Chapter 47: The Eighth Passenger

The old woman with the Inverted Cross slowly walked down the aisle, trailing a thick stench of rot mixed with blood. As she brushed past Su Jiu, the newcomer's last line of mental defense collapsed. She instinctively cried out, "Gao Tian, please, do something!"

Gao Tian remained completely still. Hand resting on the Terror Blade, he simply watched.

The old woman with the Inverted Cross didn't even spare her a glance. She walked straight past, heading toward Gao Tian's seat.

The stench of rotting flesh clung to her like a physical presence. Compared to Su Jiu, the old woman seemed far more interested in him.

Gao Tian kept his hand pressed against the hilt of the Terror Blade, his thumb twitching restlessly. The weapon had been dormant for too long; in the hands of its new master, it thirsted to be drawn and strike down ghosts.

He didn't draw it rashly. The old woman was currently a passenger, and according to the rules of the Bus, passengers were forbidden from killing each other.

Furthermore, the price of activating the Terror Blade was that one of the three living people in the vehicle—Su Jiu, Zhou Yan, or Ling Feifei—had to die as a sacrifice for it.

The situation hadn't deteriorated to that point yet.

The old woman with the Inverted Cross reached the seat directly behind Gao Tian and sat down. The gaping hole in the back of her head, punctured by the Inverted Cross, still trickled blood, leaving a smeared trail of crimson in her wake.

She simply took her seat, closed her cloudy eyes, and slipped into a dormant state, showing no intention of attacking Gao Tian despite sitting only an arm's length away.

Gao Tian breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The Bus's suppression over ghosts still held. Even at such close proximity, the old woman simply sat there like a normal passenger without showing any lethal intent. It seemed she was still bound by the passenger rules.

At the same time, a new figure appeared at the front doors of the Bus.

It was a tall man in a trench coat. The inner lining of his coat was stained with blood, his face was haggard, and his hair and beard were a tangled mess. He looked like he hadn't groomed himself in quite some time.

He didn't reek of rotting flesh when he boarded. Instead, he carried the sour stench of sweat from traveling for days without a bath. Yet, at this moment, that odor was strangely reassuring—it was a scent that belonged exclusively to the living.

Upon boarding, the man's gaze fell first on the tall male corpse before shifting to the old woman with the Inverted Cross. His eyes then darted back and forth among Gao Tian, Su Jiu, Zhou Yan, and the other living people, as if trying to confirm whether they were of his own kind.

Both sides froze, neither daring to speak up first. They were terrified of mistaking a ghost for a human and triggering its Killing Rule by striking up a conversation.

The man found an empty seat and sat down. Whether he was among the living or not, the passenger count on the Bus had just reached seven. At the next stop, if no human or ghost disembarked and another new passenger boarded, they would be forced to cast votes for an expulsion.

Gao Tian glanced at the transit schedule. The starting and ending terminals were both listed as "Reality." However, the names of every stop in between were bizarre and unsettling: Blood Door Village, Old District, Blood-Red Nursery, Dexin Hospital...

The Pagoda Primary School stop was eleventh on the route. To reach that destination, they still had to endure nine more stops. There was no telling how many passengers would come and go along the way.

In the dead silence of the carriage, the first to speak up and break the tension was the ignorant and fearless Ling Feifei:

"Hey, you up there—are you human or a ghost? Why are you on this bus?

"Don't tell me you're here to carry out a task, just like us..."

The man seemed a bit surprised that Ling Feifei had taken the initiative to speak to him. His sharp gaze swept over her again.

"I'm looking for someone.

"I've been wandering this godforsaken place for over a month and haven't run into a single living person. I never expected to meet four at once today.

"I assume the other people on this bus are your companions?"

Gao Tian was stunned.

Ever since entering the Inner World, they had felt as though danger lurked at every corner, even while shielded inside the Bus. Yet, this man in the trench coat had actually survived out there for an entire month. Judging by the confident way he had boarded, he could seemingly navigate through different Supernatural Zones with ease. He was clearly a formidable individual.

However, Gao Tian didn't rashly strike up a conversation. Although the newcomer looked human, there was no telling what he truly was. Since Ling Feifei loved to talk so much, he figured he would just let her do the questioning.

Sure enough, the chatty Ling Feifei spilled everything at once:

"We're from the Living Apartment. That cursed place forces us to carry out tasks every now and then.

"Our destination this time is Pagoda Primary School. You know about Pagoda Primary School, right, mister? Oh, by the way, you mentioned earlier that you're looking for someone. Do you have family in the Inner World? Which stop are you getting off at?"

The man in the trench coat pondered for a moment before introducing himself:

"I have no idea what this Living Apartment is. But I imagine it's some sort of curse-like mechanism that forces you into the Inner World.

