At two in the morning, the dense fog on Riverside Avenue was so thick it could almost be wrung out like water.
The three drunk men remained completely oblivious.
Old Zhang leaned back in his seat, his head groggy. The alcohol slowly burned in his veins, dulling and numbing his senses.
His friend sat beside him, staring blankly out the window at the endless white fog, muttering incoherently:
“No more drinking, no more... Tomorrow, tomorrow I still have to go to the construction site to balance the books...”
Old Zheng, who was sitting furthest inside, slept the most deeply. His head was slumped against the cold window, his mouth wide open as he snored thunderously.
The bus cabin was incredibly quiet. Even the rumble of the engine, which should have been there, was completely absent.
The shadows filling the bus swayed with the streetlights outside, occasionally twisting into bizarre and eerie shapes.
Before long, Old Zhang felt his throat grow parched. Groggy, he wanted to find some water, but the moment he raised his head, a middle-aged man standing in the aisle suddenly entered his field of vision.
He looked to be in his fifties.
He wore a faded blue work jacket, his back slightly hunched. His hair was sparse, and the outline of the back of his head was so familiar that Old Zhang's heart skipped a beat.
“Old Qian? Why are you here?”
Old Zhang shook his groggy head, a sudden wave of warmth and familiarity washing over him:
“Did you go out drinking too? Heading home this late? What a coincidence! To think we'd end up on the same bus!”
The moment his palm rested on the man's shoulder, a bone-chilling cold crawled up his hand, making Old Zhang shiver violently.
“My goodness... This bus's AC... is freezing...”
In the next second, Old Zhang's smile froze on his face.
The man turned his head around with agonizing slowness.
That face was indeed the face of an acquaintance, yet it also seemed entirely wrong.
The man called Old Qian grinned, turning his head down ninety degrees to utter a terrifying string of words:
“Old Zhang, have you come down to join me too? Come to my place for a drink.”
Boom—!
The quiet murmur felt like a clap of thunder, sending a jolt of electricity down the spines of the three men. The alcohol in their systems instantly vanished, washed away by a torrent of cold sweat!
They remembered!
Old Qian was already dead!
He had died of liver cirrhosis from drinking too much, suffering a massive hemorrhage in the middle of the night at home. The few of them had even helped arrange his funeral.
His ashes were buried on the northern slope of Taiping Cemetery.
A dead man who had been buried for half a year was sitting on a bus at two in the morning, inviting them to his “home” for a drink.
“What the f—k?!”
Old Zhang was now completely sober. He sprang from his seat, his teeth chattering as he frantically scanned the entire bus cabin.
Not a single passenger on the bus was moving.
Those who were seated sat with perfectly straight backs, their hands placed on their knees, completely motionless.
Those who were standing hovered half an inch off the ground, their feet suspended in mid-air, stiff as statues.
No one spoke, no one breathed, and no one blinked.
The driver's seat was empty!
The steering wheel was slowly turning on its own without any human control! The accelerator and brake pedals rose and fell as if an invisible pair of feet were pressing down on them!
There was no driver!
A moving bus, with absolutely no driver!
The other passengers on the bus also looked like controlled puppets. Their necks creaked like rusted bearings as they turned their heads, inch by inch.
A man in an old Mao suit had half of his face crushed, his mouth twitching continuously.
A mother holding a child stared expressionlessly, her broken wrist gently patting the cloth bundle in her arms.
An old woman with bound feet in a floral cotton jacket had skin wrinkled tightly on her face, the bun at the back of her head meticulously neat.
One by one, faces as pale as paper slowly came into the view of the three drunk men.
There was not a single trace of blood on their faces, which were as white as freshly plastered walls. Their eyes had no pupils, showing only a vast expanse of white.
The corners of their mouths were all rigidly curled upward, as if their flesh had been pulled up by someone, stretching into a chilling, mock-smiling grimace:
【Hehehe...】
【Hehehe... New neighbors?】
【Are they going to Taiping Cemetery too?】
【They didn't buy tickets! They didn't buy tickets!】
“G-Ghost... ghost bus...” The friend's voice trembled violently. “This is a ghost bus! We boarded a ghost bus!”
