9:15 AM, the third floor of the inpatient department at Jiangcheng First People's Hospital.
The smell of disinfectant, mixed with a faint scent of blood, drifted through the enclosed corridor.
Chen Xi leaned back against the cold white wall, her body tilting forward slightly as she raised her hand to rub her throbbing temples.
It had been fourteen hours since she started her patrol last night.
During those fourteen hours, Xiao Li had managed to squeeze in a quick nap, but Chen Xi had not even had time to drink water.
Chasing the Route 404 Bus across the entire city, rushing to Taiping Cemetery for the on-site investigation, conducting autopsies, preparing survivor statements, sealing off information, comforting the hysterical families...
Countless tasks flooded in like a tide. Chen Xi and her colleagues were so busy their feet had barely touched the ground.
...
“How is it? What did the doctors say?”
Chen Xi rubbed her aching stomach and took out a piece of chocolate a nurse had stuffed into her hand. Eating it, she barely managed to suppress the rising stomach acid.
The truth behind the living corpse incident had yet to be uncovered, and now a Route 404 ghost bus had cropped up.
She heard that the municipal government building was lit up all night, and the entire leadership team had been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night for a meeting.
Being busy to this extent made Chen Xi want to laugh a little.
...
“I just finished questioning them. They said one person is likely dead.”
Xiao Li's face was terrifyingly pale, looking as if he wanted to vomit but couldn't:
“Captain Chen, the situation... the situation is even worse than we imagined.
A total of seven people came into contact with the Route 404 Bus this time.”
“One is missing—the guy named Zhang Chao. We searched all over Taiping Cemetery and couldn't find him, only a pile of white stone fragments.
The forensic team said... they said his DNA was in those fragments. Wang Lei said... he said that Zhang Chao turned into stone.”
Chen Xi's heart sank instantly.
A living person turned into stone, and then shattered.
This was more absurd than a fairy tale.
“What about the other six?”
Chen Xi rubbed her eyes and asked.
“Of the remaining six... there's a middle-aged man nicknamed 'Lao Hei.' According to Zhang Dong and Zheng Zhi, he was blackout drunk all of last night and was supposedly left behind on the Route 404 Bus.”
Xiao Li took a deep breath and continued his report, “At six this morning, someone found Lao Hei at a bus stop by the People's Park, forty kilometers away.
He was still sleeping, with no injuries or abnormalities on him, and hadn't even sobered up yet. He had absolutely no idea what happened and kept asking us why we brought him to the hospital.”
The People's Park, forty kilometers away.
Chen Xi's brow furrowed tightly. Lao Hei had slept through the entire ordeal and suffered no harm whatsoever.
Why?
“What about the others?”
“The others... all claim they entered a game Instance, the kind of death game you see in novels and movies.”
Xiao Li's voice was dry, as if it had been scraped with sandpaper:
“They said the Instance was in a mass grave, and their task was to find the tombstone with their name on it and wipe it clean.
If they didn't complete the task, they would die. If they violated the rules, they would also die. They said Zhang Chao turned into stone and died because he broke a rule.”
“And... and then there's Wang Lei.”
At this point, Xiao Li couldn't help but shudder. “I just went to see him. The left half of his body... has completely turned into a paper effigy.”
Merely relaying the words could not convey the sheer bizarreness and terror of witnessing it firsthand.
A living human being, half solid flesh, half weightless paper.
The most mind-boggling part was that when the doctors examined him, they found that the left side of his heart was completely gone, yet the right side was still beating.
This had completely surpassed the limits of human imagination.
“The doctors are scared out of their minds. They've never seen anything like this and have no idea how to treat it. They could only recommend keeping him under observation for now.”
“And Lin Hao.”
Xiao Li swallowed, his expression strained. “Around his neck... an intestine has grown.”
“An intestine?”
Chen Xi's mind went blank for a second.
She wanted to ask if he had suffered some severe trauma that caused his internal organs to spill out.
But there was already a far more bizarre paper man right before this, so Xiao Li's description of "an intestine has grown" was likely a purely objective description.
“Yes, it literally grew right out of his neck, hanging off it and wrapped around like a scarf.
The doctor tried to cut it off earlier, but the moment they touched it, Lin Hao screamed in agony. Now the doctors don't dare to touch him either.”
Xiao Li attempted some dark humor, causing Chen Xi's stomach to churn again.
A body of paper, living without a heart.
An intestine growing around a neck.
Just hearing these things second-hand was enough to make one's skin crawl, let alone witnessing them in person.
“How is their mental state? Can they be questioned?”
