Fantasy Game: Infinite City

The train ran very smoothly and the speed was not very fast. It seemed that the journey would last for a long time.

Han Zu, who was sitting in his seat, had a dazed look in his eyes, and it was unknown what he was thinking about. The carriage he was in was empty, and apart from the sound of the train running, the only sound was the sound of Han Zu's fingers tapping on the table.

The conductor sitting opposite him grabbed the back of the seat, stuck her head out, and looked back and forth at the door connecting to other carriages. She was a little nervous and seemed to be afraid of something.

But for some reason, nothing happened in this carriage.

After a while, Han Zu's eyes were no longer distracted and returned to normal. He must have finished thinking. He tapped with his fingers, attracting the attention of the ticket seller sitting opposite him.

"Tell me about this train."

"Okay, this train..."

The conductor told Han Zu the story of the train.

This train was built and assembled in the factory like any other train in the 20s and was in service without incident for the decade it was in service.

In the eleventh year, the train reached its scrapping age. Although there were no problems with the train, people decided to dismantle it in order to replace it with a new generation of trains. So after the last trip, the train was driven to a special maintenance platform and prepared for dismantling.

The dismantling process of the train went smoothly. Except for the locomotive, the other carriages were quickly removed and dismantled and sent to the scrap processing plant. However, when the locomotive was being dismantled, a problem suddenly occurred.

The maintenance personnel who had gone to the front of the train disappeared inexplicably. There were many people in the maintenance station and no one saw them leave, so they looked for those maintenance personnel in the station. At first, people didn't take it seriously and just thought that those maintenance personnel had hidden somewhere to be lazy. This idea lasted until an hour later.

They found the body of the maintenance worker turned into pieces in the power furnace at the front of the train. When the personnel who were discovering the situation were talking to their companions outside through the cockpit window, they also disappeared abruptly in front of their companions.

His companions immediately informed the person in charge of the maintenance station and notified the Metropolitan Police Department. Soon, a large number of police officers surrounded the place.

Just as the police were about to enter the front of the car to check, a whistle suddenly sounded from the front of the car, and the car drove backwards. After leaving the maintenance station, it mysteriously disappeared.

After that, the locomotive of this train somehow possessed carriages again, and from time to time, it would appear at night or in sparsely populated stations, continuing to travel and stop along its original route.

However, this time, any normal person who boards this train will mysteriously disappear, and this train has become a "special line" for other urban legends, ghosts, and weirdness.

"Oh."

"Oh? Aren't you scared? This train is... alive!"

Han Zu waved his hand, took out an "Extinction Order", lit it, and puffed out smoke.

"Although I am interested in these urban legends, I don't think they are scary, and it's even better that this train is alive and its current passengers are only creatures from urban legends."

"Better? Why? What's good about a whole train full of monsters?!"

Han Zu took another deep puff of smoke and exhaled. Although the conductor did not smoke during her lifetime, she still had some understanding of this. She observed that although Han Zu was smoking a cigar, his smoking method was the same as that of ordinary cigarettes, which passed through his lungs.

"Um... Sir, the cigar goes through your lungs... right?"

Han Zu waved his hand and continued talking to the ticket seller.

"My physical condition is pretty good. There is no difference between cigars and ordinary cigarettes for me. And your question just now is because..."

Han Zu told the ticket seller his reasons. Han Zu had a very serious nicotine addiction, which was related to the simultaneous death of his parents. Han Zu almost never put down his cigarette. If he was asked to choose between not eating for three days and not smoking for one day, he would choose not to eat without hesitation.

However, Han Zu has his own rules. He will not smoke in non-smoking areas, even if he has withdrawal symptoms. If he is in a non-smoking area, he will first politely ask for the consent of the people around him. This is not because Han Zu is law-abiding or moral. This is a rule that Han Zu sets for himself in his weird thinking circuit.

And this train is full of urban legends, which means that there is no one on it, the train is alive, and it is not considered an "area", so Han Zukong's "better" only means that he can smoke as much as he wants and it does not violate his own rules.

Although Han Zu has now cured his severe nicotine addiction due to the evolution of his body, nicotine intake has become a part of Han Zu's life and his greatest interest, and he is not planning to change this bad habit.

"Ah? No, in a car full of urban legends, the first thing you care about is whether you can smoke?! What's so good about that thing? You can't..."

