Chapter 45

He took off his hood.

His wet hair clung to his forehead like little black snakes.

K used the rain to wash away the spiderwebs stuck to him.

"Did you find anything?"

Tang Luo asked.

He had just arrived when he saw K burst out of one of the houses.

Like an enraged bull, K had his head lowered and his eyes shut, not even looking where he was going.

So Tang Luo had simply grabbed and stopped him.

"These two houses are weird. It's a ghostly maze," K said angrily, turning to glance at the houses. "We need to hurry."

"Oh?"

Tang Luo said. "Interesting."

Hearing that Tang Luo was interested, K hurriedly said, "Monk, focus on completing the mission! If we provoke something we shouldn't, we won't even know how we died."

He'd managed to get out by sheer luck.

He didn't want the monk in front of him going back in.

It wasn't because he was worried about Tang Luo's safety.

He was worried that Tang Luo might provoke something and drag him into it.

K had already gone in once.

Was he really going to go back in and act as if the "thing" inside the house had no temper?

What if it came after them?

As he spoke, K reached out and grabbed Tang Luo's arm to stop him from going over, then froze for a moment.

"Beep! Beep! Beep!"

Just then, a car horn sounded.

"The bus is here!"

K didn't have time to think about anything else. He let go of Tang Luo and ran toward the bus stop.

Tang Luo glanced at the two isolated houses, didn't go inside, and turned to follow him.

Although the houses were at the end of the road, at the "end" of their line of sight,

the road wound through the mountains, so the houses weren't very far from the bus stop.

Otherwise, K might not even have made it to the houses by now.

After running for a while, K saw a bus parked at the usual stop.

It faced the direction he was coming from.

The bus was old and looked rather worn. It was orange-red all over.

One half of its windows was filthy.

The half on the driver's side was clean.

Above and to the right of the driver's head, a white rectangular sign was posted. The words "Fengmen Village" were written on it in red.

On the other side was "East Station."

A double-headed arrow sat between them.

Above the arrow was the bus number: 330.

All the writing was red.

It was easy to make out.

"Beep! Beep! Beep!"

Seeing K standing in front of the bus without getting on, the driver honked again.

K raised a hand to signal, then walked over to the bus. Lin Zi'ang and the other two were still on the platform and hadn't boarded.

When they saw K and Tang Luo returning behind him, the tension in their faces eased.

"Where are you going? Are you getting on or not?"

The driver's voice came from inside the bus.

"Sir, does this bus go to the Terminal Station?" Auntie Shufen asked.

"Yeah, it goes to the Terminal Station, Fengmen Village. It's the last bus. If you don't get on, you can walk," the driver said.

"We're getting on! We're getting on!"

Auntie Shufen shouted and hurried onto the bus first.

This wasn't one of those spacious, bright modern buses.

It had only one door near the front for getting on and off.

There were no handrails or hanging straps inside, and no seats facing sideways to the direction of travel.

There was a row of seats on one side and two rows on the other.

The ticket collector's seat was just behind the door.

There was also a seat beside the driver, by the window on his right.

Tang Luo was the last to board.

As soon as he stepped inside, he saw a group of people standing in the narrow aisle.

They weren't moving forward.

The ticket collector glared at them with hostility. "You think you can ride without paying?"

That was right. They had no money.

None of them had any money.

Why had they been able to stay at an inn and change their clothes during the last mission?

Because Master Xuanzang was good at begging for alms.

Even in the World of the Dead, things cost money.

Of course, riding the bus cost money too.

It was an awkward situation.

How had God and Demon Walkers fallen so low that they couldn't even afford the bus?

Was this the distortion of human nature, or the decline of morality?

Or perhaps human nature wasn't distorted enough, and morality hadn't declined far enough.

K, already in a foul mood after being trapped in the ghostly maze, was about to lose his temper.

So what if they had no money?

He was riding this bus today, no matter what!

Fortunately, the driver spoke up just then. "All right, all right. It's the last bus, there's nothing around for miles, and it's pouring rain. Get on, get on."

As he spoke, he shut the door.

That kept a "seat hog" from being born.

The ticket collector glared fiercely at them, then said nothing more.

"Thanks,"

Auntie Shufen said cheerfully, not at all bothered.

"Sit tight. There's a lot of mountain road ahead," the driver said.

The bus, its engine still running, began to move slowly.

Through the filthy rear window, they could see thick black smoke pouring out.

It was practically a tractor.

Besides Tang Luo and the other four, as well as the driver and ticket collector, there were five other people on the bus.

One was an old woman with a head of white hair. Though her hair was white, she didn't have many wrinkles.

A young man sat beside her.

Both were very quiet.

The other three wore long white robes, like ancient costumes.

They also had long hair and kept their heads bowed without looking up.

They gave off a strange feeling.

Well... Tang Luo could team up with those three and form an ancient-costume squad.

Those five sat near the front.

Tang Luo and the others naturally sat farther back.

Auntie Shufen and Mi Ke sat together.

Behind them sat Lin Zi'ang, a fake breast expert who was mostly all talk.

Tang Luo sat behind Lin Zi'ang.

K took the middle seat in the last row, which was slightly higher than the others.

From there, he could observe the entire cabin.

The moment he'd boarded and seen the three people in ancient costumes, he'd felt inexplicably uneasy.

