Jiangcheng is surrounded by rivers on three sides, giving it a unique geographical location. Due to historical issues, some urban areas actually have fewer permanent residents than the counties of ordinary third-tier cities.
With a large area and sparse population, the remaining densely built-up areas easily take on a ghostly atmosphere.
There are many long-standing urban legends here, like the haunting of Qixing Ridge, suicides at Jinshui Bridge seeking substitutes, and the wailing of water ghosts at Lingxiu Lake...
A simple search provides Song Mo with an endless stream of creative inspiration.
Although ghost stories and urban legends were diverse and all told with vivid detail, the most frequently mentioned was a supernatural incident called the “Route 404 Bus.”
This rumor had circulated in local forums and online communities for at least a decade, with most versions being largely similar:
It was said that every night after midnight, on the stretch of road from Taiping Cemetery to Furniture City, a Route 404 bus—the last bus of the night—would appear.
Reportedly, this bus didn't pick up living people; it specialized in carrying lost and wandering spirits.
Night-shift taxi drivers swore they had seen it, and workers returning home after overtime claimed to have spotted it from afar, packed with passengers whose faces were deathly pale.
Others said a relative had mistakenly boarded it once. When he bent down to pick something up, he saw that the other passengers had no feet, scaring him to death.
Not long after getting off the bus, that relative also died.
...
Song Mo sifted through all these posts and compiled a relatively complete route map.
Taiping Cemetery was in the east of the city, Furniture City in the north, with seven stops in between.
The route passed through the old city district and a long-disused industrial zone. Normally, apart from fishermen and funeral home vehicles, there wouldn't be anyone else following this route.
However, amidst the discussions, some people debunked the rumors, stating that the bus company indeed had a Route 404 over a decade ago, but due to urban redevelopment and route planning, it was later merged.
As for the ghost stories, most were hoaxes, as the Route 404 bus itself was a converted old model.
Later, when the entire fleet was updated, the retired 404 was sent to the Jiangcheng History Museum for public display.
Bus enthusiasts even posted photos: an old-fashioned white bus stood quietly in the exhibition hall, with an introduction plaque beside it detailing its “service history.”
Wasn't this exactly the material she needed?
Song Mo's eyes lit up, and an idea formed in her mind.
...
...
At 1 AM, a crisp rooster crow sounded in Song Mo's headphones.
【Rooster Crow Phantom (Skill): The rooster's crow represents Yang; dawn dispels Yin. When ghosts hear a rooster's crow between the Zi and Mao hours, they will turn into green smoke, gaining increased movement speed and becoming unobservable.】
The next second, Song Mo's entire being began to turn ethereal. With a “poof,” she transformed into a puff of green smoke that landed on the ground, scattered with a gust of wind, and then re-coalesced.
This feeling was peculiar—
First, her vision: in this state, everything Song Mo saw was reduced to the utterly monotonous colors of black, white, and gray.
The shimmering neon lights and starry sky outside the window appeared to her like a faded black-and-white photograph.
The buildings were grayish-white, the roads were grayish-white.
The shadows cast by the streetlights glowed with a ghastly pallor.
The entire city seemed to have transformed into a dead city.
Song Mo floated lightly out the window, as weightless as cotton, finally drifting unsteadily to the ground.
A five-story drop meant nothing to her.
“...This is too interesting, too interesting.”
Song Mo excitedly licked her lips, as if she could feel her stopped heart beating wildly.
A gentle breeze passed through her body without any sensation.
She could hear the wind, but felt no cold or warmth.
This feeling utterly captivated Song Mo, but fortunately, she only indulged for a moment before remembering her task.
Tonight, she was going to “kidnap” a decommissioned bus.
...
...
Song Mo first made her way to Hongguang Community.
In her green smoke form, Song Mo's speed was terrifyingly fast; a distance of several kilometers seemed to be covered in just two blinks of an eye.
As she neared the area, she immediately sensed something was amiss:
Several streets around Hongguang Community were entirely cordoned off, yellow caution tape swaying slightly in the night wind.
A temporary guard post had been set up at the community entrance, and several high-power floodlights illuminated the surroundings as brightly as day.
