Chapter 74: The Village Built On Tombstones
“Bang~!”
With the closing of the bus door, the Ghost Bus once again drove toward some unknown destination.
At this time, only five people remained on the bus.
Jiang Shan sat in his seat, silently lit a cigarette, then closed his eyes and began to rest.
He was summarizing the information obtained from this flame out.
The disappearance of the Wooden Fish Ghost reminded him of something very important.
“The Ghost Porcelain Woman’s so-called ability to create ghosts is fake!”
Although the skeleton holding the mud Wooden Fish possessed the Ghost’s Killing Pattern, had ghostly characteristics, and even caused him to feel supernatural erosion when approaching, the moment it boarded the Ghost Bus, it turned into a handful of mud, which explained a major issue.
“It seems I didn’t guess wrong. Creating the Wooden Fish Ghost is the Ghost Porcelain Woman’s Killing Pattern. When the crying starts, it shapes some special existence similar to a ghost out of mud, and then kills through that ‘ghost’s’ Killing Pattern.”
This weird killing method had never appeared in the entire original work.
With that thought, Jiang Shan opened his eyes and glanced at the black screen on the Ghost Bus.
The number of ghosts recorded on it was still 6.
Then he shifted his gaze to Zhang Dongxing in the front row, who was tied tightly to the seat.
After Jiang Shan threw him onto the bus, Liu Yingying followed Jiang Shan’s prior instructions and tied Zhang Dongxing to the seat, mainly to prevent him from leaving the seat after waking up.
During the Ghost Bus’s travel, not having a seat or leaving the seat would result in a terrifying attack from the Ghost Bus.
Jiang Shan didn’t want Zhang Dongxing to die for such a stupid reason.
After all, although that extremely weird Luck Ghost made him dread it immensely, he had to admit that the greatest meritorious official in this flame out was this Luck Ghost.
The Wooden Fish Ghost’s terrifying knocking sound was even more frightening than the Grave Crying Ghost’s crying!
The first time he heard the knocking sound, Jiang Shan used his Ghost Domain to temporarily disable his hearing. In his previous life, although he studied behavioral psychology, he had some knowledge of medicine.
Combined with his near-bug Ghost Domain, he could arrogantly say:
He could perform any surgery a hospital could, and surgeries a hospital couldn’t, he could still do!
It was just that his professional level was limited; whether the surgery succeeded depended entirely on the scant medical memories in his mind.
“I can’t see the Luck Ghost anymore. In what way does it exist to be controlled by Zhang Dongxing?”
Jiang Shan observed Zhang Dongxing for a good while, but he never saw the Luck Ghost’s blurry gray figure.
This time, the Luck Ghost seemed to have disappeared entirely, without even revealing the slightest outline.
Ghosts can be controlled in many ways. Except for Zhao Kaiming’s Wishing Ghost, which has small-range self-mobility, almost all other ghosts exist within the Ghost Wielder’s body.
But the Luck Ghost gave Jiang Shan a strange feeling—it seemed to exist in this world, yet also not. Many times he had tried to find the Luck Ghost with his Ghost Domain, but he couldn’t even sense its supernatural.
“Forget it, we’ll talk when he wakes up.”
Right now, Zhang Dongxing was asleep, Ren Xue and Ren Ying in the last row had their eyes closed resting, leaving only Liu Yingying. She leaned against the window, her eyes fixed outside the bus, her trembling body proving she hadn’t recovered from the flame out yet.
Jiang Shan glanced at her without speaking, then similarly closed his eyes to rest.
For a full day, the Ghost Bus didn’t stop once, nor did any other emergencies occur.
This weird phenomenon made Jiang Shan furrow his brows tightly.
Normally, the Ghost Bus shuttles between the human world and supernatural areas to pick up fierce ghosts and transport them to different supernatural lands, perhaps to help fierce ghosts find puzzle pieces, but these weren’t his current concerns.
