Chapter 463: We Don't Manufacture Corpses, We're Just Corpse Porters

Wang Jian's experience was by no means an isolated case.

Thanks to Guang Liang Television Station's ruthless push streams across all major online platforms.

At this moment, before countless screens throughout the Lower City Ninth District.

"Ahhh!!"

There were no few viewers who watched too obsessively and had the courage to scream and kick over their televisions, or grab keyboards and smash their monitors to pieces.

In short,

According to incomplete statistics afterward, the Ninth District's home appliance sales surged 17% that month.

Among them, the repurchase rate for display screens hit a historic high.

Just as Wei Guangming's slogan declared, he would not allow anyone in the Ninth District to have missed such a spectacular live broadcast.

He basically pulled it off!

………

Let us rewind the clock a little.

Wang Xiuli stumbled out the front door, hair tangled and stuck to a forehead covered in cold sweat.

She stood by the roadside waving frantically; a yellow taxi screeched to a halt before her, the driver rolling down the window.

"Where to?"

"No. 8 Middle School! Please, hurry."

"Damn it!"

The driver's face changed abruptly; he cursed violently, tires screeching against the pavement with a piercing sound, exhaust spraying Wang Xiuli full in the face.

The third car, the fourth car — Wang Xiuli lost count of how many she had flagged down.

She could only keep running forward along the road, unsure how long she had run, until blood seeped through her shoe soles.

Yet Wang Xiuli seemed entirely unaware, as if the glass shards grinding inside her shoes, constantly slicing that foot, were made of iron too, even though her shoe soles were already soaked through.

Along the roadside, every step left bloody footprints.

Wang Xiuli strode mechanically, breathing as heavy as a broken bellows; passersby took her for a madman and shrank away in fear.

Screech—

Finally, an old-model taxi stopped in front of her.

The window lowered slowly, revealing the driver's half-face wearing a black mask.

His brow ridges were high, eye sockets deep-set, fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

"Where to?" His voice was magnetic, like a cello's resonance.

"E-Eighth Middle School." Wang Xiuli braced her hands on her knees, gasping, "Nearby is fine."

The driver looked at the bedraggled woman, his gaze lingering on her blood-soaked feet for a few seconds: "Get in."

The car's leather seats were icy cold; Wang Xiuli collapsed into the back seat, her whole body nearly soaked through.

A faded Peace Talisman hung from the rearview mirror, swaying gently as the car started.

The car radio was playing a ghost story; the storyteller's magnetic voice echoed inside the cabin, vividly describing a girl in a school girls' dormitory holding her best friend's head while fast asleep.

Sitting in the car, Wang Xiuli only then felt the searing pain from her feet.

But she still could not spare the attention, instead anxiously telling the driver.

"Driver, please... faster."

The taxi driver glanced at the woman through the rearview mirror.

"That area around No. 8 Middle School"

He turned the steering wheel unhurriedly:

"That area around No. 8 Middle School has monsters, miss, you're..."

Wang Xiuli answered in a trembling voice: "My daughter, husband, son, they're all there."

"Oh?"

The driver's fingers tapped lightly on the steering wheel, a rhythm that inexplicably made one's heart race.

The car surged forward, the engine roaring.

"Whole family's there," his voice beneath the mask carried a meaningful sigh, "then we'd better hurry."

Wang Xiuli didn't hear a word the driver said; she fumbled clumsily with her phone, taking a full 2 minutes to find the Guangliang Television Station app in the app store.

All her attention was fixed on that slowly growing download progress bar.

10% 35% every number jump felt like a century.

The ghost story on the radio was reaching its climax, the voice rising and falling captivatingly, yet Wang Xiuli didn't take in a single word.

The taxi driver glanced at the rearview mirror again, brows furrowing slightly, and turned up the volume without a change in expression; eerie sounds reverberated inside the car.

But Wang Xiuli's eardrums seemed plugged; her pupils reflected only that damn progress bar — 89%!

Ding!

The installation complete chime sounded like heavenly music.

Wang Xiuli scrambled to open the app; the instant the live broadcast picture popped up, two identical bizarre grinning faces suddenly filled the entire screen.

Wang Xiuli gasped a mouthful of cold air, yet still clutched the phone tight, eyes wishing they could bore straight into the screen.

The live footage shook violently; in a fleeting glimpse, she saw at the right edge of the picture a blurry back of a head, only about 1/3 visible.

But perhaps it was a mother-daughter connection; Wang Xiuli recognized that hair whorl at a glance as very much like her own daughter's.

"Yu Huai!" Wang Xiuli instinctively reached to touch the screen, heedless of touching 【Mask】's cheek, but her fingertips met only the cold screen.

The next second, blinding white light devoured the entire picture.

In the intense light, the live broadcast room's image rotated; abruptly, a distorted face pressed against the screen, its eyes could barely open, nose bridge clearly broken, fresh blood gushing from the corners of its mouth.

The live broadcast signal cut off at this moment, static noise filling the screen.

Wang Xiuli's phone clattered onto her leg, and the ghost story on the broadcast happened to reach:

"When she finally found her daughter, she discovered....."

The ghost story on the broadcast continued, the driver's low voice mixed in the electric static saying something.

But Wang Xiuli's ear canals were filled with a piercing tinnitus, as if ten thousand venomous bees were vibrating their wings inside her skull.

Her temples throbbed, and her vision blurred with a wave of dizziness.

A long time passed before the broadcast in the car stopped, and the taxi pulled over to the roadside.

"We're here, No. 8 Middle School is just ahead, I won't drive over there."

Wang Xiuli blanked for a moment, then snapped out of it and took out all the money in her pocket to hand to the driver, then quickly pushed the door open and got out.

The taxi's stopping position was still a distance from No. 8 Middle School, but it wasn't far anymore.

Wang Xiuli didn't care at all, getting out and running toward No. 8 Middle School, her blood-stained shoe soles dragging winding blood traces on the asphalt road.

In the car, the driver killed the engine.

He took off his mask, revealing a handsome face.

The blue light of the dashboard flowed across his face, staining his deep eye sockets into two pools of dark lake water.

His gaze clung to Wang Xiuli's staggering back like a shadow, until her figure completely disappeared into the distance.

"Sigh"

After a long while, he let out a long breath, taking out a gilt pocket watch from the inner pocket of his wool coat.

When his fingertips brushed the line of tiny inscriptions on the edge of the watch cover, they paused slightly — "We don't manufacture corpses, we are merely the transporters of corpses."

The script was the complex font of the previous epoch, every stroke like coagulated blood traces.

Of course, not every corpse is worth transporting.

"It shouldn't be right, the bad luck on this woman is so thick it could drip blood, how come she precisely"

The pocket watch suddenly let out a harsh "crack" sound, the rhythm of the second hand's jumping becoming abnormally frantic.

The driver stopped pondering, instead turning his gaze toward the manhole cover not far away.

"Forget it, giving that woman a ride was just me doing a good deed on the way, today's real target is..."

The manhole cover not far away trembled slightly, the iron edge grinding against the ground with a tooth-aching "creak."

A swollen, festering palm "popped" open the manhole cover, the skin on that hand looked like it had been scalded by boiling water, covered in uneven pits, fingernail crevices stuffed full of blackish-red filth.

The ghost radio in the car switched channels, starting to tell another gripping story:

"Let us continue today's special program, remember, dear listeners, everyone is the protagonist of their own story. And also the ghost in their own story!!"

(End of Chapter)