Chapter 58: Chapter 58: The Hearse Sets Off
"I understand the reasoning, but there's a crucial girl who might be inside. If I don't try, I won't be able to let it go," I replied. Mere sinister allure couldn't dissuade me.
"Kid, under normal circumstances, even crematoriums wouldn't hang Bagua mirrors casually. At most, they'd bury Five Emperor coins at the corners of the building or hang statues of deities and bodhisattvas. People come and go without visibly noticing such things."
"Half-Immortal, what do you mean by that?"
"What I mean is, this crematorium you're in is anything but clean. A yin-affiliated building on cursed ground acts like a black hole, pulling in more and more yin energy. Such a place isn't somewhere even high masters of virtue would dare to tread lightly."
The Half-Immortal spoke with sincerity, but the viewers in the livestream chat kept egging me on.
"Streamer, go take a look inside! I've never been to a crematorium in my life!"
"Half-Immortal, what's your educational background? You even know about black holes? I'm personally from the Quantum Physics Program at Oxford. Care to discuss equilibrium states and the thermonuclear big bang with me?"
"Bah, all scientists are just lame philosophers!"
"Can I just ask if there are any Harvard alumni among us?"
"I'm the president of the Cambridge student union. Fellow Cambridge alumni, raise your hands!"
"Blue-sky Tractor Academy refuses to accept this snobbery!"
Liu Banxian of Qingcheng Mountain: "The universe begins with nothingness, which is itself a great tome of knowledge. I may not have attended private school, but my understanding of the cosmos and humanity surpasses that of those blind men groping the elephant, thinking they know everything, by a hundredfold."
Through the screen, I could almost see an old man in a Daoist robe, huffing and glaring at the chat. Smiling bitterly, I said, "Dear viewers, it seems we've gone off-topic again…"
Liu Banxian had entered a heated argument with a group of pseudo-scientists. The barrage of comments flew past, leaving me with no one to consult.
I took Yiyi's little hand and stepped into the disinfection room. "The door used to have a lock, but it's been pried open. Judging by the color of the chipped wood around it, this was done recently."
Inside, the room was empty, with all items stored in cabinets. I looked around but found no signs of theft.
"Is anyone here?" Yiyi called into the room, but her voice was answered only by echoes.
The disinfection room was much larger than expected, and as we ventured deeper, I discovered it connected to another room.
"Uncle, do we have to go into that room?" Yiyi asked nervously.
With no lights around, the only source of illumination was my phone screen.
"Since we're here, we might as well take a look." As we moved, my leg bumped into something, making a clinking sound.
Looking down, I saw a long chain blocking the passage.
"This is the path used to transport corpses," I said, hesitating before stepping over the chain and continuing. "Where does it lead?"
Feeling along the wall, we walked six or seven meters further when both Yiyi and I caught a strong, pungent smell.
"Uncle, look over there," she said, shaking my hand and pointing at a sign on the wall.
"Morgue?" I froze for three seconds. "How did we end up here?"
I'd seen this room from the outside earlier. The door was locked then, and I was relieved I wouldn't have to worry about the girl wandering in here. Yet somehow, we still ended up facing it.
"Stay close to me."
Rows of iron tables filled the room—three rows with three tables each. In the darkness, I could only make out the white cloths covering them. What lay beneath was hard to discern.
"Uncle, can we leave? I'm scared." Her fear was understandable. Even I, as an adult, felt my nerves tingling.
"Wait a moment; let's take a look around." Summoning my courage, I lifted the cloth off one table, revealing only a clean tabletop with nothing underneath.
"This is nerve-wracking," I muttered. Each time I lifted a cloth, it felt like a mental battle—half afraid of finding something terrifying, half hoping to uncover a clue.
With this conflicting mindset, I went through every table in the first row.
"A false alarm." The white cloths, though appearing uneven at first glance, merely covered random items on the tables. "Makes sense. This isn't a hospital morgue; corpses here would have long started rotting."
