The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 104: Clear the Map

“My, my. Two Rune Circuits in one month.” War Tiger was beside himself. “What kind of dumb luck is that!”

“Yeah, what kind of dumb luck is that?” Officer Huang said with a thin smile. While he had said the same line, he obviously meant it very differently.

“There are still a lot of questions to answer.” White Rabbit turned to Gao Yang. “Where are Cheng Xin and the rest?”

“Don’t know.” Gao Yang shook his head. “We should’ve run into Cheng Xin before running into Old Wang.”

Expression dark, Old Wang said in a slightly hateful tone, “Probably killed.”

Gao Yang shook his head. “That many people would’ve left traces behind if they were killed.”

After a moment of silence, Officer Huang said, “Well, I think we might have forgotten about something: the doors between the cars aren’t the only doors of the train.”

“That’s right!” Gao Yang slapped himself on the forehead. He couldn’t believe he’d neglected that. “There are the doors to the platform too.”

“Do you mean,” White Rabbit turned to look at the door, “That they got off the train?”

“It’s very likely.” Gao Yang followed the train of thoughts. “There are different numbers of passengers at every stop. Cheng Xin doesn’t sound like a fool. If they stayed in the train, they would keep running into more monsters. Perhaps they were lucky enough to reach a stop with few passengers, and they killed their way out.”

“That’d make sense.” War Tiger plopped himself down on a seat and crossed his legs. “Come on, let’s take a break. We’re going to be very busy later.”

“Busy? With what?” Officer Huang had a bad feeling about this.

War Tiger gave Gao Yang a glance. “You must know, Yang Yang. Tell everyone.”

All eyes were suddenly on him. Gao Yang silently grumbled about War Tiger of all people using the affectionate nickname, but at the same time, he was a little flattered.

He boldly said, “You aren’t looking to clear the map, are you, Teacher?”

“Haha, you know me like a roundworm!” War Tiger slapped his own abdomen dramatically.

Gao Yang suppressed an eyeroll. He didn’t want to be a parasite in the man’s colon.

“Clear the map?” Qing Ling asked.

Officer Huang shook his head. It was something he wasn’t familiar with.

White Rabbit sighed. “In gaming terms, it means killing all the enemies in a map.”

“Kill all of them?!” Old Wang jumped. “Are you out of your mind?! Do you know how many stops there are, and how many monsters there are at each stop? Do you really think you can kill them all?”

“Of course,” War Tiger said like he was talking about the weather. “It’ll just be a little tiring.”

“Don’t make it sound so easy!” Old Wang wasn’t convinced.

Gao Yang gave him a friendly explanation, “He’s the ninth-ranking awakener, Old Wang.”

“...Oh.”

Old Wang sat back down. He no longer had any concerns.

“This is what I think.” War Tiger took out a cigarette and twirled it between his fingers without lighting it. “According to Gao Yang’s theory, the head and tail of the subway train are connected, and it has been going in circles in the same spot. If that’s the case, we would’ve gone back to the platform we boarded the train from, the Cattle Farm Station of Line 7.”

“But neither Old Wang nor his teammates returned to the station,” said White Rabbit.

“That’s the problem.” War Tiger put the cigarette between his teeth. “The moment we got onto the train, the entrance was blocked. It must be the Rune Circuit’s doing. Now, the train has become a Mobius strip with no starting point nor ending point. It’s an endless cycle that will slowly kill us if we do nothing. We must find a way to break out of it.”

Everyone nodded in agreement and waited for him to continue.

“Going forward, we’ll get off the train at every stop. If there are monsters, we kill them. If there aren’t, we look around. In the case where we find nothing, we get back to the train and go to the next stop. We’ll repeat this process until we’ve dug up everything hidden in this enclosed space.”

White Rabbit put her hands on her waist, resigned. “It’s in no way a smart solution, but there doesn’t seem to be any other way.”

