"Keep living!"

"Who exactly are you? According to the information Writer gave us, veteran players can't possibly appear in a new player's first game. You don't seem like a beginner, but you don't seem like a ghost, either..." Qin Ge stopped halfway through, apparently recalling the moment Su Bai had transformed into the Ghost Bride. He found himself at a loss for words.

"Forget it."

Qin Ge pondered for a long while with a troubled expression, then finally shook his head and said only, "Thank you."

They didn't know who Su Bai was. Or rather, the question of who Su Bai was didn't mean much to them in itself. If Su Bai had chosen not to act at all, they would never have survived this long, let alone had the chance to ask that question.

Since they had survived, they might as well thank him sincerely.

"Thank you! Thank you..." Wan Shasha was still shaken by what she had just witnessed. Only when she recovered enough to offer a proper thank-you did she realize they didn't seem to know the name of the person before them.

"No need." Seeing Zhang Yibu hurriedly rise from his seat as well, Su Bai smiled and shook his head. Then his expression turned serious. "Who knows? The next time we meet, I might ask you to repay this favor."

"The game isn't over yet." Su Bai glanced at the burning Ghost Village and warned the trio, "Until you hear that voice announce that you can leave the game, don't get off this bus as long as it's still safe."

"If you decide to get off, then... good luck."

As he spoke, Su Bai glanced toward the driver of the Route 444 Last Bus. The driver with the unusually long neck poked his head out to look at Su Bai, then hastily withdrew it. He didn't seem to have been affected by either the Ghost Bride or Su Bai.

The bus was still safe, too.

After giving those oddly familiar warnings, Su Bai took a deep breath and steadied himself against the door, recovering a little from his weakened state before stepping off the bus.

The instant he stepped off, Su Bai felt like parched land welcoming rain after a long drought. His utterly depleted body was completely bathed in the light of the Red Moon. Its moonlight was icy, but to Su Bai, it was a familiar, comfortable environment.

Unfortunately, his exhausted strength wouldn't return just from basking in the moonlight for a while. Su Bai took another deep breath, quickly adjusted to his terrible condition, and started forward.

Walking along the narrow path untouched by the flames, Su Bai watched the burning villagers of the Ghost Village with an indifferent gaze. Most were dark silhouettes with indistinct faces, seemingly nothing more than weak Ghost Creatures with little power.

Occasionally, he spotted vicious ghosts whose faces were visible. Every one of them bore wounds where ghost hands had pierced and slashed them, and all had fallen in the areas where the fire burned fiercest. Perhaps the villager who had tried to entice the players off the bus earlier was among them.

The Ghost Bride kept walking ahead along the path, but Su Bai didn't immediately quicken his pace to catch up. Rather than waste his strength running, he would save some to deal with any unexpected danger that might still arise.

After struggling through the Nightmare World for ten years, Su Bai didn't believe in absolute safety, nor would he ever let himself exhaust every last bit of his strength. In other players' eyes, this "Monster," whose behavior-and sometimes even clothing-was exceedingly strange, always had more than one trump card up his sleeve.

As he walked slowly along the path, even with the village on either side nearly swallowed by flames, memories of his visit to the Ghost Village in his previous life surfaced in Su Bai's mind.

In his previous life, the Ghost Bride had gotten off when the bus reached the Ghost Village stop for the second time. By then, there had been more than ten passengers aboard. There had been no vicious ghost like White Qipao trying to snatch prey from under the Ghost Bride's nose, so Su Bai and the other new players had survived until then. In the end, however, their only choice had been to get off with the Ghost Bride and accept an "invitation" to a feast in the Ghost Village.

It was fair to say that, during the Route 444 Last Bus game in his previous life, Su Bai and the other players had spent most of their time in the Ghost Village.

Precisely because they had chosen to get off willingly, the Ghost Village had looked no different from an ordinary village at night to those beginners. Even the villagers weren't faceless shadows, but ordinary-looking people who seemed rather friendly.

Torches and bonfires had dotted the outskirts. Inside the village, they could see all kinds of double-happiness wedding decorations and red lanterns. Some beginners had even thought the Ghost Village was the game's safe house, and that they really had come to attend a feast.