After reassuring myself, I moved to the second row. The first table revealed nothing beneath its cloth. Just as I reached for the second, I noticed Liu Banxian spamming comments in the livestream.
"Don't lift it! Absolutely not!"
"Face the iron tables and leave this room immediately!"
"My friend, do not provoke this malevolent spirit. You cannot handle it. Leave now!"
The urgency in his barrage of comments was palpable.
"Why? The first row's cloths were all fine. Nothing happened."
Liu Banxian of Qingcheng Mountain: "You're truly ignorant of the danger! Look up. Is there a beam running across the center of the room?"
I glanced upward and confirmed his suspicion.
"That beam, in terms of Feng Shui, is called 'a beam pressing down.' If someone stays under such a beam for long, it can cause dizziness, headaches, poor health, and misfortune. It's a place of financial and physical loss."
"Poor health and misfortune don't sound that serious. Why the alarm?"
"That's true if it were merely pressing down on people. But don't forget where you are!"
His words hit me like a bolt of lightning. "The morgue of a crematorium."
Liu Banxian quickly followed up with another comment: "Exactly! And this beam isn't pressing on people—it's pressing on corpses! Think about it: A beam pressing on corpses, trapping resentment and malice, with the tables arranged in a layout matching the ominous nine-by-nine pattern. This place is undoubtedly harboring great malevolence! I can't be there in person to use a compass and analyze the Feng Shui, so I can't help you dispel the danger. At this point, your safest option is to put everything back as it was and leave the way you came."
"Just because of a beam overhead, I should leave?" To be honest, I was curious about whether there was anything sinister on the middle table. My hand was nearly on the cloth.
"A skilled Daoist can see the world in a single leaf. Friend, tread carefully!"
"Fine, since you insist, I'll listen to you." As I turned to restore the disturbed cloths, Yiyi clutched my hand tightly. She stammered nervously, "U-Uncle, l-look!"
"Look at what?" Following her gaze, my blood ran cold. The white cloth on the middle table had started moving—on its own!
It unfolded like a painting, revealing everything on the table beneath it.
A head, torso, arms, legs...
The middle table held a corpse emitting a putrid stench!
"Bang!" I stumbled back in a panic, knocking over an iron table behind me. The sound echoed eerily in the empty morgue.
"U-Uncle..." Yiyi clung tightly to me, burying her face in my chest and refusing to look.
"D-Don't be scared," I said, patting her back to calm her down. "Is anyone here?"
As I called out instinctively, my eyes fell on the corpse. It wore a bus driver's uniform, looking as though it had been fished out of water. Its clothes clung to its body, and water plants were still tangled around it.
Gathering my courage, I removed its hat.
"It's him!" The young face beneath looked even younger than mine, though damp and sticky with indistinguishable fluids.
"The driver of Bus 14!" Just half an hour ago, this man was alive and breathing. Now, he lay lifeless in the morgue of a crematorium. "How is this possible?"
Inspecting his clothing, I deduced he had died several hours earlier.
"The driver's identity is now confirmed." Taking out my phone, I re-read the news article I'd seen on the bus earlier.
"This afternoon at around 5 PM, a severe traffic accident occurred at the entrance to Jiangcheng Garden Community. A private car collided with Bus 14, resulting in two deaths and one injury. Among the deceased was an elderly pregnant woman, identified as Yang Rou."
"The other deceased was the bus driver. During the accident, the driver took proactive measures to ensure the safety of all passengers but was thrown out of the vehicle and into a roadside ditch, where he died instantly."
"The injured party, a pedestrian, was emotionally unstable and has been hospitalized."
"Red-clothed vengeful ghost, driver, hospital gown!" Reading it over and over, I finally pieced together the identities of three individuals.
The driver had died hours ago, his soul trapped on the malevolent Bus 14. The person in the hospital gown was likely the injured pedestrian—the only living passenger on the bus!
"Then how did the others end up on the ghost bus?" I finally realized a crucial detail and discreetly pulled out the yellow talisman given to me by the Daoist from Qingtuguan.
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