Chương 67: Chapter 66 — Training Arc (1)

A staff member arrived at the aisle beside Lin Che and Shen Yue and held out a tray towards them. It contained a plain cheeseburger and a side of fries, which was, admittedly, an odd choice for train food — people typically ordered something with far less fragrance in order to not disturb other passengers. But, here in first class, there were not that many people, so Lin Che felt it wasn't as great a social crime to order such a meal. And, besides, he recalled his wife loving cheeseburgers.

The staff member set it down in front of Shen Yue before moving forwards to the next row of passengers just a few seats ahead of them.

"Don't worry about being messy," said Lin Che.

"I have wipes in my bag and there's a toilet at the end of the carriage if you want to wash your hands properly." Shen Yue looked at him and nodded. She picked up the burger with both hands and inspected it for a brief moment, before taking a bite that was more akin to a small nibble. She chewed far longer than necessary, before building up speed for the next bite. The second bite went down harder, but her throat worked hard and tightened as she attempted to swallow.

She reached for her flask and unscrewed the cap before she drank, head tilted back, and swallowed slightly audibly. The fluid seemed to help, as it made up for her lack of saliva. She formed a rhythm: bite, chew, drink, swallow.

"Is it good?" he asked her.

"It's fine," she said, not looking up from the burger. Her voice was monotone, but Lin Che did not notice — his eyes were already closed and he was deep in thought. There was a great deal riding on the conversation he still had to have with the woman in Dalian, and he hadn't quite worked out yet just how to approach it. He'd never met her — yes he had an ancestral tie to Dalian, but he'd never actually gone there in person until the loop before last.

He also wasn't sure when his mother would arrive in Dalian, but that was something he could deal with. Lin Che planned on calling his mother once he was in Dalian to innocently ask her for recommendations of things to do. Once she then mentioned that she would be or already was in Dalian, the goal would shift accordingly — either he'd join the class and meet this lady in person, or he'd call her number and act mysteriously instead to pry out information from her to use in another life.

In an ideal world, she would be a cultivator and things would simplify very quickly from then on. Judging by how she was supposedly shocked that his father had a son, it was reasonable to assume she knew something about bloodlines, and she even mentioned something about 'old families'. It sounded highly unlikely that she was a regular mortal. With Shen Yue by his side, he would be able to scout out if she truly was a cultivator simply by seeing his wife's reaction.

That way, he wouldn't have to use his tribulation trump card so soon and wouldn't have to signal to Shen Yue that he really wasn't a mysteriously powerful cultivator, and instead someone far weaker than her. Either way, he could ask, more carefully, whether anyone else had ever asked her strange questions about his family history, which might at least tell him if someone was trying to figure out the same things he was. He could even ask about the other family names Xu Fang had mentioned over text.

Whilst Lin Che kept on thinking and Shen Yue kept on consuming, the train shifted beneath their seats. It wasn't necessarily a jolt, but more of a simple shift in the train's pace as it split routes at the junction they had passed. This was standard practice on regional lines like this, where one half of a train would go in one direction, and the other half elsewhere.

There was a mechanical clunk beneath them and a faint sensation of deceleration, before the train picked up once again as though nothing had happened. The only difference now was that the train felt much quieter, as these front carriages of the train had far fewer people, which was reflected in the sparseness of passengers in first class with them. Lin Che was still thinking of potential things to achieve his goals in Dalian when he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He opened his eyes.

There was a woman standing in the aisle beside him, close enough that her shadow fell towards him and Shen Yue, who was finishing off her remaining fries. She was wearing a maroon uniform for members of staff and opened her mouth as though she were about to ask him whether he'd like some further refreshments or meals. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. But her mouth kept opening. Further and further.

Her face didn't change so much as it simply stopped being a face — her skin lost its texture in the space of two breaths, smoothing over into something more matte. Her features flattened before quickly disappearing and leaving behind emptiness. The mouth opened further, until it was so wide that it stopped being a mouth altogether, the teeth— Lin Che punched her. The teeth shattered and hit the floor. He still hadn't finished processing what had happened, and instead relied on muscle memory.

His fist connected with what should have been her jaw, and it cracked like porcelain, forcing the thing that had been a staff member to stagger back and fall into the empty seats behind. The mannequin tilted its head at an angle no human neck could manage.

"Mannequin!" shouted Shen Yue, already jumping out of her seat and scanning the surroundings. Her eyes flashed with Qi as she attempted to figure out their numbers and see how many mortals would need protecting.

"It's just the one," she said. The remaining passengers' necks snapped suddenly, staring deep into Shen Yue's eyes, before they too morphed into mannequins. There were no mortals in this train carriage to protect. There were only two cultivators and a small army of mannequins for them to defeat. Lin Che jumped forwards using whatever strength he could muster. He really didn't want to use his trump card right now, so he zipped open his bag and brought out the Crimson Miasma Powder, holding a bag in each hand.

He slammed a bag into the face of one mannequin, causing it to explode like confetti into its face, before pivoting towards the next mannequin. They carried on, unaffected. Three mannequins held him down and pushed him towards the powder. Lin Che held his breath as much as he could. A bolt of lightning chained from head to head, temporarily stunning each mannequin. Shen Yue looked at Lin Che, eyes full of confusion. He was not meant to be so easily subdued by these things — was he testing her?

She took a large swig from her mug, practically scalding her internal mouth and oesophagus in exchange for Yang. Then, she reinforced each of her limbs and flipped the flask over in her hand to use as a convenient weapon. Shen Yue drove the base of it into the side of one of the attackers' heads as she closed the distance between them, denting the skull of one mannequin before blasting it with a close-range jolt of frozen electricity.

Her eyes lingered on the mannequin for half a second, during which it remained entirely still and almost certainly dead. She moved onto her next victim. By now, Lin Che had scrambled back onto his feet, and was in the process of deciding whether or not he should activate his cultivation right now.

It seemed like Shen Yue was doing just fine, dealing with the mannequins before he could even react — even if he had Swallow Returns to the Nest, he was not sure if he'd be able to see each of her microadjustments in combat. Shen Yue reopened her flask to reinstate control over her Qi so that she could deal with the remaining mannequins, but it was currently empty. The damn burger, she cursed internally.

She jumped towards her backpack, in which she had stored her prescription pills to consume in a hurry, but a mannequin was already holding it. It punched the glass by the window, shattering it, before throwing the backpack out of the train. Thankfully, one of the straps attached it to the side of the train, but she was not in a position to reclaim her bag from such a precarious hold whilst fending off against so many mannequins. She turned around to face Lin Che again, this time planning on asking him for help.

It turned out, however, that the mannequins she thought she'd disabled were coming back to life. Two mannequins held Lin Che by the head and torso, and one swung his arm back like a slingshot. Lin Che cycled his Qi in an attempt to break free from the grip, but it was far too late. In front of Lin Che, there was another mannequin, whose face opened up to reveal a regular mortal within.

The mannequin holding Lin Che's hand suddenly forced his fist forwards, crushing the skull of the mortal within, blood spraying onto Lin Che's face and all over the carpet and seats. A mortified Lin Che felt pain channel up through his knuckle as his heart rate accelerated and a strange sensation washed over him. One which he hadn't felt since entering the holy land. Thunder clapped above him. Before lightning could strike, the sharp nails of a mannequin decapitated Lin Che.

The last thing he saw was Shen Yue's face, upside down, as his head dropped to the ground.

Lin Che moved to his tie via instinct, before his body even processed the scene in front of him. He was not in front of his bathroom mirror. He was in front of a dead man with a crushed face, and his fist was bloodied with brain matter.