Chapter Summaries

Li was forced by Old Wu to take the late-night bus route to the remote paper mill, despite learning that three previous drivers and their passengers had disappeared in reservoir crashes. He began the first shift in bus 2386 and saw the gatekeeper staring at him in terror as he left the depot.

• Old Wu assigned Li the paper mill night route after the other drivers refused, promising him extra pay and ordering him to start that night.
• Old Tang warned Li that three drivers had driven full buses into a reservoir on the route within six months, and that the city had suppressed the accidents.
• Li grew angry at Old Wu, but could not find him and eventually boarded bus 2386 at ten thirty that night.
• Li started the bus and saw the old gatekeeper staring at him in terror through the gatehouse window.

A bus driver took the late-night route past Tangwazi Reservoir and spoke with an old man who warned him about a driver who had driven a busload of people into the water. After an old woman revealed that the old man’s seat had been empty, Old Tang admitted he had invented a fortune-teller’s reassurance and warned that the woman had appeared before three drivers’ fatal accidents.

• The driver took the paper mill route, passed the Tangwazi Reservoir stop, and heard an old man say a driver had once run a busload of people into the reservoir after encountering a ghost.
• At the terminus, an old woman returned for her vegetable basket and told the driver that the seat where he had spoken with the old man had been empty the entire ride.
• The frightened driver called Old Tang, who falsely claimed a fortune-teller had said ghosts would avoid him, and the driver made it safely back to the station.
• Old Tang confessed he had made up the fortune-teller and revealed that three drivers who later had accidents had each carried an old woman who left a vegetable basket on their bus.

Li Yao drove Route 13 again so Bai Fan could ride home, then confronted Old Wu about the route’s dangerous history. Old Wu revealed that Tang Xiansheng, whom Li Yao had trusted for advice, had died years ago.

• Old Tang warned Li Yao that the old man or old woman from his route might be something unclean and gave him a spiritual master’s address.
• Third Aunt arranged a blind date for Li Yao, and he met Bai Fan at Story of Time.
• Bai Fan asked to ride Li Yao’s Route 13 bus home, so he agreed to drive the route again despite his fears.
• Li Yao saw the old man board the bus, but Bai Fan greeted him as Uncle Six, and the journey passed without incident.
• Li Yao confronted Old Wu about the three drivers who had died on Route 13, and Old Wu said Tang Xiansheng had been the first driver and had been dead for years.

After learning that Old Tang had died ten years earlier, Li Yao followed a smoking old man's advice to find a ghost catcher at 2386 Huaiyuan Road. He reached the apartment door believing he had found Liu Qingzhu, just as Bai Fan warned him that the man he needed was Liu Yunbo and he must not go to the wrong person.

• Old Wu confirmed that Tang Xiansheng had died in a bus accident ten years earlier, and Li Yao took time off, shaken by the revelation.
• Li Yao found Old Tang's note directing him to 2386 Huaiyuan Road to seek help from Liu Qingzhu, then discovered a smoking old man's message urging him to find Old Liu at the same address.
• Li Yao went to the complex and learned from a woman that Liu Qingzhu was a fortune-teller and ghost catcher, but that he had gone out.
• Li Yao confirmed with Bai Fan that the smoking old man was her trusted Sixth Uncle, then returned to the complex after dark.
• The woman led Li Yao to a door she identified as Liu Qingzhu's home, but Bai Fan texted that the intended man was Liu Yunbo and warned him not to visit the wrong person.
• As Li Yao finished reading Bai Fan's warning, the door opened.

The narrator found Liu Yunbo, who explained that the Route 13 crashes were caused by water ghosts seeking substitutes and warned that the narrator was bound to keep driving. Liu Yunbo gave him a black bracelet for protection, but after it fell off during his route, the narrator encountered the dead first driver, Old Tang, at the reservoir.

• The narrator mistook Liu Qingzhu’s home for Liu Yunbo’s, escaped from a strange old man, and then met Liu Yunbo outside the building.
• The narrator told Liu Yunbo about the eerie events on his route, and Liu Yunbo said the later Route 13 crashes involved water ghosts dragging drivers and passengers down as substitutes.
• Liu Yunbo told the narrator he could not quit driving Route 13 and gave him a black bracelet to wear for protection until he returned on the fifteenth day of the lunar month.
• The narrator drove Route 13 that night, fell while getting off to relieve himself, and lost the bracelet.
• At the reservoir, the narrator stopped to avoid someone in the road and recognized the figure as Old Tang, the bus’s first driver who had died ten years earlier.

The narrator encountered Old Tang, who warned him about Sixth Uncle and Liu Qingzhu while the narrator secretly distrusted him. After his cousin identified the bracelet’s beads as resembling human eyeballs, the narrator realized the appointment with Master Liu Yunbo fell exactly when the beads would have been exposed to air for half a month.