The outcome was easy to imagine. The feast lacked the food needed to begin, and the unsuspecting human players became prey trapped in the vicious ghosts' clutches. The more frightened and desperate a human was, the more the ghosts of the Ghost Village craved them as a delicacy.

In his previous life, Su Bai had felt neither fear nor despair, so he couldn't become the food the villagers wanted to hunt. By sheer accident, he had instead entered the village house where the bride, A Xi, was being held.

Though they had all become Ghost Creatures, both the villagers and the Ghost Bride were trapped in an endless cycle: finding the bride, imprisoning her, and then sacrificing her. As Ghost Creatures, those villagers might long since have forgotten why they were making sacrifices, or what they were sacrificing to. They simply repeated their desperate, horrifying story over and over in the Nightmare World.

The bride the villagers had taken off the bus had been locked inside a village house, her hands and feet bound in heavy chains and shackles. Even her bridal veil had silver bells fastened to it. Whenever she made a sound while struggling or trying to escape, villagers would rush in to check, and might even attack her for making noise.

The bride then had been just as she was when she first appeared on the bus: a beast without memory or reason. Even so, the Ghost Bride hadn't attacked Su Bai immediately. One had sat quietly on the edge of the bed, while the other stood silently in the room, watching her with curiosity. Neither had communicated with the other.

Only when the sound of gongs and drums announcing the feast came from outside had the quietly seated Ghost Bride suddenly thrashed and struggled. The instant she noticed Su Bai, she had even tried to pierce his body with her ghost hands!

At that moment, the resonance that would change Su Bai's fate had appeared.

In his previous life, the Ghost Bride, A Xi, had been awakened by their resonance of fate and entrusted Su Bai with her obsession and long-cherished wish to "keep living." But she had also known that the noise of her outburst would draw the villagers, so she had willingly possessed Su Bai, who had yet to gain any abilities, disguising him as the bride in the village house.

The village feast would last a long time. Only after it ended would the bride become a sacrifice.

Entrusted with the wish to "keep living," the possessed Su Bai had remained motionless in the village house, dressed in bridal robes.

Almost at the very moment Su Bai heard the notification that he was about to clear the game, an unmistakable glow of fire had risen somewhere outside the house. In that direction stood the altar where the Ghost Village held its ritual!

The altar's torches and bonfires had been lit. Still possessed by the Ghost Bride, Su Bai had been taken straight from the house to the altar by the villagers and thrown into its roaring flames.

When he was thrown into the flames, Su Bai had thought that this was the end of the game-and the end of him. Though he had no particular wishes or goals then, he had felt one small regret: he hadn't managed to keep living as A Xi had entrusted him to do.

Yet Su Bai had felt no pain as the raging fire burned him. Like the light of the Red Moon, those flames gave off no heat and instead made him feel cold.

The Ghost Bride possessing him, however, had wailed in the flames. Her piercing cries had echoed endlessly in Su Bai's ears.

"Keep living!"

"Keep living!"

"Keep living!"

This hadn't merely been A Xi's charge to Su Bai. It was also the Ghost Bride's own obsession, the cause of her endless cycle through the nightmare.

The Ghost Bride had gradually weakened in the flames. If she hadn't possessed Su Bai, perhaps A Xi would have lost consciousness in the fire, only to awaken once more on the Route 444 Last Bus and repeat this nightmare without end.

But precisely because of the unexpected variable Su Bai represented, the weakened A Xi hadn't fallen back into the cycle. Instead, she had awakened Su Bai's Vengeful Ghost Puzzle ability and willingly become his first puzzle piece.

Even so, after knowing the Ghost Bride, A Xi, for ten years, Su Bai knew very well that she still harbored regrets.

In the ten years since they had left the Ghost Village, that beginner game Su Bai could no longer return to had continued to exist somewhere in the Nightmare World. Even without the Ghost Bride, A Xi, there would be other ghost brides wandering that endless road.

For ten years, A Xi had always helped Su Bai like an older sister. Yet her own story seemed to have been left on pause all that time, never reaching an ending that would let her rest easy.

Emerging from his memories, Su Bai looked at the flames in the Ghost Village and thought that this raging inferno might be one of the most fitting endings for it.

A Xi, can you leave without regrets this time?

Seeing the Ghost Bride stop walking up ahead, Su Bai slowly caught up with her.