Chapter 111: Stalled【overdoing The Foreshadowing】
The old bus pierced through the darkness, speeding quickly along the roads.
But suddenly, a strange old attic appeared by the roadside ahead.
The attic was big red, with two red lanterns hanging at the doorway.
At this moment, the attic’s front door was tightly closed, and the lanterns were extinguished.
Red streamers hung down like the attic’s hair.
A black small path led straight to this old attic that looked extremely ominous.
In front of the small path, a strange figure was standing.
The figure’s skin was dry and withered, like a dried corpse.
Yet it was wearing a big red wedding dress.
The wedding dress was bewitching, extremely conspicuous in this dim world.
A dried corpse wearing a wedding dress?
Another ghost!
Yang Jian’s eyes flickered, but suddenly, his nose twitched, and a strong bloody smell abruptly appeared.
Yang Jian instantly looked around left and right, but failed to find the source of the bloody smell.
Why was there such a strong bloody smell?
Was someone injured?
But how was that possible? There was no one injured inside the bus.
There were very few people on the bus; the rest were all ghosts.
Smelling this bloody smell, Yang Jian gradually felt a bad premonition rising in his heart.
Something might happen!
No!
Not might!
The bus suddenly made an emergency brake.
Everyone’s bodies leaned forward; those who weren’t seated steadily almost fell over.
The bus.
Stopped.
It stopped strangely in the middle of the highway, neither pulling into a station nor reaching some endpoint; the situation was completely different from before.
But the next moment, what made Yang Jian feel his hair stand on end was that the grave-crying ghost in white mourning clothes, sitting in front near the bus door, slowly stood up, then turned around and slowly walked toward the back of the bus cabin.
White cloth covered the grave-crying ghost’s face, only outlining hollow features. At this moment, its stiff body walked over, emanating a cold aura throughout, which carried the rotten stench of mud and corpse odor. Just one glance instilled fear in the heart.
“What’s going on? The bus stopped, and the ghost started moving too.” Yang Jian’s eyes flickered as he stared intently at that grave-crying ghost.
Was this ghost getting off the bus?
Or some other reason.
However, before he could think more.
“Bang~!”
The next moment.
The bus back door, which had never opened, suddenly opened.
The cool night wind from outside poured in, making one shudder involuntarily.
At this time, the passenger count on the bus’s electronic display screen changed from 3 to 2.
Some ghost chose to get off.
In the end, that approaching grave-crying ghost also walked off the bus slowly like the previous ghosts, without choosing to attack these living people sitting in the back.
Inside the bus cabin, the number of ghosts decreased to a great degree.
At first glance, this seemed like very good news. At least those few ghosts that got on before had all left the bus by now, though the passenger count on the electronic display still showed 1.
All the ghosts got off, yet this last remaining ghost still hadn’t gotten off.
Yang Jian watched the number change. Although it wasn’t completely cleared, it was much better than before, so he could breathe a sigh of relief for now.
However, before he could think more, the man who had been sleeping in the last row suddenly stood up from his seat.
Without a word, he immediately rushed to get off, as if he didn’t want to stay here a moment longer.
“At a time like this, he chooses to get off?” Yang Jian was immediately stunned.
The other party was Xu Feng, the person in charge of Xiao Chun City.
He had boarded this ghost bus entirely because of him.
The bus stopped in the middle of the road, with two ghosts getting off. If a normal person followed and got off in this situation, they would probably die the moment they stepped off. After all, the ghosts outside might not have gone far and could still be lingering nearby. Without the bus’s protection, the ghosts that got off earlier wouldn’t continue to stay quiet.
Moreover, there was still a ghost waiting menacingly at the road junction not far away.
“Knowing full well how dangerous this situation is, Xu Feng still chooses to get off. There must be a reason. Perhaps compared to those few ghosts outside, the bus cabin is even more dangerous right now. Was that emergency stop in the middle of the road some special situation?”
Yang Jian quickly started thinking in his mind.
However, before he could think more.
The bus’s headlights suddenly went out, and then the lights in the bus cabin aisle quickly started extinguishing.
A wave of darkness instantly began extending rapidly from the front of the bus cabin to the back.
Extreme danger~!