• Old Tang boarded the narrator’s bus and claimed Sixth Uncle had died in the crash ten years earlier in Tang Hollow Village.
• Old Tang warned the narrator to stop driving the last bus and described the fire at 2386 Huaiyuan Road that killed many people ten years before.
• The narrator repaired the bus’s damaged air valve, and Old Tang told him Liu Qingzhu had stayed at the complex to watch over a dead man surnamed Liu.
• The narrator’s cousin visited for hot pot and said the bracelet’s black beads felt and looked like human eyeballs.
• The narrator remembered Master Liu Yunbo had told him to visit on the fifteenth, exactly half a month after the first day of the lunar month.

After a date with Bai Fan, the narrator learned from Sixth Uncle that Old Tang’s secrets were hidden in the archive room of the company’s abandoned two-story building. He entered the building to investigate, but heard approaching footsteps and a chain upstairs and feared someone had locked the door.

• The narrator went on a second date with Bai Fan, ate noodles with her, and watched a horror movie that left him drenched in sweat.
• On his Route 13 shift, the narrator showed Sixth Uncle the bracelet Master Liu had given him and told him about Old Tang’s appearance.
• Sixth Uncle said Liu Qingzhu had died in the fire ten years earlier, contradicting Old Tang’s claim that Liu Yunbo had died.
• Sixth Uncle revealed that Old Tang’s secrets were in an archive room on the second floor of the company’s abandoned former office building.
• The narrator entered the abandoned building during a rainstorm and heard footsteps and an iron chain coming from upstairs.

Little Li investigated the locked records room in the abandoned building, discovered that the night watchman was his superior Old Wu, and escaped without learning Old Tang’s secret. Back at the depot, he decided to keep driving Route 13, then found the old woman from his first night on the bus waiting for him at the gate.

• Little Li waited for the night watchman to leave, then followed snores upstairs toward the locked records room, where he found a decomposed cat and dropped his phone.
• A loud crash and ringtone startled Little Li, but he realized the ringtone came from the sleeping man’s phone and retrieved his own phone as the man left.
• Little Li followed the man downstairs and recognized him as Old Wu, then returned to the dorm and worried that his coworkers might be ghosts.
• Little Li told Old Wu he would keep driving the bus, and the gatekeeper interrupted to say someone was waiting for him.
• Little Li went to the gate and saw the old woman who had ridden his bus on his first night and left her vegetable basket behind.

Li Yao was struck by a strange old woman who warned him to stay inside on the fifteenth, but he planned to visit Liu Yunbo after work. When Bai Fan called for help in her dark apartment building, Li Yao hurried upstairs, only to learn she had never called him before he reached the seventh floor.

• An old woman hit Li Yao with a potato and warned him not to go to work on the night of the fifteenth.
• Li Yao reasoned that the old woman, Old Tang, Liu Qingzhu, Sixth Uncle, and Liu Yunbo were divided into conflicting sides, each calling the others dead.
• Bai Fan texted Li Yao that she would ride his bus home, and he looked forward to seeing her.
• Bai Fan called Li Yao to ask him to escort her down from her dark, powerless apartment building, so he hurried to her complex.
• On the seventh floor, Li Yao received another call from Bai Fan, who said she had been in the shower and had never called him before.

Li Yao broke into the archive room and found records of three drivers who had crashed into the reservoir on the fifteenth while carrying large groups. As his crowded bus approached the reservoir on the same night, its brakes failed and it sped toward the water.

• Bai Fan revealed that she had faked the frightening phone call to test whether Li Yao would come to help her, and Li Yao reassured her that he was not angry.
• Li Yao learned that Old Wu would attend Fatty’s banquet, bribed Fatty to keep him drinking, and broke into the abandoned building’s archive room.
• After Fatty warned him that Old Wu had left early, Li Yao escaped the building but encountered Old Wu on his way out and then began his bus route.
• Li Yao read records showing that Tang Xiansheng, Wang Kai, and Xiong Wei had each driven into the reservoir with large groups on the fifteenth, alongside a warning not to carry large groups.
• Li Yao realized that his bus was carrying nearly thirty passengers on the fifteenth, and its brakes failed as it rushed toward the reservoir.

Li Yao survived Route 13’s unexplained rush toward Tangwazi Reservoir, but the bus showed no mechanical fault, and Liu Qingzhu’s warning to “don’t answer the door” left him unsettled. A new driver, Lu Yiheng, took the route on his first night and returned with a story about an old woman who had left a vegetable basket on the bus.

