Chapter 1: Omen

The early autumn sky was clear and bright, with a crisp atmosphere. The warm sunlight generously shared its light and heat, draping a light veil over those traveling.

Several consecutive days of clear weather had brought a bit of vitality to this typically dull and dreary city. Xiao Muyu drew back the curtains, and looked out from the balcony on the fifteenth floor at the distant view, where the lake met the sky. After a moment, she withdrew her gaze, her expression unchanged. In her beautiful, pitch-black orbs, there was a calm indifference, like a still, ancient well.

After standing for a while, Xiao Muyu turned and looked at the phone on the table. The latest message was from the company’s deputy director, Liu Yongqiang.

“Your resignation report has been approved. I’ve had someone pack up your things. If you don’t come to get them today, they might end up in the trash.”

“And I’ll apply to have your remaining bonus sent to you. Please cooperate with the takeover; it’s best for everyone.”

After glancing at it, Xiao Muyu turned off her phone. It was just a small program with numerous bugs. They had been so desperate for a solution, yet so eager to get rid of her once she ceased to be useful.

She shifted her attention to the open laptop, her slender fingers nimbly tapping away at the keyboard. The page, which was already filled with code, received a few more lines of instructions. Then she paused and pressed F12.

A blue progress bar appeared on the computer screen. It was continuously loading, with the code scrolling rapidly.

Xiao Muyu ignored it, picked up the small bag from the sofa, put on a black baseball cap, and turned to leave.

The moment the door closed, the progress bar, which had been at sixty percent, suddenly flickered. The code that had been running behind it abruptly stopped, and a red box began to flash rapidly. Lines of code automatically started replacing and generating new ones. Finally, there was a metallic chime. All the code was replaced, and the progress bar instantly jumped to one hundred percent.

As the keyboard continued to clack away, the screen displayed lines of text: “Detecting target… downloading file… unzipping… locking target!”

The next moment, the clacking stopped abruptly, and two lines of blood-red text appeared on the screen:

“Countdown”

“30:00 minutes”

Furthermore, the countdown system had already started.

The blood-red numbers dominating the entire screen ticked down second by second, the red color of the font appearing almost like blood about to overflow from the screen, striking and alarming.

Xiao Muyu was unaware of this.

She only knew that in fifteen minutes, the program they had forcibly taken over would completely crash and disintegrate. As for the things she left at the company, she no longer needed them.

Today was Friday. Originally, she should have been at work at this time, but that was no longer necessary. Thus, the place she could only visit after 6 p.m. on a Friday, she could go to early.

Xiao Muyu had taken this route countless times, so she timed it perfectly to be at the stop just as the 520 bus arrived.

At 9:30 on a weekday morning, there weren’t many passengers. Xiao Muyu stood at the back, about one and a half meters away from the person in front. Only after they boarded did she take large strides to get on, which drew a glance from the driver.

There were fewer than ten people on the bus, as it was close to the final stop. There were many empty seats, enough for each person to have a row to themselves.

Xiao Muyu glanced around the bus, pressed down the brim of her hat, and quietly walked to the last row, sitting alone in the corner. She turned her head to look out the window, her face devoid of any expression, appearing numb and detached.

This bus route, rich in romantic significance, with its dramatically arranged stops, seemed to be a microcosm of a life full of joys and sorrows.

The 520 bus route started at the Municipal Maternity and Children Healthcare Hospital, passing by a kindergarten, primary school, middle school, and nursing home, with the final stop at a cemetery. Riding this bus felt like traversing the entire span of a person’s life.

Xiao Muyu had long lost any sense of public sentiment or reflection about this route. She remained silent, staring out the window with vacant eyes, simply waiting for the final stop.

She was very familiar with this bus route. The scenes passing by the window were ones she had seen countless times—unchanging and predictable.

At the next intersection, the bus would pass a fast-food restaurant with a trash bin always placed perfectly between two camphor trees. After that, it would pass a billboard featuring a giant image of a female celebrity with a sweet smile.

Indeed, there was no change, like a programmed scene.

