Chapter 14: The Qi Wielder

"I was sitting in the front too. Why didn't I see any woman in a white dress earlier? Mister, aren't you just trying to scare us?"

A teenage boy in glasses retorted dismissively, crossing his legs as he lounged in one of the front seats of the bus.

Seeing his account being challenged, the bald man anxiously addressed those around him: "It's true! I saw it with my own eyes—that woman... that... ghost..."

As he spoke, his eyes slowly widened, his expression shifting from panic to sheer terror.

The young girl nearby, noticing his strange demeanor and assuming he had been possessed by a ghost, took a few steps back and asked, "What? Weren't you just saying the bus hit someone? Why are you suddenly talking about ghosts?"

Unexpectedly, the girl's back suddenly collided with something. A cold, damp sensation, as if she had fallen to the bottom of a lake, washed over her entire body.

There was something behind her!

Paralyzed by the terrifying realization, her pupils dilated. She tried tremblingly to lift her feet and move away, only to find she was completely unable to move or even make a sound. Her throat felt as if it had been obstructed.

"...Human?"

The voice of the ghost in the bridal gown emerged from behind the girl, slow and rhythmic like the ticking of an old, worn-out clock.

The boy who had been lounging in his seat pulled his legs back, warily facing the bride-ghost. The other five passengers also realized that the ghost, previously sitting at the back, had been stirred by their commotion.

The boy who had entered the bus with Huan Xiao glanced at her, silently asking what was going on with this ghost. Huan Xiao shook her head, signaling that she was just as clueless.

It was simply a ghost—anyone with eyes could see that. What else was there to say?

Huan Xiao felt a flicker of sympathy for their terrible luck. Judging by their earlier conversation, they seemed to have provoked more than one ghost. To be honest, she hadn't seen the woman in the white dress the bald man described; she had only felt the bus jolt twice and assumed they had hit a road barrier.

"Hee hee... hee... Let's play a game... Guess which stop I'll... get off at... If you guess right... I'll spare you."

The bride-ghost didn't attack them immediately, instead treating the players with the playful cruelty of a cat toying with a mouse.

It was strange. Huan Xiao had once witnessed this same bride-ghost devour a human the moment it realized one had stumbled onto the 404 bus. Could this be a form of protection provided by the game, "The Strange"?

The ghost directed its question at the young girl, who was currently closest to it. The bride-ghost gripped the girl's shoulder, causing her teeth to chatter uncontrollably.

"I, I..."

Finding she could speak, the girl was still too terrified to move, not daring to turn her head and lock eyes with the bride-ghost.

"Do you know which stop it got on at?"

At that moment, the bespectacled boy in the front tugged on Huan Xiao's sleeve. He appeared relatively calm, seemingly certain that Huan Xiao was human.

As he asked, the bride-ghost’s head rotated 180 degrees to look at them. Huan Xiao showed no fear; instead, she looked straight into the boy's eyes and said, "Taiyuan Potter's Field."

"Taiyuan Potter's Field."

Unexpectedly, the moment Huan Xiao finished, the young girl whose shoulder was being held by the bride-ghost repeated the words in unison.

The girl seemed to realize she had echoed Huan Xiao, and the realization made her stop trembling out of pure shock. She blurted out frantically, "No, no! That's not my answer! I didn't mean that, I..."

*Squelch.*

The bride-ghost severed half of the girl's head and began to consume her bit by bit. The scene was bloody and cruel, with splattering blood staining the clothes and faces of everyone nearby.

"...Ugh." Someone couldn't hold it back and began retching on the bus.

Having witnessed their companion being murdered by a ghost, the others were frozen in terror. Only the bespectacled boy beside Huan Xiao continued to look at her with a questioning gaze. Aside from Huan Xiao, he was the only other human here who possessed ghost energy.

"Tell me everything that happened from the moment you got on the bus until we boarded."

The bespectacled boy seemed determined to find a solution through Huan Xiao, but his demanding tone made her uncomfortable. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she replied:

"You want to know?"

"Answer my question first, and I'll tell you."

Seeing Huan Xiao act so oblivious to the immediate life-or-death danger they were in, focusing only on her own desires, the middle-aged woman nearby lost her temper before the boy could even speak. Relying on the fact that she was further away from the bride-ghost and therefore less likely to be targeted, she pointed directly at Huan Xiao's nose and began to lecture her loudly.

"If you know something, just say it! Girls these days have no sense of priority. Young people, don't be so selfish! You should consider the bigger picture!"

Huan Xiao ignored her entirely, looking instead at the boy and urging him, "Still considering? I'm not in a hurry, but they seem quite anxious."

"...What do you want to know?"

The boy, recognizing the situation, nodded. He lacked sufficient information and had to pin his hopes on what Huan Xiao knew; it was a matter of whether he could survive to the end.

Huan Xiao was extremely satisfied with his response. She liked dealing with smart people. She then asked him exactly what an "Energy Wielder" was. As a new player, this was information she lacked, and she intended to get a clear answer while she had the chance.

The boy gave Huan Xiao a puzzled look, surprised that someone who seemed so capable was actually a novice, but he explained it nonetheless.

Energy Wielders were humans capable of controlling ghost energy, categorized from levels one to nine, with no higher existence known as of yet. Players could store items containing ghost energy from the world of "The Strange" into their phones and bring them out; these items were known as "Vessels."

Humans only had one chance to merge with a Vessel. If they succeeded, they became an Energy Wielder; if they failed, they remained ordinary humans, doomed to navigate the dangerous game in a mortal body. The more ghost energy a Vessel contained, the higher the failure rate. Most importantly, no one could actually see the concentration of ghost energy within them.

"Vessels are hard to come by, which is why Energy Wielders are so rare," the boy concluded.

Huan Xiao expressed confusion about one point. "How do you know that more ghost energy leads to a higher failure rate... if you can't see the ghost energy levels?"

"That is a conclusion drawn from the collective experience of our predecessors. Now, can you tell me everything that happened before we boarded?"

The boy had no desire to chat further; he wasn't naturally inclined to be helpful.

Seeing this, Huan Xiao didn't press him further and told him everything she had seen. Throughout the exchange, the bride-ghost watched them, deep in thought, temporarily refraining from attacking anyone else.

It looked at Huan Xiao, then at the boy, curious about why a ghost would be mingling among humans. Was Huan Xiao the type of ghost that enjoyed deceiving humans only to devour them later?

Such twisted, boring, and unprofessional behavior!

She showed absolutely no signs of being a proper ghost. The bride-ghost decided it was time to show Huan Xiao exactly what a real ghost should look like.