A coach bus crawled along a deserted highway, with no one ahead or behind.
The highway was old, its asphalt surface covered in cracks. As the wheels rolled over them, the bus jolted and bounced, passengers' heads mechanically thudding against the seatbacks with dull thump, thump sounds.
Endless wasteland stretched along both sides of the road. Low tents dotted the waist-high wild grass, their fabric faded by sun and wind, hanging in ragged tatters. In the blink of an eye, it seemed as though a rotting hand had reached out from within.
The sky hung dark and heavy, as if rain were imminent. Fierce gusts swept past the bus one after another, flattening the wild grass and exposing travel bags and clothes scattered nearby.
The objects in the distance were backlit. From inside the bus, only vague black silhouettes could be seen, seeming to move slowly alongside it. Yet whenever one looked directly at them, they stopped moving.
The bus was quiet. Though half the seats were occupied, most of the passengers had their eyes closed as they rested. The few with their eyes open stared straight ahead, quietly occupied with their own business.
A young woman with a heavily pregnant belly sat beside Qi Si. A serene smile rested on her lips as she used knitting needles to sew a baby's hat.
Strangely, she had already run out of yarn, yet she continued repeating the stitching motions without pause. Her smile remained unchanged, as though it had been sewn onto her face. The longer one looked, the more unsettling it became.
Qi Si sat by the window in the back row, staring blankly at the seat ahead.
Today was May 5, the day the final Instance was supposed to begin.
According to the information they had learned earlier, the