Sure enough, after deliberately staging an accident, all the passengers on the bus got off. Only when the front and rear doors were completely closed did Chen Mo finally let out a long sigh of relief in his heart.
All of this was ultimately just his speculation, with no absolute certainty.
One of the requirements for triggering this mission was that when the bus arrived at the terminal, the number of ghosts on board could not exceed the number of people. At first glance, this requirement seemed to ask participants to probe and distinguish which passengers were human and which were ghosts, but in reality, it concealed a sinister deadly trap. The five bus routes were all ghost buses involved in major safety accidents. From start to finish, there were no living passengers on board—only these ghosts, bound by rules, either unaware of their own deaths or needing specific conditions to kill. In other words, the participants' probing itself could easily trigger the deadly mechanisms within the story.
Since the driver and conductor were company employees and not counted as passengers, the only way to avoid violating this rule was to drive an empty bus into the terminal. On each route, the story provided conditions for various passengers to get off.
Now, the only uncertainty for Chen Mo was whether, with all the accident victims already off the bus, crossing that bridge would still trigger the deadly recurrence of the accident!
The restarted bus, in utter silence, drove onto the mist-shrouded bridge. Looking out through the window, a figure could faintly be seen in the fog ahead, standing on the bridge.
That person wore a faded blue work uniform and a safety helmet. Seeing the bus approaching, he immediately waved his arm, like an ordinary worker, after a hard day's labor, eagerly wanting to rush home to reunite with his family.
In that unknown home, there might be a virtuous woman with a carefully prepared meal, or perhaps a pair of expectant parents waiting for his return.
But all of this was ultimately nothing but an illusory phantom.
No matter how eagerly that worker's face showed anticipation, no matter how hard he waved to board the bus, Chen Mo would never stop!
Because they had long since died, becoming ghosts in the story, and everything from their past lives had turned into an unreachable illusion.
Watching helplessly as the bus passed by, Chen Mo looked in the rearview mirror and saw the worker's face reveal a look of loss and a hint of reluctance.
It wasn't just this worker. In the mist enveloping the bridge, more and more ghostly figures gradually appeared. These figures all wore the same blue work uniforms, their weathered faces alternating between expressions of hope and disappointment.
Perhaps they didn't know that they could never, ever board that bus home.
The ghostly figures floating in the air silently watched as the No. 404 bus slowly crossed the bridge. Everything unfolded as Chen Mo had speculated—because the conditions for triggering the deadly mechanism were insufficient, the ghosts lingering on the bridge remained unshackled, their memories of death unawakened.
As long as the participants didn't voluntarily stop, these ghosts would just stand there, not driven by resentment to kill.
Still, Chen Mo couldn't help but feel a pang of melancholy.
With a familiar ringing of the bell, the No. 404 bus driven by Chen Mo finally pulled into the terminal. The terminal, which the participants had deeply suspected and feared would bring trouble, turned out to be nothing more than an ordinary stop. When the ghost bus came to a halt, both the front and rear doors opened automatically. As the two participants disembarked, the ghost bus started up again on its own, vanishing into the darkness, empty and driverless.
At the same time, the familiar radio prompt echoed in the minds of all surviving participants, including Chen Mo.
"Never casually board a late-night empty bus, for on it may hide unknown and poignant stories."
"Congratulations to all participants for completing another thrilling horror story!"
"This story is a trigger-type mission. All surviving participants will receive one chance to draw a reward. The reward could be points, or various auxiliary and spirit-expelling items."
"In any case, good luck to everyone."
"Surviving participants of this story: Li Yan, Chen Mo, Qu Jiaojiao."
"Deceased participants of this story: Chen Hai, Zhu Yilun, Zhang Yaqi, Zhou Junzhu, Wu Li, Zhao Yang, Yu Feng."
"Beginning teleportation out of the spirit world..."
As these names echoed in his mind, a trace of surprise flickered across Chen Mo's expression.
This trigger mission was the deadliest horror story he had experienced. Aside from the three veterans and quasi-veterans, the other participants—especially the newcomers—could be described as having been completely wiped out.
For the seventh program group, this was certainly an unwelcome outcome.
Though not one hundred percent certain, there were signs that as the program group's numbers dwindled, the probability of each listener being selected in the fixed story release frequency increased to varying degrees. The fewer the people, the higher the chance of being chosen in each round of missions. In other words, the intervals between missions shortened, leading to more participant deaths and creating a vicious cycle.
Eventually, when an entire program group was wiped out, the radio would mark it as vacant until new members entered.
Currently, there were two such vacant program groups in the radio.
Such a high mortality rate weighed heavily on Li Yan's heart as well.
An excessively high death rate among newcomers, leading to a disproportionately high proportion of veterans in the radio, was not a good thing for a program group either.
One direct consequence of too many veterans participating was that the story's difficulty was greatly increased. Take this trigger mission, for example: among the five routes, because Zhang Yaqi and Zhou Junzhu were complete novices, they were assigned the simplest route. They didn't even need to actively seek a way out—they just had to follow the manual's rules, pick any stop to pretend it was the terminal, and trick the ghosts into getting off.
In contrast, Li Yan's route required not only uncovering the truth of the bus fire based on clues and finding the hidden explosives but also facing an extremely difficult invisible ghost arsonist. Only by avoiding the ghost through subtle traces and holding out until it hid the gasoline can and got off with the other ghosts, then discarding the can, could the incident be perfectly resolved. The difference in difficulty between the two routes was clear.
As the prompt sounded in their minds, the participants' figures gradually faded away in this spirit world.
-- PS, so tired. Wrote a chapter in the hotel. Only one update today, please bear with me.