“Neither Wang Lei nor Lin Hao is in a good mental state. Wang Lei keeps babbling incoherently, saying he shouldn't have stolen the gold.
Lin Hao is extremely irritable, cursing at anyone he sees and constantly trying to rip the intestine off.”
Xiao Li said as he swiped on his phone:
“Zhang Dong and Zheng Zhi are in relatively stable mental states, but they're badly shaken. Their words are all over the place, and they keep begging us to protect them, repeatedly insisting they aren't lying.”
“Have the hospital rooms been arranged?”
Chen Xi stood up straight and asked, “I heard there's a girl whose mental state is decent. Let's question her first.”
“Don't worry, Captain Chen. It's all arranged. They are all in the isolation ward on the third floor.
Two plainclothes officers are stationed outside each room. No one is allowed near, and they aren't permitted to contact the outside world. We've already reported this to Director Jiang.”
A colleague from the criminal investigation team nodded:
“Every doctor and nurse involved in their treatment has been strictly instructed. They are absolutely forbidden from leaking any information.
The hospital's director was also called in for a meeting, and the entire hospital has been ordered to seal off all information.”
Chen Xi nodded. This was the only thing they could do for now. “Have instructions from above arrived?”
Seal off the news, control public opinion, and prevent widespread panic.
At the mention of this, her colleague's face fell into a helpless expression:
“The higher-ups said we cannot make this public for the time being. They also rejected our request to warn the public against approaching bus stops in the middle of the night.”
Chen Xi pinched the bridge of her nose. “One person died last night, and two others turned into these monstrous states.
If we don't warn the public, and if the Route 404 Bus appears again tonight, even more people will fall victim.”
“The higher-ups said they're afraid of causing panic.”
Beside her, Xiao Li raised his hand cautiously. “I actually know about this—the higher-ups are probably afraid of a repeat of what happened in Sichuan Province back then.”
He was referring to an incident in the 1980s or 90s. In a county of a neighboring province, a farming family's dog contracted rabies and bit their pig to death. The family cooked and ate the diseased pig, and the entire family became infected with rabies.
Later, their relatives took the family to the provincial capital for treatment. On the way, several members of the family suffered rabies attacks. Their skin flushed red, and they bit anyone they saw, injuring several people.
As a result, rumors spread like wildfire, mutating into stories of zombies biting people. Eventually, it became so widespread that people claimed Qing Dynasty zombies had been dug up from the Wuhou Temple and were running rampant on the streets, biting many to death—
In short, the rumors grew more and more outrageous, eventually involving the military.
In the end, it caused widespread public panic and social unrest, leading to many unnecessary losses.
...
“The higher-ups' stance is that there is currently no concrete evidence proving the Route 404 Bus is a supernatural event, and everything is still under investigation.
If we rashly make it public, it will only cause public panic. Moreover, the peak tourist season is just around the corner, and they're afraid of impacting Jiangcheng's tourism image and social stability.
Currently, we can only increase patrol intensity, deploy more police forces, and patrol bus stops and main roads throughout the city to prevent similar incidents from happening again.”
Her colleague rubbed his head in frustration.
“Increase patrol intensity?” Xiao Li was terrified upon hearing this.
“We mobilized half the city's police force last night and chased it all night, yet we didn't even catch a glimpse of that ghost bus.
It can teleport, pass through walls, and vanish into thin air. How are we supposed to chase that?”
“Never mind. I'll go report to Director Jiang myself at noon.”
Chen Xi slowly let out a breath.
While Jiangcheng wasn't exactly a city that never sleeps, it was a nationally renowned tourist destination.
Even at three or four in the morning, the streets were still filled with people wandering around, eating late-night snacks, drinking, and playing mahjong.
—Especially commercial districts like Jiefang Road and the food street, which were practically livelier at night than during the day.
If the Route 404 Bus appeared in those places tonight and took away dozens or hundreds of people all at once...
She didn't even dare to imagine.
Chen Xi could understand her superiors' concerns, and she knew how severe the consequences of a mass panic could be.
But she knew even better that truth would eventually come to light.
There were simply too many witnesses to last night's events.
Just the patrolling officers on Binjiang Avenue, the staff at Taiping Cemetery, the hospital's doctors and nurses, and the families of those survivors...
With so many people, it was impossible to silence them all.
Before long, rumors of the Route 404 ghost bus would spread throughout Jiangcheng.
When that time came, the panic would only be far worse.
“Anyway, let's not talk about this for now.”
Chen Xi took large strides forward and pressed the button for the ascending elevator. “Let's go see Lin Hao and Wang Lei first. I'll report to Director Jiang later.”
...
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