The bus

...Through the thick fog, a battered bus slowly approached along a seemingly endless road.

There were seven people on the bus: three women and four men.

They sat gazing through the windows at the dense fog outside, each wearing a different expression.

Confusion, bewilderment, fear...

But apart from that, their faces were all equally pale.

As though they had experienced something terrifying along the way.

The bus drove on until it finally stopped outside an old, timeworn villa.

Shrouded in the surrounding fog, the villa was pitch-black, mysterious and eerie.

The doors opened, seemingly telling the passengers inside...it was time to get off.

The seven passengers slowly stepped off the bus and glanced back, an indescribable fear in their eyes.

Because the driver's seat, where a driver should have been sitting...was completely empty.

Yes, this bus...had no driver.

Once the last passenger got off, the doors closed automatically, and the bus drove away again, disappearing into the depths of the fog...

The seven people standing outside the black villa exchanged looks, seeing the ghastly expressions on one another's faces.

"Let's go..."

"I don't think we have any other choice."

At that crucial moment, a slender man in the group spoke up. He wore dark brown, square wooden-framed glasses, and his handsome face displayed a composure unlike anyone else's.

"Do...do we really have to go in?"

The pretty woman wearing gold stud earrings spoke in a trembling voice.

She was wearing very little, so she was cold.

She hugged her arms, rubbing them constantly.

"What if...it isn't safe inside?"

The others remained silent.

At first, they had thought this was some kind of prank, or that someone had invited them to take part in a show...

But when they discovered there was no driver on the bus at all, they had been plunged into deep terror!

Although they had all once been staunch materialists, some of the things that had happened earlier...were simply too incredible to explain!

"So, would you rather walk into the fog?"

Ning Qiushui took a deep breath, trying hard to appear calm.

In truth, his heart was racing.

Less than an hour had passed between his receiving that mysterious letter and arriving here.

Yet that single hour had dealt an enormous blow to his understanding of the world!

"Have you forgotten the fat man who jumped off the bus at the crossroads earlier?"

At the mention of that fat man, immense terror immediately filled the woman's beautiful eyes!

Her legs went weak, and she nearly lost her footing!

Earlier, there had been eight people on the bus.

They had all suddenly appeared on this bus after falling asleep.

One of them was a fat man who had cursed the whole way, insisting that some unscrupulous producer must have brought them here for a reality show.

The fat man had impatiently claimed that their phones must have been swapped, that the driver was actually operating the bus from beneath their feet, that the fog was a specially constructed dry-ice effect, and so on...

Finally, when the bus paused at a crossroads, the fat man opened a window, jumped off, and walked into the fog alone...

Up to that point, everything had still seemed reasonably normal.

But when they reached the next crossroads, they spotted something fluttering on a traffic light shrouded in fog...

Only as the bus slowly approached did they see clearly what had been fluttering from that traffic light...the bloody skin of the fat man who had left earlier!

His skin had been peeled off intact. They could even see the extreme terror twisting his expression, as though he had seen something especially horrifying before he died!

And great streams of scarlet blood kept running down the traffic light pole!

The sight scared everyone on the bus senseless!

Someone refused to believe it and slid open a window, letting a nauseating stench of blood fill the entire bus...

At the mention of the fat man, everyone's face turned grim, and some even began dry-heaving.

"...Since none of us dares approach that fog, our only choice is to enter this black villa..."

Ning Qiushui took a deep breath.

He was afraid too.

But for some reason, neither the bloody skin fluttering from the traffic light nor the stench of blood had affected him nearly as much as the others.

Besides, he was very interested in that mysterious letter from earlier.

What exactly...was the person behind that letter trying to tell me?

With Ning Qiushui taking the lead, the others followed behind him, pushed open the black villa's iron gate, and entered the garden outside.

Their surroundings were silent.

Terrifyingly silent.

They had no choice but to huddle closely together. The pretty woman with the gold earrings, standing in the middle, felt someone groping her, but merely frowned without saying anything.

Let them grope me...it's better than getting skinned for no reason!

And so they reached the black villa's front door, and Ning Qiushui knocked.

Knock, knock, knock-

Soon after he knocked, footsteps sounded from inside. The people behind him couldn't help retreating several steps, watching the doorway warily, visibly tense!

Creak-

The door opened.

But the terrifying scene they had imagined did not appear.

The person who opened the door was a delicate, beautiful girl.

She looked only fifteen or sixteen.

"You're here?"

"Come in."

When the girl spoke, they realized that he was actually...a boy.

A very beautiful boy.

But the boy's voice was extremely cold.

There was little emotion in it.

As they watched Ning Qiushui follow the boy inside, the others exchanged looks, uncertain whether they should follow.

"You'd better come in quickly..."

Just as they were hesitating, the boy's voice came from inside again.

"That fog...isn't safe."

The mention of the fog reminded everyone of the fat man's gruesome death. They shuddered in fear and scrambled into the house.