“What if we find no exit even after we’ve gone through every station?” Old Wang said worriedly.

“Then we wait for death,” War Tiger said flippantly.

Old Wang’s face darkened. “No, I can’t die. My wife and daughter are still waiting for me to return!”

“Don’t worry too much,” Gao Yang assured him, but it was also meant for himself. “That’s unlikely to be the case. Since the space was created by a Rune Circuit, we will be able to break out of it by finding said Rune Circuit.”

“This is like a video game.” White Rabbit sighed tiredly.

“You can say that again.” War Tiger picked himself up and stretched. “It’s about time. Let’s get started.”

The train had been slowly coming to a stop as they talked. Then it reached the next station.

Click. The door opened.

Fortunately, there were only a few monsters on the platform. They were half transformed with the human clothes they wore strained to the limit, and the clothes were covered in blood, both from their victims and themselves.

They paced around the platform like walking dead, muttering, “Human, human, human...”

They were obviously the monsters the second team of the Hundred Rivers Union had run into before.

The moment the platform door opened, they turned around slowly, their dull eyes ignited with a muddled light of craving like an alarm had been triggered, and they made a mad dash toward the train.

“That’s not a lot of homework. One of us will be enough to finish them. Who’ll volunteer?” War Tiger turned to his students.

“I will.”

Qing Ling rushed onto the platform with her Tang Dao. She penetrated a monster in the head with her blade and at the same time, jumped up to kick it in the chest. Without wasting a second, she pulled her Tang Dao out and moved into another swing, decapitating another monster.

Her movement was flexible, agile, and precise.

Gao Yang could see her progress. In the past, her attacks had been fierce, but there was a lack of finesse. She had relied entirely on her explosive power and made every swing at the risk of her life.

Under War Tiger’s hellish training, her swings had become skillful, and she was able to control the power she put into her attacks without wasting energy.

To make an analogy, she had turned from a powerful but crude cleaver into a precise, fine scalpel.

It only took a few seconds for the monsters’ heads to fall.

Qing Ling’s breathing remained steady. She looked around amid the dead monsters. After making sure that there was no danger, she turned to the train and said, “All clear.”

Old Wang was the last to walk out, and he still hadn’t recovered his jaw.

Only after the train slowly departed did he muster the courage to ask War Tiger, “The pretty lady must be a veteran of your organization, right?”

“She’s a newbie who only joined a month ago,” War Tiger said.

“Huh. Haha.”

Old Wang acknowledged their differences and stopped asking for humiliation.

As they expected, the subway station was small, and they reached the border very soon. Cold walls prevented them from advancing further. There was no entrance to another space or a hidden chamber.

Using the blood on the floor, they left a mark so that they would know they had been here.

Then they sat down on the bench, waiting for the train to come.

Officer Huang sat by Old Wang. They were both family men and found a kindred spirit in each other.

Old Wang took out a photo of his daughter from his wallet. The girl had a round, flushed face with her hair tied into two braids. “My little girl. Isn’t she cute?”

“She is,” Officer Huang said with a smile. “She has your eyes.”

“Well, it’ll be better if she looks more like her mother. Her mother has big bright eyes.” Old Wang sounded proud. “It’s a shame that my phone has run out of battery, or I’d show you a photo of my wife. I’m not exaggerating. She’s a real beauty.”

“Your wife’s an awakener too?” asked Officer Huang.

Old Wang raised his voice. “Of course! Do you think I’ll marry a monster?!”

Officer Huang didn’t say anything.

It took Old Wang a moment to come to the realization. “Old Huang, is your wife...”

“Yeah, she’s a monster.” Officer Huang admitted without shame. “We fell in love before I awakened, and we are still very much in love.”

“Then the child your wife is carrying...” Old Wang didn’t dare finish the question, his expression conflicted.

“Do you think,” Officer Huang leveled him with a cool, steady gaze, “That my child is a human or a monster?”