Chapter 19: The Stalker in the White Dress

Huan Xiao sat in her seat, occasionally popping a roasted chestnut into her mouth while observing the outside world.

Every time the bus left a station, it entered this desolate, narrow road. Through the blurred, rain-streaked windows, the distant fields appeared overgrown with weeds, long abandoned as if they had not been tended to for ages. The dirt road was uneven, riddled with puddles where the falling rain created a rhythmic dance of splashes. Yet, Bus 404 moved as smoothly as if it were traveling on a perfectly paved surface, without the slightest tremor.

Huan Xiao mused that this truly was a ghost bus; Newton would surely be struggling to keep his coffin lid down.

The bespectacled boy in the seat nearby, unwilling to engage with Huan Xiao, spoke to the youth in the hoodie: "How did that man die just now? Did you see clearly from where you were?"

Questioned, the hooded youth turned serious. He recalled the moment, then shuddered, pulling at the brim of his hood. "I only saw his flesh disappearing bit by bit, and tooth marks appearing on him... but I didn't see anything else."

"When he pointed at this seat, did you see anything appear?" The bespectacled boy pointed to the seat next to Huan Xiao, casting a strange, judgmental glance at her. A person had just died there, and yet Huan Xiao dared to sit in it; she clearly had a death wish.

"No, I didn't see anything."

After the hooded youth finished, he realized Huan Xiao was sitting right next to that very spot and quickly asked, "Little sister, did you see anything at the time?"

Huan Xiao was still watching the grass outside. She had caught glimpses of white fabric flashing through the weeds, but the bus was moving too fast for her to get a good look.

"What?" Huan Xiao, lost in thought about whether the white fabric belonged to a ghost in a white dress, turned back, dazed. She had been so distracted that she hadn't heard the hooded youth's question.

Seeing this, the hooded youth assumed she was intentionally ignoring him. He frowned and replied coldly, "Never mind."

Seeing the hooded youth had no intention of speaking further, Huan Xiao blinked and turned her gaze back to the window...

An enlarged, ghastly white face suddenly appeared right before the glass!

Blood streamed from its eyes, the stark contrast of red and white creating a jarring, terrifying sight.

Huan Xiao was taken by surprise. *Clatter.* Startled, the chestnut she was holding rolled onto the floor.

The bespectacled boy immediately noticed her reaction and followed her gaze, but he saw only the usual rain and weeds. "What's wrong with you?"

What could she have possibly seen to make such a bold newcomer drop her beloved roasted chestnuts? The bespectacled boy felt a headache coming on from the strangeness of this game. They hadn't even passed half the stations, yet there were only three players left. Such a mortality rate was abnormal; they might have been dropped into a near-impossible scenario. If he didn't figure out a path to survival soon, they would all be wiped out. It didn't matter if the others died, but he had been lucky enough to become a "Qi-Practitioner," and he was unwilling to die in this game. He believed he was the hope of this world, not someone meant to be buried or snuffed out in his infancy.

In the blink of an eye, the ghastly face vanished. When Huan Xiao looked again, there was nothing on the glass but rain. No blood, no face; it was as if everything she had seen was merely an illusion.

"Just now, a face suddenly appeared on the window," Huan Xiao told them truthfully.

She had been sitting right by the window, only ten centimeters away from that face. So close that she could see the eyelashes matted with clotted blood and the cracked, bleeding lips. What left the deepest impression on her was the deep, five-centimeter-wide wound on the ghost's forehead, where the skull was clearly visible at the base of the mangled flesh.

*Clang.*

Suddenly, the bus jolted again. All three of them looked toward the front of the bus simultaneously. In the pitch-black environment, the deep, muddy road stretched ahead, flanked by endless tall weeds, leading into a boundless, infinite darkness.

Huan Xiao didn't see anything, and the bespectacled boy’s expression remained unchanged. Only the hooded youth stared wide-eyed at the front, muttering, "A ghost... it... it smiled at me..."

Clearly, the woman in the white dress had set her sights on the hooded youth this time.

"What did you see!"

The bespectacled boy, surrounded by an invisible, suffocating dread, became increasingly irritable. Before the hooded youth could recover from his terror, the boy grabbed him by the shoulders. Facing a fellow human, the hooded youth struggled to calm his emotions. He tried to steel himself—it was just a ghost, he had seen plenty before, what was there to be afraid of? He wasn't afraid, he wasn't...

Now was not the time for fear. He had to find a solution, or he would end up like the balding man, eaten to the bone by invisible ghouls.

"It was a female ghost in a white dress. She was pressed against the glass smiling at me, and then she disappeared," the hooded youth replied, his teeth chattering. In previous games, he had faced ghosts, but always alongside everyone else—not like this, where he was the only one who could see it. Didn't this mean he would be the first of the three to die as cannon fodder?

Suddenly, the youth remembered that Huan Xiao had also seen a ghost. Clutching at this sliver of hope, he hurriedly asked, "Little sister, didn't you see a ghost too? Before the bus jolted?"

"Was the ghost you saw also wearing a white dress?"

Prompted by this, the bespectacled boy also turned his questioning gaze toward her.

Facing their urgent looks, Huan Xiao calmly popped another roasted chestnut into her mouth and nodded.

Seeing her nod, the hooded youth disregarded his confusion over her composure and pressed on, "Was it a ghost in a white dress? That's what I saw, the same as what that man saw earlier. Did you see the same thing?"

Noticing the hooded youth's desperation for an answer, the bespectacled boy regained his composure, habitually pushing up his glasses. It was the other two who were in mortal danger; he only needed to extract a way to survive from them. As for whether they lived or died, he didn't care. He realized that even luck was on his side; the ghost in the white dress was saving him for last, which was essentially handing him a chance to find clues. He truly was a lucky child favored by the heavens!

"I didn't notice if she was wearing a white dress, but the ghost had a very large wound on her head," Huan Xiao replied.

Suddenly, she caught sight of a hem of a white dress in the weeds by the roadside again. The female ghost was following the 404 bus, seemingly waiting for an opportunity to get on board.