Darkness, light; the earth, the deep sea…
The scenery before my eyes shifted countless times. One moment it was a journey through the soaring lava of a volcano, the next it was the lonely ghosts of the River of the Netherworld.
As I watched, my head began to feel a little dizzy. After seeing so much, the clash of various colors left me feeling drowsy and bored.
I wanted to sleep, but the train kept swaying, vibrating so much that I felt like throwing up. Not to mention, it was freezing one moment and sweltering the next inside the car.
I had already changed into warm clothes and was currently huddled in my seat, wrapped in a little yellow duck blanket.
Copper Head remained on the floor, motionless.
The top hat had begun trying to sell divine medicine to the ghost faces on the floor.
The intestines dangled while the eyeball gazed out the window.
As for Lu Xiu… he was playing on his phone.
I thought about it for a moment.
Gripping the edge of the table with both hands, I pushed up my upper body.
The little yellow duck blanket slid down as I poked my head over the table, leaning in to peek at the screen of the phone he held. I saw a game made of small, interlocking blocks.
“What is this?”
“Duck Tetris.”
“Is it fun?”
“No.”
“Then why are you playing it?” I asked, puzzled.
“I’m bored.”
“But if it’s not fun, doesn’t playing it just make you even more bored?”
He choked on his words, his gaze shifting from the phone to my face. “…Are you actually some kind of genius?”
“Hehe.”
Just as I was about to show off my incomparable wisdom, the train suddenly lurched to a halt. I wobbled and tumbled straight toward Lu Xiu, crashing into his lap.
“Ouch!”
“Hiss—my chin!”
My head hurt so much…
I lifted my head and rubbed my forehead, certain that another bump was forming.
Lu Xiu, on the other hand, was grimacing. He couldn’t even speak, and tears were streaming down his face.
“That hurts like hell…”
Sitting on him, I glared angrily at the train.
Why didn’t this piece of junk give a warning before braking!
So irresponsible!
“Get off me first… hiss…”
Lu Xiu clutched his chin. Having recovered slightly, he hurriedly tried to shoo me away.
“I’m not even heavy.”
“You still have to get off.”
I propped up my weak body. To maintain my balance, I had to kneel on the seat beside him first.
Just as I was about to shuffle over a bit, the train suddenly lurched violently to the side without any warning, throwing me toward Lu Xiu again.
*Bang!*
My head made intimate contact with him once more.
Pain, pain, pain…
“My nose!”
Lu Xiu shoved me away, clutching both his nose and his chin. He looked like he was in absolute agony.
“Hiss… Stay away from me. Otherwise, you’re going to poke my eyes out next time.”
“I would never…”
I pouted and stood up properly. At that moment, a snowflake drifted into the train from somewhere, sticking to my face and melting into a cold drop of water.
“Eh?”
I dabbed at the water with my finger and put it in my mouth to taste it.
No flavor.
Then came another flake, and another. I looked around the interior as swarms of snowflakes began to drift and fill the carriage. Turning to look back, I saw a vast expanse of gray snow outside the window.
It fell from the sky and rose from the earth in a chaotic flurry, sticking to the glass and forming a thick layer of frost.
“It’s snow!”
I gave a loud shout, calling out to Lu Xiu.
“I see it…”
“Lu Xiu, let’s have a snowball fight!”
Despite clutching his nose and chin, Lu Xiu’s eyes still betrayed his usual look of exasperation.
“Besides eating and playing, what else can you do?”
“I also know how to poop,” I replied without a second thought.
I had already mastered the answer to that question!
He let out a sigh and stopped arguing with me.
Seeing that he was ignoring me, I ran back to my seat and leaned against the window. My slightly reddened forehead pressed against the glass as I excitedly watched the scenery of the snow country.
*Clang-clang-clang, clang-clang-clang.*
The train axles turned, accompanied by countless blue-gray long legs crawling slowly through the snow.
The carriages were covered in an eerie layer of white. The color of some of the long legs seemed to fade after touching the white snow; at a glance, the contrast in color became increasingly distinct.
The hands on the ceiling began to silently merge into the roof, and the wailing human faces on the floor no longer surfaced.
Copper Head floated up again at some point, silently watching the snowy plains outside. The salesman criminal also stopped making noise, hugging himself with a lowered head…
Suddenly, the world went dark.
A low, booming roar began to echo.
We had entered a tunnel.
Now, all the windows were black.
Reflected before me was my own image—a small face with a bit of baby fat, bright eyes, and white teeth… well, the teeth were a bit sharp, and a bright red taotie motif was painted on the side of my face.
The only thing that was slightly different was that the horns on the back of my head seemed to have grown larger, and my serrated pupils were spinning much faster, like a whirlpool drawing everything into that crimson vortex.
‘I think it’s probably because I ate the white bone monster,’ I thought.
I felt quite a bit stronger than before.
I even had a new ability, though it was a bit gross.
But I could use it to scare Lu Xiu.
“Hehe.”
I giggled stupidly at the glass.
After watching for a while, a sudden whim struck me.
I opened my mouth, curiously observing the small sharp teeth inside. They were sharp yet possessed a delicate cuteness.
After thinking it over, I used my moist, soft pink tongue to gently lick the edge of my canines. It was a little prickly. I closed my mouth, then opened it again, huffing onto the glass.
A cloud of hot mist instantly spread, blurring and smudging my reflection.
Ooh… fun!
Just as I was about to do it again, a white light abruptly burst forth in front of me. I squinted instantly. The booming roar seemed to be completely swallowed and silenced by the vast snowy plains.
The world fell into a hollow, dead silence, leaving only the muffled, dreamlike “clunk-thud” of the wheels rolling over the tracks, dampened by the ice and snow.
My vision adjusted to the light, but there was nothing outside the window except endless white.
Just when I thought this pure white would stretch on for eternity, a tiny, infinitesimal dot appeared at the edge of the horizon.
At first, it was a tiny snow-white tip, abruptly and slowly rising from beside a mountain peak.
Then, the peaks gradually became smaller and sank, and the surrounding environment began to recede like a tide, revealing a more distant and empty plain.
The tiny tip began to expand and rise along with the shift in distance and the movement of the foreground.
When the last snowy slope serving as a reference point was left behind by the train, leaving nothing to obstruct the full view, my breath hitched.
It was a giant gravestone from ancient times—a massive rocket standing straight toward the sky, covered in layers of white snow.
It was like a giant bone standing lonely on the boundless ice field, its position shifting faintly but steadily as the train moved along.
It stood upon a massive ice lake. It was frozen in the eternal snow. Layers of an eerie, pitch-black material, as dark as a mirror, spread from its base, piercing into the surrounding snow.
On the giant ice lake, it solidified into a slowly blooming, never-fading obsidian flower, reflecting the sky and casting the distorted, elongated shadow of the rocket.
The snowy plains, the train, the rocket—a cold, lonely world of boundless white.
It was like a desolate dream with no end in sight.
I watched, somewhat entranced. The colossal creation now seemed to press down toward me. The sunlight hit the snowflakes, draping them in a faint, pale blue mist.
Turning my head, I saw that Lu Xiu was also looking at the rocket. His eyes held an emotion that was hard to describe.
“Pack your things.”
He looked at me.
“We’ve reached the terminal station.”