darkness.

In the dim light, he seemed to see the outline of an ancient shrine with a distinctly Japanese style standing in the darkness of the mountaintop.

Just as Bai Yu was stunned by the impactful scene before him.

He saw that on the plaque at the very top of that huge torii gate, two large characters, filled with ominous and deathly meaning, were clearly imprinted in blood-red ink.

—The Underworld.

(End of this chapter)