As the darkness enveloped, Yang Jian felt an unprecedented sense of crisis. His ghost eye was restless, and even using ghost shadow felt somewhat hard to suppress.
As for Zhang Hao beside him and those two girls, they were filled with fear and confusion, unable to tell if this happening was good or bad.
“Leave this place.”
After weighing everything, Yang Jian gritted his teeth and chose to leave this bus.
He was now certain that something was wrong with this bus, and this problem was extremely fatal to people inside the bus cabin. No, perhaps it wasn’t just targeted at people, but at ghosts as well.
With a flash of red light.
Yang Jian disappeared from the bus cabin along with Zhang Hao and the other three.
He stood up too late and could only use ghost domain to instantly transfer away.
And after the bus door opened, the ghost domain took effect and could extend outside the bus cabin.
As soon as Yang Jian left, the inside of the bus turned pitch black.
One couldn’t see their fingers; it was dead silent.
But the road outside was also dim, only barely able to make out outlines.
“It stalled again. Xu Feng, looks like we’re really quite unlucky. Don’t know if we can survive this time.”
Outside the bus, a voice suddenly rang out. A man wearing a duckbill cap was seen squatting by the roadside, letting out a strange cold laugh. He didn’t know when he had gotten off.
He seemed to have gotten off early, but no one had noticed how earlier.
That person in the last row next to Xu Feng before wasn’t a ghost, but a person.
From his tone, it seemed he had been on the bus with Xu Feng for quite some time.
“That newcomer seems to have died on the bus. I wanted to pull him along to secure a seat and prevent accidents. Since we encountered the bus stalling, that’s just his bad luck. If he died outside, the fierce ghost revival afterward would bring considerable trouble. Only dying on the bus is safe.”
Xu Feng’s face was grim. The purpose of him helping Yang Jian was actually to secure a seat. As for the real reason for securing the seat.
Probably only those who had stayed on the bus for a long time like them knew.
Looking at the stalled and extinguished bus, Xu Feng’s expression wasn’t good, because stalling meant he had to leave the temporarily safe bus and go outside.
If he forcibly stayed on the bus, it would be certain death, even for a ghost controller. There was no exception.
He had seen such a scene before. That time, almost half the bus cabin died, including a ghost controller stronger than him. But that time, he knew nothing and survived muddleheaded, only later understanding how terrifying it was.
“Three ghosts outside, don’t know if they’ve left. If they have, everything’s easy. If they’re still lingering nearby, we can only continue delaying time waiting for the bus to start again. Hope the situation doesn’t worsen further.” Xu Feng glanced to the side.
He hadn’t gone too far from the stalled bus, while also staying vigilant against all abnormalities around.
“Leaving aside the danger outside, I just heard your conversation. That newcomer was also a ghost controller who tracked your signal here, so he was helping you. Is it really okay to silently sell him out like that?”
The duckbill cap man nearby suddenly laughed teasingly. He was also watching the surroundings.
Xu Feng’s face was calm: “His death due to not knowing some rules of the bus is none of my business. Without my reminder, he would have died at the first stop earlier. Strictly speaking, I helped him. What can I do if the bus suddenly stalls? No one wants to encounter this. With three ghosts lingering outside already very dangerous, plus that newcomer likely dying and causing fierce ghost revival, our survival chance outside would be suppressed to the lowest.”
“So strictly speaking, this saved us.”
The duckbill cap man said: “Maybe he’s an expert. If you pulled him along, he might cooperate with you to fend off ghosts that could appear anytime, greatly increasing survival rate. You said earlier that more people on the bus securing seats is good. After all, it’s not easy to have more ghost controllers on the bus. We waited these days and only got one.”
“It’s precisely because it’s hard to get one that expectations aren’t high. Who knows when that seat of his will be useful. If nothing happens, I could pull him along, but once something does, no way. So take care of the present first. Surviving the present is what matters.”
Xu Feng said.
“As for the expert you mentioned, that’s even more impossible. I’ve seen the ghost controller headquarters files; the latest update was fifteen days ago. I remember all the top ghost controllers with names. He’s just a pure newcomer. Expecting him to be of big use? Here, the only truly capable ones are you and me. If not trapped by this bus, we’d definitely be among the top in the ghost controller circle right now.”
His words revealed strong confidence.
