Chapter 15: The Ghost Bus

Yu Xi finally spoke: [The focus of this urban legend isn't on that man, but on that pregnant woman. She wants to go to the hospital to give birth because she's about to go into labor. So, before the ninth stop, find a way to perform a C-section on her and force her to give birth on the spot. According to the logic of this urban legend, there will no longer be a need to go to the hospital, and she will get off the bus directly. You can naturally follow her off then, however...]

[Every time this bus reaches a stop, a new male corpse will board to assassinate the pregnant woman. You need to hold them off while performing the C-section. You've probably felt it; with every stop, the strength of these male corpses increases. By the end, an ordinary person's strength won't be enough to suppress them alone. And on this bus, aside from a Level 3 small fry like you, there are only those who are even worse than rotten fish and shrimp. Are you counting on them to fight a hundred enemies?]

Yu Xi's cold voice contained a hint of smugness: [Ye Yu, begging me is your only way out right now.]

Ye Yu stared at the third man in the coat slowly walking toward the back of the bus: [That's not necessarily true. As the saying goes, a single chopstick is easily broken, but a bundle is hard to bend.]

Yu Xi sneered: [Unity? A bunch of small fry united won't turn into a shark. The saddest part is that many people are as stupid as pigs, yet commanding them to do one thing is much harder than leading an actual herd of pigs. Are you sure that in a time like this, you have the time and ability to lead these strangers? And place your hope for survival on them?]

On the other side, seeing the third coat-man board the bus, Zhao Yanchun quickly stood up. Her fever made her face flush, and she coughed incessantly, but she was the third most reliable person on this bus besides the Uncle and Ye Yu. She stepped forward quickly, her leg strength like a spring as she kicked the coat-man's knee. As he fell, she immediately pinned his spine with her knee and tightly controlled his hands.

"Wang Xia!"

"Coming, coming, I'm here!"

Wang Xia squeezed past Ye Yu and the Uncle who were blocking the way. Closing his eyes and summoning a "do-or-die" momentum, he suddenly jumped. With a "thud," he sat on the third coat-man's waist, using his weight to pin the opponent down firmly.

As soon as he got close, a stench of rotting death hit Wang Xia's nose. The "heroic warrior" from a moment ago immediately opened his eyes, his face as pale as a withered flower, and he turned his head to vomit uncontrollably.

"Blegh... No... I... blegh... I'm so scared!"

Fortunately, Zhao Yanchun dodged quickly and wasn't hit by the vomit. Perhaps because her nose was blocked, her expression remained stable, but Tang Nianke was so overwhelmed by the smell that she gagged. She screamed in collapse: "Brother, stop vomiting! You're making us scared, do you know that?!"

Wang Xia also collapsed: "You can't blame me, I just want to vomit when I'm scared!"

"Be patient." Zhao Yanchun spoke very quickly: "I told you to get the charging cables from the bag for me, not to fly over here. Forget it, just stay there and keep watch."

Seeing them cooperating and dividing tasks, Ye Yu raised an eyebrow: [See? Without me saying a word, they already have a sense of unity against the outsider.]

Yu Xi snorted coldly: [I'll say it again, the struggle of the weak is meaningless. A bunch of small fry, no matter how united, won't turn into a shark.]

Just then, Zhao Yanchun quickly pulled out two charging cables belonging to her and Tang Nianke from the back row. She walked quickly to Ye Yu, preparing to tie the headless coat-man's hands.

These were originally brought to the hospital to charge their phones during IV drips; the two had planned to play games together. They didn't expect to use them for a real-life fight first.

Seeing this, Ye Yu suddenly had an idea.

"Wait, don't tie him yet. Help me pin him to the seat first."

Zhao Yanchun's movements paused, then she immediately understood Ye Yu's intention. She quickly helped pin the headless coat-man to a nearby seat, then pulled his hands behind the backrest and tied them tightly with the charging cable.

Though the two had never met before, they shared a wordless chemistry in their coordination. With the coat-man's hands tied behind his back and indirectly bound by the chair, no matter how he struggled, it would be very difficult for him to leave that seat in a short time.

With one charging cable left, the Uncle saw this and followed suit. With the help of Ye Yu and the others, he also quickly tied up the coat-man on his side.

"This is a good method!" The Uncle praised: "It's just a pity we're out of charging cables."

Ye Yu smiled and said nothing, just lowered her head to pull out her shoelaces.

[You know? The reason we humans can stand at the top of the food chain is that we understand how to use wisdom, unlike some animals... whose heads are full of nothing but muscle.]

Yu Xi, mocked as a muscle-head: ... One day, he would definitely slaughter this woman!

On the other side, the others were stunned, then immediately looked down at their shoes. Zhao Yanchun and Wang Xia immediately pulled off their shoelaces. Tang Nianke was wearing high heels without laces, so she directly took off her hair tie and the ribbon from her dress, asking if they would work. If not, she was prepared to tear her dress; after all, her floral dress was long with plenty of fabric, enough to make several strips.

After the third coat-man was tied up with shoelaces, Ye Yu breathed a sigh of relief. her figure flickered slightly; she was about to reveal her identity as an investigator and show her "Shadow Parents" as proof to take command.

