Chapter 2: Inviting Spirits (Part 1)

A fierce roar echoed through the silent underground platform, accompanied by a mist that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

An ancient, roaring steam monster broke through the fog and slowly came to a halt before everyone.

It was an old train, the kind one would expect to see only in museums or black-and-white photographs. Now, it stood directly in front of Lu Jinzao, its open door resembling the gateway to hell, welcoming the uneasy newcomers inside.

“Tickets first. Other matters can be dealt with once you’re on board,” said the woman leading the group. She glanced at the newcomers, then picked up the black ticket and approached the door, deliberately demonstrating how to have the ticket checked, moving slowly.

Lu Jinzao noticed clearly that as someone approached, a narrow window on the right side of the door suddenly opened. A pale, thin, and almost horrifyingly skeletal hand stretched out, took the ticket the woman handed over, and after about three seconds, returned it.

With the ticket retrieved, the woman turned back to the newcomers. “Checking tickets is simple, but absolutely do not do anything unnecessary.”

The ticket inspection was straightforward. When it was Lu Jinzao’s turn, she placed her black ticket against the window like the others.

The next moment, the thin hand stretched out again. However, unlike the previous occasions when she had observed from a distance, at such close range, Lu Jinzao distinctly felt a chilling aura emanating from the hand, creeping closer like a tide relentlessly advancing, until the strange fingers touched the ticket.

The cold sensation abruptly ceased, and all the eerie phenomena stopped just as suddenly. Lu Jinzao only then realized she had unconsciously held her breath.

It was a bodily reflex to danger. When she regained her senses, she found her heart pounding faster without her noticing.

She wasn’t sure if others felt the same, but at that moment, she understood perfectly why the woman had warned them against doing anything unnecessary.

Danger. Extreme danger.

Even that brief contact sent alarms blaring in her mind.

Since childhood, Lu Jinzao had possessed a keener perception and intuition than most, which often caused her to be more easily startled, sometimes without any clear reason. But never had her brain sounded such a piercing warning, as if about to explode from overwhelming peril.

Only two seconds later, when the ticket was returned, she retrieved it and boarded the train. Her wildly beating heart finally settled somewhat.

Inside, the carriage was not arranged like a normal train but more like a private compartment. Although her ticket was marked “no seat,” the train seemed not to require her to stand. It appeared that “no seat” meant something different here.

Once the environment felt a little safer, she glanced at her ticket again.

Overall, it hadn’t changed much, except that the number indicating the amount of currency had risen from 100 to 200.

The ticket’s value had increased in some unknown currency?

The girl who had first met Lu Jinzao noticed her puzzled expression. Perhaps to keep her earlier promise, she stood by Lu Jinzao and explained briefly:

“You probably noticed the number on the ticket, right?”

“In the words of the seniors, that’s the train giving us... money to buy our lives.”

“Money to buy our lives?” Lu Jinzao paused and asked, “What’s that used for?”

Hearing this, the other two newcomers also looked over.

The woman’s tone turned serious, laden with an unspoken warning:

“Money to buy your life, as the name implies, is money to save your life.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you—no matter what happens, you must never use up the money on your ticket.”

“As long as you have money left, you still have life.”

Perhaps because the train wouldn’t be running for long, the woman didn’t explain everything in detail but made clear the most crucial taboos.

Among them was that when a station appeared on the ticket, you had to board the train. Every platform task was perilous, and the most terrifying part was that there were usually... ghosts.

Surviving these tasks was extraordinarily difficult, often a near-death experience. The train wouldn’t assign missions where everyone was guaranteed to die, but every task was certainly malevolent.

Among the passengers undertaking these missions, newcomers had the highest mortality rate.

These words darkened the faces of the three newcomers, but the woman only stated clearly:

“If you ever face a deadly crisis, no one will come to save you. You can only rely on yourself.”

“Time’s almost up; the train is about to arrive at the station. I’ll give you one last piece of advice.”

“The missions the train gives must be completed, even if you feel it’s a death sentence—you must do them!”

“If you fail, the train will be more terrifying than any ghost.”

After speaking, with only a few minutes before the stop, she briefly introduced the other passengers to the newcomers. Then, accompanied by the sound of the train slowing, the platform appeared.

There was no announcement inside the train; instead, once it stopped, the doors silently opened.

