The group took a train to Shangjing City, where the headquarters of the Investigation Bureau was located.
Greenvine City was far from Shangjing City. Even by train, the journey took five hours.
The headquarter would cover their travel expenses, so they traveled in business class.
The carriage was quiet, with beautiful attendants serving drinks during the trip.
No one really needed anything except Zhao Hao. He called the pretty attendant almost every five minutes. In the end, he drank almost all the beverages on the train and went to the bathroom several times.
The train ride was boring and long. At first, Yang Ming and the others talked with Zhao Hao. But halfway through the trip, they ran out of things to say.
Then, everyone rested quietly, played on their phones, watched videos, or read novels.
Fang Xiu slept the whole time. Actually, he was watching others sleep by entering their dreams.
Many people on the train were sleeping, and they were all resources for him. He didn't waste a single minute and collected their fears and pain from their dreams.
Instead of wasting time sleeping, Fang Xiu liked to see the views from other people's dreams. He enjoyed observing people and things during the journey, experiencing the many flavors of life.
As Fang Xiu kept entering dreams, the sleeping passengers on the train started to show fear, as if they were trapped in nightmares.
Suddenly, Fang Xiu found an unusual dream. He had seen many strange dreams, but this one was different because it belonged to a psychic.
Psychics' dreams were very different from ordinary people's, so he easily sensed it.
"Is this psychic on the train too? Is she also going to the headquarters for training?" Fang Xiu entered the psychic's dream and saw the dream's owner.
She was a young, beautiful woman wearing a tight white t-shirt, denim shorts, and canvas shoes. A pink cartoon headset hung around her slender, fair neck, and a studded denim jacket was tied around her waist, covering her hips. Her long, fair legs were exposed.
She was about 1.7 meters tall, with legs at least 1 meter long. By modern standards, she was definitely a beauty, even a campus belle.
Fang Xiu only took a glance at her before looking away.
He wasn't Zhao Hao; he wasn't attracted by beautiful women. No matter how "beautiful" she was, she couldn't compare to his "wife."
He didn't have a good first impression of the woman because her long legs reminded him of his "wife's." The shape and length were similar, except for the skin tone.
The woman's skin was milky white, like pure milk, while his "wife's" was a cool white, like delicate porcelain.
The woman's dream was very strange.
She seemed to dream about the Investigation Bureau headquarters. In her dream, she bossed around people who looked like the director and the captains. She constantly played tricks on them and deceived them. She fooled the Investigation Bureau leaders completely.
Then she put her hands on her hips and laughed loudly, like a real shrew.
Fang Xiu couldn't see the faces of the Investigation Bureau leaders; they were just blurry figures. This meant that the woman hadn't seen them in real life, so their faces couldn't appear in her dream.
From this dream, Fang Xiu assumed that she was also a psychic who was going to the headquarters for training.
The headquarters training wasn't for just anyone. Only the strongest or most talented psychics from each city were qualified to go. This meant that the woman must be extraordinary.
But none of this mattered to Fang Xiu. Meeting an extraordinary psychic was even better; he could collect more high-quality fear and pain.
So, with a wave of his hand, the blurry figures stopped what they were doing and began to move towards the woman.
They kept growling, "How dare you lie to me! How dare you lie to me!"
Dozens of blurry figures growled at once, and the woman, who had been laughing with her hands on her hips, was instantly stunned.
"No, I didn't, I never lie!" she said.
The blurry figures didn't listen to her explanations and kept repeating, "How dare you lie to me!"
The woman was completely scared. She turned and ran.
Dozens of figures chased her like vengeful ghosts. One of them took out a bunch of silver needles.
"Liars must swallow a thousand needles!"
"Liars must swallow a thousand needles!"
The woman was scared to tears. "I'm sorry, I won't lie anymore!"
Seeing that his goal was achieved, Fang Xiu left the woman's dream. But after he left her dream, he noticed something was wrong.
The dreams had disappeared!
On the entire train, except for the woman, everyone else's dreams had disappeared.
Fang Xiu opened his eyes instantly. He looked around and saw that in the carriage, only his group was left. All the other passengers had disappeared.
Yang Ming and the others were still asleep.
'Am I in a Specter event again? I didn't look for Specter events, but now they come to me.'
Fang Xiu suppressed the excitement in his eyes. "Seriously, did the event find me? Or did I run into it?"
"Wake up," Fang Xiu said in a low voice.
Yang Ming and the others woke up instantly.
"Huh? Are we in Shangjing?" Zhao Hao said, wiping the drool from his mouth.
"We entered a Specter Zone," Fang Xiu said calmly.
"Oh, we're in a Specter Zone… What? A Specter Zone?" Zhao Hao exclaimed, jumping up from his seat.
The others also became alert immediately and started looking around.
"Where are the other passengers?"
"Why did I fall asleep just now?"
"Quiet," Fang Xiu ordered, and everyone fell silent.
Zhao Hao and Liu Shuai used to be the least courageous, but after experiencing several Specter events, they were no longer as panicked as before. Even knowing they were in a Specter Zone, they didn't show fear; they even seemed eager.
Of course, it was also because Fang Xiu was with them now, boosting their confidence.
"I think it is a Specter Zone because the surroundings have changed," Fang Xiu said, sharing his observation.
"The surroundings changed?"
Everyone quickly looked around, and their expressions shifted. At some point, the high-end business class had turned into old-fashioned hard seats.
The bright windows had become dark and yellow.
The floor was dirty as if it hadn't been cleaned for years. A faint smell of decay lingered in the air.
"This isn't the bullet train we were on. It's an old-fashioned train!"
"This train is too old. Even if we went back ten or twenty years, we wouldn't find such an old train. This style seems to be from a hundred years ago, one of the earliest trains."
…