Chapter 106 Homecoming

Chapter 106 Homecoming

Chapter 106 Homecoming
Sitting in the last row of the bus, the leather seat under my buttocks gave off a slightly damp and musty smell. There were some tiny mold spots on the curtain tied by the window. It seemed that this bus had not been cleaned for a long time.

The light from the street lamp slowly moved forward, turned a corner and then moved back. The bus drove out of the parking lot of the West Suburb Station and got on the road.

But after driving for a while, the car stopped.

Ji Taiyu subconsciously raised his head and looked over the seat to the front, only to see the door of the bus open again, and a tall middle-aged man wearing a straw raincoat, a bamboo hat, and straw sandals walked up from below.

"Where are you going, sir?" the ticket seller asked in a tender voice.

The man stood there without making any sound, but the conductor seemed to have heard what he said and asked, "One way or round trip?"

The man still didn't say anything. The conductor took a 10-yuan note from him and gave him 1 yuan in change and a handwritten receipt.

The man took the invoice and change, got on the bus, and walked towards the back seat where Ji Taiyu was. His big feet in straw sandals stepped on the floor without making any sound, as if an illusory ghost was floating by.

Ji Taiyu's heart was in his throat, and he subconsciously wanted to stand up and change seats. At this moment, a deep male voice suddenly came from the direction of the car door:
"Heian Jing."

Who is talking? Ji Taiyu bravely looked up. The driver was still sitting in the driver's seat, the conductor was leaning against the guardrail without saying a word, and there was no one at the door, but a man's voice came from the car:

"One Way."

"He is answering the conductor's question?" Ji Taiyu opened his eyes wide, not daring to blink. The man came to a seat some distance away from him in the back row of the carriage, bent over and sat down.

Then, the sound of straw sandals stepping on the floor and the rustling sound of straw raincoats rubbing against fabric came from the door. The sound approached, one step, two steps, three steps, and silently walked to the seat at the back of the car and disappeared.

Ji Taiyu's Adam's apple moved, and he seemed to have understood what had just happened: "How many seconds after this man finished speaking did I hear his voice?"

The footsteps just now also sounded after he finished walking and sat down on the chair, as if the person's voice and his body were two separate entities. The person walked first, and the sound followed later.

This person is not normal...

Before Ji Taixuan could think about what had just happened, another person walked up to the car door.

This time, a woman in a long dress got into the car. She had a dignified manner and a graceful figure. Her plump and perfect body was bound by a waist belt. Her round oval face was covered with a purple veil, so her specific appearance could not be seen, but her gentle and charming temperament was particularly alluring.

"Where are you going, sister?" asked the ticket seller.

"Yanglao." The voice of the woman in the long skirt was very soft, like the warm water of Yunmengze in autumn, which made Ji Taiyu feel a little dazed.

"One way or round trip?"

"round trip."

After paying the ticket, the woman in the long skirt took the receipt and change and got on the bus. Her low-heeled sandals made a pleasant tapping sound as they stepped on the floor. Unlike the man who had just gotten on the bus, there was no strange situation where the person and the sound were separated.

Ji Taiyu breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that he had finally met a normal person. But when he lowered his head, the scene that came into his eyes made him even more horrified. There was no shadow under the feet of this woman.

There were dim lights on in the bus compartment, and rows of seats cast long and narrow shadows. The woman walked in the compartment, and the blurred light shone on her, as if passing through a completely transparent piece of glass. Her feet stepped on the dim light under her skirt, and no shadow of the person could be seen.

"This person is not normal either..." Ji Taiyu's breathing couldn't help but freeze, and even his heartbeat slowed down. He lowered his head carefully and sat back in his seat, not daring to move.

The sound of footsteps gradually approached, and a fragrant breeze blew towards them. The woman was sitting in the last row of seats on the bus, in the same row as Ji Taiyu, but she was leaning against the window on the other side of the car, and there were several seats between them.

Ji Taiyu breathed a sigh of relief again, as it was good that he wasn't sitting next to her.

I pushed aside the curtain and looked out the window. The street lights outside were emitting a dim light weakly. The bus door was closed and no one got on.

The bus left the station and followed the suburban highway out of the nighttime city of Yundu. There were two more people on the bus, but it was still quiet. Neither the man nor the woman spoke. They just sat in their seats in silence, not saying a word. Only the cold evening breeze blew in from the window, making a whistling sound.

Ji Taixuan carefully took out his phone and opened the map navigation software to check the bus route. However, as soon as he clicked on the software icon, a line of small text notification popped up at the bottom of the screen:

[No network connection]

After the blank advertisement page flashed by, the offline page of the map software appeared on the screen. Ji Taixuan's mobile phone memory was all used to install games, and he had no habit of downloading local maps. After disconnecting from the network, the navigation software only had ambiguous map color blocks, and no road signs and landmarks of the online mode could be seen.

"Damn it..." Ji Taixuan had no choice but to close the navigation and took a look at the 4G signal on the status bar, which showed that it was full.

He tried to open the browser to use the online map, but there was still no network connection.

After several failed attempts, Ji Taixuan turned off his phone and put it back in his pocket. He vaguely understood one thing - from the moment he entered the station, he might have come to another world.

The distance from Yundu West Suburb Station to Yanglao Village is 15 kilometers. The bus stopped and started at various stations along the way. The cypress trees on both sides of the road fell backwards in a hurry, and no one got on the bus for more than minutes.

At around 10:30 in the evening, the bus pulled over at the intersection of a small road and the door opened automatically.

"Yanglao Village is just ahead. Would you like to get off here?" the ticket seller's voice came from the front.

Ji Taiyu glanced at the woman sitting by the window, and seeing that she didn't seem to want to get up, he quickly said, "Yes, right here."

After saying that, Ji Taiyu immediately stood up, ran across the carriage, and got off the car as if escaping.

There were no street lights on the suburban roads. Under the dark night sky, only the high beams on the bus were still on, illuminating the pale weeds on both sides of the road. A small path branched off from the side of the road and extended towards the fields in the distance.

Ji Taixuan took a deep breath and finally looked back at the bus parked on the side of the road. He still remembered what was written on the letter: once you take this road into the village, you can never turn back.

(End of this chapter)