My House of Horrors

“I’m out and about in the middle of the night by myself. I have to bring something to protect myself in case of danger, right?” Chen Ge gave his explanation.

“You have a point there.” After a brief moment of hesitation, the doctor asked, “The members of the society that you mentioned earlier, are they all like you?”

“Compared to them, I’m the more rational one.”

“You’re the more rational one?” The doctor coughed. His body was failing him.

“Yes, call me if you have the time. We can sit down and discuss this slowly.” Chen Ge felt like he had good rapport with this good doctor, and the feeling seemed mutual. The bus moved in the rain. It soon arrived at the next station. Chen Ge stood up to glance out the window and did not see the woman in red raincoat.

Where has she disappeared to? Did something happen to her? There were children crying at the previous stop, and I heard that sound at Eastern Jiujiang Fresh Water Plant before. Did the shadow show up earlier?

When the shadow showed up, Men Nan and Xu Yin had appeared to stop Chen Ge. This went to show how scary the shadow was.

I hope that woman will be alright. Chen Ge was worried about the woman in the red raincoat, but he soon traced the thought back to himself. This bus connects Eastern and Western Jiujiang to collect all the despairing souls from the city. The woman merely attempted to break the rules, and something happened. If I drive the whole bus away, will the culprit show up directly?

Chen Ge thought about it and figured the chance of that happening was very low. The culprit is probably busy with something else, or else he would not have used his shadow to handle everything. Then again, there’s also a possibility that the shadow itself is the culprit. It has no body, or the body is seriously injured, and everything it’s doing is trying to fix its body.

Chen Ge was not going to risk it. He decided to drive the bus away to test the enemy’s reaction. Even if it’s an existence above a Red Specter, it won’t have come to Western Jiujiang to seek me out for no reason, right? If it really comes to that, I’ll just hide myself inside the Haunted House until Zhang Ya is fully recovered.

As someone who was optimistic, only a personality like that enabled him to survive against the wave of complicated scenarios. The bus passed several stations before it reached the final destination—Li Wan City.

The bus stop was next to the mouth of West Street. It was very simple. The bus stopped, and to Chen Ge’s surprise, the woman in the red raincoat showed up again. However, she looked rather winded like she had just experienced a horrible battle.

The bus stopped at this last bus stop for three minutes, but none of the passengers moved. Three minutes later, under the watchful gaze of the woman in the red raincoat, the bus drove into Li Wan City. The situation was similar to what Chen Ge had experienced in the game. After struggling loose from the woman in the red raincoat’s assault, Xiao Bu had gotten onto the last bus and headed into Li Wan City. The blurry buildings became clearer, and the bus trundled down the deserted street. The whole city felt empty; there was no light or sound.

“We’ve already passed the bus stop. Where are you taking us?” Chen Ge held his backpack and walked to the driver.

Now, whenever he heard Chen Ge’s voice, the driver would be scared. “The last stop is inside the town. We haven’t reached it yet.” He just wanted to finish the route and drop Chen Ge off. However, weirdly enough, he drove around the city for a long time but failed to find the bus stop.

“Are you lost?”

Hearing the annoyance in Chen Ge’s voice, the driver started to explain, “I’m not lying to you. There was a bus stop here—it’s the last stop—but that place disappeared today.” The driver pointed at an empty space next to the junction. “How is it going to benefit me by lying to you? I also wish for all of you to get off my bus as soon as possible, but we have a rule that we can only stop by bus stops, or bad things will happen.”

“If there’s no stop, do you plan to continue driving aimlessly around town?” The doctor stood up. He had been silent because things had nothing to do with him, but now that the bus could not stop, he was unable to get to the ghost apartment to hear his wife’s voice.

“I also want to stop, but I just stop anywhere—something special will get on the bus!” The driver turned the car around. “The only idea that I have now is to return to the earlier stop and park there. If you want to enter Li Wan City, you can walk there.”

The driver glanced at Chen Ge when he spoke—he was worried that Chen Ge might have a different opinion. Reality proved that his worry was founded.

“Just stop here.” Chen Ge pointed at the empty space. In the game, the bus taken by Xiao Bu had stopped there. Everything so far matched the game, so the place where the bus stop should be a piece of empty land.

Once Chen Ge said so, the driver did not even resist and park the bus. “We’ve reached the final stop. Please get off now. I cannot stay here for too long.” Then, he turned to look at Chen Ge with a polite smile. He sighed like a great burden had been lifted. “Have a good journey.”

“Thank you.” Chen Ge held the bag with one arm as he turned toward the driver. “Since we’re here, why don’t we get off together?”

“Together?” The smile froze on the driver’s face. “My job is to transport you all here safely. I still need to drive the bus back, so I can’t accompany you.”

“Just park the bus here, there’s no need to rush.” If there were no living people on the bus, Chen Ge would have taken out his comic and started a massacre. Seeing the persistence from Chen Ge, the driver relented and cursed his back luck internally. He realized that compared to angering Chen Ge, it was better to just follow his orders.

“Fine, I’ll get off with you.” The driver pressed the button, and all the doors opened at the same time. Just as that happened, the four women in patient’s garbs who had been so silent throughout the journey suddenly went mad and rushed out the backdoor with incredible speed. Chen Ge was standing by the driver’s seat, so when he recovered, the four had already disappeared into the dark city.

It was too late to give chase, but Chen Ge did not mind it. Have fun running. After all, I’ve already found out the name of your hospital. There’s nowhere else you could have run off to.

He had Xu Yin look after the backdoor to prevent an accident from happening again. Chen Ge allowed the mentally-challenged father and doctor to get off first. Then he closed the bus doors.

Don’t worry, we will have many chances to see each other in the future.