Chapter Four: The Last Train Without Passengers

Lin Wan's countdown did not stop when Shen Yan left the server room. It hung at the top of his inbox like a drop of blood that refused to fall: 6 days, 18 hours, 42 minutes. Su He cleaned the cut the iron door had left across his palm and asked what he had seen beyond it. Shen Yan told her only that he had seen Lin Wan alive. Zhou Yu stood beside an abandoned rack, his flashlight passing briefly over his face. “The living don't ask you to forget them,” he said. Shen Yan looked up. “What do you know?” Before Zhou Yu could answer, all three phones sounded with the rush of a wave. The new blue envelope had no portrait. The sender was Xu Zhen, and the message contained a single sentence: “At 12:20 a.m.