Hey, first of all, thanks for reading my lousy Machine Translation. To be honest, I’d really like it if you guys corrected the mistakes I made. But please speak nicely and politely. My heart is not strong enough to read your too-harsh comments. Have a nice day. 🙂
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Ning Ge tugged at the hem of her T-shirt, pondering. “So that’s not it. And even from the initial description, it doesn’t add up.”
Pei Han turned to look at her. “Hmm?” he asked, his voice tinged with curiosity. “What description?”
He was uncharacteristically slow to follow her line of thought.
Ning Ge knew his mind had wandered off somewhere, and he hadn’t snapped back to attention yet.
“Are you two done yet?” Owen called impatiently from the other side.
He’d been too afraid to look around, so out of sheer boredom, he’d left a sliver of the cloth covering the partition window ajar and was peeking into the next carriage.
People in the carriage ahead were also searching for the mark.
The broadcast had announced that the Imposter’s mark was on their back—a place no one could see themselves. This left everyone uncertain whether they truly had the mark.
If someone did have the mark, they’d be thrown off the train, a certain death. But if no one was found with it, everyone would die when the countdown ended.
The result was a chaotic scene: everyone wanted to check others’ backs, hoping to find the mark and end it all, yet no one was willing to let others check their own.
They started fighting again.
People tore at each other’s clothes, shoving and punching, a desperate struggle.
Ten minutes had passed since the countdown began.
When Owen and the others returned, Ning Ge said, “I don’t think this is right. A game where an Imposter is hidden among the players shouldn’t be played like this.”
She explained, “Normally, in these kinds of games, the Imposter is secretly informed of their identity from the start. This way, they can actively hide themselves and avoid being discovered, instead of having a mark on their back that they can’t even see.”
Ning Ge pondered for a moment. “And in terms of rewards and penalties, players win if they find the Imposter, while the Imposter wins if they remain undetected. That’s how you motivate the Imposter.”
“Exactly,” the high school student agreed. “All the games I’ve played recently are like this.”
Owen understood Ning Ge’s point. “Their mission is pretty straightforward: players win if they find the Imposter, and everyone dies if they don’t. It’s like the Imposter is cursed for eight lifetimes—no matter how they play, they’re doomed.”
“So I don’t think that’s it,” Ning Ge said. “Let’s recall the broadcast’s description: ‘An Imposter is hidden in each carriage.’ It didn’t say, ‘An Imposter is hidden among the players in each carriage.'”
“You’re right.”
Pei Han’s mind, which had been drifting in some mysterious dimension, finally returned to the dungeon mission.
He recalled, “And the broadcast described failures as ‘the affected carriage will be cleaned.’ The word used was ‘cleaned.’ So the Imposter is likely not a player at all, but something else entirely.”
He stopped talking and immediately began searching the carriage.
The carriage was simple and easy to search. After sweeping his gaze across the entire compartment, his eyes landed on a corner.
There, on the carriage wall, was a square object. Its shape suggested a hidden panel, about the size of a typical fire equipment compartment door.
The square frame was riveted to the wall, with four hex screws at the corners.
Pei Han rummaged through the tools scattered on the floor and in his shoulder bag, finding a hex screwdriver of the right size. He twisted it in his hand and strode over.
With a few turns, he easily opened the small door.
As expected, a dark brown object shot out.
It lunged at Pei Han, and Ning Ge finally saw it clearly: a monstrously large spider, as big as a watermelon including its legs, like a Halloween decoration.