Route 404 drove through the thick, impenetrable white fog, its body swaying slightly, strangely resembling an old boat drifting on the water's surface.
The tires rolled over the road, yet there was no physical sensation of contact at all.
“Ghost!”
“There's a ghost on the bus!”
“Aaaaah! Let me off! Mommy!”
“Bah! It really is a ghost!”
The screams and gasps of the new players echoed through the windows, making the scene feel all the more terrifying.
“This batch of new players has the worst quality of any group I've ever seen.”
Song Mo sat on the roof of the bus. Hearing A'yan's words, she couldn't help but laugh out loud.
This Ming dynasty fierce ghost was truly keeping up with the times, consuming novels, movies, and anime alike.
Song Mo knew just from her tone of voice that A'yan must have been reading infinite flow novels recently.
The wind on the roof was much fiercer than inside the cabin.
Swept with mist, the wind blew Song Mo's stray hairs across her cheeks.
She opened the Instance status to take a look. Floating by her side with her hands hanging down, the fierce ghost immediately let dark red blood mist pour from her sleeves like running water—
The blood mist seeped through the cracks of the bus in thin threads, enveloping all the players like an invisible net.
The expressions on the players' faces gradually shifted from terror to dazed confusion. Soon, their eyes grew vacant, as if they had been pinned in place by some unseen force.
“My Lord, it is all taken care of,” A'yan said in a cheerful tone. “I have blinded their eyes. They will only think you are a normal player who boarded with them.”
“Will there be any flaws?”
Song Mo took the opportunity to browse the Instance status. Ink-style text floated before her:
【Instance: 《Taiping Cemetery》】
【Status: Running (Hour 1)】
【Remaining Surviving Players: 7/7】
【Unlocked Class: Herb Gatherer (Yellow-Tier)】
【Estimated Screenwriter Points Gained this Instance: 500】
【Current Number of Ghosts in Instance: 89】
—It seemed Taiping Cemetery had also attracted quite a few souls from outside the Instance.
“Not at all,” A'yan said firmly, her expression practically begging for praise, though the bloody tears streaming down her face made the sight rather horrifying. “With their eyes blinded by a ghost, the living cannot see anything else. They won't even notice if there's one more or one less person. Even if the officials question them later, they will only remember that you boarded the bus with them, My Lord.”
“I see. 'Ghost Blinding' can distort the players' perception of time and space. My presence serves as an anchor, fitting seamlessly into their scrambled memories,” Song Mo summarized. “In their perception, 'I' am inside the Instance. So no matter who questions them, or if any Class is able to inspect their memories later, they won't find any flaws.”
Hiding a drop of water in the ocean—was there any way to conceal oneself more perfectly than this?
She had always lived a reclusive life, but she couldn't completely avoid contact with human society.
The identity of "Song Mo" was her sole link to her past life.
What was more, she was accompanied by two ghosts, A'yan and A'zhu.
If she became a player, any future slip-ups could easily be covered up with "items" or "skills."
When the right time came, perhaps even the two ghosts could openly exist before others.
—A'yan listened with half-understanding, but she still nodded along excitedly.
“First, let me modify the Instance parameters.”
Song Mo raised a finger, and the ink-style text moved according to her will, flowing into the Instance settings.
“I need to expand the scale of the Instance first, increase the player capacity, and add two new NPCs.”
Song Mo's fingertip slid across the panel. She then pulled out the newly captured Materials from her inventory, retrieving them one by one to show the bus like she was displaying merchandise: “Route 404, how about this one? A Mid-Grade Material, the ghost with the red scarf.”
“Or this one? A Material captured from the Wenshan Village Instance, the paper boy and girl dolls?”
“...Oh, so you like the blonde, blue-eyed type?”
Every time she picked out a Material, the Bus Ghost would beep twice in protest.
—Until Song Mo pulled out a pale, gorgeously dressed male ghost from London.
He was incredibly obese, with traces of ulceration still visible on his legs. He wore a velvet-like silk robe, a delicate gold chain draped across his chest, and the lace trim on his cuffs was exceptionally prominent.
