Chapter 1: The Accident

"Are you coming to pick me up or not? If you don't, I'm just going to grab some random person on this train and leave!"

A sharp voice rang out, waking Yiyao Qiu, who was curled up asleep in the corner of her seat. She frowned slightly and rubbed her eyes, looking toward the source of the noise.

In the seat diagonally opposite her, a fashionable young woman with long, chestnut hair was leaning back. With one arm crossed over her chest and a stern expression on her face, she spoke in a lecturing tone.

The woman didn't seem to notice the ambiguous glances from the surrounding passengers, or perhaps she simply didn't care. She continued shouting into her phone, "Did you hear what I said? ...What? Fine, you've got guts."

Huffing, the woman hung up the phone. When she looked up, her eyes locked right onto Yiyao's. She raised an eyebrow. "What are you looking at? Never seen a beauty before?"

Her remark drew a burst of laughter from several young men nearby who had been staring at her. They all turned their attention to Yiyao, sizing her up as if comparing the two in their minds to see who was prettier.

Yiyao rolled her eyes inwardly and muttered, "Hmph, she really thinks she's some kind of goddess."

She turned to look out the window. The rain had stopped, but the heavy, dark clouds in the sky showed no signs of dispersing, leaving the farmlands shrouded in a thick mist.

Over the loudspeaker, the conductor's voice announced that they would be arriving at the station in just over ten minutes.

Yiyao sat up straight, reaching behind her back to gently knead her spine, which was sore from the long hours of sitting.

The next stop was Yueli Station.

Yueli Town was a remote place tucked away deep in the mountains, and it was where Yiyao's ancestral home lay.

Although that home felt incredibly foreign to Yiyao, it was her birthplace. It held an innate sense of familiarity that stirred a quiet longing within her.

The train plunged into a dark tunnel. But just as it emerged, a deafening boom echoed, and the carriage began to shake violently.

"Earthquake!" someone shouted.

Screams erupted from the crowd as people scrambled to their feet, shoving their way toward the exit. Cries and curses filled the carriage.

Yiyao had never experienced anything like this and panicked. She was in the very last carriage, and her seat was close to the door.

Because she had been a second too slow to react, the entire carriage was already jammed at the exit. Yiyao felt like a sardine in a tin, unable to even budge her feet.

The stench of sweat and body odor, mingled with the heavy perfume of women, washed over her, making her gag involuntarily.

Suddenly, the shaking stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

The passengers who had been desperately crowding the exit let out a collective sigh of relief.

The doors opened, and as they stepped outside, everyone was frozen by the sight before them.

The front carriages were completely buried under massive boulders and mud. Only this final carriage had escaped major damage, save for some small rocks that had pelted the roof, leaving it dented and scarred.

"It's a landslide," someone who understood the situation muttered.

A collective gasp swept through the crowd, followed by a wave of relief.

A few people tried to step forward to inspect the damage, but before they could take more than a few steps, another thunderous rumble echoed from the mountain above.

"Run! Hurry!" a man in a white shirt and glasses waved his arms frantically at the crowd. "Quick, get back into the tunnel!"

Having a clear direction, everyone turned and dashed toward the tunnel—at this moment, it was the only place that offered any relative safety.

Yiyao ran along with the crowd into the dark tunnel. She gasped for air, her entire body trembling violently from the sheer shock of it all.

At twenty years old, this was the first time she had felt death so close.

Several people pulled out their phones to make calls, only to find there was absolutely no signal.

Fear and anxiety gnawed at everyone; they fidgeted restlessly, some cursing loudly, others pacing back and forth.

Outside the tunnel, the rain began to pour again, showing no signs of letting up.

Listening to the angry curses of those around her, Yiyao felt a pang of regret.

She had originally booked a ticket for the following day, but on a whim, she had changed it to this train to surprise her father. She never could have anticipated running into such a disaster.

Inside the tunnel, only a few dim overhead lights illuminated the narrow, endless tracks, casting a melancholy glow.

Thunder rumbled heavily in the distance.

The tunnel now felt like an isolated island in the middle of the sea. No one knew when they would be found, let alone what awaited them.

"Sigh, what are we going to do? My wife is about to give birth. She's waiting for me to come home." The man with glasses, who had guided everyone into the tunnel, stared down at his phone screen, shaking his head and sighing repeatedly. He looked thirty at most, with a slightly frail build, his black-rimmed glasses giving him a scholarly air.

Someone nearby replied in a muffled tone, "We wait. What else can we do? Compared to the people out there, we're already the lucky ones."

Clutching her chest, Yiyao tried to steady her breathing and looked around for a place to sit.

Just then, a white blur flashed past her eyes at an astonishing speed.

Yiyao shrieked in terror and shrank back, crying out, "What was that?"

Her cry drew the attention of the others, who all turned to look at her. "What did you see?"

"There... there was something white, right over there." Yiyao pointed to the spot, only to see a crumpled tissue lying quietly on the ground.

"A tissue scared you like that? Relax, little girl."

Yiyao's reaction served as a brief, lighthearted distraction for the tense crowd. Everyone burst into laughter—though whether they were genuinely mocking her foolishness or just trying to ease their own nerves was hard to tell.

"But I clearly saw it move just now," Yiyao muttered to herself.

Just then, a strange odor wafted over. It smelled like a pungent perfume mixed with some kind of foul stench.

She couldn't help but sniff the air, but the moment she inhaled, the smell grew even more intense, rushing straight to her head and making her cough uncontrollably.

"Useless," the woman with long, chestnut hair muttered. She was sitting not far from Yiyao, a cigarette pinched between her fingers, her eyes filled with disdain.

Yiyao knew the woman was talking about her. The scene from the train flashed through her mind again, and in a fit of anger, she marched over to the woman and demanded, "Who are you calling useless? You think you're so great, but aren't you the one shamelessly clinging to some man?"

Sure enough, Yiyao's words struck a nerve.

The woman threw her cigarette to the ground and stood up in a rage. "Who's shamelessly clinging? Make yourself clear, or we'll let everyone here judge who is..."

As she spoke, the woman turned to look at the others, but she suddenly went dead silent. Her mouth hung wide open, as if she had just seen something terrifying.

Yiyao followed the direction of her gaze, and in an instant, a cold shiver ran down her spine.