Chapter 196 The Bus

He looked at the first female student who told her story and asked playfully, "You said you came here because you received the invitation. Is that true?"

"Yes, it's true." Seeing Jiang Cheng approach her first, the female student looked very nervous. Perhaps worried that she wouldn't be persuasive enough on her own, she immediately looked at the others. "If you don't believe me, ask them. I think we should all be in the same boat."

Upon hearing this, A Zhe, the woman in red, the writer, and the black car driver all nodded in agreement.

At this moment, the writer seemed to realize something. He raised his head and looked at Jiang Cheng with a puzzled expression, his mouth slightly open as if he wanted to ask something.

But Jiang Cheng didn't give him the chance. A hint of killing intent flashed in his slightly narrowed eyes, scaring the writer into silence.

Jiang Cheng retracted his gaze and asked calmly, "Where are the invitations you received?"

"This..." The black car driver, who was closest to Jiang Cheng, hesitated.

Jiang Cheng sneered, "What's the matter? Is it inconvenient?"

Seizing the opportunity, Fatty immediately took on the role of an assistant, pointing at the black car driver and saying in a strange tone, "Doctor, I think he's just looking down on you, thinking you're trash, a useless orphan, so he doesn't want to pay attention to you. Maybe he's even thinking of making a straw doll and cursing you behind your back, hoping your internet cuts off when you're watching porn, and your instant noodles have no seasoning packets or something."

Hearing Fatty's words, the black car driver turned pale with fright, his voice trembling. "No... I didn't. You're talking nonsense, Fatty. I never thought that!"

"This brother, you..." A Zhe was obviously the most vocal among the group. Seeing that the situation was not right, he wanted to smooth things over.

But as soon as he spoke, Jiang Cheng's cold gaze swept over him. The next second, he forgot what he wanted to say, only hearing Jiang Cheng say, "Did I ask you?"

"Stand up straight, take off your sunglasses, and talk to me!"

"It's not that we don't want to give you the invitation, it's just that we really don't have it. As soon as we arrived here, the invitation disappeared." The woman in red explained pitifully, "The invitation was like a pass. After the invitation disappeared, we saw this bus stop."

Huai Yi's eyes flickered, and a ominous premonition suddenly rose in his heart. "What? There wasn't a bus stop here before?"

"No, before, this place was as dark as the surroundings." The female student hugged her shoulders, glanced at the darkness, and quickly retracted her gaze, muttering in a low voice, "Who knows if there are any ghosts hiding there."

Jiang Cheng was also aware that there was something wrong with the surrounding darkness, but he was more interested in the invitation. He felt that the others were not lying.

The problem here might really lie in that mysterious invitation.

"What else do you remember about the invitation?" Jiang Cheng looked at the people in front of him. "No need to raise your hands to speak, you can answer as you please."

"It's just... it was a very ordinary invitation, inviting me to come here at midnight three days later, and I had to tell a weird tale to complete the task." The female student said softly, the same as what she had said before.

"I received the invitation a week ago, asking me to come here at midnight today." The woman in red said, "Everything else is the same."

"If I had to say there was something strange, I think the invitation was indeed very strange..." The writer stroked his chin, hesitated, and then said, "I mean the background of the invitation, it didn't feel like it was photoshopped, it felt like paper."

"Very old paper, with a yellowish tint. It feels like it's at least several decades old." The writer seemed to know more about these things, so he added in detail.

"Now that you mention it, I remember." The black car driver frowned, thought for a moment, and gestured with his hands, "The background of the invitation looked like a ticket, a train ticket, about this big, a very old one. My father likes to collect old grain coupons and train tickets, the background of the invitation was very similar to those."

"Train ticket..." Jiang Cheng slowly turned around, looked at the bus stop sign not far away, and a strange look flashed in his eyes, "Could there be some kind of connection between them? Is that invitation-like invitation actually a ticket?"

"But what kind of bus would issue tickets in this way?"

"And from the looks of it, everyone who receives the ticket, whether they come or not, will suffer misfortune."

"So what's the difference between coming and not coming?"

"No, that's not right!" Jiang Cheng slowly frowned, as if he had thought of some terrible conjecture. "The focus isn't on this, but... living people can't board this bus. Only those who die and become ghosts can!"

"This explains why everyone who receives the invitation dies, because they can't board this bus unless they die!"

An ominous premonition vaguely rose in his heart. Jiang Cheng vaguely felt like he was caught in an unsolvable supernatural event.

Just as he was about to leave with Fatty and Huai Yi immediately, suddenly, light shone from the distance.

It wasn't the bright light of car headlights, but a dim, hazy light.

Two dim yellow lights, like two large lanterns, shone towards them, and in the darkness, a huge black silhouette approached them.

As the black silhouette got closer and closer, the ground trembled, and the low, mechanical roar mixed with the friction sounds of various parts, as if a heavy and old machine was trembling its rusty body and slowly driving over.

That's how it felt, but the reality was even more shocking.

As the huge black silhouette came to a steady stop in front of them, Fatty couldn't help but widen his eyes. A very old bus appeared in front of them.

The body of the bus was painted dark green, almost blending into the night if you didn't look closely.

Slowly, Jiang Cheng noticed something even more bizarre, which was that since the appearance of this bus, all the other cars on the road had disappeared.

Not only the cars on the road, but even the road itself, the streetlights on both sides of the road, and the residential areas they had passed along the way, the houses with lights on, the lake... all of them had disappeared.

Now, the entire area behind the bus was shrouded in darkness. Jiang Cheng turned his head to look towards the rear of the bus and found that the rear half of the bus had completely disappeared into the darkness, merging with it.

It felt like it was dragging the entire darkness forward. Wherever the bus went, it would be swallowed by the darkness.

The bus was quiet. From the outside, the inside of the bus was blurry, not black, just purely blurry. If you looked at it for too long, it felt like your whole person would sink into it.

Jiang Cheng couldn't help but take a few steps back. Fatty, Huai Yi, and the others followed suit, staying away from this bus that came from nowhere.

Sweat began to appear on Jiang Cheng's forehead, his heart beat faster, and he clenched his fists slightly. It was the first time that Jiang Cheng had felt such a strong sense of throbbing in his heart.

This was what frightened him the most, because it wasn't him who was feeling this throbbing, but the Nothingness (Wu) within him.

The Nothingness (Wu) was afraid.

Afraid of the bus in front of him.