Players, Please Board the Train

This time, Xu Huo didn’t wait for the nursery rhyme to finish before heading to the door, but the moment he neared the entrance, his vision went black again. When he opened his eyes a second later, he was once more seated on the sofa.

Picking up the doll, he gave it a quick inspection. Finding no hidden control mechanisms, he simply twisted its head off.

The inside of the doll had no mechanical connectors whatsoever, as if its head and body had always been separate. The neck and jaw were perfectly smooth, and when tossed aside, each piece rolled away on its own.

Since this was all part of an illusion, Xu Huo wasn’t truly intent on destroying anything. After discarding the pieces, he planned to head upstairs and investigate.

But when he reached the staircase, he found he couldn’t go up. It was as if that part of the map hadn’t been unlocked yet. He tried stepping onto the stairs multiple times, but after just a few steps, the staircase would flip downward, sending him right back to the living room.

”Ding-dong! Ding-dong!” The doorbell rang again.

Xu Huo stood motionless in front of the stairs, but after the doorbell paused for a few seconds, he still ended up back on the sofa.

After three attempts, he had pieced together some information.

First, regardless of whether he touched the doll or destroyed it, it would start singing on its own when the time came, and after the song ended, the doorbell would ring.

Second, no matter whether he approached the door, walked over from the sofa or the kitchen, or simply didn’t get close at all, he would still die.Third, he couldn’t go up to the second floor.

The clues available inside the house were pitifully scarce. The most telling lead was the nursery rhyme the doll sang.

The content was simple enough: a child was playing in the living room, a mother was cooking in the kitchen, the father was on his way home from work but hadn’t arrived yet, the doorbell rang, and both the child who answered the door and the mother were killed. Whether the father, who returned later, was also killed was uncertain.

It was clearly a murder scene. The person outside the door killed both the child and the mother. Additionally, the mother might have come to the door holding a knife, or she might have died by the blade she herself brought—there was a knife missing from the kitchen.

If this was a game, being killed no matter where you were in the house meant the way to break out might be to save yourself.

First, he had to survive this ”murder case.”

Xu Huo began by blocking the doors and windows before the nursery rhyme started. But two minutes later, he failed. After resetting, he not only sealed the doors and windows but also hid himself under the kitchen cabinet. Even that proved futile.

Since he couldn’t go up to the second floor, sealing it off was out of the question. An unsealed area meant an opening, and that might be the key to ”death.”

But if that were the case, it meant this was an inescapable death loop, so there had to be another way to break through.

He started trying to use items.

Item powers could manifest within this illusion and had some degree of physical form. For example, when he used ”Concentrated Air,” the nearly transparent barrier turned into a solid shield that could even detach from his hand and stand on its own.

So he simply used the concentrated air barrier to completely seal off the floor-to-ceiling windows and the space beyond the second-floor staircase. Other items that could set traps, like ”Hurt Others, Not Yourself,” were also deployed, partially blocking the front door and hallway.

He prepared this thoroughly, but when the doorbell rang, he still ”died.”

Since sealing all the entrances and exits was useless, he changed tactics. He pulled out Shelter 101, took the doll inside with him, and hid. But when the nursery rhyme ended, he was once again seated on the sofa.

Xu Huo sat on the sofa edge, face-to-face with the doll. He had used every defensive measure at his disposal, and it still couldn’t change the inevitable outcome. Unless the game maker was playing a joke on him, it meant the murderer in this game possessed special items and abilities like the players—or was directly a player.

Using the brief time during the nursery rhyme, he tried attacking the room. Staying inside only meant waiting for death. Perhaps he could go out.

But the result surprised him. The moment he broke the window, he still ”died.”

After trying all this, Xu Huo realized he was going about it the wrong way. No matter what method he used, ”death” couldn’t be skipped. This meant the mother and child in the house were fated to die. It was a fixed fact. So what was the point of reenacting this scene?

”The doll was playing in the living room.”

”Mom was cooking in the kitchen.”

”Dad was on his way home.”

”Ding-dong! Ding-dong! The doorbell rang!”

”Dad forgot his keys!”

”The doll went to open the door and banged its head on the cabinet.”

”Mom went to open the door and her belly met the small knife.”

”Dad came home and opened the door, and he lay down beside the doll and Mom too!”

The nursery rhyme started singing again. In an instant, Xu Huo was at the door, directly twisting the doorknob. Of course, the result was predictable—he was back on the sofa.

In the nursery rhyme, both the mother and child, the main characters, had died, but the father returning from outside wasn’t necessarily dead. Was this a delusional cycle or remorse for the past?

”Click!” At that moment, a glass bead suddenly fell to the floor and rolled slowly to his feet. Following the direction the bead had come from, he saw that the space above the second-floor staircase was no longer pitch black—it was lit up.

He wasn’t sure what had triggered this, but Xu Huo chose to go up.

The second floor was a study. There was no desk, and the only chair had its back to the staircase, its tall back hiding the person sitting in it. Only a middle-aged man’s hand rested on the right armrest.

”They’re all dead,” the middle-aged man said before Xu Huo stepped into the study.

After waiting two seconds, Xu Huo spoke. ”I wanted to save them too, but I couldn’t.”

”How I wish time could turn back,” the middle-aged man continued. ”If I hadn’t lost my temper that day because of a young team member’s mistake, I wouldn’t have called a short meeting before leaving work.”

”If I hadn’t called that short meeting, I wouldn’t have run into a supervisor coming for an inspection and been dragged out for a drink.”

”If I hadn’t drunk, I wouldn’t have chosen public transportation because I couldn’t drive, and I wouldn’t have gotten caught up in an unexpected argument.”

”If I hadn’t gotten caught up in that argument, I wouldn’t have been pulled in to testify, and I wouldn’t have repeated my statement over and over because I was slurring my words.”

”If I hadn’t wasted time giving my statement, I wouldn’t have been five minutes late getting home.”

”If I hadn’t been five minutes late, they might still be alive.”

It was the simplest of narratives, but every word was soaked in regret. Beneath the calm surface lay the daily, knife-like pain of that remorse, so deep that every detail, every choice, even every single step was filled with regret.

If that was the case, then the existence of this illusion was still the creator’s attempt to save his wife and child. Unfortunately, time couldn’t turn back...

As this thought flashed through his mind, Xu Huo suddenly froze. Staring at the hand, he said, ”If you can’t change what happened at the moment of the tragedy, maybe you can save them before it happens, as long as time can turn back.”

The middle-aged man stopped repeating his words and then vanished from the chair.

Xu Huo quickly walked over and spun the chair around. Lying on the cushion was a single vial of potion!