After being stared at by Chen Ge for a long time, the man tightened his clothes at the collar and coughed softly.

"Have we met before?"

His voice was cold and vicissitudes of life, and he seemed to care nothing about anything in the outside world.

Chen Ge didn't expect the other party to speak so suddenly. He paused for a moment, then continued what the man said: "You look a lot like a friend of mine, and your temperament is almost the same. Have we met somewhere before?"

The man turned his head, a trace of fatigue hidden in his eyes: "Maybe you made a mistake."

"Impossible, I must have seen you somewhere." Chen Ge and the man were meeting for the first time, and he said this just to chat with him a little more and get more useful information.

The man was silent for a while. Seeing that Chen Ge did not seem to be lying, he hesitated for a while, raised his hand and took off the mask on his face.

The man had a high nose bridge, pale skin, and purple lips. After taking off his mask, he coughed violently a few times: "You're wrong. I'm not the person you're looking for."

After that, he put on the mask again, with a look of emotion that others could not understand: "I don't have any friends."

The man was not afraid of Chen Ge. He was a passenger who got on the bus later and was a living person. He did not know what was hidden in Chen Ge's shadow. Perhaps in his eyes, Chen Ge was not much different from other passengers.

Chen Ge wanted to find out what happened in the eastern suburbs, and also wanted to bring all the ghosts in the hearse back to the haunted house, but to his surprise, there were actually two living passengers in the hearse tonight.

He didn't want to reveal his secret, and it was not convenient for him to do anything out of line in front of two living people, so he temporarily changed his plan and kept a low profile. When he arrived at Liwan Town and the two living passengers got off, he would have a good chat with the other passengers.

Sitting obediently in his seat, Chen Ge turned his eyes away from the man and looked out the window.

Raindrops fell on the glass. The buildings on both sides were no longer visible. It was pitch black all around. The No. 104 hearse they were riding in looked like a small island floating on the black ocean.

The car suddenly became quiet. The man found that Chen Ge had not spoken since he finished talking to him, and thought he had said something wrong.

He placed his hands on his knees and suddenly asked Chen Ge in a low voice: "Does he want to take this car just to find your friend?"

Chen Ge's eyes gradually focused, and the expression on his face began to change, as if the man had guessed the secret in his heart. He felt a little uneasy, a little painful, and a little self-blaming.

Nodding slowly, Chen Ge looked at the man next to him: "How did you know?"

"Everyone on this bus has their own stories and secrets, otherwise they wouldn't take this bus after midnight."

"From your tone, it seems like this isn't your first time taking this bus?" Chen Ge's mouth twitched, revealing the same smile he had when he got on the bus, but there was a hint of suppressed pain in his eyes that made people feel distressed.

"I took bus No. 104 when I was working, and I have been taking it for almost 20 years." The man seemed to have not talked to anyone for a long time, and spoke slowly: "The department was quite busy at that time, and there was a shortage of staff. I often worked overtime, and always took the last bus to go home. At first I liked taking the last bus, there were few people, and it was very quiet, but later I took it more often, and looking at the dark buildings on both sides, I felt a little lonely."

"Department? What did you do before?"

"Doctor, a doctor from the burn department." The man emphasized the three words "burn department". There was a ripple in his eyes, as if he remembered something.

"Burn Department?" Chen Ge had only dealt with psychologists before and didn't know much about the Burn Department.

"Surgery, skin grafting, rehabilitation, this is our job." The man said it calmly, but Chen Ge heard a hint of heaviness behind these words.

The man also noticed the deep suppressed pain in Chen Ge's eyes. He seemed to see his own shadow in Chen Ge and subconsciously regarded Chen Ge as a person like him.

After the brief conversation, the two fell silent again. After a long while, Chen Ge spoke up: "Are you taking this car to look for someone as well?"

The man nodded slightly, pressing his gloved hand against his scarf.

"Is this scarf knitted for you by your wife?" Chen Ge found the right moment and asked casually.

Hearing Chen Ge's words, the man was stunned for a moment. He took his hand off the scarf and slowly shook his head.

"It wasn't given by your wife?" The fact was different from what Chen Ge had guessed. He was a little curious: "Can you tell me your story?"

The rain was getting heavier, and the raindrops hit the windows, making a constant sound.

The man pondered for a moment, took off his mask, and took a deep breath. "The patients in the burn department are different from those in other departments. They are bruised, unrecognizable, burnt, and torn. They are everywhere here. When I was an intern, I thought I was in hell until I gradually got used to the blood and flesh, the stench, and all kinds of strange smells."

"At that time, I thought that I would no longer have such big emotional ups and downs when facing patients."

"It wasn't until I was thirty that I met a patient who was fourteen years old."

"She was just a child and her back was severely scalded by boiling water. It took me half an hour to separate her clothes from her skin."

"The girl was very quiet, she didn't cry or make a fuss."

"To prevent any impact on the child's brain nerves, I did not use general anesthesia. When I separated her clothes and skin, the child opened her eyes and looked at me."

"Her back and her face were two different extremes. I comforted her like I would any other patient."

"After treating her wounds, I found the adults who took her to the hospital and prepared to give them some instructions. However, after asking them, I found out that it was a neighbor who took her to the hospital and that her injuries were not caused by an accident, but by her parents."

"I called the police." The man coughed occasionally while speaking. He was in very poor health.

"The girl's father has a serious tendency to violence, and her mother is deaf-mute and cowardly."

"The police detained and educated her father for a month, and then her mother took the initiative to go to the police station to plead for mercy, after all, the whole family depended on her father for support."

