Inside Carriage No. 1, Lin Xian lay on a comfortable memory foam mattress, savoring the soft warmth of the person in his arms. After two consecutive sleepless nights, he finally managed to get some decent rest.
He glanced at the time. 14:00. Fortunately, the night had been peaceful and uneventful.
It was still dark outside. Lin Xian had preset his watch to observe the exact time daylight would return.
The night was far too long, and they had slept far too much.
The woman lying on him, Chen Sixuan, had already woken up. She remained silent, but when Lin Xian stirred, she blushed furiously and quickly got dressed, pulling up her pants. In a small voice, she said to him,
“They seem to have blocked the tracks with rocks.”
Lin Xian pulled her into his arms, lowered his head, and placed a light kiss on her fragrant lips. He replied,
“I know. I dealt with it before I got on the train.”
“Counting the distance from Yushan Station, we covered 54 kilometers yesterday. Based on the survivors’ shared information, daylight should return by 17:00 today.”
After their intimate night, she couldn’t help but avoid looking directly at Lin Xian as she spoke.
“We’ll see,” Lin Xian said, glancing at his watch. “This distance may not be enough to notice a significant change.”
Since it was still pitch dark outside, the two kept their voices low as they took out some food and water for a quick meal.
Lin Xian leaned against the corridor, pressing a hand to the floor as he probed the outside situation. He also took a moment to check his injuries, and as expected, his recovery was astonishingly fast.
As an Ability User, his body was qualitatively different from an ordinary person’s. Furthermore, after yesterday’s life-or-death battle with Liu Wei, Lin Xian’s Wind Cannon Skill had improved significantly:
[Wind Cannon LV.1: 25/100]
[Ice Shield LV.1: 6/100]
Yesterday’s fight had pushed Lin Xian to his absolute limits. For the first time, he realized just how ruthless and decisive he could be, maintaining a chilling calm in critical moments. He even found himself impressed with his own composure.
Lin Xian stared at his watch as the minutes passed.
16:00—still no daylight.
The later the sunrise, the faster they needed to flee.
What worried Lin Xian most was the possibility of no change in daylight time. That would truly be despairing.
The temperature had already dropped to around 0°C. Lin Xian and Chen Sixuan both put on long-sleeve clothes to keep warm. Thankfully, he had looted a bunch of new quilts and memory foam mattresses from the furniture store; otherwise, they’d be stuck sleeping on cold, hard beds in this freezing weather.
Finally, at 16:48, a streak of light flashed across the sky. The darkness abruptly retreated, and the setting sun hung low on the horizon!
“It’s daytime!” Chen Sixuan exclaimed, her eyes lighting up with joy.
Daylight had come 12 minutes earlier than the predicted time of 17:00, a small but hopeful sign that they were escaping the Polar Night.
Lin Xian opened the door to the corridor, and he and Chen Sixuan stepped into the cockpit together. They stared at the sunlight outside, their eyes filled with both surprise and worry.
The joy came from the fact that daylight had arrived earlier than expected, confirming that they were indeed making progress in escaping the endless night.
The worry came from the realization that a mere 12-minute improvement was like a drop in the bucket.
Chen Sixuan quickly regained her composure. Picking up the travel logbook, she began calculating,
“If daylight arrived 12 minutes earlier, and we only covered 54 kilometers yesterday, then to reach 17:00 daylight tomorrow, we’d need to travel at least 270 kilometers!”
“More or less,” Lin Xian nodded. “That matches the broadcast information we heard. But don’t get too optimistic. We’re not traveling in a straight line, and covering 270 kilometers would take at least three hours at our current speed—unless we accelerate.”
Chen Sixuan’s expression dimmed at his words.
“Yeah, but we can’t go too fast. There’s no guarantee someone won’t try to block the tracks with cars or rocks again…”
In just two days, they had faced constant dangers, each time brushing past death. The thought weighed heavily on Chen Sixuan, filling her with anxiety.
The Infinite Train’s ten-cylinder heavy gas turbine engine roared to life. Lin Xian took the driver’s seat and glanced back at Chen Sixuan.
“Ms. Chen, hold on tight.”
