44: Chapter 44 Dense Fog Envelops Ding Gui, a Deadly Silent Midnight Bus

At 11:45 PM, the very beginning of the Hour of the Rat.

In the northern suburbs of Jiangzhou City, at the bus stop of the abandoned No. 3 Chemical Plant.

The early autumn night wind carried the damp moisture unique to the Corpse-Sinking Reservoir, drilling into the gaps of people's bones like omnipresent icy needles.

The surrounding weeds were waist-high, and the dilapidated streetlamp overhead emitted a "buzzing" electrical sound.

In the heavy fog, the dim yellow light could only illuminate a visibility of less than three meters.

Fatty Wang was wrapped in a thick military overcoat, with his hands tucked into his sleeves, holding a half-burnt cigarette.

His heavy breathing turned into wisps of white mist in the air, and his legs trembled slightly and uncontrollably.

"Yezi... There isn't even a ghost's shadow in this damn place. Can that Route 404 ghost bus really arrive on time?"

Fatty lowered his voice, afraid of disturbing some unknown entity lurking deep within the thick fog.

Lin Ye stood beneath the bus stop sign, looking down at the Sanyuan Fengshui compass in his palm.

A thin layer of fine water droplets had condensed on the brass surface of the compass.

The magnetic needle in the central pool did not spin wildly; instead, it presented a bizarre "nodding" state.

The needle tip flickered weakly with an up-and-down undulation frequency, known in Taoist jargon as "trembling like a chicken pecking rice".

"Shut your crow's mouth. The thick fog blocks the road, and the water vapor is pervasive."

Lin Ye wiped away the water droplets on the compass and pointed at the asphalt road beneath his feet.

"Look at this road. Running from north to south, it directly faces the spillover of the Corpse-Sinking Reservoir. In the Liqi school of Fengshui formations, this is called 'Facing Ding and Gui'."

"The high slopes on both sides sandwich this low-lying area in the middle, perfectly forming a 'Water-Locking Formation'. The drowned ghosts who died violent deaths at the bottom of the reservoir are usually suppressed by sunlight. Only when the Yin energy is strongest at the hour of midnight, and with the help of this heavy fog, can they wander out along this funnel-like terrain."

Tossing out a long string of professional Fengshui terms, Fatty Wang understood only vaguely, feeling that the back of his neck was even colder.

"Put out the cigarette. Lonely ghosts and wild spirits love the smell of human fireworks the most. Your Yang energy is already weak. If you keep smoking, your soul will be hooked before the bus even arrives," Lin Ye reminded coldly.

Terrified, Fatty quickly threw the cigarette butt into a puddle and stepped on it twice.

In the shadows behind the bus stop, two figures stood quietly.

Leng Yue wore an ankle-length black trench coat, completely concealing her astonishingly graceful curves.

She crossed her hands in front of her and lowered her head slightly, her silver hair motionless in the night wind.

As a half-step Drought Demon, her control over the surrounding aura had reached perfection, forcibly compressing the terrifying corpse qi on herself and Frost Star—which was enough to make a hundred ghosts retreat—within half a foot of their bodies.

Frost Star was wearing that black Lolita dress, with a sun hat perched on her head.

The little girl was boredly toying with that dark blue small bone knife in her hand, the amber pupil of her right eye faintly flashing with a bloodthirsty red light in the darkness.

"Brother-in-law."

Frost Star tugged at the corner of Lin Ye's clothes, her voice soft and waxy, leaking an eager greed.

"The smell in this fog is so fishy, like stinky fish fermented in a sewer for three days. When can we have our meal?"

"No messing around tonight. We need to figure out its final destination. After getting on the bus, no one is allowed to make a move without my command."

Lin Ye turned his head and instructed with a solemn expression.

This was his first time encountering such an urban legend in the real world; he used to read about them with great relish in novels.

Now that he had run into the classic last-train urban legend and had the ability to protect himself, he naturally had to explore it.

Leng Yue nodded slightly, her voice as clear and cold as a spring:

"Rest assured, Husband, this concubine will protect your Yang energy and never let those filthy things notice any clues."

