The 104 ghost bus had changed owners, but the Red Raincoat still regarded it with wariness. She stood outside, both hands gripping the door frame, her red raincoat strikingly vivid against the dark night.
"It just so happens we're heading the same way. Why don't you join us in Liwan Town tonight?" Chen Ge extended the invitation to the Red Raincoat. He had many questions he wanted to ask her.
When he had driven the ghost bus away earlier, he had handed the "human trafficker" who had stolen the Red Raincoat's child over to her. Now that he was seeing her again, that trafficker was nowhere to be found.
Chen Ge guessed that the Red Raincoat had most likely gotten the information she wanted out of the man and discovered the whereabouts of her child.
If she'd had no success, she probably wouldn't have been waiting at the station for the 104 ghost bus to appear again.
"If you're ready, we can go save your child tonight. I'll go with you — that's my promise to you." Walking up to the front door, Chen Ge bent down and spoke to the Red Raincoat.
Her mouth had been stitched shut with threads of blood, so the Red Raincoat couldn't speak. She made a strange gesture toward Chen Ge.
Her fingertip pointed at the 104 ghost bus, then at Chen Ge's face, then at Chen Ge's heart. Finally, all five fingers clenched tightly together, as if she were trying to crush Chen Ge's heart.
"The ghost bus? My face? Crushing my heart?" It took Chen Ge a few seconds to work it out. "You're saying someone who looks like me wants to rip out my heart? And he's on the ghost bus right now?"
The Red Raincoat neither nodded nor shook her head. Peering through the gaps in her black hair, she reached out and grabbed Chen Ge's arm, trying to drag him away from the 104 last bus.
He had already claimed this vehicle as his own property — how could he possibly give it up so easily? Besides, his backpack and the white cat were still on board.
Chen Ge took a step back. The Red Raincoat saw his movement and stopped pulling, releasing her grip.
Torrential rain slid off the brim of her hood. She seemed to be trying to convey some message to Chen Ge — she pointed in the direction of Liwan Town, then made a gesture as though cradling an infant.
Before Chen Ge could figure out the deeper meaning behind her actions, the Red Raincoat stepped back onto the platform.
Bloodstains ran off her raincoat, dyeing the platform beneath her feet red.
The bus pulled away slowly. The Red Raincoat stood at the center of the platform, watching the 104 ghost bus disappear into the distance.
They were getting closer and closer to Liwan Town, and the rain outside was growing heavier by the minute.
Through the windows, not a single light was visible. The entire bus seemed wrapped in darkness.
"What exactly did she mean?" The Red Raincoat's refusal to board didn't align with Chen Ge's earlier plan. "If she didn't want to cooperate with me, there was no reason to make a commotion just now, and no reason to wait at the station either. She must have sensed danger — that's why she wouldn't get on."
He stole a discreet glance at the passengers inside. The doctor and the drunk were probably just ordinary people. Chen Ge focused more of his attention on the Red High Heels and the Smiling Man.
"Should I strike first?" Chen Ge was weighing his options when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, silently declined the call, then sent a text message to that number.
"Captain Li, I can't take calls right now. Let's text instead."
The caller had been Li Zheng. The moment Chen Ge saw the caller ID, he'd sensed that something had gone wrong.
"Jia Ming escaped from the hospital! Watch yourself! He wants to kill you!" Li Zheng's reply contained three exclamation marks in a row.
"Kill me? I never provoked him! Besides, wasn't he in the hospital? With you guys guarding him, how did he get away?" The police in Jiujiang could certainly be counted among the best, and Chen Ge had always had confidence in them.
"This lunatic told us this sob story about how pitiful he was, how he was just a victim, then spun eleven different tales about a shadow monster skilled at disguising itself and altering its voice, claiming that monster was the real mastermind behind everything — that he was just a helpless person being coerced."
"Eleven stories?"
"That's right! A full eleven stories about being blackmailed by the mastermind and forced into committing acts against his will. Every one of them was airtight — no logical inconsistencies whatsoever. And our crime scene investigation matched his descriptions almost perfectly."
"So he wasn't lying."
"Exactly — he wasn't lying, but he told the biggest lie of all!" Li Zheng's emotions were running high; his message was full of spaces and exclamation marks. "That mastermind doesn't exist at all — he made the whole thing up! The real killer was him and him alone! All eleven stories, all eleven murders — he did every last one of them!"
Only after reading this message from Li Zheng did Chen Ge realize that the eleven stories likely represented eleven lives.
"This guy who looks so meek and timid is hiding a completely deranged soul deep inside! While he was telling us these stories, he broke down in tears several times, sobbing in anguish. His words were drenched in remorse — even the doctors and nurses changed their attitude toward him. When we went to the scenes to verify, the more details he confessed, the more horrified we became. To speed up the investigation, we had no choice but to keep pulling officers from other units."
"Tonight Jia Ming's condition deteriorated again. The doctors rushed him into emergency treatment, and we left one officer to stand guard."
"But on the way to the ER, this man who could barely walk jumped out of a second-floor window and disappeared. He'd planned everything in advance — scouted the routes in secret. His room was on the third floor, the ER was on the first. Once outside, there was an alley fifty meters away, full of branching paths. No single person could chase him down."
Li Zheng sent Chen Ge a breakdown of how Jia Ming had escaped, but Chen Ge wasn't interested in the details. "Captain Li, I already expected Jia Ming to escape. But what's this about him wanting to kill me?"
"We found wood shavings next to the bed where he slept. When we pushed the nightstand aside, we saw the back of the wooden cabinet covered with your name — carved over and over with his fingernails. After carving each one, he'd scratch it away little by little. Nobody does something like that unless the hatred runs bone-deep. Either way, be careful. We think he may have come looking for you."
"Jia Ming and I had never even met before all this. There's no way he could harbor that much hatred toward me — unless the one controlling his body isn't Jia Ming." Through Li Zheng's messages, Chen Ge was starting to think the Shadow was probably still inside Jia Ming's body. The reason he had fainted outside Bailong Cave Tunnel that night might have been due to some kind of accident.
"Oh, right — where are you tonight? Don't go wandering around!"
A little while later, another text from Li Zheng arrived. At first, Chen Ge didn't think much of it and was about to reply when he suddenly froze. "Wait — why would Captain Li ask where I am right now? The person who texts me usually almost never uses exclamation marks. Could the one sending me messages not be Li Zheng... but Jia Ming?"