Soldiers in camouflage patrolled back and forth within the cordon, their steps synchronized. Each had a walkie-talkie clipped to their waist, from which occasional low static and brief communications emanated.
Song Mo floated a little closer.
She saw two military trucks parked beside the guard post, their beds covered with tarpaulins, obscuring their contents.
Song Mo then floated to the other side of the community.
This side, near the community's back gate, was also tightly cordoned off, with a post even set up in the rarely used alleyway next to it.
Two soldiers stood at the alley entrance, one holding an unlit cigarette between his fingers. They occasionally spoke in low voices.
“How long do you think we’ll have to guard this?” asked the younger soldier.
“Command didn’t say. Just keep guarding,” the older one replied, his voice kept low. “Don’t go asking around.”
The young soldier hummed, silent for a few seconds, then couldn't help but whisper, “...I heard the things they cleared out from inside... were all sent to the research institute.”
The older soldier shot him a glare, and the young man immediately fell silent.
Song Mo had heard enough to understand the situation.
The incident that night had indeed caused quite a stir.
Officially, it was reported as a gas pipeline explosion, but this explanation clearly couldn't fool everyone.
Especially the eyewitnesses who saw living corpses pouring out of the stairwells.
Seeing that she hadn't been detected, Song Mo floated around the area once more.
The cordon extended wider than she had imagined; not only was Hongguang Community itself sealed off, but the two adjacent streets were also under control.
Several shops along the street were all closed, their roller shutters pulled tight, with “Under Renovation, Temporarily Closed” signs taped to their doors.
One convenience store even had a large padlock on its door. Through the glass, she could see goods still on the shelves and takeout boxes on the counter.
Clearly, the owner had left in a hurry.
Just then, Song Mo's peripheral vision caught something else.
At first, she thought it was an illusion.
After transforming into green smoke, her vision was different from normal; everything appeared as if covered by a hazy gray filter, completely stripped of color.
She saw something else—many gray shadows moving on the street.
Song Mo initially didn't pay much attention, thinking they were passersby.
But soon she realized something was wrong:
It was almost 3 AM, and apart from patrolling soldiers and occasional vehicles, there were almost no living people on the streets.
Yet these gray shadows were everywhere.
She stopped above a streetlight and carefully observed the nearest shadow.
It was the image of a middle-aged man, slightly stout, wearing a top of an indiscernible style, walking slowly along the sidewalk with his head down.
His steps were mechanical, each stride almost identical in length, unhurried, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.
Song Mo looked in another direction.
Across the street, an old woman's shadow stood beneath a bus stop, hunched over and motionless, as if waiting for a bus.
Further away, a child's shadow crouched by a flower bed, holding a leather ball, but it was so blurry its outline was almost indiscernible.
【Discovered Low-Grade Material: Shadow (Capturable)】
Material?
Song Mo's heart stirred, and she floated closer, carefully observing the old woman's shadow.
This thing didn't seem to be a ghost.
It had no physical form, no expression, and she couldn't even sense any “consciousness” from it.
It seemed to be merely a humanoid gray outline, as if someone had drawn a faint ink stroke in the air.
She couldn't say what it was exactly.
But since the system prompted it as a low-grade material and it was capturable—
Song Mo tentatively reached out her hand, trying to touch the grayish-white shadow.
A faint glow, visible only to her, flashed.
【Capture Successful】
The old woman's shadow vanished instantly, as if erased by something.
Only a line of ink-style text floated in its place: 【Low-Grade Shadow * 1 (Can be used to synthesize Mid-Grade Material or deployed)】
The bamboo basket icon representing “Inventory” in the upper right corner of Song Mo's vision gently stirred.
She really could catch them.
Song Mo's interest was immediately piqued.
She immediately turned and floated towards the child's shadow crouching by the flower bed across the street.
This shadow was blurrier than the old woman's, its edges almost melting into the night.
Touch.
【Capture Failed】
The ink-style text prompt was concise and clear, without any extra explanation.
After being touched, the child's shadow's outline wavered for a few seconds, then returned to its original state.
“Capture can also fail.”