“Get off... We need to get off!”
Old Zhang lunged toward the doors, frantically pounding on the cold metal. “Open the door! Let us out! Please, open the door!”
But the doors remained absolutely motionless, as if they had been welded shut.
The ghosts filling the bus continued to watch them in silence, as if utterly determined to take them away.
Old Zhang and his friend backed away in terror, clinging tightly to each other as they shrank into the furthest corner by the door, tears and snot streaming down their faces.
“We're not going! I'm not going! Please, spare us!”
“We were wrong! We'll never drink in the middle of the night again! Please let us off!”
The two pleaded incoherently. Just as they were about to fall into utter despair, the rear door of the bus suddenly let out a sharp creak—
And four young men and women boarded the bus, laughing and fooling around.
“Whoa, there's actually a bus running this late?!”
“I don't have any cash on me. I'll just toss in a couple of arcade tokens.”
“Why are there so many people at two in the morning? Don't these old folks ever sleep?”
The moment they stepped into the cabin, all four of them shivered in unison.
“Whoa, why is it so cold?” Wang Lei rubbed his arms. “The air conditioning is blasting!”
To Old Zhang and his friend, this was like seeing a beacon of hope. They lunged toward the exit with all their might, but it was as if some unseen force was blocking them. Before they could even get close, the rear door slammed shut with a heavy thud.
It was over.
Old Zhang and his friend looked as devastated as if their own parents had died. However, the four newly boarded youths looked at them like they were total weirdos. After a brief, stunned silence, they burst into roaring laughter.
“Hahaha! Are these two out of their minds?”
“Probably drunk. Look at them, they look like they're about to wet themselves from fear.”
Lin Hao curled his lip in disdain and said to the two, “Hey! What are you running for? Is missing your stop really worth being this dramatic? What, is the bus haunted or something?”
With that, he turned to Wang Lei and Zhang Chao and laughed, “These two old fogies probably think we're going to rob them.”
Wang Lei and Zhang Chao joined in the laughter, but Su Ya's face was growing increasingly pale.
“Brother Hao, let's get off,” Su Ya tugged at Lin Hao's sleeve, her voice trembling. “I think... there's something wrong with this bus...”
She pointed a finger toward the driver's seat, her face white.
The others followed her finger, and a collective gasp escaped their lips as their blood ran cold.
They, too, saw the completely empty driver's seat. The laughter vanished from their faces without a trace.
The chilling cold inside the cabin grew heavier, and a stench of decay mixed with the scent of burnt joss paper quietly began to spread.
A mechanical female voice chimed, carrying a bone-chilling coldness:
【Attention passengers, the instance is now at full capacity (7/7). We have arrived at the terminal station, “Taiping Cemetery.” Please allow passengers to exit first and disembark in an orderly manner.】
【Passengers who have not purchased tickets, please remain inside the cabin and wait.】
The cold doors finally slid open silently.
Outside was not a modern cemetery, but a pitch-black, desolate burial ground.
Countless crooked earthen mounds were scattered among the wild weeds, their gravestones listing in all directions.
A freezing wind swept through as crows shrieked in the thick fog. The wild grass rustled, sounding like the muffled weeping of countless souls.
Just as the six of them stared in horror at the scene outside, a line of ink-wash-style text abruptly flashed in their minds:
【Welcome, players Zhang Dong, Zheng Zhi... Lin Hao, Su Ya (7/7) to the Instance: 《Taiping Cemetery》】
【Instance Quest: Before dawn, find the gravestone engraved with your name and wipe it clean.】
【Instance Rules:
Do not leave the boundaries of the mass grave.
Do not damage any gravestones.
Those who complete the quest will receive rewards; those who fail will remain here forever.】
【Countdown starting: 3 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds】
The moment the text appeared, a cold countdown timer materialized in the upper-right corner of the six people's vision.
The red numbers ticked down continuously, each tick sounding like a death knell.
The six conscious individuals all wore expressions of absolute terror.
Rate on N.U.
