304 Disembark at the Stop
The bus was about to pull into the station and stop.
Passengers aboard this eerie bus had already been in a state of panic, terrified beyond belief, all thinking about how to escape this place. But after a series of attempts, they realized they were stuck on the bus, at the mercy of the uncontrollable vehicle taking them to an unknown destination.
But now, they noticed that the bus was actually slowing down to stop.
No one was pressing the brake or controlling the steering wheel; the bus seemed to be stopping on its own as if self-driven.
“The bus is stopping,” someone shouted nervously.
Everyone prepared to dash off the bus in unison.
Although the current situation was incomprehensible, as normal people confronted with such a bizarre event, the first impulse to think of escaping was undeniably correct.
“Is it really that easy to get off?” Unlike the others, Yang Jian’s heart was filled with concern at this moment.
With the sound of the brakes becoming clear,
the bus finally stopped after travelling for so long.
The next moment,
the front door opened.
A chill, along with a breeze from outside, blew into the bus, instantly dropping the temperature several degrees, causing an involuntary shiver.
Outside, it was dim.
Dead silent, as if they had arrived in an unknown and mysterious world that was definitely not a bus stop beside the road.
“Hurry up and get off.”
The passengers started to rush out frantically, eager to distance themselves as much as possible from the frightening bus.
Yang Jian frowned, extending his Ghost Domain cautiously out of the bus through the front door, making a tentative exploration.
Because he sensed that the world outside the bus was no longer the normal world they knew.
But compared to his wariness, the other people showed no hesitation whatsoever. In the blink of an eye, the other passengers had all rushed out the bus. Zhang Haw, Zheng Yaowen, and the three girls who were travelling with them also squeezed frantically toward the door. In a short while, most of the passengers had disembarked.
“The situation outside seems a bit abnormal.”
Although Yang Jian got up to follow at the end, he was not too hurried, as he could exit immediately through the Ghost Domain if he wished.
Only, the environment outside the bus was even more eerie.
“Where is this?” A middle-aged man who had gotten off earlier was dumbfounded.
This was not a bus stop at all, but an intersection with a utility pole next to it. Hanging on the pole was a sign, seemingly a makeshift bus stop common in rural areas.
But what was strange was not the stop; since there was a stop, there should also be some kind of town or village nearby, right?
Yet, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but a desolate forest, looking utterly unfamiliar.
Seeing that the others disembarked without incident, Yang Jian too decided to get off and take a look.
At that moment, suddenly, a voice came from the very back seat of the bus: “I think you must be one of the international ghost hunters. Since you’re a ghost hunter, you should be somewhat cautious. I advise you it’s better not to get off. Once you exit through the front door, who knows what kind of ghostly place you’ll enter. Anyway, I haven’t seen a single person come back alive these days.”
“Who?”
Yang Jian turned around sharply, his gaze fixing on the person who had been sleeping in the corner while wearing a trench coat.
“Who I am is not important. Since you’re on the bus, our predicaments are the same. It’s easy to get on this Ghost Car, but hard to disembark. You’ll find out soon enough. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and try getting off,” the man at the back of the bus said coldly.
“What do you know?” Yang Jian asked without making any rash moves.
The man said, “I don’t know much. All I know is that once this bus passes six o’clock, it will pick up a fierce ghost at every stop. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s two. You’ve seen that electronic display, haven’t you? It’s not recording the number of living people; it’s tracking the number of fierce ghosts in the bus.”
“So far, the number of ghosts in the bus… is 1. Lucky for us, that ghost got off.”
The person looked up slightly, noticing the passenger count on the electronic screen: 1.
That was one less from the previous 2.
Upon hearing this, Yang Jian’s expression turned serious, as this man’s words coincided with his own previous speculations.
He too had guessed that the passenger count on this bus, did not refer to the number of living people, but to the ghosts.
Out of the more than twenty passengers, there were two ghosts.
“How can you be sure that this is the number of ghosts?” Yang Jian asked.
The man chuckled, “If you can survive here for seven or eight days, you’d know this too.”
“Seven or eight days? Are you Xu Feng, the spirit medium who disappeared from Xiaochun City?” Yang Jian’s expression shifted slightly as he immediately spoke.
“Oh, you know me?”
Xu Feng raised his head slightly, his complexion haggard, his eyes bloodshot as if he hadn’t slept for several days, desperately hanging on until now. His pallor indicated he might suddenly drop dead at any moment.
Yang Jian said, “You’ve been missing for a long time. The headquarters wanted to find you, and the result was they had me track down your signal to this bus.”
After thinking for a moment, Xu Feng replied, “Then you’re quite unlucky. At the time of the incident, I accidentally lost my satellite-locating mobile phone on the bus. Although I tried to find it afterward, I didn’t succeed. If you say the phone signal is still on the bus, that complicates things.”
“Are you suggesting that your phone ended up in the hands of some ghost?” Yang Jian furrowed his brow deeply.
Xu Feng was on the bus, but his phone was not, yet the phone signal was.