“Get off.”

Lu Jinzao clenched her palms. By now, she understood clearly: although she didn’t know why Lin Zhao was doing this, she had undoubtedly been caught up in a supernatural event. For now, her best course was to follow the rules and focus on survival.

When Jiang Yingzhi had mentioned the high death rate among newcomers, she recalled the blood-red words on the sheepskin parchment at the station:

“Pay the price to buy a way out.”

She seemed to possess a shortcut others did not, but what lay at the end?

What price would she have to pay?

A foreboding feeling rose in her heart, making her reluctant to use the parchment for exchange.

“Unless absolutely necessary, I’d better not do that,” she resolved silently, then stepped off the train.

Upon stepping down, she first surveyed her surroundings. Clearly... she was no longer in Yun City.

She recalled the ticket mentioned Thailand, and indeed, the environment resembled the Chinatown she’d seen in films.

“Don’t worry about the language barrier; the train wouldn’t make the missions harder that way.”

“Our mission time is twelve hours; we have to encounter ghosts nine times. Time is tight. Let’s find a bookstore first.”

The temporary team leader, formed by the train’s crew, was a woman named Lin Shuyue. According to Jiang Yingzhi, she had the most experience because she had been through the most platforms.

“If the time is so tight, the bookstore shouldn’t be hard to find.”

With that, she led the group into the Chinatown area of Thailand.

The weather was gloomy, and judging by the sun’s position, it was about three in the afternoon. Lu Jinzao thought uneasily that if the order in which they drew their ghost-encounter methods was late, they would finish near midnight.

No matter how many horror films or ghost stories one had seen, everyone knew midnight was never a good time. Lu Jinzao could only pray she wouldn’t be assigned a late turn.

Fortunately, the bookstore’s location was easy to find. Soon after entering Chinatown, they spotted an old bookstore with a faded sign.

The paint on the sign was almost completely peeled off; no matter how hard Lu Jinzao tried, she couldn’t make out the name. The shop was inconspicuous, nestled on one side of Chinatown, occupying only a tiny space. A wooden display rack stood outside, featuring some promotional slogans.

“The foot traffic is so sparse,” Xu Lei frowned, glancing around.

Not only was the weather gloomy, but pedestrians were scarce—far from the bustling Chinatown he remembered.

The buildings exuded an old-fashioned vibe from the last century. Occasionally, someone would open a window upstairs and stare down at the newcomers entering Chinatown for a few seconds before retracting back inside.

The entire street carried a strange atmosphere: eerie and oppressive like the weather.

Inside the bookstore, Lu Jinzao caught a faintly pungent smell, probably due to the small space packed full of books.

The bookstore owner was a middle-aged man who barely lifted his eyes when Lu Jinzao and the others entered, weakly asking, “What kind of book do you want?”

When Lin Shuyue answered “Ten Methods to See Ghosts,” he suddenly raised his head to look at them.

After scrutinizing them for four or five seconds, the owner’s voice, hoarse and clearly from heavy smoking, lowered as he asked, “Are you sure?”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to play some ghost-seeing game again?”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you—last time, a few young folks who bought this book from me all died!”

It sounded like a chilling urban legend. The man’s expression grew serious.

Just like in most horror movies where the protagonists always have to court disaster first, Lu Jinzao and her companions ignored the bookstore owner’s warning and bought the book titled *Ten Methods to See Ghosts.*

When leaving, Lu Jinzao felt the owner’s gaze on them was unsettling, as if he were looking at those marked for death.

Not everyone present had seen the movie *Ten Methods to See Ghosts,* so they needed to read the book to understand what the ten methods actually were.

After reading, the atmosphere fell into a deathly silence.

Because the ten methods were:

Cup Spirit, Bowl Knocking at the Crossroads, Black Cat Hide and Seek, Corpse Mud Application, Headstand, Midnight Combing, Umbrella Indoors, Corneal Transplantation from the Dead, Pregnant Woman’s Suicide, and the ultimate ghost-seeing method: Playing Dead.

“We don’t have any pregnant women among us,” someone slowly said.

Indeed, Lu Jinzao thought silently. Without a pregnant woman, whoever drew the “Pregnant Woman’s Suicide” method would be doomed to fail the ghost-seeing mission.

In other words, one of them was bound to die.