Chapter 2:Mysterious Person

Inside the bus, strange sounds of twisted metal echoed from all around, as if the vehicle itself was squirming.
Two piercing screams erupted from the crowd.
Black smoke seeped in from under the feet of two individuals, rapidly spreading through their bodies via blood vessels and nerves. Their height surged wildly, deforming quickly, until they towered into humanoid sculptures pressing against the roof, then continued to crack and extend outward in all directions. One of their sprawling mouths spoke to Yang Zicang in a contorted voice: “Hit… bad guy.”
Yang Zicang’s eyes dripped with blood from watching—this was a monster more horrifying than any nightmare!
“You go out first.” Yang Zicang scooped up the girl’s slender waist, tossed her through the window, and immediately pushed off from the seat to leap out after her.
By the window, the seatbelt twisted up like a snake and shot outward.
Snap! Yang Zicang’s foot got caught by the seatbelt, pulling him upward and attempting to drag him back into the car.
The girl, still fallen on the ground, hurriedly turned and reached out her hand to grab Yang Zicang’s dangling arm: “Brother, come on out!”
“Get out, kid!” The two men inside the car grabbed the struggling seatbelt, ready to expend their life force together and yank it apart, when once again, two bulging black masses surged from the floor beneath them, exploding at their feet, and the black smoke poured into their bodies.
“Ah!”
After the screams, the two swelled rapidly, with flesh-and-blood vines spreading outward on their bodies.
Thump! A fire extinguisher smashed over, breaking the seatbelt, but the tough guy who threw it quickly lost focus in his eyes. He struggled to glance at his rapidly wrinkling skin.
“So… I still have thirty-two years to live…”
He staggered and fell to the ground.
With this blow, the tough guy had used up all his remaining lifespan.
A few more windows not yet covered by flesh were smashed, and six or seven people crowded by the window, scrambling to jump out, but half of them were tangled by shooting seatbelts.
The terrifying aura surged sharply. Inside the car, a dark red membrane-like heart appeared between several “pillars,” contracting and expanding as if breathing.
On the ground outside the car, Yang Zicang crawled a few steps. The skin on his calf where it was entangled had sunk in deep color, noticeably different from elsewhere.
Yang Zicang, now seeming sixty or seventy years old, got up and looked at the horrific scene inside the car. His eyes were filled with shock and sorrow.
Then, from under the car, he saw the pair of legs across from him, wearing sandals and standing in a bow stance.
“Director Huang!”
Yang Zicang roared. That bastard was still holding the door!
“You, hurry and leave.” Yang Zicang told the girl, still half-kneeling on the ground in confusion, to run fast, while he himself ran with another person across the car.
“Ahaha, only twenty seconds left. I know, I know, the child is about to be born right away!”
Seeing several furious figures rushing towards him, Huang Xu shouted maniacally, “Bang!”—a fist slammed into his face, followed by a kick. The old man was quickly beaten to the ground.
The door was yanked open with a clang.
The two inside the car looked out through the window, where several elderly people, huffing and puffing, were beating up the balding old man, who was clearly taking in more breath than he was giving out.
Bang! A figure exploded inside the car.
The moment they stepped out of the door, the ground suddenly turned translucent, reflecting an image of the bus, as if an upside-down bus hovered within a deep, dark hollow.
Indistinct murmurs rose up, a tremendous sense of horror spreading from inside the vehicle, like slimy tentacles coiling around one’s back from behind.
With a dull, booming sound, a whirlwind rushed into the bus, and surging heartbeats, like the pounding of a drum, echoed from the obscure, web-like darkness inside.
“Hah!” A red dot ignited in the center of Huang Xu’s chest, then burst out several crimson, jagged beams, as if three or four geometric lines exploded from small to large, knocking everyone over; his skin rapidly restored itself.
“Ah ha ha ha, I gambled right, I gambled right!”
The ground quickly became soft.
“Run!”
The group was terrified and scattered in all directions.
This Huang Xu was extremely ruthless, and now that he had acquired strange abilities, he could very well become a devil.
The passersby all around remained utterly indifferent to what was happening.
Even some cars that crashed into the crowd passed right through them—these were all illusions!
Huang Xu, whose appearance had rapidly reverted to that of a man in his early twenties, greedily reveled in the surge of power and vitality rising from within his body—a sensation he had not felt in many years.
“Who would have thought I, Huang Xu, could see such a day.” He turned his head to glance at the dark, fine-scaled bus beside him, now shrouded in a haze of blood-red mist, his eyes filled with intoxication.
