Chapter 105: Returning Home

Sitting in the last row of the bus, the artificial leather seat under his butt emitted a slight moldy smell. The curtains tied to the window were covered with some small mold spots. This bus seemed to have not been cleaned for a long time.

The light of the street lamp moved forward slowly, turned a corner, and then moved backward. The bus drove out of the parking lot of the West Suburban Station and got on the road.

But it didn't drive for long before the car stopped.

Ji Taimei subconsciously looked up, his sight passing over the seats to look forward, only to see the bus door open again. A tall middle-aged man wearing a coir raincoat, a bamboo hat, and straw sandals walked up from below.

"Where is this gentleman going?" The conductor asked sweetly.

The man stood in place without making any sound, but the conductor seemed to hear what he said, and then asked: "One-way or round-trip?"

The man still didn't speak. The conductor took a 10-yuan paper note from his hand and returned 1 yuan in change and 1 handwritten invoice.

The man took the invoice and change and got on the bus directly, walking toward the back row of the carriage where Ji Taimei was. A pair of big feet tied with straw sandals stepped on the floor without making any sound, like a phantom ghost floating past.

Ji Taimei's heart rose to his throat, and he subconsciously wanted to stand up and change seats. At this moment, a low male voice suddenly came from the direction of the bus door:

"Heian-kyo."

Who is speaking? Ji Taimei gathered his courage and looked up. The driver was still sitting in the driver's seat, the conductor was leaning on the railing without saying a word, and there was no one at the bus door, but a man's voice came from there:

"One-way."

"He is answering the conductor's question?" Ji Taimei opened his eyes wide, not daring to blink. The man came to a seat some distance from the back row of the carriage where he was and sat down, bowing his body.

Subsequently, the sound of straw sandals stepping on the floor came from the bus door, as well as the rustling sound of the coir raincoat rubbing against the fabric. This sound approached all the way, one step, two steps, three steps, walked silently to the seat at the back of the carriage, and disappeared.

Ji Taimei's Adam's apple moved. He seemed to have understood what happened just now: "This man finished speaking a few seconds later, and then I heard his voice?"

The footsteps just now also sounded after he finished walking and sat down in the seat, as if this person's voice and his body were two separate entities. The person walked first, and the voice followed later.

This person is not normal...

Before Ji Taimei could think more about what happened just now, another person walked up from the bus door.

This time, a woman wearing a long dress walked up the bus. Her demeanor was dignified, her figure was graceful, her plump and noble body was tied with a waist seal, and a purple veil covered her round goose-egg face. Her specific appearance could not be seen, only her soft and charming temperament was particularly seductive.

"Where is this sister going?" The conductor asked.

"Sheep Prison." The long-skirted woman's tone was very soft, like the gentle lake water of Yunmeng Marsh in autumn, making Ji Taimei somewhat dazed.

"One-way or round-trip?"

"Round-trip."

After paying the bus fare, the long-skirted woman took the invoice and change and got on the bus. Her low-heeled sandals made a pleasant clicking sound on the floor, without the strange situation of the person and voice separating like the man who got on the bus just now.

Ji Taimei breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that he finally met a normal person. But then, as soon as he lowered his head, the scene that caught his eyes made him even more horrified. Under this woman's feet... there was no shadow.

The bus carriage was lit with dim yellow lights, and rows of seats cast rows of long, narrow shadows. The woman walked in the carriage, and the faint light sprinkled on her, as if passing through a completely transparent glass. Her feet stepped on the dim light under her skirt, and no shadow of a person could be seen.

"This person is also not normal..." Ji Taimei's breathing couldn't help but freeze, and even his heartbeat slowed down. He carefully lowered his head, sat back in his seat, and didn't dare to move at all.

The clicking footsteps gradually approached, and a burst of fragrance drifted toward his face. The woman sat in the seat in the last row of the bus, on the same row as Ji Taimei, but she was leaning against the window on the other side of the carriage, with several seats between them.

Ji Taimei breathed a sigh of relief again. It was good that she didn't sit next to him.

Pushing aside the curtain to look out the window, the street lamps outside emitted dim light. The bus door closed, and no one got on the bus again.

The bus left the station and drove away from the night Yun City along the suburban highway. There were two more people on the bus, but it was still silent. Neither the man nor the woman spoke. They all sat silently in their seats without saying a word, only the cold night wind blowing in from the window, rustling.

Ji Taimei carefully fished out his phone and opened the map navigation software, wanting to see the bus's route. But as soon as the software icon was clicked, a line of small text notification popped up at the bottom of the screen:

【No network connection】

After the blank advertisement page flashed, what appeared on the screen was the offline page of the map software. Ji Taimei's phone memory was all used to install games, and he didn't have the habit of downloading local maps. After the network connection was disconnected, there were only ambiguous map color blocks on the navigation software, and the road signs and landmarks in online mode could not be seen.

=9+Shu_Ba

"Damn it..." Ji Taimei closed the navigation helplessly and looked at the 4g signal in the status bar, which showed full bars.

He tried to open the browser to use the online map, but the network was still not connected.

After several attempts failed, Ji Taimei turned off the phone screen and put it back in his pocket. He vaguely understood one thing—from the moment he entered the station, he might have already come to another world.

The distance from Yun City West Suburban Station to Sheep Prison Village is about 15 kilometers. Along the way, it stopped at various stations. The cypress trees on both sides of the highway rushed backward. In the twenty minutes or so, no one got on the bus again.

Around 10:30 at night, the bus stopped on the side of the road at the intersection of a small road, and the bus door opened automatically.

"Ahead is Sheep Prison Village. Are the two of you getting off here?" The conductor's voice came from the front.

Ji Taimei turned his head and glanced at the woman sitting by the window. Seeing that she didn't seem to have any intention of getting up, he hurriedly said: "Yes, getting off here."

After speaking, Ji Taimei immediately got up and ran through the carriage, fleeing off the bus as if escaping.

There were no street lamps on the suburban highway. Under the pitch-black night sky, only the high beams on the bus head were still on, illuminating the pale weeds on both sides of the road. A small road branched off from the side of the highway and extended toward the distant fields.

Ji Taimei took a deep breath and looked back at the bus parked on the side of the road for the last time. He still remembered what was said on the letter—walking on this road into the village, he could never look back again.

(End of Chapter) ===== CHAPTER 106 =====