Unexpectedly, the next second, the Uncle also let out a sigh of relief and clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.

"I didn't expect to run into this while out buying groceries. I won't say much, but you've probably seen the number 712 on the electronic display. First, let me ask, have you heard of the urban legend of Bus Route 712?"

Hearing this, Ye Yu's heart skipped a beat with a bad premonition. Tang Nianke and Wang Xia shook their heads, their eyes full of student-like innocence, while Zhao Yanchun coughed.

"Cough, cough, I've heard of it. They say a horrific murder once happened on Bus Route 712, and since then, it became a ghost bus that appears at night disguised as a normal bus to pick up people. Once you board, this ghost bus takes you to the underworld. Is this bus the 712? Have we really met a ghost?"

"Ghost bus? Underworld?" Wang Xia covered his mouth: "Oh no, I want to vomit again."

Tang Nianke hurried to move a bit further away from him.

"This isn't meeting a ghost; it's an urban legend at work. Boarding this bus is equivalent to accidentally entering an urban legend domain. Urban legends have their own logic; normal methods won't get us out. Fortunately, I happen to know a bit about the rumors of Bus Route 712."

The Uncle briefly recounted the murder case of the coat-man assassinating the pregnant woman a year ago. The three students turned their heads in horror to look at the pregnant woman still in the back row.

She seemed completely oblivious to the Uncle's words, immersed in her own world, sweating and crying out in pain, amniotic fluid dripping from her dress onto the bus floor. She looked so lifelike; if the Uncle hadn't said it, the three students could never have imagined that this pregnant woman had been dead for over a year!

The Uncle continued: "I suspect the logic of this urban legend is related to that case. I just looked at the route map on the bus; look at this last stop."

The three students immediately looked up. On the old bus, the route map was yellowed, but it was clear this route only had ten stops. Although the last stop was slightly obscured by a stain, the four words "Jinyang ** Hospital" were still visible.

Ye Yu, who had noticed this map long ago, immediately realized: This is bad.

Sure enough, the Uncle drew a conclusion based on his experience.

"Even if I didn't pay attention to the old route of the 712, I know its normal route couldn't be this short. This Jinyang Hospital must be the pregnant woman's destination."

Seemingly hearing a keyword, the pregnant woman clutched her stomach and cried out in pain: "Yes, I'm about to give birth. I want to go to Jinyang People's Hospital to give birth. Save me, save my child!"

These words moved the three students, but the Uncle only glanced indifferently at the pregnant woman and continued: "So I suspect the death rule of this urban legend involves those men with knives, while the survival rule lies with the pregnant woman. This bus keeps reminding passengers to exit through the back door; I think this information is reliable. But why hasn't the back door opened? Perhaps it's because the bus we intended to board was Route 12, not Route 712."

Wang Xia immediately confirmed that they had intended to take Route 12. Before boarding, they clearly saw the number 12, but in the blink of an eye, it became 712!

Uncle: "Because of this, we aren't considered passengers of Bus 712. The only true passengers of this bus are the coat-men who keep boarding and that pregnant woman. So as long as we can protect her and ensure she reaches her destination safely—the Jinyang People's Hospital—the back door will open for her, and we can follow her out, thus escaping this urban legend."

[Ha, it seems there's a good show to watch.] Yu Xi, who had been silent, couldn't help but laugh: [Now that he's said this, those three won't listen to you at all. At this point, do you still not plan to cooperate with me?]

Ye Yu remained silent. The Uncle's words indeed made the situation more troublesome. Actually, his reasoning wasn't entirely wrong; if Ghost Bus 712 were just a normal Level 4 urban legend, his method would indeed be the standard escape route. But the problem was that this urban legend had undergone a mutation; its final stop wasn't Jinyang People's Hospital, but Jinyang Union Hospital. Thus, escaping according to the Uncle's way would only lead to death!

But she couldn't say this directly because, logically, even the investigation team didn't know this classified information. How would a newly joined Level 1 investigator like her know? If she survived this urban legend, the investigation team would surely interrogate her.

So Ye Yu had originally planned to take command, pretending to be a "half-baked" investigator who realized the pregnant woman was the key but didn't notice the change in the final stop. By "stumbling" into helping the pregnant woman give birth before the tenth stop to get off, she could perfectly hide Yu Xi's existence.

She hadn't expected an experienced Uncle to jump in halfway. With the other party's clear logical escape plan as a counterweight, she couldn't convince the others to "stumble" away with her!

So... perform the C-section herself? No, the others needed to borrow the pregnant woman's passenger status to get off. If she acted, the others would surely unite to stop her for fear that the pregnant woman's death would prevent them from leaving. Her "Shadow Parents" might stop these people temporarily, but what about the coat-men who would board later?

Or... just state the mutated status of the ghost bus directly, convince them to choose her escape method, and then kill them all once they got off? If the investigation team came, she could blame everything on the ghost bus to hide her own suspicious points... No, it hadn't come to that yet.

Ye Yu took a deep breath, suppressing her overly dangerous thoughts. She was a human with a sharp mind, not that large black cat who only knew how to kill. She had to think again, think carefully—there must be another way.