NOVPUB“That made me feel good?”
Lin Xian, who had been in a gloomy mood, was stunned when he heard that. He had just wanted to sincerely thank Ding Junyi. As someone who had always had a low profile aboard the Infinite Train, Lin Xian had seen this as a good opportunity to reward her for her contributions. But now it sounded like... he was the reward?
Ding Junyi glanced at Lin Xian, the corners of her mouth twitching slightly upward. Then she said seriously,
“Back to business—I have some very important information for you.”
Lin Xian let out a sigh of relief. “Alright, go ahead.”
Ding Junyi walked up beside the Hell’s Black Chrysanthemum and said, “While we were investigating the Dark Mark, I used my ability to try sensing affinity with the Chrysanthemum. What I saw… was something very unusual.”
“Saw?” Lin Xian pointed to the Hell’s Black Chrysanthemum, which was currently flickering with red light and absorbing dark energy. “You mean visually?”
Ding Junyi nodded. “That’s right. I’m sure of it. Through that Disaster Flora, I saw from the perspective of some dark entity in Xilan City. It could’ve been that giant sea urchin—or perhaps something even more advanced, something it worshipped or served.”
Lin Xian’s face turned serious at her words. He gestured for her to continue.
Ding Junyi’s brows furrowed slightly. “To be precise, the word ‘see’ might not be accurate. Dark creatures are a different type of existence entirely. Their sensory and survival systems are completely unlike ours. They likely possess a unique network of sight/smell/perception. And this time, we discovered that WIMP-type dark matter particles can form bonds directly with human cell membranes, turning the marked human into a sort of ‘Dark Universe Beacon’. In other words, this dark matter is their ‘light’.”
Lin Xian pondered. “And they can’t see our light?”
“Exactly,” Ding Junyi confirmed. “We can’t understand these beings with conventional logic. Take cold dark fundamental particles, for example—they might be their oxygen or a more advanced form of energy. I was only able to sense the presence of a colossal lifeform through the Disaster Flora. Judging by the sea urchin’s behavior, it’s likely just a scout.”
“Of course, all of this is just speculation. It doesn’t contribute much to our current research. What I really wanted to tell you is something else.”
She raised both hands in front of Lin Xian, and to his astonishment, the minuscule energy streams flowing through the air slowly rose—then were directly absorbed into her body.
“Wait… huh?” Lin Xian was dumbfounded. “You can grab that energy?”
“I seem to have developed some traits similar to the Hell’s Black Chrysanthemum. I can directly absorb and convert the energy from the Black Smoke. It’s incredibly weak… but still…” She looked at Lin Xian with a troubled expression. “Honestly, I feel pessimistic about this change.”
“I still don’t know if this trait is permanent, whether I’ve replicated something, borrowed it, or if it’s because of my plant-based ability. Maybe I’ve formed some kind of symbiotic relationship with the Disaster Flora...”
“That’s also why I was able to sense the Chrysanthemum’s location when Captain Yu went missing.”
Her brows were tightly knit with worry, and her voice sounded uneasy—but Lin Xian was already stunned.
Wait a sec... Sis, are you some kind of cheat-code magnet?!
That Chrysanthemum’s ability is seriously overpowered, and now she’s just... copying it?
“Lin Xian?” Ding Junyi called out when she saw his dumbfounded face. “You think this is unusual too, don’t you?”
“You’re being too modest,” Lin Xian muttered, turning away as a million thoughts ran through his head. He struggled to find the right words, but upon seeing her serious face, he could only say,
“Let’s just… keep observing. Your ability has only just awakened. There might still be a lot—like, a lot—of unknowns to uncover.”
“For example, if you can sense Disaster Flora, maybe you’ll be able to detect more of them.”
Ding Junyi shook her head. “I’ve tried. So far, I can’t sense any others except for the Hell’s Black Chrysanthemum. Not even the Silver Dragon Tenfold Bloom.”
“Oh, right!” Lin Xian suddenly remembered. “Have you figured out what that thing does?”
“No. But if I can use the same method as I did with the Chrysanthemum, I might be able to find the answer.”
“Don’t!”
Out of caution, Lin Xian immediately objected. “I don’t think you should try that right now. Last time, you passed out. And we still don’t understand the effect the Hell’s Black Chrysanthemum is having on you. Testing the other one might backfire.”
His concern wasn’t unfounded. Who knew if the Silver Dragon Tenfold Bloom was tied to some even worse dark entity? Their top priority right now was escaping the Polar Night. Risking it would be reckless. That thing wasn’t going anywhere, and with Ding Junyi’s expertise as a biologist and plant-type Ability User, he was confident she’d eventually uncover its secrets.
