And the "static health bar" of his Scorpio knife kept him from losing any attributes or mobility no matter how badly he was injured.
Combining these two traits, Wen Xishu managed to drag himself, in a state of "fraying but unbroken" and "torn apart," across the entire carriage with great difficulty. He didn’t encounter a single child, nor did he step on a single white footprint.
The second row.
The first row.
When approaching the first row...
Wen Xishu noticed, the little girl was still there.
Not long ago, he had already seen the little girl disappear, turning into white footprints. But now, the little girl appeared again.
"Could it be... the little girl is also problematic?"
At first, Wen Xishu merely thought that the little girl was just an ornament, a hint that the woman could be a human trafficker, an informational ’npc’.
In the bizarre carriage with the woman, the little girl might turn into white footprints and vanish like the other children.
But now, Wen Xishu saw the little girl again in the first row.
The little girl’s hand was held by the male attendant.
Yes, the trafficker’s face had swapped onto the attendant’s face. And the attendant’s face had moved onto the woman’s face.
The immense disparity made Wen Xishu feel a surge of disgust and revulsion.
"What the hell is all this?"
Why did the attendant’s and the woman’s faces swap? What information did this imply?
Wen Xishu couldn’t understand.
At this moment, Wen Xishu noticed something else.
The trafficker woman at the front of carriage 02 still faced the door. But Wen Xishu could feel her eyes start to glance sideways at him.
If I look at her now, what will happen?
This thought ran through Wen Xishu’s mind.
But Wen Xishu wasn’t one to recklessly court death; he was very sure that doing so would carry immense risk.
Wen Xishu turned his head away, intentionally avoiding eye contact with the trafficker.
Finally, he reached the front where there were no footprints.
He let out a long sigh of relief.
"Finally made it..."
In a sense, Wen Xishu had brute-forced his way through this stage. Although the rule was not to step on any white footprints, it was nearly impossible for an ordinary person to achieve this.
Among the trio of Yue Yun, Nissen, and Xiaojin, probably only Xiaojin could do it due to her nearly superhuman flexibility.
But the other two couldn’t.
"I can’t really assume their starting points are the same as mine... but it’s certain that since this is called a maze train, there must be some extremely similar carriages."
"Actually, if you ignore the trafficker and the white footprints, this carriage is almost identical to the previous one."
"But since it’s a maze, it’s very likely that we entered from the same entrance but ended up in different places."
"Perhaps Xiaojin’s carriage 02 is another scene."
"Maybe, after passing a certain scene, they get auxiliary tools for other scenes?"
"At least, there must be some way in this carriage to reduce the difficulty, otherwise it would assume everyone has superhuman control over their body and memory?"
Of course, there was another possibility—
That Wen Xishu guessed wrong, and all this white footprints and avoiding children’s bodies was fake.
But Wen Xishu trusted his intuition.
In any case, he didn’t step on any white footprints, and in his mind, he simulated the children’s bodies above the footprints, avoiding them as well.
Though he struggled and the process was painful, he ultimately reached the front of this carriage.
[Proceed to the next carriage? Yes, No.]
Wen Xishu no longer hesitated and chose Yes.
The door of carriage 02 opened.
His figure stepped into the white light, and the next second, an identical scene appeared before his eyes.
He had reached carriage 03, still far from carriage 016.
The scene in front of Wen Xishu now was almost identical to that of carriage 01.
Seventeen rows of seats, sixteen passengers, two attendants.
Wen Xishu did not move.
After his experience in carriage 02, no matter how similar carriage 03 appeared to carriage 01 at first glance... he was convinced that the carriages were different.
"In the last carriage 02, when I noticed the trafficker’s face on the attendant’s body, the rule activated immediately. Fortunately, I reacted quickly and retreated to the very bottom."
"So, it’s likely that the trigger mechanism for these eerie rules... is ’finding a difference’. After finding it, the rules trigger, and as a player, besides finding differences, we have to discover how to pass the carriage..."
Wen Xishu began to observe.
Worker 1 and Worker 2 sat on the left side of row eleven.
The family with the bratty kid sat on the right side of row eleven.
From afar, Wen Xishu saw nothing unusual.
"What if I use the Compass tool here?"
Acting on his thought, Wen Xishu took out his orange tool, the pseudo-Fate Compass.
But unfortunately, the Compass gave Wen Xishu no indication; its needle spun wildly, signaling that danger was everywhere.
"This thing is only useful when finding people in Desire Tower..."
Wen Xishu put the Compass away and continued to observe.
The student couple sat in row nine, with the female student still sitting on the outside, leaning slightly; nothing different.
Worker 3 and Worker 4 sat in row seven; again, nothing different.
Wen Xishu directly looked to the first row and saw that the male attendant had returned to his original appearance.