So, is this an "all aboard, nobody gets off this ride until it's over" kind of supernatural entity?
Bai Zhi shot the driver a glance, but since it was clear that there was no way he was getting off the bus, he didn't bother trying any excuses, like needing to use the washroom or anything like that.
Finding nothing else out of the ordinary, Bai Zhi turned and made his way back to his seat at the back of the bus. Once seated, he unlocked his phone and sent a message to the mysterious number from earlier.
After some moments of silence, Bai Zhi got a reply.
Trade? Bai Zhi looked out the window as he pondered the implications.
The person texting him knew exactly when he had gotten on the bus, which meant that they must be nearby, most likely in the bus station. They had shown the ability to monitor his every move, and suddenly proposed a mysterious trade...
Putting two and two together, Bai Zhi quickly narrowed down who that person could be. After all, making deductions like these was his forte.
...Could it be the campus belle impostor who once stalked me but seemed to have gone underground ever since I became a Player? So, this trade...
As Bai Zhi mulled over these thoughts, his eyes were drawn to a particular item in his Inventory—the Shadowland Perpetual Deed.
No matter how he tried to look at it, the Deed was the most likely reason that his erstwhile stalker had chosen this moment to make themself known. If he died, the Shadowland Perpetual Deed would be dropped, and thus lost to them.
Almost immediately upon sending that text, Bai Zhi received the reply.
Hmm...
Upon reading that message, Bai Zhi could not help but glance at the "???" that was his Sanity attribute.
Sanity was an attribute that grew proportionally with the Player's Level, but how much it grew was unique to each Player. Usually, it increased by a random amount between 0.1 and 1 per Level, so a typical Level 10 Player could be expected to have a Sanity of about 15. However, to use the Deed, the requirement was 100 Sanity, which was a number that even the highest-leveled Players currently active could not meet, barring some exceptional traits.
Bai Zhi was one such exception, as he still had no idea what his Sanity value even was.
Still, based on the tone and content of the messages I've been getting, it's clear that this place is dangerous—so dangerous that the sender seems to think I, a new Player, has no chance of coming out alive... or they're playing mind games with me.
Bai Zhi raised his head and scanned the bus again, more thoughtfully this time. Since his seat was all the way in the back, he had an unobstructed view of everything.
Two rows behind the driver sat the old woman, whose head was drooping as if she was fast asleep. On the seat next to her was a bulging sack—its contents were anyone's guess.
The mother-daughter pair had taken their seats around the middle of the bus. The mother had her head down and seemed to be swiping on her mobile phone. Based on the faint sound of music coming from her direction, she must have been browsing TikTok. Her daughter, on the other hand, sat obediently next to her mother. She was wearing a white one-piece dress and looked about seven or eight years old.
The two delinquents, who were clearly a team, had tattoos all over their arms and were acting extremely bored, lazily chewing some gum while occasionally glancing out the window.
As for the one wearing earphones, who looked like a university student, they were in the row right in front of Bai Zhi. They looked like a typical emo kid on the old NetEase**—morose and misunderstood. Despite it being a warm day, they had chosen to wear a long-sleeved top, and were currently resting a moody head on one hand, looking sadly into the distance.
It looked like a perfectly ordinary scene—that is, if he ignored the incidents from earlier. As the bus slowly pulled out of the station, rocking slightly, Bai Zhi calmly sent a text.
Trade was out of the question, of course. In fact, the Shadowland Perpetual Deed even stipulated that it was Untradeable, Untransferable, and Cannot be Dropped. He couldn't make a trade with it even if he wanted to.
Without waiting for a reply, Bai Zhi shot off another text.
"This shameless bastard!"
In a corner of the bus station, a certain young girl was livid with rage as she read the message that popped up on her mobile phone screen.
She had alerted Bai Zhi out of the kindness of her heart, then followed that up with an earnest suggestion, only to receive a sarcastic, insulting text in return—anyone else would have felt just as indignant in the same situation.
But what really pushed her over the edge was the fact that everything he said in the text was actually true. She couldn't care less where that scumbag died, but if he died on that bus, that all-important Deed would really be lost to her forever.
Like the Shadow Fiend, she had also snuck into this world secretly, but after he was defeated, she had gathered all her wits and used her unique abilities to stay undetected while she continued to prey on her victims.
She was not particularly bothered that her fellow supernatural entity had been defeated, since that guy's hubris was bound to be his downfall sooner or later. Nevertheless, the item that he left behind was very valuable.
That item was something that no human could use, so she had been content just to take the occasional peek at the one who held it as she went about her business, hunting her victims in secret. She was biding her time, waiting for the moment the holder screwed up and made a fatal mistake to swoop in and snatch the Deed. If he was struggling against any other supernatural entity, she would have happily watched until he lost, then collected the spoils, but that bus...
Gritting her teeth resentfully, the little lolita sent him a text with all the vitriol she could muster.
* "Veteran/Experienced driver" is a slang for someone who knows their way around a particular field, typically referring to less savory pursuits, e.g. porn
** NetEase is a Chinese company with wide-ranging services. Author is referring to a particular subset of users of the music-streaming service who were prone to leave moody, sentimental posts on the associated forums.