【Nameless British Ghost】
...
“When did I capture this one?” Song Mo stared at the text description in her hand for a long time before speaking with some difficulty, “It's not that I'm being stingy... but Little Four, you're an old-fashioned Chinese bus. Don't you think it'd be weird if a gorgeously dressed foreign ghost who clearly isn't local suddenly appeared on board...”
—It would be like being in a restaurant in Northeast China, and suddenly a waiter in a formal suit walked over.
Holding a silver platter, he serves a beautifully plated dish of... pork with pickled cabbage and glass noodles, then politely asks if you would like a spoonful of air-shipped caviar.
The sense of incongruity would be overwhelming.
Besides, there were plenty of smart people among the authorities. Would someone deduce from this that the various Instances were actually interconnected?
“Beep beep! Beep beep beep!”
Route 404 used its horn to express its absolute adoration for this "action figure."
Upon hearing her rejection, it became so depressed that it even stopped waving its windshield wipers.
Song Mo felt like a mother who had made a promise to her child only to break it.
“Fine, fine, I surrender.”
She pulled a headless female corpse in a white dress from her Material storage to pair with the nameless ghost, then threw them both into the Instance.
【Modification successful.】
In the next second, two NPCs whose styles were completely out of place with their surroundings—clearly not local ghosts—appeared out of thin air inside the cabin.
She hoped the next batch of players wouldn't be scared out of their wits, Song Mo thought with a touch of wicked humor.
“Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!”
Route 404 was practically beside itself with joy, its tires bouncing up and down repeatedly.
The players inside the bus were tossed around like heads of cabbage.
“My Lord, you spoil it too much.” A'yan, who prided herself on being the ghost who had stayed by Song Mo's side the longest, couldn't help but feel a little jealous at this.
The next second, however, a little Material ghost snack appeared in her hand.
“My Lord is the best!” The fierce ghost narrowed her eyes happily, cheering as she clung to Song Mo's head to act spoiled.
Song Mo wiped away the blood dripping from the fierce ghost onto her head, silently sighing to herself: Raising children is truly no easy task.
...
...
Lu Jianming didn't even remember how he had gotten off the bus.
He had walked into the cemetery in a daze, and by the time he snapped out of it, the damn Route 404 was already gone.
“Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!”
Shuddering violently, he finally shook off his confusion and realized he was inside an Instance.
The surroundings were completely desolate. In the overgrown cemetery, tombstones of various sizes and materials stood silently.
The other players were nowhere to be seen.
His satellite phone, GPS watch, and all other communication tools had completely lost their function.
...
“Shit!!”
He cursed in frustration, yet he did not dare to make any reckless moves.
Prior to this, the Lu clan had done everything in their power to gather intelligence regarding 《Taiping Cemetery》 from unofficial players.
【Instance Quest: Before dawn, find the tombstone carved with your name and wipe it clean.】
【Instance Rules: ...】
【Countdown starting: 3 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds】
“It's just wiping a tombstone. Nothing to be afraid of,” Lu Jianming frantically reassured himself, but his trembling legs betrayed his current state of mind. “I remember, I remember... what was it? Right, right, as long as I don't run around blindly or touch things randomly, finding the tombstone with my name and wiping it clean counts as completing the quest. Yes, yes, first I need to find the tombstone. I can't panic, absolutely cannot panic.”
Fortunately, his life experience carried him through. After only a brief moment of panic, Lu Jianming began searching for the tombstone carved with his name.
He was very patient.
He searched tombstone by tombstone.
Some tombstones had offerings placed before them, emitting a mouthwatering aroma.
Lu Jianming didn't even look at them.
There were urns scattered on the ground, with fine gold ingots peeking out from within.
After a brief thought, Lu Jianming quickly bypassed them.
In the end, he indeed found the tombstone carved with "Lu Jianming" amidst a patch of wild grass.
“It's not that hard after all. As long as your mental fortitude is strong enough, it's fine.”
A secret, unspeakable rush of pleasure suddenly surged in Lu Jianming's heart: He had entered the Instance, not his elderly, stern father.
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