• When Route 13’s brakes and steering failed near Tangwazi Reservoir, an unseen force stopped the bus just short of the water, and Li Yao got the villagers off safely.
• After a mechanic found no faults, Old Wu gave Li Yao time off, and Li Yao went looking for Master Liu Yunbo but found no one at home.
• A woman at the compound entrance told Li Yao that Liu Qingzhu had left the message, “don’t answer the door.”
• Old Wu assigned Lu Yiheng to share Li Yao’s shifts, and Li Yao discovered that his bracelet’s beads had softened and begun to rot.
• Lu Yiheng told Li Yao he had driven Route 13 that night and had carried one passenger: an old woman who knocked on his window to retrieve her vegetable basket.

The narrator warned Little Six about the haunted Route 13 bus, then sought Liu Yunbo’s help against the drowned ghost and followed his instructions to tie bloodstained cloth to Liu Qingzhu’s door. After a bloody discovery involving the company’s new copper clock, the group saw two Fattys and realized one of them might be a lookalike.

• Old Wu announced the company’s award and arranged a barbecue, while the narrator warned Little Six about the dangerous Route 13 bus and its ghostly passengers.
• The narrator visited Liu Yunbo, who said a drowned ghost was trying to exchange lives and gave him bloodstained cloth to tie to Liu Qingzhu’s door.
• The narrator tied the cloth to Liu Qingzhu’s door and completed his bus route without encountering danger.
• At the company barbecue, Little Six reported that the copper clock had stopped, and Fatty went to inspect it in the office building.
• The workers found a bloody, mangled figure resembling Fatty kneeling before the clock, then saw Fatty return from another part of the lobby.

After a stranger dressed like Fatty died by striking the bronze clock, Li Yao and the others discovered that the clock could not be moved and investigated who had sent it. The ghost-catching master died kneeling before the clock, just as the deliveryman revealed the sender's name: Liu Yunbo.

• A dead man dressed like Fatty was found kneeling before the bronze clock, and the police identified him as a missing villager from Tiger Waist Mountain Village.
• Old Wu and the others failed to lift, push, or pry the clock loose, and Old Li suggested bringing in a master.
• Li Yao and Little Six visited the Scud courier depot, where a deliveryman agreed to find out who had sent the clock for a hundred yuan.
• The master in black examined the clock, said it was powerful, and arranged to stay overnight with a completely black cat.
• At two in the morning, Little Six called Li Yao and Old Wu to the lobby, where they found the master dead before the clock.
• Li Yao saw a message from the deliveryman naming Liu Yunbo as the sender and giving the address 2386 Huaiyuan Road.

After Old Wu described encountering monsters at Tiger Waist Mountain, Li and Little Six traveled there to investigate who had obtained the bronze bell. They found a photograph linking Old Wu, Liu Yunbo, and the supposedly dead Old Tang, leaving Li shocked on the floor.

• Old Wu told Li that he and his friends had found a monster lair beneath a field at Tiger Waist Mountain, where the creatures killed Third Brother.
• Old Wu said the bronze bell had been unearthed at Tiger Waist Mountain and might have been acquired by Liu Yunbo through the village chief.
• Li and Little Six traveled to Tiger Waist Mountain and encountered villagers whose strange, vacant behavior unsettled them.
• A young man warned Li and Little Six not to look into the village well and directed them to the village chief's house.
• Li and Little Six found a photograph showing Old Wu standing with Liu Yunbo and the supposedly dead Old Tang, and Li collapsed in shock.

The narrator learned from the village chief that Old Tang, Liu Yunbo, and Old Wu had served together and fallen out over treasures, deepening his suspicions about Liu Yunbo and Old Wu. After Little Six revealed he had rescued a woman in a red dress at the reservoir, the narrator encountered a similar figure on his night route and stopped the bus to help her.

• The narrator questioned the village chief about the men in a photograph and learned that Old Wu had taken a book, Liu Yunbo had paid for a bronze bell, and the three men had served together in the army.
• The village chief caught the narrator fishing for information, accepted 200 yuan, and offered to share more if the narrator returned with another payment.
• Little Six told the narrator that he had delayed finding the man in black because he rescued a woman in a red dress from the reservoir.
• The narrator returned to the company, doubted Liu Yunbo's claim that he had to drive Route 13, but took the night shift anyway.
• At 12:15 a.m., the narrator saw a woman heading toward the reservoir, stopped the bus, and ran to help her.

The narrator learned that the woman in red he had saved at Tangwazi Reservoir had died before the bronze bell, then encountered her alive again on his bus. Sixth Uncle claimed he had saved the narrator on the fifteenth and urged him to find a tiger-patterned copper coin on Tiger Waist Mountain before the next fifteenth.