“You’re right.” Ding Junyi nodded. “We can’t rush this.”
Lin Xian glanced toward the dark train corridor and said, “That Chrysanthemum absorbed a lot of energy this time. Everyone’s been fighting for nearly two days straight. We’re gonna need a bigger supply of veggie juice. I’ll leave that to you.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve wrapped up the Dark Mark investigation. Next, I’ll focus on cold dark fundamental particles and plant cultivation.”
After wrapping up with Ding Junyi, Lin Xian made his way toward the back carriages.
Since the lights were off, the train was quietly cruising. Da Lou and Fire Bro were fast asleep in Car No. 5, so Lin Xian kept walking until he reached the living carriage.
Even before he got there, he could already hear some chattering from one of the living pods—boys and girls chatting in hushed tones.
“Xiao Yuan, you were so brave! You drove all the way there alone to find the Chrysanthemum.”
“Yeah, we were scared out of our minds…”
“It was so close. I still can’t believe Lin led the charge and pulled you out of that monster’s belly like a fr*ggin’ god!”
“Our Captain Lin is awesome! Like a savior from heaven! I think I’m in love.”
“Ah Chen, did you forget you’re a dude?”
“So what? What guy wouldn’t fall in love with a massive mecha? That thing cracked open that sea urchin like a walnut!”
“Totally badass!”
Then came Xiao Yuan’s voice: “Alright, alright, that’s enough. Captain Chen told us to keep it down, remember? Let’s not be noisy—ah~”
“Xiao Yuan.”
Lin Xian walked over. Everyone turned in surprise and quickly stood up.
“Cap—Lin—”
Shhh.
Lin Xian held a finger to his lips. “We’re still under the Polar Night. Until we know what’s out there, let’s try not to make too much noise.”
They all nodded and lowered their voices.
“Thank goodness you’re okay, Captain Lin. We were so worried.”
“You’ve been through so much. Thank you, Captain.”
“We all fought with our lives. No need for thanks.” Lin Xian nodded, then looked toward Xiao Yuan. Her head and body were still wrapped in bandages. The Automated Medical Pod had already treated her twice, but due to the intense crushing damage and Dark Invasion inside the Abyssal Maw, she looked pale and exhausted. Her baby-fat cheeks were now ghostly white.
When she saw Lin Xian, her eyes widened in surprise and she tried to sit up.
“Cap—Captain Lin.”
Lin Xian quickly motioned for her to stay down. “You made it through. That’s all that matters. Focus on recovering.”
Xiao Yuan looked at him with teary eyes and nodded. “Okay, Captain. Thank you.”
“You nearly died saving me. Why are you thanking me?” Lin Xian said with a sigh. “You were really brave. I should be thanking you.”
“I…”
Boom!
Suddenly, the train trembled slightly, and everyone tensed up.
Lin Xian signaled them to stay quiet. Then, a voice came through the communicator—Ning Jing’s.
“All trailing convoys, heads up—unknown entities detected on both sides of the track. Do not engage.”
A moment later, she switched to a private channel.
“Captain Lin, confirm if there’s any new Marks.”
“Captain!”
Shu Qin came rushing in. “Quick! Look outside!”
Hearing that, Lin Xian’s face changed. He immediately opened the blackout panel in the living carriage.
The snowstorm had calmed down. On both sides of the once pitch-black track, buildings and fences began to appear—dilapidated and eerie.
Most shockingly, strange mushrooms were growing on the fences, houses, and abandoned cars. They glowed faintly in the dark, casting a blue-green luminescence. The train rolled forward, and what had started as scattered dots of glow turned into glowing fungal carpets.
One by one, people on each train opened the blackout panels to look outside. Under the glowing mushroom fields, they saw it—a city in the darkness: Yijin.
Everyone on the Infinite Train was stunned.
“What kind of mushroom is that? It glows?!”
“Nothing from the Blue Planet would grow under Polar Night like that…”
“Looks kinda beautiful…”
“Can we eat it?”
Soft chatter began to spread.
Suddenly, Xiao Yuan cried out, “Captain Lin! Look!”
She pointed toward a few low buildings near the tracks. Lin Xian and the others looked—and there, on the ruins, stood people.
They stood completely still—alive or dead, it was impossible to tell. But the creepiest part was that their heads and bodies were covered in those glowing mushrooms. As the train thundered past, every one of those “people” turned their heads in unison to watch it pass. Their faces were indiscernible, but the aura they gave off was chilling.
“Director Ding,” Lin Xian instinctively pressed his communicator.