Time ticked by second by second.

Exactly twelve midnight.

Deep in the distant thick fog, a dull roar of an engine suddenly came.

The sound sounded like a tractor on the verge of scrapping, accompanied by the harsh metallic sound of tracks grinding against the ground.

Two dim and turbid headlight beams, like two huge dead fish eyes, slowly tore open the thick fog ahead.

"It... It's coming!"

Fatty Wang grabbed Lin Ye's arm, his fingernails almost pinching into the flesh.

A dilapidated blue-and-white bus silently glided in front of the bus stop.

The LED display screen above the front of the car had long been damaged, leaving only a paint-peeled tin sign.

On it, three numbers were crookedly written with dark red paint: 404.

"Hiss!"

Accompanied by the sound of the hydraulic valve exhausting, the front door of the bus slowly folded and opened to both sides.

A strong, fishy stench of river mud, mixed with the smell of rotting corpses, slapped him in the face like an invisible wall.

Fatty covered his mouth and nose, almost vomiting on the spot.

Lin Ye's gaze was like a torch, his sight piercing through the darkness of the bus door.

He saw that the non-slip aluminum plate of the boarding step was covered with thick moss, and dark black water stains were dripping down the steps one by one.

"Let's go."

Without hesitation, Lin Ye took the lead, striding with long legs onto this ghost bus leading to the netherworld.

As soon as they got on the bus, the surrounding temperature instantly dropped below freezing point.

The driver's seat was wrapped in a thick layer of black plastic sheeting, and only a bloated back wearing an old bus uniform could be vaguely seen.

The driver tightly gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his head hanging down bizarrely, showing no reaction to the people getting on the bus.

The coin box was a rusted tin bucket.

Lin Ye fished out four pre-prepared "Qianlong Tongbao" copper coins from his pocket.

As the Taoist saying goes, when encountering Yin on a night road, one must leave toll money.

These copper coins were tainted with the vitality of living people through the dynasties. To these low-level resentful spirits, they were more useful than real gold and silver.

"Clatter, clatter, clatter."

The four copper coins fell into the tin bucket.

Taking advantage of the faint eerie-green emergency lights in the carriage, Lin Ye glanced and saw that there were no coins at all at the bottom of the bucket; it was packed full of water-soaked, sticky black hair.

Fatty Wang followed tremblingly behind Lin Ye.

Leng Yue and Frost Star got on last.

The moment Leng Yue stepped onto the bus, the bone-chilling Yin coldness inside the carriage seemed to encounter its natural enemy, instinctively shrinking back half an inch.

"Go to the back, don't look around," Lin Ye commanded in a low voice.

The carriage appeared exceptionally crowded, with the two rows of seats almost filled with "people".

Some of them wore tattered raincoats, while others wore blue work clothes from the 1980s.

All of them maintained the exact same posture.

Their hands were placed flat on their knees, and their heads were deeply buried in their chests.

Droplets of turbid water dripped down their clothes and hair onto the rusted steel carriage floor, converging into winding water stains.

Lin Ye and his group walked through the aisle.

Every time they passed a seat, Fatty could feel a chill that went straight to his bone marrow.

He could even hear the dull sound of water bubbles bursting coming from these "passengers".

Fatty bit down hard on his back teeth, not daring to turn his head.

But his peripheral vision simply could not avoid those details that were inches away.

An aunt sitting on the left side near the aisle had her hands placed flat on her knees.

The fingernails of all ten fingers were completely gone, and the fingertips were worn down to nothing but eerie white bone stubs, with the gaps between her fingers packed with black silt from the bottom of the reservoir.

Those were the marks left by living people desperately gouging the riverbed before suffocating underwater.

Meanwhile, the man in the blue work clothes on the right was violently heaving his chest at an extremely high frequency, making movements of gasping heavily.

But not a single breath of air was inhaled into his open mouth; instead, gouts of turbid muddy water mixed with yellow sand were bubbling out from his ear holes and everted nasal cavity along with his "breathing" motions.

The "people" in the entire bus were endlessly repeating the agony of the final moment before drowning...