The villa's hall was spacious and decorated in a classical style, with neatly arranged bookshelves on the left, a wooden staircase on the right, and three large sofas in the central sitting area.

A burning brazier stood between the sofas.

Inside, four people were gathered around the brazier.

They stared blankly at the flames without speaking.

In that silence, the atmosphere...grew colder and colder.

"Excuse me...where are we?"

"Why were we brought here?"

"What's going on with the fog and the bus outside?"

"..."

Finally, after thinking for a moment, Ning Qiushui asked those three questions.

But still, no one answered him.

The four people warming themselves by the fire didn't even spare him another glance.

At that point, Liu Chengfeng, the heavily bearded man behind Ning Qiushui, lost his patience:

"He's asking you a question!"

"Are you all mute?"

His booming voice reverberated through the room, loud enough to hurt their ears.

Finally, the man in a suit warming himself on the sofa directly opposite Ning Qiushui spoke:

"I know you have a lot of questions..."

"If you return alive from your first blood gate, I'll give you the answers."

At those words, a sense of foreboding immediately filled everyone's hearts.

"A blood gate? What's that?"

Something stirred in Ning Qiushui's mind. Remembering the mysterious letter he had received earlier, he asked the question.

Without raising his head, the suited man pointed toward the villa's third floor.

"You don't have much time. The blood gate will open in less than five minutes. Then you'll enter the terrifying world inside it and carry out the task written on the gate."

"Once you complete the task, the bus will come to pick you up."

After he finished, Yan Youping, a short, thin woman with twin ponytails, timidly asked:

"What happens...if we don't complete the task?"

At that, the suited man slowly raised his head and met Yan Youping's eyes.

His calm, indifferent gaze made her heart tremble.

"You'll die."

"And your death will be...extremely gruesome."

Everyone went weak at those words.

They desperately wanted to believe this was only a joke.

But...the suited man's serious expression extinguished their last shred of hope.

"Can we...n-not go?"

Another young man, who had dyed his hair blond, swallowed and asked.

The suited man glanced at him.

"Yes."

"But...you'd better never sleep again."

The blond man froze:

"W-why?"

The suited man gave a smile that never reached his eyes:

"Because if you don't enter the blood gate and complete the task, then...'things' from behind it will come looking for you."

"No matter where you run, they'll find you."

"And then..."

The suited man said no more, but everyone already knew how it would end.

Ning Qiushui glanced toward the third floor, then asked the suited man one last question:

"Before we go in, do you have any advice for us?"

The suited man paused, then turned his gaze to Ning Qiushui. Seeing his composure, so unlike the others', a barely perceptible trace of admiration flashed in his eyes.

"Advice...yes."

"Although the stories behind the blood gates are incredibly dangerous, there is always more than one way to survive. As long as you find one, completing the task and staying alive...isn't difficult."

Ning Qiushui nodded.

"Thank you."

After saying that, he actually took the first step forward and headed upstairs.

Seeing how decisive Ning Qiushui was, the heavily bearded Liu Chengfeng struggled fiercely with himself for a moment, then gritted his teeth and followed.

"Damn, buddy...you've really got guts!"

Catching up behind Ning Qiushui, Liu Chengfeng spoke in a low voice.

He had actually noticed Ning Qiushui back on the road.

It was hard not to.

Whether they were discovering the fat man's skin or smelling that overwhelming stench of blood, Ning Qiushui had barely reacted.

"Guts?"

Ning Qiushui gave a self-mocking chuckle.

"Do you think we have a choice?"

Liu Chengfeng was a big, tall man, so even standing one step below Ning Qiushui, he was only a little shorter.

"When we saw that fat man's skin earlier, you didn't even blink. Did you used to work as...one of those?"

"One of what?"

"A hitman."

"You've read too many novels. Where would all those hitmen come from in real life?"

"Uh...then..."

"I'm a doctor."

"Oh~ No wonder. A forensic pathologist?"

"Close enough. A veterinarian."

Liu Chengfeng: "..."

The two chatted as they reached the villa's third floor.

As soon as they arrived, both fell silent.

A thick stench of blood mingled with the strong smell of rotting wood.

There was nothing on the villa's third floor except a... wooden door soaked red with blood.

A line of crimson words was written in blood on the wooden door:

[Care for the bedridden elderly person for five days]

"Care for an elderly person... so that's our task this time."

Ning Qiushui's eyes flickered.

The others gradually came upstairs as well, and they all froze when they saw the words written in blood on the wooden door.

"It's just... that simple?"

Wang Yuning, the woman with the gold earrings, found it hard to believe.

Everyone whispered among themselves. Suddenly, they all stopped, as though they had sensed the same thing, and turned in unison toward the wooden door.

Creak, creak-

Something seemed to be pushing against the door from inside.

Before long, a pair of pale hands pushed the wooden door open!

As the bloodstained wooden door slowly opened, everyone's vision suddenly went black, and they lost consciousness...