"Bringing the skull-crushing hammer along really does make me feel a lot more at ease."
This one she told in great detail, as though she had experienced it firsthand.
What made it truly terrifying for the listeners was how many details in this story mirrored the first one.
In other words, the taxi driver working the midnight shift in the third story was the poor soul who had been replaced by a ghost.
"A ghost behind the wheel—the more I listen, the more it sounds like something the Horror Association would come up with."
Chen Ge waited for a long time at the entrance to the amusement park before a taxi finally pulled up. It was already half past eleven at night.
"I should still make it in time." Chen Ge opened the car door and was about to get in when a few-year-old DJ track blared from inside.
The taxi's air conditioning was off. The driver was a middle-aged man with his arm resting on the windowsill, his head bobbing gently to the beat.
"This guy looks a little familiar."
Chen Ge studied the man's face, and after a long moment he remembered—when he had gone to the Western Suburb Private Academy to complete the affinity mission for
Back then, he had accidentally brought a fruit knife out when reaching for his phone, and the driver had mistaken him for a carjacker, even triggering the message "I'm being hijacked, call the police" on the advertising panel atop the car.
What a coincidence—maybe this was fate.
"Where to?"
Afraid the driver would recognize him and refuse the fare, Chen Ge covered his nose with his hand and simply slid into the back seat, closing the door behind him. "Old City District, Huaihua Alley. I'm in a hurry, so could you step on it?"
"Huaihua Alley?" The driver turned down the music and hesitated for a moment, as if weighing something in his mind.
"Is there a problem? Is there an extra charge for going to the Old City District?"
"That place isn't far from here, but I've heard it's cursed. A taxi driver ran into something strange there before."
"It's the modern age—do you actually believe in that stuff?" Chen Ge said without so much as batting an eye. "Just drive, please. I'm in a hurry."
"Sometimes you really can't help but believe. Just a few weeks ago, something weird happened to me too." The driver started the car. A grim look crossed his face, as though he had dredged up an unpleasant memory. "In the dead of night, some guy asked me to take him to the abandoned school out in the suburbs. Heaven and earth as my witness, I didn't think twice about it—just drove him there. And guess what happened?"
"What happened?"
"Almost at the destination, the guy tells me he's going on a date inside the abandoned campus! You know what that felt like? I'd been driving a lunatic around for half the night—my scalp was about to split open!"
The more the driver uncle spoke, the more unsettled he became. "The next day I came down with a fever. It was seriously cursed. I quickly had my wife go find a folk healer to get me some protective talismans. It took a whole week before I felt right enough to drive night shifts again."
"That's terrifying?" Chen Ge felt a twinge of awkwardness—he and this man seemed to have had two completely different experiences.
"Don't brush it off. Every word I'm telling you is the truth. That young man back then was about your age—clean-cut, looked totally normal. Who would have guessed…" The driver uncle glanced at Chen Ge through the rearview mirror, and after that, a strange sensation suddenly crept over him—a chill that slowly climbed from his legs up to his shoulders.