To Jiang Chen's surprise, although all the resentment surrounding Li Hongxia had dissipated, her corpse had not oxidized, rotted, or turned black.
He crouched down thoughtfully and began searching.
He found nothing at first. Then he used the Assassination Short Knife to cut open the female ghost's mouth, throat, and down into her belly, bit by bit. In the end, he really did find a sealed plastic bag in her stomach.
He took out its contents and examined them for a long time before discovering that it was actually a bus ticket.
Jiang Chen knew that buses had used tickets long ago. They were usually thin slips of paper resembling receipts, stamped in red and printed with amounts like fifty cents or one yuan.
But this ticket was strange.
It read, "Four yuan."
"A four-yuan ticket back then should have been for a short- to medium-distance coach. Right, some buses ran routes like that too." Jiang Chen remembered.
Some rural buses traveled between two towns, and their tickets could cost as much as four or five yuan.
"Route 444. What an unlucky route number."
"And why are there so many different people's fingerprints on it? Was the same ticket used over and over by several people?"
Jiang Chen noticed several red or black fingerprints on the ticket.
They differed in both size and shape.
The black ones were easy to understand: dried blood. The red ones were stranger. They looked like fresh blood and even gave off a faint bloody smell.
He examined it carefully and found a line of small handwriting on the back.
"On a date divisible by four, at a bus stop numbered with a multiple of four, hold the ticket and wait until 4:44 a.m."
"Fours everywhere. Huh, interesting." Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes.
The ticket