Matryoshka Off-Limits Chapter 78 Part 2

Chapter 78.2 Crimson Sunset Expedition

The waiting hall descended into a fierce battle. At the station entrance, two green trains were awaiting passengers’ arrival.

A breathless man ran from the front to the back of the train, finally spotting a rather inconspicuous little colored flag on the last carriage.

He and Wen Shi had used a teaming item to enter. This man, named Qian Laiye, had been specially summoned by Li Nan from the Nightingale Guild. Once he confirmed the train he was to board, Qian Laiye was ready to get on board.

The doors at the rear were all closed. He had to keep moving forward. The information on the ticket about the train was quite vague, but the carriage positions were clearly listed. He needed to reach Carriage No. 04.

When he was about to reach his target carriage, both Carriages No. 04 and 05 had an extra conductor at their entrances. The same arrangement applied to the train on the opposite side.

The conductor blocking the carriage entrance was wearing a sweet smile. “Hello, you need to exchange your ticket first.”

Qian Laiye wasn’t sure why they were handling boarding issues here, so he didn’t want to force his way. He cautiously handed over his ticket.

The conductor’s movements were clumsy and extremely slow, much slower than a sloth. They fumbled through a thick stack of cards, searching for matching numbers.

The sound of the announcement came from the main hall, audible even from the outside platforms.

“Dear passengers, the K6666 and K9999 trains bound for the direction of Sunset Town are about to depart. Please board the train if you haven’t already.”

Now Qian Laiye finally understood why the conductor was taking so long. They were deliberately wasting time.

He was afraid that the train would depart without him getting on or letting others get on.

His eyes darted around as he strained to think of something he rarely ate. When he imagined mixing durian and cilantro together and stuffing it into his mouth, Qian Laiye’s face turned green, and he promptly spat it out.

Worried about upsetting the NPC, he didn’t spit on the conductor but quickly retched a second time in their direction.

The sweet smile on the conductor’s face froze, and they hastened to hand over the newly exchanged ticket.

Qian Laiye managed to board the train as he had hoped.

The players were all assigned to Carriages No 04 and 05, with everyone now gathered in the former.

Around twenty players squeezed into this space, the air stagnant and not circulating. Some players had blood on them, mixed with the scent of sweat, filling the carriage.

Qian Laiye wrinkled his nose and immediately spotted the two guild leaders: Li Nan and Yu Xingzhou. Others instinctively kept their distance from them.

Yu Xingzhou wore a mask year-round, so not much change was visible. Li Nan had clearly become several years younger, his skin as smooth and fair as an actor’s. Of course, Qian Laiye himself had reverted to looking around eighteen or nineteen, but at that time, he had a dark complexion.

Just as Qian Laiye was about to speak, a player’s complaint interrupted.

“This teleportation is really trash,” a player with a crew cut hair near the window grumbled, “I woke up right below the platform. Before I could figure out the situation, the train had entered the station. I had to climb up. The brothers next to me had it even worse.”

“Ha, it’s not like you used the petrification skill to freeze their bodies and climbed over them,” someone else unceremoniously exposed his acting.

The guy with the crew cut hair sneered and stubbornly denied, “Which eye of yours saw that?”

Around the same time, a panicked voice echoed from the other end of the carriage.

“Where is this? Why am I on a train?”

Without needing to look closely, it was clear that this was a newbie. This instance didn’t explicitly provide difficulty levels, and being a standalone, newbies joining wasn’t surprising.

With twenty people, each having a mouth, it was noisy enough.

“Getting younger also made your mouths more reckless?” Yu Xingzhou’s voice from behind the mask sounded displeased, and the chatter abruptly stopped.

The scene fell silent. The two newbie players from the other side instinctively quieted as well.

Yu Xingzhou had been staring at the opposite train. “Since when did your shadows start disappearing?”

Qian Laiye hurriedly answered first, “Mine was gone from the beginning.”

“Mine too,” Crew Cut Guy chimed in.

“I had a faint shadow at first, but it disappeared after entering the platform.”

“Same here.”

The players chattered away, accompanied by quite a bit of complaining about the teleportation.

Unlike before, each player’s teleportation point this time wasn’t only different, but also quite scattered. The closer one were to the platform, the more advantageous it was for boarding early, but the higher the danger level.

For example, there were three players like Crew Cut Guy. They were all teleported dizzy and ended up beneath the platform. Only Crew Cut Guy survived by using the petrification item to create a makeshift ladder and climb up.

Thinking about that terrifying moment, Crew Cut Guy couldn’t help but speak again, “What exactly is going on? How did we become younger?”

Many people turned their gazes toward Yu Xingzhou and Li Nan, seeking answers from the big shots.

As it was a team mission, Yu Xingzhou didn’t bother wasting words. He explained briefly, “The travel group claims to help us regain our original selves, hence the key is being more ‘original.’ Given the current situation, we should have returned to the year when a significant change in our mindset occurred.”

He looked at the train with tightly closed curtains across from them and directly concluded, “On that train sits another ‘me,’ identical in appearance but with an entirely opposite personality.”

With that said, it was clear who their opponents in this team battle were.

Crew Cut Guy seemed to grasp something. One train was labeled K6666, and the other was K9999, as if everything was reversed. He now candidly stated, “I’m not a good person, so the other ‘me’ on the opposite train is probably kind…”

Yu Xingzhou coldly interrupted him, “Light and shadow—we represent light, and we lost our shadows.”