“Zhang Dongxing is still in a coma. Even the Luck Ghost couldn’t have such ability to continuously affect the Ghost Bus. So the anomaly isn’t due to the Luck Ghost, then—”
Jiang Shan thought as he looked toward the Ghost Porcelain Woman:
“It seems the problem lies with this ghost. Since it boarded, the Ghost Bus hasn’t stopped once on its own. That flame out was probably an emergency. So, it seems the Ghost Bus is taking the Ghost Porcelain Woman somewhere?”
Looking at the Ghost Bus’s current situation, it was hard not to think of the term “chartered bus.” At this thought, cold sweat began to form on his forehead. He now desperately wanted to know:
What was the Ghost Bus’s final destination?
Why could the Ghost Porcelain Woman cause the Ghost Bus to exhibit such weird behavior?
Ghosts are embodiments of world rules; ghosts don’t communicate with each other like humans. If the Ghost Porcelain Woman’s appearance caused the anomaly in the Ghost Bus, Jiang Shan wouldn’t believe there wasn’t some special force’s interference behind it. He couldn’t help thinking:
This special force could be human, or it could be a ghost.
If it was human, he might still have a chance to survive, but if it was a ghost—
Just thinking of the terror the White Bone Pagoda brought him and the Ghost Porcelain Woman’s various strangeness, Jiang Shan could hardly imagine what terror level fierce ghost he would face if a ghost was orchestrating all this.
From the moment the Ghost Bus hadn’t stopped for three hours, Ren Ying had similarly realized something was wrong.
Though she was somewhat deranged, it didn’t mean her intelligence was lacking. On the contrary, Ren Ying’s vigilance and patience exceeded ordinary people. After detecting the anomaly, for the next twenty hours, she didn’t close her eyes to rest but intently observed the scenery outside and Jiang Shan’s demeanor.
After continuously observing Jiang Shan for five hours, she finally noticed at one point that although Jiang Shan’s face showed no expression change and still appeared calm and composed, the few beads of sweat that abruptly appeared on his forehead alerted her to the anomaly.
The inside of the Ghost Bus was very cold, with a chilling sensation at all times that made one’s hair stand on end.
Actually, this chill was an illusion, representing that everyone was being affected by the Ghost Bus, their bodies eroded by the Ghost Bus’s supernatural.
Ghost Wielders were fine; due to the fierce ghosts suppressed in their bodies by the Ghost Bus, they could withstand this erosion for a long time, but ordinary people would die in less than three days.
Liu Yingying’s current deathly pale complexion proved this point.
Under this chilling influence, how could Jiang Shan sweat?
“He must have thought of something, and out of fear in his heart, that’s why he’s breaking out in cold sweat,” Ren Ying thought.
She pushed Ren Xue, who was sleeping soundly beside her, awake. The two exchanged a glance, then Ren Ying gestured something on Ren Xue’s body with her hand.
Ren Xue nodded excitedly at Ren Ying, then looked at Jiang Shan with greed in her eyes, like looking at a beloved toy.
At a certain moment in the Ghost Bus’s twenty-seventh hour of travel,
Jiang Shan noticed the scenery outside the bus beginning to change. Outside was no longer the straight road and the eerie, sinister woods; he saw:
Old mud houses built of yellow mud and thatch, some already collapsed, revealing the earthen kang inside and walls pasted with newspaper.
As the Ghost Bus advanced, a dilapidated village appeared before everyone, but amid the yellow mud-dominated village stood countless black tombstones everywhere, like wild grass covering the hills, in every corner of the village!
Jiang Shan’s expression changed slightly. He continued looking deeper into the village, where in what seemed like a slaughterhouse, there were no eerie tombstones, only an ordinary woods and a wooden house.
Behind the wooden house, there were clearly other structures, but due to the woods, Jiang Shan saw nothing. Suddenly, he jolted in shock, murmuring incredulously:
“Ghost Tree Forest?!”
Brothers, I’m really not deliberately suppressing the protagonist’s combat power. The next plot is the last one for the Ghost Bus, climax coming right up. Please, don’t go, brothers. I won’t do the build-up and letdown anymore.
