If anyone else encountered something so bizarre, they would likely be screaming in terror. But Chen Mo, as a radio listener who had experienced several real "ghostly" encounters, only felt a sinking feeling in his heart without much panic. Facing such an event, he wasn't entirely unprepared.
As the sky darkened, rolling gray fog began to churn outside the bus, gradually swallowing all surrounding scenery into its mist. At the same time, the door that had been open creaked shut on its own, as if manipulated by an invisible force. This trapped him inside this "ghost bus."
Though he remained outwardly calm, Chen Mo's heartbeat quickened. The sudden darkening of the sky, the automatic closing of the door—these all heralded the arrival of supernatural forces. But this wasn't within a story world created by the radio; it was in reality!
Just after the door closed, the churning gray fog outside began to seep into the bus. At that moment, Chen Mo felt a sudden, familiar, and overwhelming drowsiness wash over him.
Could this be...?
Before he could figure out what was happening, he quietly fell into a deep sleep without realizing it.
After an unknown amount of time, Chen Mo suddenly woke up.
Sweat on his forehead showed that his brief sleep had been restless, and strangely, he had dreamed of his distant parents.
But why did I suddenly fall asleep just now?
Rubbing his sore arm, Chen Mo looked around. The rolling fog had vanished, and now a bright moon cast silver light through the windows. Time had truly shifted to night.
Though time had passed, everything else remained unchanged. He was still sitting on that eerie bus, surrounded by bloodstains. The only difference was that the repairmen were gone, and even Wang Hanzhang was nowhere to be seen.
Is the space I'm in now still the real world?
As Chen Mo felt a flicker of doubt, his gaze was suddenly drawn to a booklet on the dashboard. The pages rustled as the wind blew through them.
"What's this?"
He reached out and picked it up. It was a work log, recording the start and end times for each bus route. One line had been underlined in bold red ink as a reminder.
"Bus 404, starts at 10 PM, ends at 12 AM, driver: Wang Jianguo."
Wasn't this the bus company's work schedule for Wang Jianguo?
Just then, the handwriting in the log began to blur, and another line of bloody text gradually emerged.
"Have you ever ridden a midnight bus?"
"When you're tired and in a hurry, and such a bus breaks through the night to appear before you, don't you feel a sense of relief?"
"But some midnight buses shouldn't be boarded casually."
"Because you never know if the driver and passengers are alive."
"And you can never guess where its final stop is..."
"Welcome to the horror world of Strange Tales Radio. A new story has begun!"
"This time, ten participants will play the roles of bus company drivers and staff, operating five night routes. Drive the midnight bus and bring it to its final stop."
"Note: Midnight buses sometimes pick up 'strange' passengers. As company employees, you must identify their identities and transport the correct passengers to the destination."
"When the bus reaches the final stop, the number of living people must exceed the number of ghosts."
"This story is a trigger-based temporary mission. Completing it will yield extra rewards beyond regular stories. Discovering the story behind the mission will also grant additional rewards. This is a restricted-item mission, with ten participants total."
A trigger mission!
Chen Mo had initially thought he was dealing with a real-world supernatural event. But unexpectedly, this twisted radio station had once again "processed" a real-world paranormal incident into a horror story, releasing it as a mission within the station.
And this time, ten people were involved.
Trigger missions differed from forced stories. Because they happened spontaneously, no preview images were sent to selected listeners. Instead, within minutes of the notification, all participants were forcibly transported to the story space.
This was the scenario every listener dreaded most!
After reading, the bloody text seeped back into the paper and vanished. Chen Mo stood up and looked out the window. In the empty courtyard, figures of varying heights gradually materialized—clearly the radio members caught in this trigger mission.
"What... what's going on?"
A man in a shirt and glasses, looking refined, glanced around in surprise, his face showing shock.
Beside him were two young men in their early twenties, looking like students. They exchanged bewildered glances, their expressions equally terrified.
A bit farther away, a burly man with a crew cut, over 1.9 meters tall, appeared with a grim face, his thoughts unreadable.
Then, other figures emerged one after another. Most wore expressions of surprise, while a few showed a mix of shock and complexity.
"So... it's a trigger mission?"
Suddenly, a familiar figure caught Chen Mo's eye.
"Li Yan?! It's you!"
The person turned at the sound, saw Chen Mo, and smiled warmly amid his surprise. "Chen Mo, hello."
Chen Mo gave a bitter smile. "Meeting again in a mission—not good at all."
Li Yan chuckled, then looked around. "This trigger mission has quite a crowd. Chen Mo, do you know what's happening?"
After a moment's hesitation, Chen Mo briefly recounted the supernatural event he had encountered earlier and how he had helped Wang Hanzhang investigate the missing bus. Li Yan listened, then shook his head with a resigned smile. "Others would avoid this like the plague, but you actually went out of your way to help..."
"Thinking back, it was a bit foolish," Chen Mo admitted without denial. As a radio listener, he was more prone to encountering real-world supernatural events than ordinary people. And once involved, the radio could turn those events into horror stories, dragging the trigger and some selected listeners into the story as participants.
Knowing this, he still got involved in Wang Jianguo's case, simply because he couldn't refuse the old man's desperate, crumbling gaze.
But from another perspective, completing a trigger mission would yield rewards far greater than those of regular missions.
It was dangerous, but also an opportunity!