Xiao Muyu furrowed her brow as this inexplicable thought crossed her mind. Just then, the bus stopped. She turned her head toward the front door, staring intently as three people boarded—two men and one woman. The bus driver had his finger on the button, ready to close the door.

At that moment, Xiao Muyu’s expression showed a fleeting moment of pain. She closed her eyes and murmured very softly, “There are still two more people, one carrying a child, and the other will argue with the driver, struggle, and grab the steering wheel.”

Several blurry images flashed quickly through her mind, making her dizzy. She couldn’t help but reach out and grasp the armrest beside her.

Her low murmur went unnoticed, and just as the door closed and the bus started to move, a man’s loud shout rang out from outside. The bus had moved only two or three meters when the driver slammed on the brakes.

Xiao Muyu lurched forward and then fell back into her seat, watching as an angry man boarded the bus. He then beckoned, and moments later, a woman carrying a child jogged breathlessly onto the bus.

The woman carried her child unsteadily and sat down two rows in front of Xiao Muyu, gasping for breath, clearly exhausted.

The man, however, didn’t sit down. Instead, he angrily confronted the driver, “Are you blind or deaf? Didn’t you see someone hadn’t gotten on the bus? My wife is carrying a child! Do you have any shred of common decency, or are you in such a rush to die?”

His tone was aggressive, and his behavior was equally provocative, with his finger almost touching the driver’s nose. The driver, having a quick temper, immediately responded with a cold face and a raised voice.

“Just try swearing at me one more time. Is this bus your property? Another bus would’ve come soon. If you’re in such a hurry, you’re the one rushing into your next life!”

This outburst ignited the man’s fury. His eyes bulged like brass bells, his muscles trembling with rage, and his words became increasingly vulgar, his actions more aggressive.

“Hey, stop arguing. The driver is driving.” A few scattered passengers, unable to bear watching any longer, spoke up. However, they quickly fell silent when the burly man glared at them. Even his wife was too timid to intervene.

The driver, equally agitated, retaliated but didn’t slow down or brake. Instead, he deliberately accelerated and made a sharp turn, throwing the man to the side.

The passengers screamed as they watched the bus veer off its original route. Up ahead was a tunnel.

“Driver, calm down! Stop the bus and call the police!”

Before the words fully settled, the man had already gotten up and lunged for the steering wheel. The bus, moving too fast, began to sway violently from side to side.

“If you don’t want to die, stop the bus now! We’re going to crash!” A cold, clear female voice pierced through the chaos. At the same time, the speaker began making her way from the back row to the front, though in the out-of-control bus, it was hard to even stand, let alone walk.

The driver, as if under some Gong Tau¹ spell, had no intention of slowing down. Xiao Muyu was thrown forward, and collided with the woman holding the child, who was already crying in fear.

Xiao Muyu glanced at the woman pleading tearfully with her husband, frowned, and endured the pain from the impact on her ribs. She gritted her teeth and tried to get up to stop the reckless man.

But just as she took a step, Xiao Muyu’s expression instantly changed. The passengers began screaming in terror. Xiao Muyu’s pupils constricted as she watched the bus rapidly enter the tunnel, the hard tunnel walls enlarging and closing in fast in her vision.

There was a loud bang in her ears. As glass shattered and flew everywhere, her view spun and flipped, and in the blink of an eye, everything plunged into darkness, before her consciousness was pulled into the abyss.

Xiao Muyu didn’t know how much time had passed before she regained consciousness. When she opened her eyes, everything was still pitch black, with no trace of light. Surprisingly, her body didn’t feel much pain, which filled her with an oddly unsettling feeling.

Her last memory was still vivid: surviving such a violent collision was a miracle in itself, so why wasn’t her body in severe pain? Moreover, it was broad daylight; even if the bus had crashed inside the tunnel, it shouldn’t be this dark. What was even more terrifying was the deathly silence around her.

“Is anyone there?” She called out, her voice hoarse. Only after speaking did she realize it carried a slight tremor. She closed her mouth, steadied her voice, and called out a few more times, but there was no response.

There was no light, no sound—none of the expected cries, commotion, groans, not even breathing!