"I'm a bit different from you all. I'm a ghost hunter by trade and have dealt with all kinds of supernatural incidents. I actually retired quite a while ago.

"But last year, a Fierce Ghost dragged the only child my late wife and I had into the Inner World. His whereabouts are still unknown.

"To find my child, I've been relying on this Bus to travel through the Inner World for over a month. I've nearly died a few times along the way, and I still haven't found any trace of him."

He glanced at his watch, as if checking the passage of time in the real world.

"We're all human here. You want to survive, and I want to find someone. Our goals don't conflict. When it's time to vote later, we humans will definitely have to band together and help each other out."

Just as he said, anyone with a lick of sense knew that the humans on the Bus had to stick together; otherwise, there was no way they would survive among the Fierce Ghosts.

"By the way, my name is Shen Nian. People in the business call me Shen Three-Guns. You can just call me Ah Nian."

The man added. The fabric of his trench coat bulged, suggesting he was hiding several handguns underneath.

Inside the carriage, the ghost hunter who called himself Shen Nian engaged in idle chatter with Ling Feifei and Zhou Yan. The atmosphere was so suffocating that it made everyone drowsy. Just then, Bus 444 tapped its brakes, jolting the living passengers out of their sleepiness. They had arrived at the third stop: Dexin Hospital.

As the front doors swung open, Shen Nian rested his hand on the firearms beneath his trench coat, going on full alert.

An experienced ghost hunter was always on guard when dealing with ghosts. Shen Nian had been in the Inner World long enough to know that Bus 444 was itself just a supernatural phenomenon. It was entirely possible for them to encounter a greater terror out there—one powerful enough to board the vehicle, completely ignore its rules, and start a slaughter.

The Inner World was a realm of sheer, indescribable horror. Staying on the Bus did not guarantee absolute safety.

For some reason, the gray fog outside this stop was exceptionally thick. The doors had been open for less than a minute, but the sinister mist was already creeping inside, drastically reducing the visibility within the carriage.

Through the windows, a gothic white hospital building loomed in the distance, phasing in and out of view amidst the sea of gray.

A long shadow stretched across the front of the carriage.

Clack, clack.

The passenger boarding this time had an exceptionally long and lanky figure. They were so tall they nearly scraped the ceiling of the carriage.

When the eighth passenger stepped onto the Bus, the red number on the display flipped from 7 to 8. As soon as Gao Tian got a clear look at the newcomer, his pupils shrank to pinpricks in sheer terror and shock. Veins bulged on the back of his hand as he gripped the hilt of his blade; it took a tremendous amount of willpower to suppress the urge to draw his weapon on the spot.

He never could have imagined running into this particular entity in the Inner World.

The one who boarded was also a tall "gentleman" dressed head to toe in black. The only difference was its absurd height. Once it entered the carriage, the uppermost head on its body had to hang low to avoid scraping against the ceiling.

Stacked right beneath that first head was a second one—a middle-aged woman wearing freshly applied pink lipstick.

Beneath the woman was the haggard head of an elderly person. The face was so weathered and riddled with deep wrinkles that it was impossible to tell if it belonged to a man or a woman.

Beneath the elderly face was the head of a chubby little boy, who was constantly chewing on something, producing a sickening crunching noise.

And right below the little boy's head was the face of a soldier wearing tactical Goggles, armed to the teeth...

...

This new passenger's body was composed entirely of countless severed heads, all stacked on top of each other.

Below the heads were even more heads. Where a normal person would have a torso and legs, this entity had nothing but a shifting mass of faces.

It wobbled as it walked, moving like a grotesque, twisted centipede made of human heads. The black coat tightly enveloped its hideous form, so from the back, its silhouette could still barely pass for an unusually tall "man" with a bizarre gait.

But whenever its coat shifted open, the countless faces hidden beneath the fabric would all turn their eyes toward the same direction. It was a sight terrifying enough to completely shatter a person's sanity.

Gao Tian certainly recognized this ghost. Or rather, he had never seen the entity with his own eyes, but he had heard its name in legends.

Back at the Sapphire Mall, the very thing that had killed Xu Yuan and claimed his head was a Fierce Ghost with four heads.

This Fierce Ghost's sole twisted hobby was collecting the heads of its victims after slaughtering them.

When Xu Yuan first encountered it, the creature only had four heads. Yet now, the mass of heads beneath its trench coat was densely packed, seemingly connected to a bottomless abyss. There were simply too many to count.

At the same time, with the arrival of the eighth passenger, the first round of voting on the Bus officially began.

Every Fierce Ghost on board temporarily awakened.