Ding Junyi replied from Car No. 3, “No Marks detected.”
Lin Xian told her to keep updating all 22 convoy leaders in real-time to help ease tensions.
But now, more and more mushroom-covered figures were appearing along the tracks.
Some stood in pairs, others in clusters—but all stood like wooden stakes, their heads slowly turning to follow the train’s rumble.
Shasha and Chen Sixuan leaned by the window, staring at the bizarre sight. Just then, one of those “people” passed close to the train. As it turned its head, its face reflected off the window from the glow of the mushrooms—and finally, the two of them saw what it looked like…
It was… a living person?!
The shriveled, yellowed face looked like decaying wood, crawling with mycelium vines. The top of the skull had been broken open by fungal threads, with grayish-white brain matter solidifying into the patterns of a mushroom cap. The cap itself was covered in honeycomb-like holes, seeping blue-green glowing slime. The jawbone sagged like bleached wood, coral-like fungus clusters climbed up the throat—and the most horrifying part? The person’s eyes were still moving… like they were alive.
“Holy sh*t!”
Shasha jumped back in fright. “What the hell is that?! Is it alive or dead?”
“I saw its eyeballs move. Is it a zombie?”
As they moved deeper into Yijin City, more of these human-fungus hybrids came into view. What had seemed like a surreal, luminous landscape at first now stirred something indescribably eerie in the survivors. Everyone’s initial awe turned into palpable dread. No one knew what these dark creatures were, and all remained on high alert.
“There are still no Marks. All convoys, stay synced and do not fire!”
Just as the words left the comms, a massive explosion boomed from about a kilometer behind.
Immediately after, an anxious voice came through the communicator. It was the captain of the Ocean convoy.
“Captain Lin, someone in our team fired at those human-fungus things! The mushrooms are explosive—they ignite and blast with crazy force! Everyone, be careful!”
Panic swept through the convoys. Orders to cease fire were relayed rapidly across all teams.
Lin Xian rushed toward Car No. 2 to launch drones for reconnaissance, but just then—the train braked hard.
SCREEECH—!!
Starting with Dragon Mountain No. 1, the inertia rippled back through the convoy. Everyone felt the intense jolt. The 15-kilometer-long steel beast let out a piercing metallic screech as sparks flew across the tracks.
“All trains stop immediately—track ahead is broken!”
Ning Jing’s urgent voice came through the communicator, and chaos erupted. Lin Xian quickly cut Infinite Train’s power output, but the convoy's massive inertia pushed Dragon Mountain No. 1 hundreds of meters forward before it finally halted.
The grating friction noise echoed through the dark shell of Yijin City, harsh and ominous.
Thousands of survivors—still reeling from the brutal Xilan City defense—were instantly on edge. As if triggered, they reached for their weapons, holding their breath, ready for combat.
“What’s going on?!”
“Are we under attack?!”
“Don’t shoot! Wait for the captain’s orders!”
On Infinite Train, everyone tensed up. Da Lou and Fire Bro were startled awake. Even KIKI rubbed her eyes groggily, asking around, “What happened? What’s going on?”
“Everyone, stay calm.”
Lin Xian stopped near Car No. 3 and glanced toward the Hell’s Black Chrysanthemum. Ding Junyi stood beside it, expression solemn—then she shook her head.
No Marks.
Lin Xian turned to the communicator. “Ning Jie, what’s the situation?”
“Not good.”
Those two words immediately set off alarm bells in Lin Xian’s mind.
Back in Dragon Mountain No. 1, Ning Jing stared at a blank void on the track detector display, her face grim. “Our rail scanner’s range is over one kilometer…”
She looked up toward the front of the cabin. By the faint outlines of the glowing mycelium clusters, she could see a frozen urban water zone ahead, crusted in ice like a swamp. Beyond that, only pitch-blackness—no trace of the tracks.
Ning Jing took a deep breath and activated Dragon Mountain No. 1’s high-powered floodlights.
A blinding beam lit up the tracks and surrounding structures like daylight. Abandoned buildings, snow-covered roads, everything was silent and still.
The light cut further into the city. The train had just entered Yijin, still far from the main station. The roads up ahead were cracked like spiderwebs, coral-like fungi gushing from each fracture. Billboards and ruins were covered in dried yellow vines, and everywhere, human-fungus hybrids stood frozen in grotesque forms—chests split open, legs fused into the earth.
