Following the direction the old man pointed, the staff member glanced and then said, "Oh, that bus? It's already been moved. It was taking up too much space here, and with people coming and going, passengers seeing it wouldn't look good for the company either."
"You!" Wang Hanzhang grew a bit angry. "This is an important piece of evidence. The police investigation hasn't concluded yet—how can you just move it around casually!"
"Oh, old man, so you know it's evidence," the staff member, a plump woman in her forties, said with a dismissive smile. "But this bus is too big for the police to take away, and we're a service unit here—we can't scare off the passengers..."
Wang Hanzhang was about to argue further when Chen Mo reached out to stop him. "Can you tell us where this bus was moved to?"
"It's not far. See, over by the bungalows. Just walk a bit, take a turn, and you'll see it." The staff member, perhaps realizing her earlier tone was off, stepped out of the management office as she spoke and personally pointed Chen Mo in the right direction.
Nodding to acknowledge, Chen Mo immediately headed toward the indicated spot. After rounding a semi-old four-story building, a yard smaller than the bus station appeared before him. On one side of the yard stood a row of bungalows, seemingly used as tool sheds, while the yard itself held a scattering of damaged or malfunctioning buses awaiting repairs, with some tires and metal scraps littering the ground.
This yard was likely used by the bus company for repairing damaged vehicles. Here, Chen Mo immediately spotted the "ghost bus" that Old Man Wang Hanzhang had mentioned.
To be precise, it was a bus on Route 404. As if struck by something heavy, the front was deeply dented, the entire windshield shattered and covered in bloodstains. The rest of the body, like the front, was marked with collision dents of various sizes, some spots smeared with mud and blood, giving it a pitiful look—just like it had been in a serious accident.
Looking at this severely damaged bus, a flicker of doubt arose in Chen Mo's mind.
"This bus is wrecked like this—can it still run?"
He directed this question to a nearby worker who was busy. The worker paused, glanced at Wang Hanzhang behind him, then at Chen Mo, as if catching on. "You mean this bus? It's strange, actually..."
"What's strange?"
"A few days ago, when this bus showed up, Master Bao checked it and said the front steering gear was already broken. No idea how it was driven back."
"You mean this bus can't be driven at all?"
"Of course not. It's smashed up like this—would you dare to drive it?"
Chen Mo didn't reply. He looked up at the bus, growing more certain that its disappearance and eerie reappearance were due to supernatural forces at work.
Only supernatural power could make a behemoth like this bus suddenly appear here...
But why was that?
What did this bus's condition hint at, and where had the driver, Wang Jianguo, gone?
All of this seemed shrouded in deep mystery.
Circling the bus once, Chen Mo sensed no unusual aura, and he lacked the spare points to exchange for a spirit-detecting tool to probe for ghosts.
Through the open front and back doors, he could see the interior was also severely damaged and covered in bloodstains, yet the bus was empty.
If a major accident had occurred, where had the injured gone? Asking Wang Hanzhang, Chen Mo learned that the police had received no similar reports recently.
Instead of boarding the bus immediately, Chen Mo turned to look around. Through the corridor's glass window, a room full of cabinets caught his attention.
"What's this place?"
"Oh, that's the records room. The files of all drivers hired by the company are kept in there."
It was clear the files were stored haphazardly, with some even piled directly on the desk.
"Can I take a look?"
The repairman glanced at Wang Hanzhang. He recognized this old man, who had come several times in the past few days, seemingly the family member of the missing bus driver. Bringing someone here now likely meant investigating the incident again.
This bus disappearance case was indeed strange from start to finish, so although the bus had sat here for days, no mechanic had volunteered to inspect it. Still, since even the police were stumped, this old man probably wouldn't uncover much either.
Thinking this, the repairman still felt a pang of sympathy for the elderly man's efforts. Though he believed the records room held nothing valuable, he walked over and pushed the door open.
"Go ahead and look, but don't stay too long. If someone from the front comes by, we'll get blamed."
"Thank you, master. You're kind-hearted." Wang Hanzhang nodded hastily. He was now grasping at straws, unwilling to give up even the slightest hope. In his view, since Chen Mo had come here, it meant he'd agreed to help investigate his son's disappearance.
Inside the records room, a thin layer of dust covered the chairs and desks, showing they weren't often cleaned. Employee files like job applications were displayed in glass cabinets, unlikely to be used unless necessary—no wonder they'd been moved to this remote spot.
The folders on the desk were probably recent files, not yet sorted and stored.
Chen Mo recalled Wang Hanzhang mentioning that Wang Jianguo hadn't been employed long, just a month or two. So his file might not have been filed away yet.
Though unsure what good this would do, Chen Mo reached out and flipped through the folders on the desk. Sure enough, one marked with Wang Jianguo's name and a photo caught his eye.
The hire date was indeed just over a month ago. In the photo, the young man wore a shy smile, as if full of hope for his future job.
Attached to the application were other work arrangements from the unit. Since Wang Jianguo was a trainee driver, the company had assigned him to night shifts with lower frequency and fewer passengers. This made sense—less pressure and easier for him to learn the route and work. Though it was a night shift, it wasn't a late one; it ended by midnight, meaning at most one or two round trips.
Stable work, not too demanding—Wang Hanzhang's family must have been satisfied. If not for this incident, their lives would likely have been peaceful and happy.
Seeing this, Chen Mo suddenly thought of a question.
"How many night drivers are there on Route 404?"