Hearing Lin Xian still call her “Ms. Chen,” Chen Sixuan felt a surge of awkwardness and unease. After all, the two of them had already…
Did he have some sort of fetish? Was he into that taboo “teacher-student” dynamic?
Unaware of Chen Sixuan’s overthinking, Lin Xian drove the train into reverse.
Seeing the train moving backward, Chen Sixuan’s expression turned to shock.
“Yes,” Lin Xian replied solemnly. “We’re heading back to Yushan Station to check things out.”
With Liu Wei dead, his convoy was bound to fall into chaos without its leader, especially as night approached. Without Liu Wei, an Ability User, any remaining lackeys with guns posed little threat to Lin Xian and Chen Sixuan as long as they stayed on the train.
He had already taken down their leader; it would feel like a waste not to reap some rewards.
Moreover, Lin Xian now felt a faint sense of hope. If they could just keep pushing forward, they might truly escape the Polar Night. For someone who had endured months of this hellish survival, this was undoubtedly an encouraging sign.
The sound of the train echoed steadily as it rolled along the tracks.
Before long, the heavy locomotive slowly backed into Yushan Station, and the scene that greeted Lin Xian and Chen Sixuan made their expressions change drastically.
The platform was in complete ruins. The “Oasis” convoy had been entirely wiped out. The off-road vehicles and jeeps parked there were smeared with grotesque bloodstains, while the station’s ground was practically soaked in crimson. Several members of the convoy had already turned into zombies, their bodies completely blackened. They stood there groaning, lifeless yet terrifying.
Among them, Chen Sixuan recognized one of the zombified men—it was the bespectacled, seemingly cultured middle-aged man who had pretended to be the “father” of the fake family of three the previous day.
Who could have imagined that in just one night, everyone would perish?
Chen Sixuan gasped, pointing toward the station’s waiting hall. The relatively small waiting hall had been almost completely overrun. But what shocked the two the most was the sight of several large, insect-like legs scattered near the waiting hall’s entrance!
Chen Sixuan’s face turned pale. “Oh my god… what kind of monster is this?”
Lin Xian frowned, his thoughts flashing back to the insect-like creature he had glimpsed near Warehouse 14. A chill ran through him.
He had driven over 50 kilometers yesterday. Could it have caught up to them?
Lin Xian still had no clues about that strange creature or the pale giant. It was as if they appeared out of nowhere in the dark of night, only to vanish completely with the sunrise. If it weren’t for the massive insect legs right before them, who would believe that such horrifying monsters could suddenly emerge in this world?
Leaning against the train window, Lin Xian observed the scene carefully for a while before finally speaking,
“Don’t be scared. It’s daytime now, so these things shouldn’t come out.”
Still, internally, he was cursing. He had just started to consider moving at night, and now reality slapped him right in the face.
If these creatures were following him, how was he supposed to travel freely?
“Are we still going down there?” Chen Sixuan asked hesitantly.
Lin Xian gritted his teeth. Since they were already here, and the “Oasis” convoy had fallen, this was a perfect opportunity to scavenge their remaining supplies.
“Alright, I’ll go too.” Chen Sixuan clenched her fists, but Lin Xian stopped her with a raised hand.
“Hold on. Let me go first. I’ll take care of those zombies, and then you can come down.”
“Okay.” Chen Sixuan nodded obediently.
Gripping his short blade, Lin Xian activated the train’s cockpit door and leapt down. The moment he landed, he unleashed several Wind Cannon blasts, cleanly blowing the heads off the zombies on the platform.
Although the skill consumed some energy, Lin Xian preferred not to risk alarming anything else. The Wind Cannon was quiet, making it ideal for surprise attacks.
One by one, the zombies collapsed. Only then did Lin Xian notice the overwhelming stench of blood in the air. He wrinkled his brows in disgust.
The platform was riddled with bullet holes and littered with severed limbs. Clearly, a brutal battle had taken place here last night.
Having witnessed the monstrosity of these creatures firsthand, Lin Xian was certain that regular firearms would have done little to harm them. This scene only confirmed how futile the convoy’s resistance must have been.