Song Mo frowned, silently noting the experience. “...Capture isn't 100% successful. The clarity of the shadow might be related to the success rate.”
She tried again, failing, until the third attempt, when the child's shadow wavered and finally turned into text.
【Capture Successful】
【Shadow (Low-Grade Material) * 2】
Song Mo checked the time; it was just a few minutes past 2 AM, and she still had nearly two hours.
This was going to keep her busy.
...
3:30 AM.
Song Mo transformed into a streak of green smoke, soaring over the empty main roads, through the silent ring roads, heading straight for the Jiangcheng History Museum in the eastern suburbs of the city.
Of course, along the way, she lazily hitched rides with a few night-shift drivers.
The green smoke had no physical form, so the drivers remained unaware, merely muttering about the cold night wind.
A museum late at night was probably the quietest place in the entire city.
Tall, thick stone walls encircled the entire park, the main building standing in silent solitude against the dark night, its layers of glass display cases reflecting the ghastly pale streetlight.
The exhibition hall, bustling with people during the day, was now utterly silent.
Streetlights within the park were sparse, casting dim light and shadows, while 24-hour surveillance cameras silently scanned every corner.
Security guards on timed patrols walked steadily back and forth.
High walls that ordinary people couldn't scale were virtually nonexistent for Song Mo in her green smoke state.
She floated effortlessly through the tempered glass exhibition hall, directly entering the museum's interior display area.
The interior of the museum was pitch black, with only faint light from emergency indicator lamps.
Rows of neat display cases, old exhibits, and historical artifacts appeared before Song Mo.
【Discovered High-Grade Material: Fully Gold-Carved Family Shrine (Insufficient Writing Power, cannot capture)】
【Discovered High-Grade Material: Republic-Era Ningbo-Style Canopy Bed (Insufficient Writing Power, cannot capture)】
【Discovered High-Grade Material: Qing Guangxu Eight-Pillar Six-Eave Carved Wooden Bed (Insufficient Writing Power, cannot capture)】
【Discovered High-Grade Material: Qing Tongzhi Six-Pillar Five-Eave Fully Gold-Carved Grand Bed (Insufficient Writing Power, cannot capture)】
【Discovered...】
Song Mo was like a mouse that had fallen into a rice bin but had too small a mouth to eat the fine grains—
Millennia-old porcelain, centuries-old furniture, yellowed old photographs, dusty old newspapers, decommissioned antique machinery...
All sorts of materials unfolded one by one in her black-and-white vision, filled with the desolate aura of time.
But none of them were capturable, so she regretfully left, her gaze finally locking onto the city's transportation evolution exhibition hall in the deepest part of the museum.
Here were displayed models illustrating the evolution of all transportation tools in Jiangcheng over the past century:
Old rickshaws, Republic-era bicycles, 70s and 80s vintage green bicycles, first-generation taxis, and replica displays of early bus routes.
And in the most secluded part of the exhibition hall, a Route 404 bus, covered in the dust of ages, stood silently.
The moment she saw it, Song Mo breathed a soft sigh of relief.
She finally found it.
This was no ordinary exhibition model.
This was the original bus, directly decommissioned during a model upgrade, the “ghost bus” that countless Jiangcheng residents deeply believed in.
This provided Song Mo with an excellent foundation for her creation.
For over a decade, countless Jiangcheng residents had heard its supernatural legends; countless rumors, imaginings, fears, and fantasies had been layered onto this long-decommissioned bus.
It had no physical vitality, no independent sentience; it was merely an inanimate object.
Yet, this inanimate object had accumulated the supernatural essence of an entire city.
【Detected Mid-Grade Creative Material (Can be captured by consuming 20 Screenwriter Points)】
【Material Judgment: Incomplete Supernatural Carrier - Route 404 Yin-Yang Bus】
【Special Note: Carries the century-long urban legend essence of Jiangcheng, possesses the potential to manifest as a spirit or ghost. Upon successful creation, it can be linked to the Instance: Taiping Cemetery.】
The cold prompt text floated erratically, and Song Mo's eyes practically glowed.
Rate on N.U.
