Volume 7 - CH 119.3

While thinking about the situation, Mu Jiashi hears Fei asking, “our shuttle… is that it?”

Mu Jiashi looks at the departure information on the display board, and tells Fei, “yes, we should go.”

They pass through the entry gate without incident, and boards a large shuttle bus that transports people between this city and Cangcheng on a daily basis.

The clock shows 13:15. It’s a simple afternoon; slightly hot. There aren’t that many passengers, with only a third or so of the 40-odd seats filled.

The driver starts the shuttle after checking everything with the station staff and counting the passengers.

No one could have known what was to happen to them on the journey.

About half an hour into the journey, someone asks the driver how long they have left. The driver tells them they still have about an hour to go.

Most of the passengers are in advanced stages of falling asleep. The murky air, mixed with the scent of cheap fabric and summer sweat, plus some of the exhaust lingering around the asphalt road around, is quite the effective sleeping gas.

Although the people affected definitely doesn’t include Fei or Mu Jiashi. Fei is clearly paranoid, continuously checking the clock, calculating the time in her mind.

According to her companion, the situation would change about forty minutes into the ride.

Mu Jiashi didn’t explain in detail what the change entails, as it was quite difficult to put into words.

Fei asked if they could just not board the shuttle altogether, but Mu Jiashi shook his head, and told her it was for the best they boarded.

He tried avoiding that when he was in the Nightmare, and leave the terminal altogether, not knowing the nature of Nightmares well enough yet; he ended up discovering how risky it was staying behind at the terminal turned out to be.

To put it briefly, there are tens of thousands of times more people crowded around the terminal than on the shuttle.

So their only choice is to get onto this shuttle bus that may lead them to death.

Time slowly passes, until finally, Fei watches as the clock ticks over, and it has now been forty minutes since departure.

Nothing has happened yet.

The driver is still driving, the passengers still fast asleep, the sun still shining overhead, countless cars still whizzing past on the road.

Then Fei feels a gust of wind blow past the window of the shuttle, touching her.

It was sudden, and oddly enough, gentle. It brushed past her cheek and ear.

Was it really a gust of wind, she didn’t hear the wind howl like usual. In fact, she doesn’t think the air was moving about her at all.

It was like, something was touching her nerves directly. Spooked, she looks around carefully.

Maybe it was the wind, and she’s overthinking things.

The vehicle bumps a little, and Fei’s vision blurs momentarily – it feels oddly like her brain shut off for a moment – before everything goes back to normal.

She thinks there wasn’t any change observable in her.

So she turns to Mu Jiashi, as only he knows what is really happening, even though her mind is telling her, that nothing has changed at all.

But she sees Mu Jiashi looking out the window, focusing on a small car.

There seems to be a young couple in the driver’s and passenger’s seat. The man is driving, and the woman’s head is tilted; she appears asleep.

Suddenly, a small toy probably put under the windshield by them jumps and falls, and Fei swears she could hear the porcelain shatter in her mind.

The man merely gives it a nonchalant glance.

The woman wakes up, and it seems she is irate, and possibly criticising the man’s driving skills──Something like that.

But then, the situation escalates. She tries to take control of the steering wheel. Then after that, the man lets go of one hand to slap the woman on the face.

The woman then starts wildly pushing and pulling on the steering wheel.

The car quickly meanders in a worrying path, until it smashes right into the road divider, and explodes in flames.

The shuttle bus is right next to this explosion, and Mu Jiashi and Fei both watched it unfold before their eyes.

The bus continues moving. Oddly, not another car on the road slowed down or stopped from the scene. It was like they were entirely disinterested in this car crash.

Fei, astonished, mutters, “what’s going on?”

“The first spread of the madness,” Mu Jiashi says, with a deep, agonising sorrow, “It spread outward from near Cangcheng, and we’re close enough that the effects were near instantaneous here as well.”

“Madness?” Fei asks, “just like what was happening in that little village?”

“Yes…”

Fei seems to mumble something to herself, before asking, “so you’re saying, these scenes are all connected to some single worldview?”

Mu Jiashi nods and says, “yes, they are.”

“Then, where would the door be this time?”

Mu Jiashi looks hesitant, and then he shakes his head to show he doesn’t know either.

He suspects it’s related to the setting of Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, but he has no way to conclusively prove or utilise it.

Fei didn’t seem to be holding out hopes for Mu Jiashi to have an answer, either.

She’s going to keep talking, when she hears yelling coming from the front of the shuttle bus. She looks ahead, and finds herself stunned frozen.

The passengers who were asleep or about to fall asleep, have suddenly started lambasting each other and even fighting.

When Mu Jiashi boarded the bus, he took Fei to the very back of the shuttle to sit. They’re quite the distance away from the ruckus, but who knows how long the illusion of safety will last.

Fei quickly asks, “would the door we need to find be the door to the bus? We can leave after it reaches the destination?”

Mu Jiashi says, “no…”

Fei seems confused.

Mu Jiashi stops to think a little, then explains, “do you think the driver is afflicted with the madness as well? Do you think he would keep working hard, or go insane in some way after becoming afflicted?”

Fei falls silent for a long time.

Finally, she mutters, “so all we can do, is wait?”

To wait, for this shuttle bus ride, to take them to unknown horizons.

Mu Jiashi is the first Missiontaker to regain his sense of self in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, but he’s certainly not the last one.

At the same time, in another Cell Nightmare, as Xü Beijin looks on, Wu Jian, A-One and A-Two are also arriving at the special Nightmare.

This Nightmare makes Wu Jian look quite conflicted indeed.