[Dungeon 4-10326 “Ghost Embodiment” opens for the first time.]
[Around you, many unidentified presences are observing you. They might be on the road, next to your seat, or by your bedside.]
[Shh! Please be careful! Don’t let them discover you’re not one of them; otherwise, they will ‘seek sameness and disregard differences.’]
[Instance mission: Complete the journey through the underworld.]
[Mission time: 15 days in the underworld (3 days in base time).]
[Friendly reminder: Do good deeds, don’t inquire about the future.]
[Having treaded the same roads and seen the same views repeatedly, are you thinking of taking a different route for a change of scenery? This journey is here to fulfill your wish. Wishing all players a joyful trip.]
Initiating teleportation.
Ning Su breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that this dungeon number seemed familiar.
After giving it some thought, he understood why it was familiar.
When he entered the game base by riding the bus, the skeleton driver had once placed a card in his pocket, and the number on the card was 4-10326.
At that time, Ning Su didn’t know the meaning of the card. Now he understood; it was the address of the skeleton lady’s home.
After listening to the system’s dungeon introduction, Ning Su felt secretly delighted.
Previously, he carefully selected dungeons from the game hall’s previews, but never found one that suited him perfectly. Instead, the randomly chosen dungeons exceeded his expectations in adaptability.
Embarking on the ghostly path.
For a zombie with a vitality of only 0.1, this was truly a professionally tailored experience.
When Ning Su opened his eyes, he was inside a vehicle.
In the late night, the vehicle’s headlights were dim, making it difficult to see details. He could only discern that it was a long-distance bus.
In the era before high-speed trains became widespread, long-distance bus journeys started at a minimum of ten hours, with bunk beds available for overnight stays—a feature of old-style long-distance buses.
He was currently lying on one such bunk.
The bed’s iron railing was rusted, the sheets underneath him had a musty smell, and the pillow was both hard and damp.
Although the instance was professionally tailored to him, the environment couldn’t compare to the small villa in Huaiyang Village or the luxurious rooms in the ancient castle.
At best, it could match the Flower Temple’s Flower Attendant Hall.
The condition of the other beds was hard to put into words.
Ning Su squinted his eyes and, in the dim light, saw a dark coffin on a bed. Thick blackness adorned with a few dried bloodstains. In such a gloomy environment, there was a sense of oppression and horror.
On one bed lay a “person” with a neck bent at a 90° angle.
On another bed lay a “person” wearing a blood-colored prison uniform.
On yet another bed lay a “person” with a face covered in grayish-green corpse spots, decaying and unpleasant.
...
And on another bed, there lay a person stiff all over, trembling faintly.
Ning Su: “...”
The frontmost driver, with seaweed-like long hair, drove silently.
Around the driver’s seat hung numerous familiar-looking small dolls.
Two ghost children lay beside him, staring at him in the darkness.
Ning Su gestured to them with a shushing motion, and immediately covered Gui Sheng’s mouth, fearing that he would say “Hmm!”.
Gui Sheng looked at him, his two slightly different big eyes bent into a small crescent moon shape, and he happily rubbed against his arm.
Ning Su used his other arm to let the meticulous little princess rest her head on it. She was crawling away from the pillow she couldn’t stand.
The little girl quietly rested her arm on his, holding a small skull in her arms.
The bus wobbled forward in an unknown area, shadows of trees swaying in front of dim headlights.
Ning Su blinked his tired eyes, simply closed them and went to sleep.
He liked lying on trains and buses to sleep, rocking gently, like a cradle.
The two kids also slept with him.
On this bus filled with terrifying corpses, they squeezed together and slept peacefully.
Ning Su didn’t know when he woke up. He had enjoyed a peaceful sleep and noticed some changes in the car.
The person who was stiff all over before he went to sleep got off the bed.
Apart from a few “people” lying strangely, everything else resembled an ordinary long-distance bus. There were suitcases, woven bags, vegetable baskets, and a few food bags, just like people on a regular long-distance bus journey.
The person didn’t seem too big, appearing to be in their twenties, with flaxen curly hair. They quietly approached a basket not far from him.
There was a rooster there.
His movements were quite nimble. He held the rooster’s beak, knocked it out before it could struggle.
He took out a knife and started bleeding the rooster.
The black rooster’s blood covered his hands. He smeared the blood all over his face and body, attempting to make himself look like a blood man.
Ning Su: “...”
He had heard that rooster blood could ward off evil spirits, but it was just hearsay.
If the little Taoist were here, he could ask whether rooster blood could also cover up someone’s energy.
He could understand what this player was trying to do—pretending to be a corpse, maybe even wanting to use rooster blood to hide his energy.
However, had he considered whose corpse this rooster belonged to? What if that corpse came back looking for him?
The curly-haired guy finally stopped trembling, seemingly feeling relieved, and quickly lay back on the bed.
After a while, he got up again, crawled under a bed, picked up a talisman, and stuck it on his forehead.
Ning Su: “...”
Probably feeling less like a living person now, his body relaxed a lot after lying down again.
Not long after, he got off the bed again, crouched under the carriage, and used his fingers stained with rooster blood to write on the ground: “Hello, is anyone there?”
Ning Su: “...”
Considering it from a normal person’s perspective, being in this kind of bus at the start of a dungeon, with unknown darkness ahead and terrifying dead people inside, it made sense to want a living companion. Otherwise, it could be quite scary.
As Ning Su was contemplating whether to answer him, the guy squatting there suddenly trembled. On the bed beside him, a “person” sat up.
It quietly looked down at the curly-haired guy. On its gray-white face, the eyeballs moved stiffly.
He could tell that the curly-haired guy squatting on the ground was desperately trying not to tremble. Trembling was something only living people did, and it could easily be noticed that he wasn’t the same.
He bit down on the back of his hand, holding his breath, his back rigid.
The inside of the bus became silent, creating a suffocating feeling.
Just then, there was a series of screams outside the bus.
The corpse sitting on the bed looked up and glanced outside.
Ning Su opened the curtain next to the pillow. There was another bus beside theirs.
Ning Su wasn’t surprised at all; there were a total of thirty players in this game, and it was impossible for all of them to be in the same bus.
The screams were coming from that particular vehicle.
As Ning Su was watching, that bus came to a stop, and their bus also stopped.
One by one, “people” got out of the bus, and the curly-haired guy also got out, not only to make himself look less like an outsider, but also to see what was happening outside.
Ning Su immediately followed with the two children.
Ning Su deliberately walked alongside the curly-haired guy.
They walked with the crowd of “people” to the side of the bus, where the person screaming had already been carried under the bus.
Some of the “people” on the bus looked horrifying, clearly resembling dead bodies, while others looked normal. Additionally, considering that the players were pretending to be corpses, it was difficult to distinguish who was a player and who was not at the moment.
Except for those who knew each other before entering the game.
Ning Su, by the back of the car, saw Fang Qi, who had an arm abnormally twisted behind him, walking over with a stiff face.
Ning Su: “...”
Thanks for the update
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