What malicious intent could NPCs possibly have? C37.1

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Chp37. part1

Having learned from the previous incident, no one dared to refuse.

Under the Masked Man’s countdown threat of “Three, two, one,” there was no time to think. The next man and woman each took a Red Ticket.

The ticket distribution proceeded smoothly, with everyone forcing themselves to choose a ticket from one of the two paper boxes.

An elderly man standing in front of Ning Ge looked around nervously, his hand trembling.

“Should I take green?” he muttered. “Red means stop, green means go. Green means pass, red always means death, right?”

“I think it should be red,” a middle-aged man in office attire interjected.

He was also observing the Masked Man distributing the tickets. “Look, the man first offered the box with green tickets, trying to mislead us into taking the wrong ones. The woman with the red tickets must be the correct ones.”

A tall, middle-aged woman nearby disagreed. “But what if they’re using reverse logic? What if they deliberately give us the correct tickets first, just to make us think they’d give us the wrong ones?”

The office worker countered, “But what if it’s reverse-reverse logic? They know we’ll think that, so they give us the wrong ones first.”

Everyone had valid points, and a palpable sense of unease settled over the group.

The high school student suddenly spoke up, his voice barely above a whisper, “What if both types of tickets are correct? Maybe the different colors are meant to divide us into two factions for some kind of competition?”

The middle-aged woman suggested, “Then let’s all pick the same color to form a team. We’ve been talking for a while and know each other well enough to work together.”

The office worker glanced at her, then at the slender high school student, and remained silent.

A young woman nearby hesitated. “I’m just worried that both colors are flawed. Maybe we’re supposed to think outside the box and find another solution.”

The elderly man reminded her, “We have to choose one. If you don’t, they’ll throw you off the train.”

Silence fell over the group.

No one knew what was going on.

Whatever the case, they had to take either a red ticket or a green one.

The Masked Man went through the carriage, offering the two cardboard boxes to each person. The crowd parted automatically to let him pass as they took their tickets.

Ning Ge and her group were in the middle of the carriage, toward the back. Soon, the boxes reached them.

Ning Ge carefully examined the tickets in both boxes.

Each ticket was a small, stiff cardboard card. The top row bore an abstract black logo, followed by three bold, black characters—”One-Way Ticket”—and beneath them, in small capital letters, “SINGLE JOURNEY TICKET.”

The main feature of the ticket was a simple silhouette of a subway train’s front.

Without hesitation, Ning Ge reached into the Masked Woman’s box and took out a red ticket.

Pei Han glanced at Ning Ge, then took a green ticket from the Masked Man’s cardboard box.

Their actions caused Owen great distress.

Owen looked at the tickets in the box, then at the red and green tickets in Pei Han and Ning Ge’s hands. Suddenly, he understood and also took a green ticket, just like Pei Han.

Everyone around Ning Ge also chose their tickets.

Watching them choose, Ning Ge knew she couldn’t warn anyone.

The reason was simple: a quick glance revealed that the boxes contained few tickets—exactly as many as there were people in the carriage. Warning one person to take the correct ticket would inevitably force someone else to take the wrong one.

Helping one would harm another, making it as good as not helping at all. She could only let them choose for themselves and leave their fate to chance.

Just as Ning Ge had predicted, the boxes emptied after everyone had taken a ticket. The three masked figures had successfully completed their ticket distribution task and turned to disembark.

The moment they stepped off the train, the doors automatically sealed shut behind them.

Everyone clutched their chosen tickets, their hearts pounding with anxiety.

“It has to be green, it ‘has’ to be green…” the old man muttered.

The middle-aged office worker who received a Red Ticket remained silent, simply gripping the ticket tightly in his palm.

The subwaywas truly moving now.

In the thick, impenetrable darkness, the subwayhurtled toward an unknown destination.

The carriage swayed slightly, and after a few minutes, the “ding-ding-dong” chime of the announcement system sounded again.

“The subwayis approaching Ping’an Street. Please exit through the right doors, in the direction of travel.”

The subwaybegan to slow. Everyone pressed their faces against the windows.

Yet outside remained pitch-black. The subway had stopped in the middle of nowhere, as if this was the “Ping’an Street” station mentioned on the broadcast.

This “Ping’an Street” was pitch-black and looked anything but peaceful.

The doors opened again, revealing a gaping, dark maw.

After a long pause, movement stirred.

Masked Men.

This time there were five of them, all wearing the same gray uniform with “Loop Line Subway” printed on the chest. Each one was as burly and imposing as the Masked Man who had dragged someone off earlier.

Each of them held a black device about the size of a smartphone. As soon as they boarded, they announced, “Ticket check!”

Here it comes.

They aimed their devices at the tickets, scanning them one by one.

The first two tickets produced a soft ‘beep’. But when they reached the third ticket, the device emitted a long, drawn-out ‘beep—’

It was the ticket of a thin young man.

The young man froze, his mind still processing the sound, when two Masked Men surged forward. Each grabbed an arm and dragged him to the door in a few swift motions.

With coordinated effort, they tossed the young man out into the darkness beyond the carriage.

Another familiar crunching sound followed.

This time, the carriage erupted in screams and wails.

Ning Ge heard someone in front shouting loudly, “Red Ticket or Green Ticket? Did he have a Red Ticket or a Green Ticket?”

Amidst the chaos, the Masked Men seized another passenger and forcibly scanned his ticket.

Another long ‘beep—’

The man was dragged away without protest and thrown out.

Someone in front was screaming incoherently, “Why did you throw out the one with the Red Ticket earlier, and now the one with the Green Ticket?! What’s going on?!”