After being trapped in the ghostly maze, he hadn't been able to relax.

Just as the driver had said, the mountain road was winding, and it was pouring outside.

The bus never went very fast.

The sky darkened quickly, almost turning to night.

"Sir, about how long until we reach the Terminal Station?" Auntie Shufen asked.

"It's a fair way. About an hour," the driver said.

The bus fell quiet again.

Before long, they heard a faint snoring sound.

It came from the three men with their heads bowed.

They'd already fallen asleep.

No wonder they'd been looking down.

"Hiss—"

The engineering student in front of Tang Luo suddenly drew in a sharp breath. He looked ahead, then glanced back.

After hesitating for two seconds, he lowered his voice and said to Tang Luo, "Monk, have you ever heard of the Tianjing 330 Bus Incident?"

"What?"

Tang Luo shook his head.

Behind him, K watched Lin Zi'ang, clearly having heard what he said.

Mi Ke and Auntie Shufen turned around too.

The Tianjing 330 Bus Incident?

"It's... it's..."

Keeping his voice low, Lin Zi'ang briefly described the whole incident.

In short, it was an unsolved case from the real world.

Compared with Jack the Ripper, this incident seemed more like some kind of supernatural event.

In 1995, a major supernatural incident occurred at a bus stop in Tianjing. Bus 330 mysteriously disappeared. The next day, a series of astonishingly strange things were discovered on the bus.

Simply put, a bus had gone missing.

It was eventually found near a reservoir more than a hundred kilometers away, with three badly decomposed corpses inside.

The case was riddled with suspicious details, all the hallmarks of a supernatural event:

First, the bus that was found couldn't possibly have traveled more than a hundred kilometers after a full day on the road. Besides, its fuel tank had contained blood, not gasoline.

Second, the bodies had badly decomposed in less than two days. That couldn't have happened even in summer, but the autopsy confirmed that it wasn't caused by human interference.

Third, when they checked the surveillance cameras at all the roads leading to Miyun that day, they found nothing.

Fourth, before the bus went missing, a passenger had reported seeing ghosts on it.

The so-called ghosts were three long-haired people in ancient costumes!

At the time, people said they were drunk extras from a nearby film shoot, taking the bus home.

But an old woman noticed that they had no legs, so she pulled the young man beside her off the bus.

He'd also heard that the case had eventually been solved. It had actually been an ordinary incident that had grown in the telling.

Of course, Lin Zi'ang didn't know what had really happened.

He'd just happened to hear the supernatural tale. The more he looked around the bus, the more it resembled the version he'd heard.

Then there was the heavy rain, and the winding road that clearly led to some mountain village.

The thought gave him goosebumps, so he'd spoken up.

"Damn it!"

K muttered under his breath. The signs of a survival mission were already obvious.

This kind of mission didn't require much brainpower to think through or analyze.

But it was extremely dangerous all the same.

The struggle to survive left you gasping for breath.

One careless mistake, and you were dead.

Should he get off and simply abandon the mission? He'd only failed once so far. He still had another chance, K thought to himself.

But when he looked at the woods slipping past outside the window, he didn't dare take the gamble.

Before reaching the Terminal Station, he'd already encountered a ghostly maze at a house by the roadside.

He'd only made it out by the skin of his teeth.

If he got off and stayed on this deserted mountain road instead of going to the Terminal Station, who knew what other dangers he might run into?

Giving up on the mission didn't mean he could hide in a corner and safely wait it out.

The mission world contained dangers beyond the mission.

Sometimes, they were even more dangerous than the mission itself.

"No, no."

A dark glint flashed in K's eyes. "If I bet wrong and get off alone, it'll be too dangerous. I'd better stay with these people. That monk doesn't look weak, and the others can serve as cannon fodder."

Since danger was inevitable either way, it was naturally better to have companions.

Besides, at least the mission had a clear objective.

"Should we get off?"

After hearing Lin Zi'ang out, Mi Ke asked quietly.

"If we don't do the mission, we'll die, right?" Lin Zi'ang asked.

"Maybe," Tang Luo said. "But not the first time."

He briefly explained the God and Demon Game's punishment system.

Just then, the bus jolted violently.

Nearly lifting everyone's backsides off their seats.

"It'll be pretty bumpy for the next ten minutes or so. I don't know what's wrong with this stretch of road. They've been trying to fix it for years and still haven't managed," the driver said.

For the next few minutes, the bus rocked and lurched, bouncing up and down.

Lin Zi'ang and Mi Ke turned pale, looking as if they were about to throw up.

Auntie Shufen, however, looked completely unfazed.

As she put it, riding a tractor over mountain roads—that was what you called bumpy.

"Something's wrong!"

K's expression turned grim.

But it had nothing to do with the shaking bus.

His physical fitness was good enough to handle this.

Although he hadn't completed six missions and earned an all-around improvement, anyone who became a God and Demon Walker knew they had to train hard.

"Those three are still asleep?"

K stared at the three passengers dressed in ancient-style clothing.

Even with all that shaking and bouncing, their bodies swayed from side to side, yet they still had their heads bowed, fast asleep?

Faint snores mingled with the rattling of the bus and reached K's ears.

"There's something wrong with those three!" K couldn't help shouting.

Everyone lurched forward.

After K's shout, the bus braked and came to a stop.

The ticket seller turned around and fixed K with a strange look.