As Su Bai prepared to leave the Mist Shop, he took a few small items with him. A string of blood-red beads, nearly the same color as the Red Moon, now encircled his left wrist.
The child who called himself Xiao Wu had originally hoped Su Bai would choose some dolls or ornaments as vessels for vengeful ghosts, but Su Bai had no interest in walking around with several dolls on his back. That would make him feel like he was cosplaying Santa Claus.
So Xiao Wu offered a compromise, producing this string of beads from somewhere. They were supposedly made from a special material, twelve beads in all, each capable of serving as a temporary vessel for a vengeful ghost.
An item like this was much easier for Su Bai to carry around. If he gained anything in a nightmare game, he could take his time after returning to the Mist Shop to turn it into attractive specialty merchandise suitable for sale.
"Vengeful ghosts and evil ghosts, huh?" Su Bai stopped in front of the Mist Shop's door.
As soon as he opened it, time, which had stopped because of the Mist Shop, would resume. He would have to return to the Route 444 Last Bus, complete the task of surviving for twelve hours, and face the familiar yet unfamiliar Ghost Bride in the back row.
Su Bai's trait was "improved puzzle-solving ability." After being suffused with the Red Moon's power, that trait had become his special ability, "Vengeful Ghost Puzzle." He could integrate the vengeful ghosts he subdued into himself like puzzle pieces, freely borrowing their powers at the cost of some of his own power.
At the same time, Su Bai also had to shoulder those ghosts' unfulfilled wishes and obsessions.
In his previous life, Su Bai had survived the "Route 444 Last Bus" game, which otherwise left no survivors, not because he possessed overwhelming power or extraordinary intelligence.
There had been only one reason Su Bai survived in his previous life-
He wanted to die.
He had been the only player among that batch of newcomers who wanted to die.
That did not mean Su Bai would actively seek death. It was just that, in his previous life, his older brother Su Xuan had gambled away everything their family owned. Then his mother had been in a car accident while out looking for his brother, and afterward, that devil of a brother had even gambled away the last of her medical funds. Su Bai had abandoned his studies, hoping to provide his mother with the best treatment, but ultimately lost her because he could not do enough. After spending a year searching for Su Xuan in the real world without finding a single lead, he had been dragged into the Nightmare World.
Although he knew clearing games would give him a chance to return to the real world, the Su Bai of that time no longer had anything there to hold on to.
So he had not resisted death. There had not been even a trace of fear or despair in his emotions. He had simply closed his eyes and let death come.
When the Ghost Bride's ghostly claws pierced Su Bai's chest to tear out his heart, a resonance of fate allowed them to read each other's memories. The woman who had likewise been betrayed by her family and robbed of her future, becoming the Ghost Bride, found a kindred soul in Su Bai. Not only had she spared him, she had willingly become his first puzzle piece.
At that moment, the Ghost Bride, A Xi, had whispered her obsession into Su Bai's ear: "Stay alive!"
Su Bai could borrow the Ghost Bride's power, but he also had to shoulder her unfulfilled wish and obsession.
Over the next ten years, Su Bai had gained more and more Vengeful Ghost Puzzle pieces. For a large number of them, there was only one wish and obsession they wanted him to fulfill: to do everything he could to "stay alive"!
Every player who knew Su Bai knew that this monster of a man treasured his life. No matter what, he would do everything he could to survive. Some even called him the human most afraid of death in the Nightmare World, someone who had all but become its strongest player precisely because he was so afraid of dying.
Yet no one knew that when Su Bai first entered the Nightmare World in his previous life, he had not cared about his life at all. He simply carried the obsessions of too many Vengeful Ghost Puzzle pieces. So even if surviving meant entering a marriage contract with a supernatural entity, he would not hesitate for a second!
In this life, Su Bai still had his mother to care for in the real world, and the obsessions of the Vengeful Ghost Puzzle pieces within him still influenced him. Repeating the way he had cleared the game in his previous life was absolutely impossible.
But by the same token, clearing it was no longer difficult for the Su Bai of this life!
Su Bai took a deep breath, shook off the memories of his previous life, then pulled open the Mist Shop's door and walked out.
On the Route 444 Last Bus, after Su Bai got off, the trio tried asking the driver about the "final stop." Strangely, the driver, who had previously been so talkative and polite, offered no response to their questions beyond an occasional sneer.
They did not even know whether the bus's next stop would be its final one.
Just as the trio found themselves completely at a loss, they spotted a familiar figure approaching the bus through the mist. He even boarded through the front door without the slightest hesitation.
The same school uniform, still not quite dry, and the same handsome, somewhat pale face instantly gave the trio a glimmer of hope amid their nightmare.
"You're back!" Wan Shasha could not help crying out.
At the same time, the driver glanced at Su Bai from his seat, then shuddered and quickly looked away. In a voice barely audible even to himself, he muttered, "He seems even scarier now."
"I remember now. I really have seen him before." Zhang Yibu, who had already said Su Bai looked familiar, looked up once more at that unforgettable face. Understanding suddenly dawned on him. "He's the son of one of my mom's friends."
"That kid everyone gets compared to?" Wan Shasha still remembered that Zhang Yibu had recognized the school uniform because he had met that "son of his mom's friend" a few times.
"Why is he here? I heard something terrible happened to her family, and I think she was hospitalized too. My mom's been going to the hospital to visit her a lot lately."
Su Bai heard Zhang Yibu's words just as he boarded the Route 444 Last Bus. In fact, it was not only Zhang Yibu who found Su Bai familiar. When Su Bai looked at Zhang Yibu, he also felt as though he had seen the boy somewhere before.
Su Bai had not given it much thought, but after hearing Zhang Yibu's words, he found something in his rather distant memories.
In his previous life, before Su Bai's mother passed away, most of their relatives and friends had stopped contacting them except to demand repayment. But one kind woman, despite having also lent money to Su Xuan, still visited Su Bai's mother in the hospital often. Before his mother's car accident, the woman's shop had been right next to hers, and the two had been close.
Sometimes, when Su Bai was held up by his part-time work, that woman would even help look after his mother.
Su Bai remembered that the woman's own life had not been easy either. She had a son two years younger than him, but that son had disappeared the year Su Bai's mother was hospitalized. Even by the time Su Bai entered the Nightmare World, the woman was still putting up missing-person notices everywhere, searching for her son, but she had never found any useful leads.
So... Zhang Yibu was that woman's missing son?
His so-called disappearance meant he had died in a nightmare game he failed to clear.
Su Bai sighed deep inside. He had never intended to get the trio out of this game unscathed. After all, he was no saint, helping others was no hobby of his, and he could not save the countless unfortunate players in the Nightmare World.
But if-if he could do something for that woman, his mother would be happy too, wouldn't she?
Before you continue