Chapter 2 Time Anomaly

　　Ahead of the bus, there was another vehicle.

　　Enshrouded in fog, only the rear half of the vehicle was visible. It appeared to be a rather impressive SUV, but like the school bus, it had been parked there for a long time, covered in dust.

　　Upon seeing this vehicle, Huai Yi's eyes paused, and then, without Jiang Cheng's permission, he drove forward a little. "How is this possible?" After a few seconds, Huai Yi couldn't help but speak.

　　"Don't be so jumpy, just say what you have to say." Fatty was startled by him.

　　"I know this SUV. It was just released at the beginning of this year!" Huai Yi said, staring at the car with certainty.

　　A little thought made his meaning clear. This car had only been released this year, but the car parked here had been there for at least a few years, otherwise it would never have been abandoned in such a state.

　　"What's going on?" Fatty felt a pang of fear. "Could it be that we've traveled through time?"

　　Some supernatural events would bring people back to a past era, but right now, they seemed to have traveled to some day in the future, arriving on this desolate and abandoned road. The immense sense of temporal disruption made it hard to breathe.

　　"Turn on the headlights." Jiang Cheng patted Huai Yi's shoulder, emphasizing, "The high beams."

　　Hearing this, Huai Yi, who was looking around, became a little nervous and immediately suggested, "Jiang-ge, why don't we wait and see what happens first?" He lowered his voice and warned, "There might be some ghosts in this fog. If they haven't discovered us yet, turning on the headlights will expose our position."

　　In Huai Yi's opinion, this road was like a dark forest. Turning on the headlights would be like lighting a torch, attracting things hidden deep within the forest.

　　"Do as I say." Jiang Cheng insisted.

　　When the high beams were turned on, the bright light tore through the fog, and the scene before them made Fatty's heart skip a beat. Looking around, dozens of cars were parked crookedly on both sides of the road, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie.

　　The abandoned vehicles stretched into the fog ahead, and it was unknown how many more there were.

　　No one was seen, as if this road had been forgotten by the world.

　　Slowly, Jiang Cheng also saw some clues. The closer the vehicles were to them, the better preserved they were. The vehicles at the end of their line of sight were so decayed that only a frame remained.

　　While Fatty and Huai Yi were still recovering, Jiang Cheng told Huai Yi to stop the car, then opened the door and walked to the nearest vehicle. In the back seat of the car, he found a dusty schoolbag.

　　Opening the schoolbag, there were several workbooks inside. Flipping to the last page with writing, a date was clearly recorded on it in childish handwriting.

　　It was... yesterday!

　　That meant the owner of this workbook was still alive yesterday, but today, the vehicle they were riding in had been abandoned on an unknown road, as if decades had passed.

　　Taking back the schoolbag and workbook, Fatty and Huai Yi also had incredulous expressions.

　　Jiang Cheng didn't let Huai Yi get out of the car. The two of them switched seats inside the car.

　　Jiang Cheng started to reverse.

　　He already had a rough idea of what was happening before them, but he still needed evidence to confirm it.

　　Turning around, Fatty put both hands on the seat, nervously staring behind the car, worried that a ghost face would suddenly appear in the fog.

　　Visibility behind the car was only 4 or 5 meters, but a few seconds later, a strange scene occurred. With a muffled "thump," Jiang Cheng's car suddenly stopped, as if it had hit something.

　　But looking out the window, the back of the car was empty. There was nothing there.

　　"There's something behind the car. We can't see it!" Huai Yi reminded.

　　At the moment of the collision, Jiang Cheng pulled open the car door and got out of the car in the shocked gazes of the other two, as if this was what he had been waiting for.

　　After getting out of the car, Jiang Cheng saw a dilapidated, yellow-green taxi right behind their car.

　　"Get out." Jiang Cheng turned back and patted the car door.

　　After Fatty and Huai Yi got out of the car, they immediately recognized the taxi behind them as the one that had been following them earlier. But in just one hour, the taxi had become very dilapidated, and the tires were flat.

　　The car door was half open, and there was no one inside.

　　"It seems that's how it is." Jiang Cheng said calmly, "This road is a new supernatural event. The flow of time here is much faster than outside."

　　"The closer the car is to the front, the earlier it entered this place, and the more exaggerated the degree of aging is." With what they had just seen, Jiang Cheng's words were not difficult to understand.

　　After a brief thought, Huai Yi said thoughtfully, "But this supernatural event hasn't affected us, so there's nothing wrong with our car. It hasn't decayed with time. The few of us haven't disappeared either, because we have tickets!"

　　"It's the mark left by the bus," Jiang Cheng corrected.

　　"Then how do we get out?" Fatty was more concerned about this.

　　"We can try driving forward." Jiang Cheng said, looking into the distance. According to his judgment, this road was not virtual; it was real, but its location was not here.

　　Some kind of strange force had distorted space and time, grafting this road onto this place, and they had accidentally闯闯ed in.

　　Fatty and Huai Yi both looked at Jiang Cheng, their expressions seeming to say that he was the one who chose this road.

　　"Where did the people in these cars go?" Fatty couldn't help but ask. Each of these cars was empty, and the things inside were still there, except for the people. The atmosphere was very strange.

　　But he didn't get the answer he expected from Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng shook his head. "I don't know."

　　Because the few of them had the mark of the bus, ordinary supernatural events couldn't affect them at all, so the situation they faced was different from that of ordinary people.

　　But judging from the abandoned cars, the fate of these people was probably not very optimistic.

　　"Get in the car. Let's find a way out."

　　Jiang Cheng got back into the driver's seat. Worried about hitting strange things on the road again, he thoughtfully reminded the two of them to fasten their seat belts.

　　Along the road, the vehicle drove towards the end of the fog.

　　Along the way, both sides were filled with abandoned vehicles. The further they went, the heavier Fatty's mood became. The horror of time was fully manifested here. The cars in front were even just some remnants.

　　Desolation, helplessness, and endless loneliness—the complexity of emotions was indescribable. It was hard to imagine what those missing people had experienced.

　　Thinking about it another way, if they hadn't boarded that bus, would they also be in this environment, gradually decaying?

　　But Fatty didn't feel any relief in his heart. He looked out the window, pursed his lips slightly, and shed tears.

　　He thought of that bus.

　　He remembered the person who touched his face and gently told him that everything would be alright, who was still on that bus.

　　At least he still had the chance to look out the window, but Wang Qi didn't.