Global Collapse

Chapter 132 Seeing the path through the scalp is the most deadly.

The driver seemed startled by Gu Mian.

Her face stiffened as she asked, "What's wrong?"

Gu Mian felt the wind blowing from afar, then wrapped her white coat tighter: "It's okay, I just didn't bring any money."

As he spoke, he took two steps forward, opened the car door, and sat in the back seat of the taxi.

The driver opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but Gu Mian moved too fast and sat down in the back seat before she could make a sound.

As he watched him get in, the driver, a beat slow, finally spoke up: "This time you can have the fare free, or you can pay next time... Actually, you can put your guitar in the trunk."

Gu Mian had already taken the guitar off and placed it on the seat next to her: "No, I feel it's safer to keep the guitar next to me."

The driver pursed her lips slightly, seemingly not wanting to waste any more words. She turned back to look ahead and asked, "Where are you going?"

Gu Mian glanced down at the map in her hand: "Rong'an Residential Area."

Then he saw the driver seem to pause slightly, but he didn't say anything and silently started the taxi.

Gu Mian had roughly calculated the distance from here to Rong'an Community.

He is currently in a remote area in the northwest of Yecheng City, which can be considered a suburb; while Rong'an Community is in the eastern part of the city, and it takes more than an hour to get there by car.

It's strange, there doesn't seem to be anyone alive in this city.

The taxi drove past several residential buildings, but there wasn't a single lit window on any of them.

Gu Mian knew it was a bit unreasonable to ask someone to turn on the lights in the middle of the night, but the city did look like an empty city, as if it had been built specifically for players entering this instance.

The strong wind lashed against the car body, and just listening to it made me feel cold.

There were no lights in the taxi, so Gu Mian glanced down at the time in the upper left corner of the advertisement in her hand—July 30th—using the light from the streetlights outside the window.

Logically speaking, the weather at the end of July shouldn't be this cold. The temperature outside is like late autumn, and the wind makes people shiver.

The driver had already passed two intersections and was now stopped at the third intersection, waiting for the green light.

The intersection was deserted except for their car. As far as the eye could see, there was eerie darkness, and even the tri-color lights overhead looked somewhat unreal.

So far, the driver has behaved no differently than a normal person—except for his unprofessional age and his somewhat eerie trembling body.

Gu Mian looked at the rearview mirror inside the car.

From this angle, you can see the driver's face.

The young face had turned deathly pale, and looked particularly eerie under the streetlights outside the car.

“Speaking of which…” Gu Mian suddenly spoke up.

The driver immediately asked, "What?"

Aside from his deathly pale face, which resembled a ghost, his tone and movements were no different from those of an ordinary person.

Gu Mian noticed that the driver suddenly lowered his head, making it impossible for him to see that pale face through the rearview mirror.

He coughed lightly: "Speaking of which, you've been working as a driver here for quite some time now, haven't you?"

The driver kept his head down and gave a soft "hmm".

Gu Mian then asked, "Have you ever heard of the famous paranormal events here, like people getting into taxis and then disappearing into thin air?"

The description of this instance is very clear: in Ye City, there are stories circulating about people who have disappeared without a trace after getting into a taxi.

Moreover, the missing person notice in the advertisement also illustrates this point.

The light turned green, and the taxi slowly started moving again. Gu Mian smelled a strange odor in the air, very faint and hard to detect.

The driver, still with his head down, said, "I've heard of it..."

Before Gu Mian could ask, she continued, "Four people have gone missing here, all after getting into taxis—three men and one woman."

"I don't know if the missing people were in the same taxi. All I know is that no one has seen them since. They disappeared without a trace, neither alive nor dead..."

“I don’t know about the others, but I do know that the first person to go missing was a female college student. Her parents searched for her for more than ten years, sold their house, and rented a second-hand apartment right across from mine.”

"I know they've been trying to save money. Actually, the rent in our neighborhood isn't the cheapest. I don't know why they chose that location."

"When I was little, I saw them going out every day before dawn with tubes and printed missing person posters, and not returning until very late at night."

“When I was little, I loved looking out through the peephole. Every time I heard someone coming up, I would climb up to look…”

“I often saw her mother come home first to cook; then an hour later, when it was completely dark, her father would come up the stairs carrying a bucket, his back bent.”

"I often saw him squat down by the door and cry for a while, very quietly, almost inaudibly, before standing up, taking out his keys, and opening the door."

“Sometimes I ask my parents what would happen if I disappeared like the girl across the street, and they always say that nothing like that will happen…”

"After that, I rarely saw that woman's parents. I heard that her mother was sick, so they refunded the rent, and nobody knows where they went."

Gu Mian looked at the missing person notice on the advertisement in her hand, and then at the time in the upper left corner.

Lin Rongrong, a female college student, went missing on July 24, 2002.

Based on the driver's words, it can be deduced that it is now more than ten years from now, at least 2012, or even later.

Gu Mian looked out the car window and saw a phone booth on the side of the road ahead.

He then turned to the driver in the driver's seat: "What month is it now?"

The driver seemed to be in a daze for a moment before speaking: "It's almost October, isn't it... I think it's almost October..."

Gu Mian looked at the driver, who had been keeping his head down, and said, "Stop at the phone booth up ahead, I need to get off."

The driver's bangs twitched slightly; she seemed to want to look up, but ultimately didn't: "You'd better not get out of the car now, it's not safe."

"So you think it's safe to see the road with your scalp?"

"..."

The taxi stopped on the side of the road.

Gu Mian got out of the car with his chainsaw and stood in front of the driver's window, staring at the driver's scalp.

Her head was bowed so low that you couldn't see her face unless you looked up from below.

Gu Mian looked at her scalp and said, "I'll ask you one last question: what's your name?"

The driver's bangs swayed slightly, and then he made a barely audible sound: "Liu Mo, my name is Liu Mo."

She immediately stepped on the gas, and the taxi sped away, leaving Gu Mian behind, eating dust.

Gu Mian didn't care about the amount of dirt she had eaten, but instead muttered to herself, "The first missing person appeared in 2002, and by 2012 the number of missing persons had reached four."

It's likely that far more than four people disappeared after taking a taxi in this instance, and Liu Mo is very likely one of them.

It's really strange for someone her age to be a night bus driver.

Liu Mo was probably detained here by some mysterious force after he disappeared, and then became a driver.

"So it's very likely that the drivers we players are matched with are the people who went missing back then."

"But these drivers don't seem like a threat at all. It's like they could easily get home safely while sitting in their cars." Gu Mian stroked her chin. "Maybe I'm the only one who thinks they're harmless?"

As he pondered this, he slipped into the nearby phone booth and pressed the "call a taxi" button once again.

This time, a man answered the phone.

Thank you WeissP, Qiuweifeng, Guanlingfeng, Yes, I am your dad, and Feichazi Haiyuanxia for the donations (づ￣3￣)づ╭～
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(End of this chapter)