When Mrs. Manas swore aloud, Lin Sanjiu's shock matched the teacher's. She found herself momentarily dumbfounded, her emotions hidden within the folds of her brain's white matter.
After some hesitation, Lin Sanjiu explained, "I-I just thought it might help if I could convert my body into a card... so, I touched it with my 'head' and converted it."
It took Mrs. Manas a while to grasp the situation. Typically, after Lin Sanjiu transformed something into a card, it would be stored in her body, appearing in her mental catalog—her card inventory. But without her body, where would the items be stored?
"Where did your/my body go?"
Both Lin Sanjiu and Mrs. Manas grew anxious. Following Mrs. Manas's advice, Lin Sanjiu floated closer to the ground. With a single thought, her body materialized and fell with a thud. Shocked, Lin Sanjiu barely noticed a small cut on her temple. Despite discussing it at length, they couldn't fathom how it worked.
Realizing they couldn't solve it through discussion, Mrs. Manas warned Lin Sanjiu against rash actions before disappearing again, likely to inspect Lin Sanjiu's current brain form thoroughly.
Though concerned, Lin Sanjiu found solace in being able to store her body. When she gently touched it, it instantly transformed into a card. Keeping her body with her seemed the safest choice.
With Mrs. Manas absent, Lin Sanjiu flew unsteadily though the train carriages. A man scuttled along the ceiling like a gecko, causing the fluorescent lights to flicker. Lin Sanjiu wondered if the man caused her previous experience with flickering lights, but she knew little of his urban legend.
Observing her Teru Teru Bozu, she realized she couldn't keep it. The woman's sinister face peered through the doll's cloth. Lin Sanjiu could only see the two black eyes of the originally cute, smiling face on the doll following her—as a brain. For a second, Lin Sanjiu was afraid that the woman would suddenly reach out to grab her.
Other passengers remained silent, unfazed by the floating brain. Lin Sanjiu explored the train and noticed people in the driver's cabin. Now and then, she would see some passengers shifting a little in their seats. Despite the circumstances, the unique duoluozhongs at Kirasagi Train Station showed no interest in attacking her in this state.
With some thoughts in her mind, she drifted back to the carriage where she died. She tried to call Mrs. Manas a few times, but she did not receive any reply. Lin Sanjiu floated in mid-air absent-mindedly. As her mind wandered to the problems about her future, she didn't immediately notice when the old woman on the seat in the carriage suddenly moved.
"So, that explains things." Lin Sanjiu couldn't help sighing after she eyed the old woman for a few seconds. The old woman's limbs were very stiff, and she struggled to coordinate her movements. The old woman stood up rigidly. Her body was stuck where she was bending over at a 90-degree angle. She maneuvered in a way almost as if her back was breaking. The old woman reached for the newspaper Lin Sanjiu had thrown to the ground and stuffed it back into the crevice between the seats.
It was the same paper that warned new passengers not to get off the train. Lin Sanjiu understood its significance after thinking about it for some time. In the past, someone must have written that message and stayed on the train for some time. The person eventually discovered something terribly wrong with the train but was harmed before she could finish writing her contradictory warning. The spirits on the train had turned off the first piece of advice and placed in an easily noticeable spot. In order words, the paper with the original piece of advice had been used as a trap.
But Lin Sanjiu couldn't figure out why the ghostly old woman would suddenly remember to return the newspaper to its original position. Could it be—
"Good news!" A loud exuberant broke her chain of thought. It was Mrs. Manas.
"I've already checked your current condition thoroughly. I know what is going on now..." she sounded happier than when was still alive Lin Sanjiu, "It isn't your time yet. Plus, this is great for you!"
"What do you mean?"
"You're in this brain form because you've nearly exhausted your Higher Consciousness. It can only protect and surround that part of you. Though you lack your body, your Higher Consciousness is still slowly recovering. You can't see it yourself, but with that bit of recovered Higher Consciousness, you created a small pocket at the back of your brain. Your card is currently kept there. In other words, your card didn't vanish; your consciousness simply concealed it."
"But my other cards are in my body, right? Like my knife and special items. Without my body, is this anything to be happy about?"
Mrs. Manas's voice turned cold, and she spoke sternly to Lin Sanjiu, "I wanted to point this out long ago... As a posthuman, don't you think you are over-reliant on your items and physique? Any other person who can activate [Defense Forcefield] could probably maintain it for a week, whereas you cannot handle things without your special items... You don't even bother working on your abilities."
Lin Sanjiu considered what Mrs. Manas said, and she couldn't help but feel a little ashamed. Honestly speaking, her fighting style in battles had not changed much from the time she killed Ren Nan with a kitchen knife. The differences were perhaps that the weapons she used had improved and she had become agiler.
"Now that you have become a form made of Higher Consciousness, this could be an opportunity for you," Mrs. Manas was very positive about it. "From today, I will coach you to use your Higher Consciousness. You must practice your overall proficiency using it, controlling its amount and strength. Once you can use your Higher Consciousness to sculpt a replica of your body... No, that wouldn't mean you are alive. By then, we can see if you can link the replica created by Higher Consciousness with your actual body..."
"So, Higher Consciousness can be used as an all-purpose adhesive?" Lin Sanjiu didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this conclusion. However, she couldn't deny that seeing hope in her current situation made her feel much better.
"Anyway, duoluozhongs are uninterested in you now, and posthumans cannot see you. You have 14 months to work hard..."
The noise of the train traveling on the tracks quietened. Without warning, the train stopped at a station, and the train doors opened.
"There are many of them here on this train... Huh? What is a brain doing here?"