The entire carriage descended into pandemonium.

The crowd panicked like a flock of startled chickens, all scrambling backward in a desperate attempt to delay being checked by the Ticket Checker Masked Man.

Ning Ge and her group, already standing at the back, were forced to retreat to the end of the carriage with the crowd.

Ning Ge knew this dungeon was maliciously designed. If the Ticket Checker Masked Man only threw people holding one color of ticket, say red, then everyone with red tickets would be pushed to the brink. They might even unite for a desperate last stand, rising up to fight the five masked figures.

Though the masked figures seemed strong, such a large group might not be entirely outmatched.

But that wasn’t the case.

The rules were baffling. Everyone, regardless of ticket color, was terrified, yet clinging to a sliver of hope: ‘Maybe they won’t throw me?’

Only when the Ticket Checker Masked Man reached them, announcing their fate, would they know for sure.

Ning Ge understood the throwing mechanism perfectly, and even more clearly, she knew that under the current circumstances, she absolutely couldn’t reveal it.

Yet someone beside her blurted it out anyway.

It was a high school student.

“I know,” he said. “They aren’t looking at the ticket color at all. They’re looking at the little symbol drawn on it. Anyone with the wrong symbol gets thrown out.”

His voice was loud enough that many people around heard him and lowered their heads to examine the logo on their tickets.

Before the words “One-Way Ticket” was a small, abstract black logo, clearly formed from two stylized letters.

The logo on Ning Ge’s ticket was “HC,” the abbreviation for the pinyin of the two characters in “Loop Line Subway.”

The logos on the other incorrect tickets were “NL.” At first glance, they looked similar, but upon closer inspection, one could see the difference.

The color was a red herring.

It had nothing to do with the color of the ticket. In both green and red boxes, there were correct and incorrect tickets.

Only tickets marked with “HC” were valid for the Loop Line Subway. Since they were currently on the Loop Line Subway, they needed Loop Line tickets. Tickets not belonging to the Loop Line would naturally fail to scan during ticket checks.

As soon as the high school student spoke, many people carefully examined their own tickets and then looked at those in others’ hands, and they understood.

Hearing the high school student’s explanation, Ning Ge immediately stuffed her ticket into the pocket of her hiking pants, keeping it out of sight.

She exchanged a glance with Pei Han, and together they squeezed into the furthest corner with Owen.

As she had predicted, the moment the rules were revealed, the scramble began.

A middle-aged man in office attire glanced at his ticket, then at the high school student’s, and was the first to lunge.

The high school student was startled.

He hadn’t expected the person he had been chatting with just moments before to turn on him so suddenly.

Gripping his ticket tightly, the high school student scrambled backward, but the man showed no hesitation, lunging forward and clamping his hand around the student’s neck.

The attack was brutal and vicious, pinning the student against the car wall as the man reached for his ticket.

The student’s face turned crimson from the chokehold, but he stubbornly resisted, desperately trying to hide his hand behind his back and wrestle with the man.

As they struggled, a young man suddenly intervened, landing a punch on the back of the middle-aged man’s head.

Caught completely off guard by the ambush, the man’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the floor with a thud.

Gasping for air, the high school student turned to his rescuer. “Thank you…”

Before he could finish, he saw the young man ignore him, grab his arm, and twist it into an unnatural angle, trying to snatch the ticket from his hand.

Pei Han, who had been silently observing the scene, stepped forward.

With a single punch, the young man flew backward, crashing into the crowd.

The high school student stared at Pei Han in terror, unsure if he was also there to snatch tickets. Seeing that Pei Han had no intention of joining the fray and had simply retreated after delivering his punch, the student quickly shrank into a corner of the carriage, clutching his ticket and squatting beside a seat.

The carriage had descended into complete chaos.

Many people still didn’t understand the rules, but that didn’t stop them from coming up with a brilliant idea: to steal tickets from those who had already had theirs checked.

It started with just one or two people pouncing on those who had passed the ticket check but hadn’t been removed by the inspector. Soon, more and more people joined in.

The crowd piled up, tearing at each other like a pack of hungry wolves fighting over meat.

At the center of the pack, those who had already had their tickets checked clung to them with desperate ferocity, refusing to let go.

We can’t lose our tickets! Who knows if they’ll check again later?

Outside the main scrum, others were hatching their own schemes.

Ning Ge saw a man on the other side of the carriage pounce on a girl, snatching the ticket from her hand. The girl, who hadn’t had her ticket checked yet, was frozen in shock.

The man grabbed her ticket and immediately targeted a frail-looking boy, successfully snatching his ticket too. Then he seized an elderly man.

Anyone who looked like they couldn’t win a fight, he seemed determined to steal their ticket. The old, the weak, the sick, the disabled—perfect targets. After all, right or wrong, the priority was to snatch the ticket first. The more tickets in hand, the better; one might just happen to be the right one.

The carriage was filled with screams and wails.

Blood stained the floor, where many lay beaten and unable to rise, trampled repeatedly.

Amidst the chaos, the Ticket Checker Masked Men moved silently through the crowd, continuing their work. With sharp eyes, they singled out those whose tickets hadn’t been checked yet, letting some go and throwing others off the train.

Ning Ge watched them closely.

If stealing a ticket and then re-swiping it worked, couldn’t everyone survive by cooperating and taking turns swiping the same correct ticket?

But that wasn’t the case.

Ning Ge noticed that each ticket seemed to have a unique serial number. The Masked Men remembered these numbers perfectly. After seizing a correct ticket, they would turn back and throw the original owner off the train, ensuring that each correct ticket corresponded to only one survivor.

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