Chen Ge quietly told Tang Jun to change the final destination. Once they reached Liwan Town, Bus 104 would drive straight into Fan Cong's residential complex.
After sorting out the plan, Chen Ge walked back to his seat at the rear of the bus. As he passed by the Smiling Man, a deep chill surged up from the bottom of his heart.
He turned his head. The Smiling Man's face was ashen, his gray-black pupils fixed on Chen Ge with an unblinking stare.
"He seems to have a problem with me. If he doesn't like being near the Red High Heels, why doesn't he just move it away? It feels like he won't even touch it — could there be some kind of curse on those shoes?"
Chen Ge froze mid-sentence, realizing that judging from the Smiling Man's reaction, there really might be some vicious curse on the high heels.
"Forget it, I've already touched them anyway. When I run into Shadow later, I can just hurl the heels at him."
Curses were the last thing on Chen Ge's mind. He'd received a cursed love letter right after first obtaining the Black Phone. In his view, curses themselves weren't frightening — what was frightening were the ghosts that lurked behind them.
He returned to his seat without further provoking the Smiling Man. He slipped his hand into his backpack while gazing out the window. At some point, the world outside the bus had become pitch black.
Before long, Bus 104 pulled into the stop closest to Liwan Town. Once they passed this stop, the next one would be Liwan itself.
The doors opened. Amid the downpour came the sound of clanking chains. A hand, bloated and whitened by the rain, reached into the bus and gripped the railing.
Rainwater trickled down the fingers, and mixed in with the chain sounds was an eerie, piercing laugh. When every passenger turned to look at the front door, a face tilted at an angle poked its way inside.
The features were refined — under normal circumstances, it should have been a handsome face. But what a pity: from the corner of his left eye to the corner of his mouth, someone had sliced it open with a blade, giving the impression from a distance that he had two mouths — one vertical, one horizontal.
The wound on his face appeared recent. It hadn't healed properly yet, and soaking in the rainwater, there was even the risk of infection and suppuration.
His thin lips slowly parted. He extended his tongue and licked the wound at the corner of his mouth. The pain twisted his entire face into a grimace, yet he still tried to put on an expression of enjoyment.
"A psycho?" Chen Ge took a single glance and reached his conclusion.
The man seemed quite satisfied with the attention from the other passengers. He used his elegant fingers to tidy his disheveled hair.
Before touching his hair, his fingers were white. After combing through it, the tips came away stained red — there appeared to be old, uncleaned blood matted into his hair.
"Something funny?"
This new passenger was even more unhinged than Chen Ge had expected. The moment he boarded, he began provoking the Smiling Man, seemingly without a care for the danger, his eyes locked on the Smiling Man whose face had turned iron-gray while he forced himself to keep smiling.
"What's this man's leverage?" Chen Ge was an extremely observant person. He noticed that part of the wound on the man's face had already become infected, while another portion showed signs of scabbing. So the new passenger was probably human — but then, what gave a lone human the courage to provoke the Smiling Man? Was it the fearlessness of ignorance, or did he have some hidden trump card?
The Smiling Man had just been thoroughly infuriated by Chen Ge, and now here came another who was practically asking to die. The black threads within his eyes writhed like worms, and the corners of his mouth split wider and wider.
Anyone could tell that something terrible was about to happen, but the newly boarded passenger showed no fear. Instead, he pointed at the wound on his own face: "Are you copying me?"
As he stepped fully into the bus, the passengers finally saw clearly — this new passenger was drenched in blood from head to toe. In his left hand he held a pair of scissors nearly thirty centimeters long, and with his right he dragged a tattered bag that was still oozing blood.