Chapter 1: Who Breaks Whose Window

When Yang Zicang woke up, he found himself inside a strange bus.
“I… I’m not dead?”
In the dim light outside the window, a yellow taxi drove past the bus, which was stopped in the middle of the road.
As it passed by, Yang Zicang saw, in the passenger seat of that taxi, a slender boy with a face as sharply chiseled as if carved by a knife.
He wore a dark-patterned blue shirt, a black sports bag slung diagonally across his body, a peaked cap on his head, and a blue earring in his ear.
That was him!
Another him?!
Yang Zicang’s pupils contracted; he couldn’t believe his eyes as the car carried his other self and the younger brother, who was playing in the back seat, into the unfamiliar residential area nearby.
He slapped his hands against the window, pressing his face close to get a better look at that person.
“Hey!”
He shouted loudly, but the outside world couldn’t hear the sound from inside the car.
Countless fragmented memories surged in, explosions, scattered flesh and blood, heads tossed high in the air, and monsters flying like metal-winged beings…
Yang Zicang turned his head to glance at the bus; the men and women inside were all lost in sleep, a strange atmosphere reigning over the place.
It was as if someone’s heartbeat was echoing.
“What the hell is going on? No, I have to get out!”
He stood up and ran to the door of the bus.
The door handle had become greasy; it had grown a membrane of flesh, and no matter how hard he pulled, he couldn’t open the tightly shut door…
The driver’s seat was thick with smoke, dense with strange, thumb-thick net-like patterns, where a pale, slowly flickering small halo floated, containing seemingly unreadable numbers, just on the verge of disappearing.
The air grew somewhat viscous and suffocating, as if something was about to take form inside the car.
The ominous atmosphere made Yang Zicang’s hair stand on end.
“Here… where is this?” Several voices echoed inside the car. These groggy individuals gradually regained consciousness, and the space became clamorous.
Suddenly, in the powerless car, the screen of the in-vehicle television flickered to life, the signal unstable image jittering, as a voice crackled with background noise.
“This vehicle is already in a pre-nightmare state. You’d better get out within three minutes.”
“This door won’t open at all!” Yang Zicang said anxiously to the TV, not knowing if the other party could see him.
“Let me handle it.” A man with a receding hairline stood up and walked over, with three others gathering around. They were all middle-aged men in their forties or fifties, with considerable arm strength. Yang Zicang stepped back to make way for them.
Meanwhile, someone on the bus used a claw hammer to pry at the window glass, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t break it.
“Everyone, the state of this vehicle has changed. In a sense, it has already become a special life form about to be born, and you are the nourishment for its birth.”
Everyone stared at the on-board TV screen with confusion or furrowed brows.
“Hey, who are you? Are you kidnappers?”
A fat man stood up and said, walking towards the driver’s seat in an attempt to start the car, but there was a chilling and gloomy aura there. Before he even got close, he was trembling all over and dared not move forward.
“Approximately two minutes and thirty seconds left. If you fail to escape from here, you will become its food.”
The figure on the TV screen was blurry, and the picture flickered left and right continuously. Yang Zicang couldn’t make out his appearance at all.
“Excuse me, how do we get out?” a frail young woman in her twenties sitting in the back row said softly.
“If you are willing to make a deal, then I will tell you the way out.”
The bus immediately erupted in commotion.
“They really are kidnappers. Hey, does anyone have a phone? Call the police.”
Some people banged on the windows and shouted loudly, but passersby outside seemed unable to see the bus at all, paying no attention to them.
Yang Zicang clearly remembered that he had already died once. He spoke to the television: “What do you want?”
The dark figure on the TV screen laughed coldly and said:
“The deal is this: within seven days, pay me fifty years of time sequence. If you agree, the deal is done. How about it?”
“Fifty years of time sequence? What’s that, some kind of commodity?”
“Commodity? Hmph, you could say that. After all, it’s the starting capital everyone possesses. Make your decision quickly—less than two minutes remain.”
Those pulling hard on the door couldn’t get it open no matter what, and the atmosphere inside the bus grew increasingly somber.
The glowing orb flickering above the driver’s seat had completely disappeared.
The vehicle seemed to shudder, and a stronger sense of panic and unease gripped everyone’s hearts. Black spiderweb-like crystalline films grew on the ceiling, as if a terrifying demon was about to be born.
“50 years… Could it be that we have to use our lifespan to open it?” Yang Zicang said incredulously.
The people around cast a glance at Yang Zicang as if he was insane, then anxiously turned their eyes back to the door.
Upon hearing this, the figure on the TV hesitated for a moment, his throat emitting a dry laugh.
“I didn’t expect you to figure it out on your own.”
“What!”