Before the ticket seller could finish his words, Han Zu grabbed his neck and pulled him over.

"I know what you're going to say, 'quit smoking', right?"

The conductor nodded in horror.

"To other people, it's just a word, but if you say it to me, I might kill you for it."

"Just because someone asked you to...you're going to kill someone?! Are you mentally ill??!!"

"Oh... It's not that I can't tell anyone, but the minimum requirement is that the person has to be my friend, but I don't have many friends."

Han Zu didn't really care about being treated as a mental patient.

"Besides, you are an urban legend at least, or a ghost at the very least. Why do you look so frightened?"

"Who says you can't be afraid of ghosts?!"

"If you still feel fear after death, then you have died in vain, right?"

"what?"

Han Zu shook his head, put the conductor back on the seat opposite him, and continued to enjoy his cigar.

The conductor was thinking about the conversation he had just had with Han Zu, and tried to rearrange Han Zu's strange and jumping thought circuits using normal human thinking. The result of this was that the conductor's CPU was temporarily burned out.

Although he had no eyeballs, he could still feel the conductor's dysfunctional mind. The conductor lay on the table and fell into silence.

Han Zu stood up from his seat with a cigar in his hand. From the moment he boarded the train, Han Zu had a strange feeling. The source of this feeling came from himself. He seemed to have become the center of an aura, constantly and automatically detecting something.

Just now, Han Zu was sitting in his seat with a dazed look in his eyes, trying to figure out what this strange feeling was all about. However, apart from discovering an abnormality, Han Zu didn't find out anything.

Han Zu turned his head and looked out the window of the moving train. That was an abnormal point that Han Zu had discovered before. Looking in the approximate direction, Han Zu saw an urban legend that was incredible but left an impression in his mind.

On one side of the train, there was an old lady who was running with her legs at a very fast speed, as fast as the train, and still accelerating. When she passed the carriage where Han Zu was, Han Zu saw with his super eyesight that there was a piece of paper stuck on the old lady's back with an English word written on it, "Turbo".

"It's true, the Highway Grandma." (This urban legend has multiple names, some say the 100-kilometer Grandma, and some say the Sprint Grandma. It's mostly heard in Hokkaido, but there are also rumors in other places.)

She seemed to be playing with the train, and the train also accelerated to 140 kilometers per hour. However, the high-speed grandma was not thrown away by the train, and from her expression, she seemed very relaxed.

The high-speed grandma made a cheering gesture to the train, accelerated again, and went away like the wind.

"Ginger is still spicy with age, awesome."

Han Zu smacked his lips, retracted his gaze, and began to check the carriage, but found nothing. However, Han Zu discovered that although the doors leading to other carriages could be opened, they were blocked by something behind them, both in front and behind.

"Maybe I didn't check carefully enough. I need to take another look."

After rechecking the entire carriage, Han Zu found a very tiny gap in the middle of the carriage. Half-kneeling on the ground and looking into the gap, Han Zu saw an eye. There was someone in the gap.

"boom!"

"Click!"

Without any hesitation, Han Zu punched the floor of the carriage and grabbed something from the place he had destroyed. Looking closely, he saw a woman with hair growing to her abdomen, only one eye exposed, and wearing a very dirty white nightgown.

"Gap Girl? Oi! Can she talk?"

Han Zu waved his hands in front of her, but the girl didn't move at all and didn't respond to Han Zu's actions at all.

"What happened... What you have in your hand is... a gap girl?"

"One? Are there a lot of these things?"

"Um... you can understand it as the Gap Girls being a race."

"Oh, by the way, if I gouge her eyes out, can you replace them? After all, you are both creatures from urban legends."

"Theoretically it should be possible, but..."

"That's fine. I don't really like interacting with faceless creatures. I'll unconsciously treat them as 'food'."

Han Zu easily tore open the Gap Woman's head and took out the complete eyeball, but this creature looked very strange and had only one eyeball.

Han Zu pulled the conductor's body over and stuffed the eyeball into the conductor's empty eye socket. Soon, the conductor had an eye again.

Han Zu had his own plans for this ticket seller, but unlike what he said before, he didn't expect this ticket seller to be a so-called tour guide.

"are you hungry?"

"Huh? I don't feel hungry anymore, what's wrong?"

"Then I won't be polite."

