Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!
Chapter 989: Endless Night City

Chapter 989: Chapter 989: Endless Night City

"What a coincidence." Xu Huo responded nonchalantly.

"Thanks for helping out yesterday," Liang Yi hesitated before bringing up the past event, then added, "You must not trust that Dong Yu, if she invites you to go with them, you mustn’t go."

"Have you been to District 002?" Xu Huo asked.

"I have a friend in District 002..." Liang Yi paused, "He mentioned that quite a few players in District 002 are involved in population trafficking, and some players abduct newcomers on the train. District 002 is not as good as they say."

Xu Huo thanked her for her kindness, without saying much else.

Liang Yi stopped there, and after finishing, she returned to her room.

The VIP section was quiet, with few players coming and going, and the next two days passed peacefully. Thanks to his strong regenerative ability, Xu Huo’s wounds had almost healed. As the train passed through the Daylight Zone and welcomed the night, it arrived at the destination, District 002.

The moment he stepped off the train, boundless darkness swept in from all directions, different from the usual night.

Ordinary night isn’t complete darkness; although dim, natural light from the sky and stars, to the players with abilities, doesn’t differ much from day. But the night in District 002 is different. With no light sources in the pitch-black skies, the darkness seems solid, obstructing vision. Besides the lone lights along the streets, the buildings ahead, behind, and around Xu Huo, even the entire city, are soaked in blackness—this is the infamous Endless Night City of District 002, with no daylight, only night.

Endless Night City, the nickname of District 002, suggests a city with only night. It’s unclear if it was always like this or if some catastrophe caused it to be so, but all the information, Beneath the Dimension, notes the perpetual night here.

People living in the normal world might find it hard to imagine what kind of environment this is. Just do a simple subtraction.

In a world with normal day and night, flip one’s schedule, sleep during the day, and be active at night, you wouldn’t see the sun for all twenty-four hours—a seemingly manageable task. Then remove most of the natural light at night, like daylight, starlight, moonlight, etc., which also seems acceptable since in highly urbanized areas human-made lighting is the main melody of the night.

But what if this main melody was removed?

Little things like indoor lighting, the glow of electronics, to bigger things like architectural lights, city illumination, leaving only small path lights that appear every hundred meters, doesn’t it feel like the world suddenly got quieter?

Not just for one-third or half of the day, but day after day, year after year of living this way.

With no daylight, all the lighting in District 002 relies on human-generated power. Though people still live according to a certain timetable, the "daytime" only accounts for one-third of it, meaning power is supplied for at most eight hours a day. In special circumstances, or when a major city requires a lot of power, the already limited eight hours for smaller cities might still be deducted.

In such a context, the local government advocates for conservation. The amount of power each distribution point can supply for appliances is limited, meaning people are not free to use power storage devices. When the designated "night" arrives, they must ration their stored power, which can also be sold back to the government, forming part of a family’s income.

Now, during the "night" of District 002, most places Xu Huo saw were engulfed in darkness. If not for the reflective materials on the exteriors of the buildings, even with Night Vision abilities, one could not see too far.

"This is the darkness without light." Xu Huo walked alone on the street for a bit, ignoring the two tails behind him, until he found a place marked "Lodging." After knocking on the door, a small peephole opened, revealing eyes as if covered in a layer of dust.

The people of District 002, living in perpetual darkness, had gradually deteriorated vision and corresponding changes in their eyes.

The person scrutinized him, "Two thousand White Notes a night."

Xu Huo glanced at the price tag beside, "Isn’t it five hundred?"

"Take it or leave it!" The peephole was about to close while speaking.

"Open up." Xu Huo called him back.

The owner cautiously looked outside for several seconds before cracking the door open for him to enter, and then followed up with a smooth sequence of locking the door. By the time Xu Huo turned around, three locks were already fastened on the door.

The owner wasn’t interested in his identity; holding a piece of Fluorite that emitted a faint light, he said: "You have to leave by daylight tomorrow morning; the key is on the counter, help yourself after you pay."

Xu Huo handed over the money and got a key, casually asking, "Who are those following me?"

Hearing the question, the owner was startled; he shoved the money back into Xu Huo’s hand, snatched away the key, opened the door in one swift movement, and pushed him outside, "Go find somewhere else to stay!"

The door slammed shut without a trace of mercy.

Xu Huo had no choice but to take his money back.

Darkness breeds not only a perfected electrical circulation system but also an endless emergence of crime syndicates.

In the premise where "light sources" can be destroyed at any moment, not to mention at "night," even the "daytime" in District 002 was not necessarily safe. Human trafficking as described by Liang Yi was one of the more common crimes. Besides the more developed metropolises, many medium and small cities in this region are almost under the co-governance of the local government and the local Dark Power. Officially, the government has the say, but in reality, the Dark Power’s reach was even broader than the government’s.

Hence, at night, ordinary citizens scarcely went out.

But staying indoors didn’t mean safety.

Three hundred meters, two hundred meters, three hundred fifty meters away from him, home robberies and kidnappings were unfolding respectively.

Xu Huo pocketed the map he had taken from the hostel owner’s counter and walked down a pitch-black alleyway with his head down.

The two trailing men saw this and gestured to each other, blocking the alley’s entrance from front and back, but by the time they entered, the person who had gone down the alley first had disappeared.

After easily shaking off the two tails, Xu Huo headed to the kidnapping scene, quickly tying the two people carrying the sack to the chairs. He gestured silence to the little girl who scrambled out of the sack, and only after she hurriedly closed the door did he sit in front of the two men with a chair and a single piece of string laid across his crossed legs. In his other hand, he played with the strings:

"I have a few questions for you two. Work with me."

"Don’t you know whose people we are? Just because you’re a Player, that doesn’t mean..." Before the one on the left could finish his threatening sentence, a string shot out and wrapped around his throat, lifting him and the chair halfway into the air. Ignoring the other’s reddening neck, Xu Huo turned to the other, "What about you?"

Seeing his companion’s face turning purple, the other man hastily nodded, deliberately lowering his voice, "I’ll tell you, I’ll tell everything I know!"

"Good." Xu Huo lifted two fingers, and upon hearing a crisp snapping sound, he tossed the corpse aside and directed the strings to the neck of the remaining person.