The monster’s shadow inside the bus transmitted its emotions and desires to Huang Xu through some mysterious connection—a craving for humans, a hunger for living beings.
Huang Xu’s gaze fell on the few people fleeing into the distance. In his perception at this moment, humans had naturally become food to be savored at will.
Yang Zicang and the three of them crossed the road and raced to the foot of the white commercial building on the left.
Suddenly, streaks of white energy webs emerged from within the building, quickly coalescing toward its interior. As they detached from the building’s surface, the structure began to look decrepit and aged.
Something inside that building was stirring to life. The group sensed that their presence might have been the cause.
To that entity, humans were merely the catalysts hastening its birth.
“Can monsters be born from something like this, too?!”
Panic-stricken, they continued running forward.
Boom!
Dozens of meters behind them, the bus monster crashed into the road opposite, shattering the wall of a house under a building.
“Ahhh!”
Panicking, the three people on the opposite side scattered and fled, with one of them directly swallowed by the monster’s windshield-like massive mouth.
The elderly Yang Zicang and his companions turned into an alley.
“Alleys are narrow, hopefully… we can make that monster give up chasing us.”
Beside him, the lungs of the two men sounded like pulling bellows, letting out heaving, rasping breaths.
Liu Ming clutched his chest, leaning against the wall, and gasped, “I can’t go on anymore. I feel like I’m dying. I… I need to rest for a moment.”
A rumbling sound came from nearby.
Several people looked up and saw the glass and structural layers of a twenty-plus story commercial building beside them crashing down in a violent collapse. But strangely, as they fell, they continuously transformed into streams of white energy that converged downward.
Yang Zicang frowned. He vaguely grasped something, but couldn’t yet form a clear thought—only a haze of intuition.
From across the street behind them, the roar of the bus monster sounded again, accompanied by faint, almost imperceptible screams, as another person lost their life.
“Stop resting now! There’s some commotion over on that street—probably other people. Let’s go check it out,” Yang Zicang urged.
Liu Ming panted, “What if it’s another monster? Either way, I’m dead.”
“Damn it, then die already. Even a woman has more guts than you.”
Yang Zicang grew angry. He turned and ran through the winding alley toward the building.
Stung by his words, Liu Ming, who had been lying on the ground, scrambled up and followed.
The surroundings seemed a cluster of dilapidated, unfinished buildings.
“There’s someone over there.”
The girl’s fair finger pointed at a blurry figure beneath the desolate commercial building across the street. Thick white lines coiled around him, constantly emitting various curves that tangled, tightened, and swelled.
A monster, or a human?
Amid a rumbling sound, the bus monster came rushing from the alley behind them!
The light around the figure under the commercial building suddenly contracted.
“Run, we’re being chased by a monster,” Yang Zicang called out to the figure staring at them from across the street.
“A monster… a nightmare?” The man in a white windbreaker and wide-brimmed hat stood up and looked over with a smile.
The man had a rugged face, his eyes holding a dazzling brilliance—a countenance that clearly marked him as exceptional and extraordinarily spirited.
Rumble!
The sound of a building collapsing came from behind.
“Whoa, with that commotion, you guys made it out alive.”
The man in the white windbreaker stepped forward slowly, a tattoo of a woman blowing a kiss inked on his muscular arm.
“What did it turn into, and how many has it eaten?”
“A vehicle, a big bus. Seven or eight dead—no, maybe ten.”
“I see.”
A white flash appeared on the man’s chest.
As he moved, this light spread out into a geometric virtual shadow that enveloped his body, like a constantly shifting triangle.
As he passed by the group, the phantom lines elongated and approached Yang Zicang. As the lines drew near his chest, Yang Zicang saw that a faint shimmering light had also ignited in his own heart, responding to the tips of the lines.
“What is this!”
{Everyone, you should be able to hear my telepathic communication directly by now.}
“Amazing,” the girl exclaimed in awe.
Yang Zicang was deeply shaken; it felt as if a broader view had appeared directly in his consciousness—another “perspective” overseeing everything from a third-person point of view, with the protagonist being the man before him.
{You can call me Bai Yuan. Hmm… That bus nightmare contains at least centuries of temporal energy; I doubt I can necessarily take it down alone. Are you willing to invest a bit of your lifespan? That way, my chances of victory increase.}
“How do we invest?”
“It’s simple.” The man in the white trench coat turned to look at the elderly individuals in their seventies and eighties, revealing a playful smile. This time, instead of using his mental voice, he spoke aloud: “Just think about it—’imagine’ and ‘confirm’ to actively invest your lifespan for me.”