Han Zu took off his hat and gave it to the conductor along with the half-smoked cigar, then ate the remains of the woman in the gap, including the bones. The conductor holding Han Zu's hat unconsciously stepped back many steps and leaned against the wall of the carriage.

"It's OK. There's no blood, but it saves time on cleaning up."

She waved her hand, signaling the conductor to come over. The conductor came over reluctantly. Han Zu took the hat and cigar from her and sat down in a random seat.

"The doors connecting the front and rear carriages are blocked. Do you know what's going on?"

"I'm not sure. I've only tried to board this train twice, and I almost ran off immediately each time. I've never been in this carriage."

"When does the train arrive at its first stop? That...where is it?"

"I don't know, but the monk who brought me here said that people who bought full-trip tickets will take a separate route. I don't know the exact route either."

The ticket seller was terrified because she didn't know the answers to several of the questions the man asked, and she was afraid that the man would kill her.

However, Han Zu did not take it to heart. He had long realized that this ticket seller would not know any important information. Her role should only be to provide tickets to players, and judging from the situation at the station before, it was probably just a secondary location.

"Don't worry, it's normal not to know. After all, you haven't been "working" for very long."

Han Zu showed a harmless and kind smile, but his behavior made the ticket seller even more frightened. She had not forgotten that this man was mentally ill.

"How about this, we can go sightseeing on the train, and I can help you with your injuries while we're at it."

"Then what do you need me to do?"

"I haven't thought about it yet, but you can be an answering machine for now."

"what?"

"What I mean is that you just need to respond to what I say. It doesn't matter whether what you say is useful or nutritious. But don't answer questions that are irrelevant."

Accompanying the conductor, Han Zu came to the door leading to the next carriage, kicked open the blocked door, and walked in.

Looking around, this carriage was full of strange creatures. They were smooth in appearance, like a group of headless human figures, all white. Walking to the aisle between them, Han Zu observed them, and they were also observing Han Zu.

They have no heads, but both men and women have a ferocious face on their chests. All of these creatures are grinning. They only have one foot that cannot be distinguished between left and right, and they are naked, not wearing anything.

Although they were all staring at Han Zu, no one moved. Han Zu touched his chin and thought for a while, then casually put the burning part of the cigar that had not yet burned out on the face of the creature closest to him. The creature burned by the cigar made a strange sound, which sounded like "Ding...Swoosh...Meetz".

"Well, Mountain Pieces, these things are just a bunch of junk."

Ignoring them as nothing, Han Zu began to search the carriage, but found no useful information. As for the "Mountain Pieces", Han Zu naturally killed them all during the search. Strangely, they neither resisted nor called for reinforcements from other urban legends.

And not long after, the remains of these mountain pieces suddenly disappeared, and no one knew where they went.

There was nothing useful in this carriage, so Han Zu took the conductor and prepared to move on to the next carriage. However, just as Han Zu reached the door of the next carriage, the train whistle sounded, and the train began to slow down and prepare to stop.

Through the car window, Han Zu saw a small village in the distance ahead. There was an open space outside the village with train tracks in the middle. This should be where the train would stop in a while.

Two minutes later, as expected, the train stopped at the location Han Zu expected. However, Han Zu did not rush to get off the train, but stood there waiting. For a full hour, the train still stopped at this location.

In order to prove some of his guesses, Han Zu took the conductor off the train and moved away from the train, giving the train enough distance to speed up and leave if Han Zu was an ordinary person.

However, the train did not speed up and leave as Han Zu imagined, but remained where it was. And it seemed that it would not leave for a long time.

"Well, I guess I need to find something around here before I can continue on my way via train. Let's go."

The train was still parked in the same place and did not move. Han Zu took the conductor away and headed towards the small village.

A sign on the road leading to the village reads: "Safety of life cannot be guaranteed entering this area."

At the entrance of the village there is a torii gate that is about to collapse, with a skull-shaped stone at its base.

After walking in, Han Zu saw a house that had become a ruin. The three steps at the entrance were stained with blood, and the door at the entrance was missing. It was very gloomy inside, which was in sharp contrast to the bright day outside.

"You...are not going to...come in here?"

"Yeah, don't you think it's a bit hot outside? It's a good time to go in and cool down."

Grabbing the conductor's wrist, Han Zu walked up the steps carelessly and entered the gloomy residence.