Crew Cut Guy, who survived by stepping on others, suddenly changed his expression, “So, when you say ‘entirely opposite personality,’ you mean compared to the other me on the opposite train, I’m the kind one?”

Where is justice in this world? Where is fairness?

Without even glancing at him, Yu Xingzhou asked the teammate who came along with him on this journey, “Xiao Hua, how much has the temperature increased?”

The female player crouched by the window of Carriage No. 05 to measure the temperature. She replied, “It’s still thirty-five degrees Celsius. The change is too small to notice.”

Qian Laiye: “Does the temperature rise with each additional passenger?”

Xiao Hua returned and said, “The temperature started increasing when the train had eighteen passengers on board. You’re the twenty-first, and the temperature rose by one degree when the person before you got on.”

She used an item to measure, so it was very accurate.

The carriage was extremely stuffy, and there was no air conditioning. So, shortly after boarding, Yu Xingzhou had team members closely monitor the temperature changes.

According to their current observations, the worse the shadow was, the more the temperature would rise.

Qian Laiye’s expression turned grim. “If more people come in, won’t it become unbearably hot?”

“No, you were the second-degree increase as Guild Leader Li came in before you. Other people’s impact can be mostly ignored.”

The game’s difficulty points were reasonably arranged within limits, and the initial challenges were already concentrated on the teleportation positions.

Regardless of everything, being in the same train car as the leaders of the two major guilds felt like a reassurance.

Qian Laiye also looked at the First Commandment Guild leader, who had been silent since boarding.

Sensing his gaze, Li Nan leaned back on the lower bunk, closing his eyes to rest. He said, “You should be concerned about other matters. For example, the weather forecast on our phones showed it’s supposed to be overcast. The temperature rise due to passengers boarding clearly happened later. So, why did we board under bright sunshine?”

“And consider the players on this train…” Li Nan smiled and paused for a moment. “Are they truly all players themselves?”

With a weighty yet subtle sentence, the atmosphere in the car instantly cooled.

Everyone suddenly realized a critical issue.

The game’s early message advised them to board the carriage with a colored flag. While it seemed like a well-intentioned reminder, it ironically made it easy to overlook another point: it didn’t explicitly restrict others from boarding.

If a player got on the wrong train or was killed before entering the station, allowing the shadows to mix in… The thought of this made all the players begin to distance themselves from those around them. Their concealed apprehension was evident.

Vigilance, hostility, worry—everyone’s expressions were so flawless, all states that players were familiar with.

A few experienced players had hoped to catch a hint from the initial shift in everyone’s demeanor, but not a trace of unease could be discerned.

A girl forced a smile and said, “Let’s think positively for now, perhaps there might not be…”

Even she couldn’t finish saying that sentence. The reason this instance became standalone must surely be tied to this very point.

The atmosphere fell silent once again, this time into a deathly hush. Muscles tightened, breaths grew shallow, and then someone weakly spoke up, “Um…”

The one who spoke was a newbie who had been pulled into the instance.

In the background of this story, all the tourists were successful individuals, including the newbies. After the initial shock, they rapidly forced themselves to calm down, striving to digest this analysis.

“So our first challenge is to find the ‘shadow’ hidden among us?”

Compared to the newbie who had been making a ruckus, these two were relatively composed. Those nearby didn’t have friendly expressions, but they still nodded.

The newbie pointed at a distance outside the window and hesitated, “Which one of those two do you think represents the light?”

Following their gaze, a teenager in sportswear held a kitchen knife. Behind him, a group of people chased after him. With each swing of the knife, sharp blade cutting veins, flesh spilled out, and blood oozed in a spluttering rhythm. Those unaffected by shadows, of all ages and genders, became victims of his blade.

Closer to the front of the train, another person identical in appearance and clothing wielded a steel pipe, also going on a killing spree. His actions were swift, and the clang of the pipe hitting skulls echoed from quite a distance.

Two Wen Shi figures, identical in looks, but one crazier than the other in their slaughter.

While the shadows worked hard to masquerade as players and infiltrate the side of light, these two individuals stood out as a breath of fresh air.

The closed curtains of the opposing train were pulled back slightly, shadows observed in secret, attempting to discern distinguishing clues. In the end, their countless thoughts boiled down to one profanity.

Damn it, which one is on our side?

“Ladies and gentlemen, the trains K6666 and K9999 bound for Sunset Town are about to depart…”

The train’s engine emitted a buzzing sound. The crowd chasing the teenage Wen Shi pair retreated when they were about five or six meters away from the platform. The two individuals positioned themselves in Carriages No. 04 and 05, respectively.

In the wake of their passage lay bloodied corpses, their bodies melting rapidly, decaying in the sunlight before long.

The conductors at the carriage doors used the same script, their smiles sweet, “Hello, you need to exchange your ticket first.”

As they spoke, they slowly raised their arms, attempting to delay the remaining time.

“You’re too slow.” The teenager before Carriage No. 04 grinned, grabbed the conductor’s hair and, much like slaughtering a rooster, slashed across their neck.

The crowd turned their gaze to the exterior of Carriage No. 05, where the other person was even more ruthless. Without a word, a steel pipe went straight through the conductor’s vulnerable throat, piercing through with a torrent of foul-smelling blood. Number cards fell to the ground, and the killer collected them all, stuffing them into his pocket.

Inside the carriage, the newbie posed the soul-searching question again, “Everyone, which one represents the light?”

“……”

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