The darkness enveloped Xiao Muyu like a deep, eerie pool. Despite being known for her cold and composed demeanor, her heartbeat began to quicken in this unnerving situation.

Xiao Muyu struggled to get up. It was completely dark inside the bus, and she could only grope her way. Her phone had been thrown out of her pocket, and was lost somewhere.

The bus seemed to have flipped over, the space compressed and deformed. She remembered that she had walked to the middle of the bus when the accident happened. Bending her body, she grabbed onto whatever she could to discern her position. Following the seats, she found a shattered window; the remaining glass cut her hand, but at least it confirmed an escape route.

She continued to feel her way around, but then her body froze, and her breathing became erratic. Her fingertips touched something warm and sticky. In this situation, it wasn’t hard to guess what it was. Xiao Muyu quickly pulled her hand back.

Breathing heavily, she recalled the small thing she had touched. It was the child.

She forced herself to endure, quickly wiping her hand on her clothes, trying not to think about the scene before her.

She didn’t find any other exits or survivors, but she repeatedly encountered twisted, strangely soft objects. Imagination often filled in sensory gaps, and at this moment, Xiao Muyu had a clear picture of the hellish scene inside the bus: the shattered, twisted bus, overturned seats, and those dismembered limbs and remnants…

Unable to dwell on the eerie, illogical reality before her, she gritted her teeth, kicked open a window with broken glass, and carefully crawled out. She didn’t want to stay inside the bus.

When her feet finally touched solid ground, the suffocating, claustrophobic feeling dissipated, and the invisible fingers clutching her throat released their grip.

Yet, amidst the unease, Xiao Muyu’s still-clear mind made her acutely aware of the desperate situation she was now in.

Everyone inside the bus seemed to be dead. The place she was in now was definitely not where the bus accident occurred. There was no rescue, no light, and recalling the scenes that had flashed through her mind on the bus, she knew her worldview was about to collapse.

She actually smiled thinking of this. She really was a freak. A normal person would probably have a complete breakdown after seeing everyone around them dead, but she… As her mother had said, she was born with little humanity.

It was as if she had foreseen her own end, but was powerless to change it. This was definitely not a good omen.

Although Xiao Muyu wasn’t particularly passionate about living, she didn’t want to die so inexplicably in such a bizarre place.

She slung her only remaining backpack over her shoulder, put on the cap she had found in the darkness, and stood in the boundless blackness, cautiously testing her surroundings with her hands and feet. Strangely enough, she was still in the tunnel.

Since it was a tunnel, there had to be an exit. Both directions were engulfed in darkness, indicating that she was far from either end. Not wanting to stay near the bus, Xiao Muyu turned and started walking step by step along the tunnel wall.

At this moment: Countdown: 05 : 20.

---

Footnotes:

1. 1. Jiangtou, or more popularly known by its Teochew/Hokkien name Gong Tau, is Southeast Asian black magic, very similar to voodoo. ↩︎
2. 
   2. 摆渡人, or known by its English title “See You Tomorrow”, is a 2016 comedy/romance film. The ‘ferryman’, which is what the original Chinese title translates as, refers to the film’s main character, Chen Mo. ↩︎

Author had something to say:

I’ve always wanted to try more things, and this counts as my first challenge. It’s very difficult to write, and most readers might not enjoy this type of story, but I really like it. I’m quite stubborn in my opinions, and I hope to bring various different stories to life—whether it’s wuxia, political intrigue, school life, business wars, romance, or xianxia, none of them are orthodox, but I’ve made an effort to write them all. Now I can add infinite flow to the list, haha.

So, if there are any plot issues, please feel free to point them out, but be gentle. If there are any bugs, please let me know, but don’t scold me. The logic might not be entirely tight, but I will handle it seriously. The tunnel at the beginning was influenced by “The Ferryman”², but there’s no connection, so rest assured. The next book will return to my old forte, xianxia, focusing on the master-disciple dynamic. I started writing with xianxia and have a strange fondness for this genre, so you can look forward to it.

Now, readers, please take your positions. The game begins!