“Heh, since that’s the case, I’ll make it clear. Next, this bus will devour your lives.”
“Its doors and windows are no longer physical doors and windows. Your attacks are futile. To open them, you either use time to ripen them, or use something with more time than they contain to break them apart. And with each additional death, the difficulty of opening them will only increase further.”
The crowd stared in shock at the flickering TV image, their minds yet to process this information.
“I’ll do it!”
The balding man pushed through the crowd, his face full of rage as he gripped the door handle with both hands.
“Director Huang, do you, do you really believe that?”
“What’s the harm in trying?”
“But what if it’s true?”
“Heh, then let it be true.” Director Huang, with a fierce expression, growled in a low voice: “No matter how much of my life you want to devour, open it for me now!”
Slam!
With a heavy bang, the bus door burst open instantly.
Several ladies in their seats instantly covered their mouths. The middle-aged man who was acquainted with Director Huang braced himself against the car seat with trembling hands.
The skin on Director Huang’s body visibly became loose and dull, his remaining ring of hair gradually turned gray, and age spots appeared on his face.
He had aged—this turned out to be real!
Director Huang blinked his eyes, then vigorously rubbed them with his hand.
“This… is what presbyopia feels like… I just used up… over thirty years…”
The sound of sharp intakes of breath echoed through the bus.
“Well, you’ve been saved.” The person on the TV gave a low chuckle:
“Since you’ve turned into saints, I might as well see it through to the end. Next, here’s some info about this monster… We call it the ‘Nightmare.’
“If you manage to kill this monster, not only its lifespan but also the lifespans of everyone it killed will transfer to the one who defeats it. Hmm, enjoy your deaths.”
The screen flickered once, then went dark.
Panic broke out among the people around.
Director Huang cast a blurry, aged look at the people in the bus through the doorway, then stepped down.
“Old Huang, we’re really indebted to you this time. I never thought you’d be such a noble person.”
“Hmph, no need to thank me. Anyway… everyone dies sooner or later.”
He stepped down with one foot, his body tense as he leaned against the car door, standing rigidly. A few people behind him, eager to get off, though tempted to hurry him along, ultimately held themselves back.
After all, this was the hero who had just saved everyone.
“I…” Huang turned his head to look inside, forcing a smile and said, “Sorry, everyone.”
Before the crowd could grasp the meaning of his words, he suddenly yanked the carriage door shut with both hands, slamming it closed with a clatter, and held the handle tight from outside! Inside, the people frantically pounded on the glass windows, but Huang outside merely buried his head and closed his eyes, not daring to look inside.
“With my part, it should be under two minutes now, kid…”
Just moments ago, after Huang Xu had aged this door by thirty years, a faint trace of feedback flickered within him—this soon-to-be-born monster seemed to regard him like a father!
He grew restless, a burning sensation surging through him, and after a conflicted inner struggle, he finally made up his mind… I’m doomed to die anyway, so let’s go all in!
“Sorry, everyone, if I manage to gain more years of life, I’ll turn over a new leaf and find ways to kill more of these things to honor you…”
This bus held at least a dozen or so people; counting each one’s lifespan of forty to fifty years, that’s a minimum of five to six hundred years!
“If I fail… we’ll all go to hell together!”
With a contorted face, he held onto the door.
The door was battered and dented by the people inside, nearly yanked open two or three times, but he pressed down firmly, every time.
Inside, three more had become aged, hurling curses and kicking at the car door—which, if closed, would require over thirty years of each person’s life to break down!
The crowd was both anxious and furious: “I could still feel myself accelerating its maturation just now, but now I can’t.”
Yang Zicang was squeezed so much by the surrounding people that he could barely stand. A girl around seventeen or eighteen was also pushed aside.
“Big brother, are we going to die?”
Mu Xiaoyu held back tears helplessly, gripping Yang Zicang’s arm, instinctively relying on him as the first person to realize their lifespan could be used.
“Die? No, no!”—
Yang Zicang steadied himself against the window frame, gritted his teeth, and reached for the emergency hammer on the wall. Raising it high, he roared in his heart: I’m as good as dead anyway—no matter how many years it costs, break for me!
He swung the hammer with all his might, driving it fiercely into the glass, which was already covered in a web of crack-like filaments.
“Crack!”
A fissure appeared on the window.
The moment the hammer struck, Yang Zicang felt the vital energy within his body surge out through his arm, clashing against the invisible force surging from the glass.
In the girl’s eyes, Yang Zicang seemed to age several years in an instant.
“Break open!”
The young man swung the emergency hammer again and struck a second blow!
His skin rapidly wrinkled and aged.
Bang! The window shattered instantly like aged, brittle tree gum as his fist broke through it.
Two strikes of the hammer consumed a total lifespan… forty-five years!