Mycelium wrapped around them like veins, forming grotesque symbiotic bodies. One billboard, originally reading “Welcome to Yijin City: The Beautiful Western Homeland,” had been rewritten in glowing patches: “Welcome... to... Beautiful... Home…”
As the spotlight swept over them, the glowing mushrooms on these figures shrunk their caps, and then—the “people” began trembling violently. Crack, crack! The fungal vines snapped, roots that had anchored them to the ground tore free, and the creatures began moving mechanically, dragging their rotted joints and stumbling toward Dragon Mountain No. 1.
Seeing this, Ning Jing immediately turned the lights off and barked through the comms:
“Everyone, listen up! These things react to light—don’t turn on the lamps!”
She stepped back cautiously. Shi Diyuan, wrapped in bandages, limped forward. Watching the mass of silhouettes advancing from the shadows, his expression darkened.
“F*** me... can’t even catch a break. What the h*ll are these freaks now?!”
“No idea. And now that the track’s broken, we can’t even run if we want to.” Ning Jing scowled. “We’ll need to send a scouting team and fix the rails fast—or we’re sitting ducks.”
Out of the 22 Doomsday Trains, only Monica’s Monica Queen had full all-terrain mobility. Dragon Mountain No. 1 only managed half that. On terrain like this, dragging dozens of steel carriages was impossible.
“Should’ve upgraded everything when we passed through Silent City,” Shi Diyuan muttered, loading a shotgun with swift one-handed motions. Eyes narrowing at the approaching monsters, he growled, “Figures—had to break down in the middle of Polar Night. What a f***ing joke.”
“Easier said than done,” Ning Jing sighed. “Back then, we didn’t have the supplies to trade for upgrades.”
“Well then—”
“Wait—hold up,” Ning Jing stopped him. She noticed the creatures had paused midway through their march. They froze in place, and slowly, the mushrooms on their bodies reopened, glowing faintly again.
“They only seem to react to light. Doesn’t look like they’re actively hostile…”
BANG!
Suddenly, a loud crash hit the side of the cockpit. Something had slammed into the train’s armor.
Startled, the two turned toward the source. Another impact struck a carriage behind them—and then more. A series of heavy thuds pounded against both sides of the convoy.
On Infinite Train, Lin Xian immediately opened the blackout panels. Several rushed into the information center. KIKI pointed to the monitor showing Sentry System’s night-vision feed: grotesque, spiked rat-like beasts were slamming into the train’s flanks with frenzied force. Other convoys were under the same assault.
“It must’ve been the screech from braking—they heard it and came rushing!” Chen Sixuan exclaimed.
“Director Ding,” Lin Xian called out.
“No Marks!” she responded instantly.
“Should we fight back?” Shu Qin asked, ready to act.
“Prepare to eliminate them,” Lin Xian ordered. Shu Qin nodded and turned to leave, but Lin Xian quickly stopped her.
“Wait!”
He noticed something strange—the giant rats had only been attacking for a few minutes before suddenly retreating into the darkness.
Despite the chaos, the impacts had caused no real damage. Infinite Train’s new composite armor remained intact. Other trains were fine too—only some grille plates were dented.
Thousands of survivors, who’d been holding their breath for a counterattack, finally exhaled.
“Trains really are safer,” said Luo Yang of the Sun Convoy, wiping sweat from his brow. “That kind of impact would've totaled a jeep or off-road vehicle…”
As the sudden night assault faded, the 22 convoy captains began exchanging updates.
“Dragon Mountain No. 1’s drones have flown over 10 kilometers. Still no sign of the track. What the hell—where did the whole Yijin City rail line go?!”
“Are we trapped here?”
“Hold on, there should be news soon.”
Back on Infinite Train, all key personnel gathered in Car No. 2, waiting for the scouting reports.
“Everyone,” Ning Jing’s voice came through, “Good news: we’ve found the track. Bad news: the break is in the northern part of the city. That means the entire 22-kilometer stretch of city rail is gone, including all backups.”
“What?! 22 kilometers?!”
In the Joker Convoy, Qian Dele looked at his stunned teammates and grumbled into the comms, “Hey, Monica, didn’t you say track issues were super rare?”
“You’re just really lucky,” came Monica’s reply.
Inside the luxury cockpit of the Monica Queen, Monica scanned the train’s system data and sighed. “We’ve always taken the orbital rails, and we’ve never entered a Polar Night Zone. Guess your bad luck just hit the jackpot.”
Still, Monica wasn’t panicking. Her train had full all-terrain mobility. That meant out of 22 trains, she was the only one with an escape route. Truthfully, she’d only joined the rail convoy to stick with Infinite Train. After all, this man had just piloted a giant mecha and smashed an S-Class Eerie Entity. Monica knew that in the apocalypse, choosing the right team was often more important than raw power.
And in that decision—she had no doubts.