• The narrator saved a suicidal woman in a red dress from entering Tangwazi Reservoir, and she said another young man had saved her days earlier.
• Little Six told the narrator that a woman in a red dress had died at the company, and the narrator recognized her kneeling before the bronze bell.
• The city expanded the cordon around the bell and formed a special task force as public alarm grew over its third victim.
• The narrator encountered Sixth Uncle on his bus and learned that Sixth Uncle claimed to have saved him on the night the bus nearly plunged into the reservoir.
• Sixth Uncle told the narrator to find a tiger-patterned copper coin on Tiger Waist Mountain before the next lunar fifteenth.
• At the paper mill terminus, the woman in red boarded the bus alive, leaving the narrator stunned by her return.

Little Li learned that the woman in the red dress was alive, gave Little Six the money she had left as thanks, and returned to Tiger Waist Mountain to investigate the tiger-patterned copper coin. After surviving a mysterious night of knocking without opening the door, he opened it in daylight and found Liu Qingzhu outside.

• The woman in the red dress explained that she had been abroad and had come to thank Little Li for saving her, then left him money to share with the other driver.
• Little Li gave Little Six his share of the money and went back to Tiger Waist Mountain, where Sixth Uncle had told him to find a tiger-patterned copper coin.
• A young man poured water over Little Li, and the village chief told him that the Demon Cave was a tomb from which two valuable treasures had been taken, including a strange copper coin.
• Little Li stayed at the village chief's house and remembered Liu Qingzhu's warning not to open the door if someone knocked.
• The village chief asked Little Li whether he had opened the door during the long night of knocking, then knocking resumed in daylight.
• Little Li opened the door and struck at whoever was outside, only to discover Liu Qingzhu.

After learning that a dead person had knocked on the village chief’s door, the narrator stayed in the village with Liu Qingzhu, who promised to reveal the truth about the tiger-patterned copper coin and their shared secrets. They followed a young man to a dilapidated house, where screams and a mysterious figure dragging a person unsettled them, before the grinning young oxherd appeared right behind the narrator.

• The narrator found the little girl mourning her dead ox and gave her two hundred yuan, then heard the old man warn him to leave the village.
• The village chief explained that anything left outside after dark would be dead by morning, while Liu Qingzhu later told the narrator that a dead person had knocked on the door.
• Liu Qingzhu promised to answer the narrator’s questions about Old Tang, Old Wu, Liu Yunbo, Sixth Uncle, and the tiger-patterned copper coin if he stayed another night.
• At night, Liu Qingzhu led the narrator to watch a lit house, where a young man emerged and walked to a dilapidated house in the fields.
• The narrator saw someone dragging what looked like a person toward the house, then recognized the people leaving as the young oxherd and a woman he had seen before.
• While Liu Qingzhu went inside the dilapidated house, the grinning young oxherd crept up behind the narrator, whose legs had gone numb with fear.

After helping Liu Qingzhu escape the young cowherd, the narrator learned that Liu Qingzhu was human and agreed to stay another night to uncover more of the village’s mysteries. Liu Qingzhu led him to the northern slope to catch the grave-digging pair, but their chase ended with the narrator realizing he might have left the village chief’s door open.

• Liu Qingzhu drove off the young cowherd, then told the narrator that the fire ten years earlier had not killed him and that he was human.
• The narrator agreed to stay another night, called Little Six to cover his work, and asked Liu Qingzhu about the red-wrapped well, which Liu Qingzhu warned was beyond anyone’s power in the Northeast.
• The village chief tried to stop them from going out, but Liu Qingzhu hypnotized him and took the narrator to the northern slope to pursue the two figures digging at a grave.
• Liu Qingzhu struck one of the grave diggers with his stick, and the pair fled in opposite directions; he sent the narrator after the injured woman.
• The narrator suddenly stopped chasing, alarmed that he might have forgotten to close the village chief’s door.

After the village chief disappeared and was presumed killed, the narrator returned to the city with Liu Qingzhu, who warned that he had to keep driving Route 13 or die. Back at the company, the narrator learned that Little Six had met the supposedly living girl in the red dress, while police said the woman killed by the bronze bell was also from Tiger Waist Mountain Village and had recently returned from abroad.

• The narrator found the village chief's house open and bloodied, and Liu Qingzhu concluded that the man-eating creature had killed the chief.
• The villagers held a funeral for the chief, and Liu Qingzhu told the narrator that the tiger-patterned copper coin had rendered the creature unable to move.
• On the bus back to the city, Liu Qingzhu warned the narrator that leaving Route 13 would lead to his death.
• Old Wu scolded and slapped the narrator for missing work, while the narrator asked him to hit harder because he felt guilty about the chief's death.
• Little Six told the narrator that the girl in the red dress had appeared on his bus and asked whether he had received her money.
• Little Six said police identified the woman killed by the bronze bell as a Tiger Waist Mountain Village resident who had returned from abroad shortly before her death, leaving the narrator stunned.