"I stayed with the girl the whole time while she was being treated. She was like a small white wild flower blooming on the roadside. Being with her also allowed me, who was used to seeing cruelty and smelling stench, to feel a bit of happiness after a long time."

"Two months after she was discharged from the hospital, I suddenly received a strange phone call. It was her voice on the other end of the line."

"Unable to endure her father's drunken violence, she ran away from home."

"I took her in, hiding it from the police and her family."

"I know I might have done something wrong, but I can't imagine what would have happened to her if I had sent her back then."

At this point, the man paused for a moment. Seeing that Chen Ge's expression did not change, he continued, "When she was twenty years old, she confessed her love to me."

"I was 36 years old that year, so we skipped the dating process and had a wedding that year with just the two of us."

"I spent the happiest five years with her, but also endured unimaginable pressure."

"When I was 41, her parents found her, insulted her, beat her, and made a scene at school and at the hospital where I worked."

"Life changed in an instant. People's words are scary. I can bear it, but she gave up."

"I called her several times while I was on the last bus home that day, but no one answered."

"When I opened the door and returned home, there was a prepared meal on the table, as well as a long letter she had written to me."

"Finally I found her in the bathroom, her body submerged in water, not breathing."

The man's face turned frighteningly pale, and his coughing became more and more severe. Chen Ge reached out and patted his back.

“Thank you.” The man did not wear a mask, and the fatigue in his eyes could not be concealed: “In fact, the passengers on this bus all have their own stories. During the day, everyone is busy and hiding their inner thoughts. At night, these helpless, painful, and desperate people will take this bus to the terminal.”

From the man's words, he seemed unaware that the other passengers were ghosts, or maybe he already knew it, but he just mistook the ghosts for humans.

"Do you know anything else?"

"Too many, like the mute next to me, I've met him before." The man said with a hint of sympathy: "He has a mental disability and can't speak. He works as a porter in a supermarket and is often bullied. He still smiles foolishly and praises others."

"Then why did he get on this car? A person with a simple mind should not be targeted by dirty things." Chen Ge was a little confused.

"He went to the terminal to look for his daughter." The man couldn't bear to continue. "For some reason, someone hired thugs from outside the school to bully his daughter. Cigarettes burned her palms, her hair was pulled out, and the surveillance camera captured even worse things. His daughter never said anything, but in the end she couldn't stand it anymore and ended her life."

"School bullying?" Chen Ge's eyes darkened. These things really happened and he had seen them before: "Did you call the police? How did the police handle it?"

The man sitting next to me has an intellectual disability and is physically uncoordinated. He often falls when he walks. It is very difficult for a person like him to protect his rights.

"Call the police?" The man grinned. "This father, who was born with intellectual disabilities and could not speak and could not even walk steadily, knocked out the gangsters and the culprit and locked them up in an abandoned building in the eastern suburbs. He then poured gasoline on them and burned them all."

"He is in poor health and has intellectual disabilities. How did he do all this by himself?"

"The police can't figure it out either, so the murderer hasn't been caught yet."

The burn doctor and Chen Ge turned around to look at the man at the same time. He seemed a little embarrassed and smiled foolishly at the two of them.

"Fighting violence with violence will only leave more problems. A heart that is already broken due to being hurt will find it difficult to withstand the pressure of revenge killing. He may go from one extreme to another." Chen Ge was unable to evaluate what the father did. If he were the father, he would not be able to guarantee what he would do.

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, I think that's fair. Let's not talk about him. I've seen people in worse condition on this bus." The burn doctor said casually, "Once it was raining heavily, I got on the bus and saw a young man in a suit. He was dressed very smartly and looked different from the other passengers, but who would have known that he was a complete lunatic."

"What has he done?"

"The young man was a wedding host. He had been in the industry for several years and had hosted hundreds of weddings. Finally, the time came for him to get married. He married his bride in a suit and tie, but on the way back, he had a car accident."

"The bride could not be saved. Although his life was saved, his face was disfigured."

"The wedding company fired him, and he later changed his career to become a funeral designer. When someone found him, he would help them design funerals, and when no one was around, he would look after the cemetery."

"These are all quite normal, but then during the conversation, he accidentally let out a message."

"In the dead of night, he would arrange ghost marriages for the corpses and preside over them himself."

What the man said was a little scary: "He got in the car to find his wife, and then he planned to hold a special wedding at that time."

After listening to the stories of the burn doctor, the mentally handicapped father and the funeral designer, Chen Ge discovered that the last bus on Route 104 was not what he had imagined before. This bus seemed to have become a passage for the living people of Jiujiang to enter the shadows of the city. People of all kinds took it to search for their last hope.

Chen Ge didn't know how to tell the burn doctor that everyone regarded this bus as their last hope, but they were doomed to fail because the final destination of this bus was made up of the deepest despair and pain.

Chen Ge even suspected that the mastermind behind Dongjiao created such a bus just to collect despair and all kinds of negative emotions.

"The Ghost Stories Association created ghost stories to attract despair and negative emotions. The ghosts in the gate need these things. In addition, only those who are desperate, painful, and dominated by negative emotions can become containers for ghosts."

There are some people and ghosts on the last bus. They arrive at the terminal with the last glimmer of hope, but what may greet them is another world of endless despair.

"I can't let this happen again. It looks like I have no choice but to drive this car away. Maybe I can build a new route that goes straight to the haunted house."

These abnormal living passengers on the bus reminded Chen Ge of the game he played at Fan Cong's house.

In that game, there are not only evil spirits and people in red, but also many perverted murderers. Chen Ge now suspects that those murderers are the living passengers on bus No. 104.

"The whole town is full of evil spirits and murderers. The mastermind behind the East Suburbs is much crazier than the Ghost Story Association."