“An anomaly created by accident, what’s there to be confident about.” The duckbill cap man said.
Their conversation had no concealment.
Perhaps they were used to this kind of exchange. After all, they stayed on the strange bus all day. Once people on the bus died, only ghosts remained. Saying any secrets didn’t matter; even if someone heard, ordinary people couldn’t easily leave the bus and would soon become dead.
And dead people can’t keep secrets.
But Xu Feng overlooked Yang Jian’s existence.
He didn’t see Yang Jian get off and thought he had died on the bus, as per past experiences without exception.
However, Yang Jian had used ghost domain to leave at the last moment when the lights inside the bus went out.
Not only did he leave, he also casually pulled Zhang Hao and the three ordinary people along.
Yang Jian was now standing by the roadside, only about ten meters from Xu Feng and the duckbill cap man, but he in the ghost domain hadn’t been discovered.
These two seemed to have no resistance to ghost domain abilities.
“This strange bus can also stall? After stalling, anyone staying on the bus is certain to die. Xu Feng needs someone on the bus to secure a seat, and not just any ordinary person, but a ghost controller. He deliberately got off at the very last moment to steady me, leaving me, the one closest to the door, in the bus cabin to die inside.”
Yang Jian’s gaze shifted slightly; he had heard the whole story.
But he wasn’t angry at Xu Feng’s selfish actions.
For survival, ghost controllers doing such things wasn’t strange, because if it were him, he wouldn’t save Xu Feng if something happened to him. The only difference was that he wouldn’t deliberately sabotage others.
Of course, not being angry didn’t mean he had no opinion of Xu Feng.
Whether it was his deliberate reminder earlier not to get off or intentionally leaving him in the bus cabin, it was all strongly purposeful, using his information advantage to manipulate this newcomer who had just boarded.
“Discussing my matters right in front of me like this, isn’t that a bit inappropriate?”
At this moment, Yang Jian suddenly appeared, his figure materializing on the road, looking at them coldly.
Yang Jian was already annoyed, and now even more so.
He boarded this bus largely because of this guy.
Moreover, he was now carrying a human skin paper with him.
His trip on this ghost bus might have been schemed from the start.
And now the other party was sabotaging him.
Yang Jian chuckled.
Hm?
Hearing his voice, Xu Feng trembled violently, then looked at Yang Jian with extreme shock: “Weren’t you on the bus? How could you appear here?”
At that timing earlier, he judged Yang Jian couldn’t possibly leave the bus cabin.
Even acting fastest, he’d be trapped inside.
“My legs are pretty nimble, got off quickly, so I left.” Yang Jian said: “Sorry to disappoint you. Looks like this newcomer of yours is going to cause you trouble.”
“Interesting.”
The duckbill cap man nearby was stunned for a moment, then laughed: “Thought you were dead, but you got off alive. I was watching you the whole time earlier. The bus cabin went dark and you vanished; thought you were dead, but you escaped.”
After all, he was also a ghost controller who had seen many bizarre things, so he quickly wasn’t surprised.
People who controlled fierce ghosts couldn’t be measured by common sense.
“I thought you in the back row were a ghost. Didn’t expect a person. When did you get off?” Yang Jian said.
“There’s a window in the last row. Jumped through the window to escape.” The duckbill cap man shrugged, indicating it was easy.
Yang Jian said: “Bus windows don’t open. I tried.”
“Normally they don’t, but after stalling they do. The door too. During normal driving, the bus door won’t open, but after stalling, the restrictions lift. This is a sudden situation on this ghost bus, with very low probability.
But once it happens, people and ghosts inside must get off, or it’ll be extremely dangerous—more than facing a fierce ghost. For us, it’s a death trap with no survival chance. Good thing this time wasn’t too unlucky; only three ghosts on board, and they haven’t appeared now, probably left.”
The duckbill cap man said.
“Since you’re not dead, let’s cooperate and team up to survive. As long as you can leave the ghost bus with us later, there’ll be unexpected gains.” Xu Feng immediately changed his tone, seeking cooperation.
“Survive from my hands first before saying that.” Yang Jian said indifferently.
He wasn’t going to waste words with this guy.
Act directly and kill him first. He wasn’t sure if the other would use his intel to sabotage him again.
Only dead people won’t sabotage him!
