Chapter 169: Bus
Dadong City, a certain bus stop.
A man carrying a backpack stood in the stop, occasionally looking toward the end of the highway, wanting to wait for a bus that went straight to his destination.
He held a mobile phone in his hand and would occasionally say a few words to the front-facing camera, seemingly doing a live broadcast.
“Brother Tao, are you really up for this?”
Looking at the bullet comments in the live broadcast room that seemed provocative, Wang Tao showed no anger and instead revealed a hearty smile, confidently saying to the live broadcast room’s camera: “You guys can rest assured.”
“We agreed from the start to let the brothers vote on the location. Since they chose this Qing Yi Ancient House, I definitely won’t back out.”
Wang Tao, a somewhat famous outdoor explorer streamer on Mou Ya.
Not handsome and without tricks like biting a lighter, streamers like this were a dime a dozen on Mou Ya. Logically speaking, audiences watched him just for novelty, and it wouldn’t be long before he faded into the crowd.
But after several live broadcasts, not only did Wang Tao’s live broadcast room not become deserted, its popularity kept rising, showing signs of becoming the next internet sensation.
The secret wasn’t anything else—it was that Wang Tao would randomly draw a few lucky audience members after each live broadcast, have them write down a few locations, then invite the live broadcast room to vote and decide the next live broadcast location.
The first vote surprisingly selected the Amazon rainforest. Once the result came out, Wang Tao disappeared for several days.
Just when everyone thought he couldn’t handle it, they discovered Wang Tao had gone abroad and was doing a live broadcast in the rainforest with faint signals.
After this incident, Wang Tao’s reputation as an explorer was established.
As for why a perfectly fine outdoor explorer streamer would come to a place like this, Wang Tao could only give a wry smile.
These fans now were too hard to please. Rainforest, desert, neighboring country… they’d tried them all, but after spending the money, popularity stalled and wouldn’t rise anymore.
The team behind him was getting restless. Recently, various ghost stories had started circulating for some reason, so they simply found Wang Tao a relatively famous “haunted house” and wanted him to go in and live broadcast to test the effect.
If the effect was good, future live broadcasts would probably shift from outdoor adventure to ghost hunting.
Of course, Wang Tao himself didn’t believe in these things and even found them boring.
A real man should conquer the sea and mountains—sneaking into a house was what?
He had always been someone who liked adventure, had slept in ruined temples or on graveyards, but never encountered the legendary monsters.
If not for the signed contract, Wang Tao wouldn’t waste time coming to a place like this.
Whatever, just treat it as relaxing for a few days…
Wang Tao chatted idly with fans in the live broadcast room while looking up at the highway.
He noticed that amid the crowded traffic, a bus had appeared at some point. Judging by the license plate, it seemed to be the one he was waiting for.
“Screech—”
The bus slowly pulled over to the roadside, and the somewhat outdated iron door creaked open.
The air conditioning inside was on very strong. Before even entering, Wang Tao felt a chill blowing in his face.
“It’s almost winter and they’re still blasting the air conditioner? What is this driver thinking?” Wang Tao muttered, not thinking much of it, and stepped onto the bus.
But the reactions of the others on the platform were strange—they kept chatting and playing on their mobile phones, completely unaware of the bus stopped right in front of them, and even less aware that a big living person next to them had quietly vanished.
Wang Tao himself didn’t notice this anomaly. When he got on and wanted to pay, he realized there was no coin box on the bus, nor any place to scan a code for payment.
While hesitating, the driver in the driver’s seat spoke: “Find a seat and sit down. No charge for you.”
Free? Was there such a good thing?
Wang Tao looked up suspiciously and found the driver exceptionally old—not just grayish hair, but his skin was covered in large and small age spots.
Just looking at him made one worry he might drop dead in the driver’s seat at any moment.
“This wouldn’t be a black car, would it?”
Wang Tao suddenly had this bold thought. After all, a proper company definitely wouldn’t hire an old man like this as a driver.
Looking at the passengers on the bus, they were all silent and deathly still.
The seats were almost full, yet not one opened their mouth to speak, as if these people weren’t alive but just corpses.
Riding this bus wouldn’t lead to getting kidnapped for kidney harvesting, would it? He felt it was better to get off honestly.
While thinking this, the bus door creaked shut, as if not giving Wang Tao a chance to get off.
The old man in the driver’s seat reminded: “We’re about to depart. Find a seat and sit down first.”
Hearing this, Wang Tao stopped fussing. His mobile phone was still live broadcasting, and he didn’t believe this group had the guts to kill in front of tens of thousands of people.
Where to sit?
Glancing around the bus, most seats were taken. Finding a row to sit alone probably wasn’t an option.
The passengers above didn’t look like good sorts either, mostly with heads down, quietly like they were asleep.
The few empty seats were next to a white coat, a long-haired woman, an old woman…
After thinking, Wang Tao walked toward the nearest old woman and politely asked: “Is this seat taken?”
The old woman holding a basket seemed hard of hearing, staring at the seatback in front without any intention to respond.
Just then, the bus jolted, Wang Tao stumbled and nearly fell, so he temporarily sat down.
He wanted to share with the fans in the live broadcast room, but found the mobile phone signal intermittent, and the live broadcast room was lagging.
As expected, iPhone really wasn’t up to it.
The signal was too poor. If not for the team taking sponsorships, Wang Tao would definitely support domestic brands and never use this kind of phone.
Helplessly putting away the mobile phone, restless Wang Tao looked around inside the bus and soon spotted the display screen at the front.
It was a black dot-matrix screen with a red number on it.
“42? Is that the number of passengers on board?”
Wang Tao curiously counted and found the bus had 48 seats in total, plus one driver’s seat, making 49 positions.
Excluding the driver, there were 43 passengers seated, which didn’t match the number on the electronic screen.
Could it be worn out from age, making the screen inaccurate?
Just as Wang Tao curiously wanted to count again, he accidentally made eye contact with the long-haired woman in the neighboring seat.
