Chapter 1: The Reaper Has Arrived

  "It's so cold! It's so cold!"

  "It was fine yesterday, but suddenly turned cloudy today, I bet it's going to snow."

  "If I had known it would be like this, I wouldn't have come out and stayed at home instead."

  In front of a bus stop, more than ten people were waiting for the bus. Among them, a young man and woman were talking to each other.

  "All I heard was a woman saying: 'I'm freezing to death, this awful weather, how did it suddenly get so cold?'"

  "It's winter, of course it's cold." The man said nonchalantly, then looked at her and added, "Put your hand in my pocket, I'll warm you up."

  "Hehe!" The woman giggled and turned around, facing the man. She put her hands into his down jacket pockets, and he also inserted his hands, holding hers, as they hugged each other for warmth.

  The woman's eyes scanned around, then suddenly lowered her voice and leaned in close to the man's ear, whispering: "Look at that person, wearing so few clothes."

  The man turned his head and looked back, then asked: "Which one?"

  The girl whispered: "The one wearing a blue jacket."

  The man glanced at the crowd and immediately turned back, saying calmly: "Mind your own business."

  The woman seemed interested in this and laughed: "He's wearing so little clothes, doesn't he feel cold?"

  The man curled his lip and made a disdainful expression, "Only an idiot wouldn't know that. Maybe he just doesn't have any clothes to wear. Look at how old his clothes are, they're clearly several years old. This kind of poor devil is common, can't even afford new clothes."

  "Shh!" The woman raised her head and glanced at him, "Speak softly, he might hear us."

  Xu Mo couldn't help but take a step back, retreating one pace. He vaguely felt that these two people were discussing him.

  Today, he is going for an interview, a quality inspection job in a factory.

  He is a taciturn person, not good at expressing his inner thoughts through words, and has extremely bad luck. Every time he wants to do something, he will inexplicably encounter this or that kind of problem, and ultimately fail.

  Graduated two years ago, I've done countless part-time jobs over the past two years, but due to that terrible luck, I haven't found a decent job yet. As time drags on, my expectations for work have become lower and lower.

  But his parents mysteriously disappeared in the same year he graduated, and their lives or deaths are still unknown. He has been through hardships, and his life is getting harder day by day, where can he afford to buy extra clothes? The man's words hit his sore spot, and he couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness, with tears almost falling from his eyes.

  In such cold weather, there was no wind, and his body temperature was constantly dissipating. He tightened his clothes, but found it to be of no use.

  He was wearing only a pair of single pants on his lower body, and inside the jacket was a T-shirt that could only be worn in spring and autumn, so it couldn't keep him warm.

  He looked up at the sky, which was gray and hazy, as if he couldn't see a glimmer of hope. He sighed, lowered his head, and his eyes were filled with confusion.

  At this time, he heard the sound of a car engine, turned his head to look, and a bus slowly came over, stopped in front of him, he took a glance, and suddenly felt delighted, it was the No. 645 bus, which was the one he had been waiting for.

  The bus door opened, but no one got off. He walked out of the crowd and headed for the front door, jumped onto the bus, and was about to throw coins when he suddenly heard someone shout in a low voice: "Get down, this bus has been chartered."

  Xu Mo was taken aback by the words and looked towards the person who spoke, a man in his thirties sitting in the driver's seat, staring at him with a cold expression.

  It was this person who just spoke to him.

  He was wearing a black suit, with both hands on the steering wheel and a briefcase slung over his right shoulder, which he didn't put down even while driving, looking quite bizarre.

  Looking at his attire, he doesn't look like a bus driver at all, but rather a salesperson specializing in financial bonds or insurance who goes door-to-door.

  At the same time, Xu Mo also discovered that on the first seat behind the man, there was another person sitting. This person was in his 40s and wore a uniform of the bus company, looking more like a bus driver than the man in the driver's seat.

  At this time, he didn't know what was going on. The man's expression was dull and his eyes were staring forward, without looking at Xu Mo.

  Just at this moment of delay, the driver waved his hand again and said to Xu Mo impatiently: "Get down, get down, hurry up."

  Xu Mo glanced at the other people in the car, and they all looked almost identical to the man in uniform, with a dull and listless expression. No one looked back at him.

  Xu Mo glanced at it hastily, didn't look carefully, sighed, and got off the bus. The bus waited for him to get off, then closed the door immediately, started up, and drove forward. In an instant, it went far away.

  Xu Mo took advantage of the moment when the bus started to move, glanced at the back of the bus and remembered the license plate number - 62975.

  I thought: The bus was chartered, I've never heard of it before. It must be that the driver broke the rules and made money privately by renting the car to others. Should I report him?

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head and gave up the idea. Even if he reported it, it would be useless. The bus company might just treat it as a trivial matter, respond with a few perfunctory words, laugh it off, and ignore him, wasting his phone call.

  So he took out his mobile phone, dialed the first number, sighed and hung up, putting it back in his pocket.

  At the same time, he vaguely felt that something was wrong. On that bus, in a glance, he seemed to have discovered something very strange, but at the time he didn't pay attention and just took a casual look before withdrawing his gaze. As a result, what exactly was strange about it, he couldn't recall now.

  And what about the driver's behavior, he also felt inappropriate, he was driving, why didn't he put down the briefcase on his shoulder? What was in that briefcase that made him so concerned? And what about the person wearing a uniform behind him and the passengers in the car, how were they doing? Why did they look so strange?

  But these things had little to do with him, and after passing through his mind, he was thrown aside and no longer cared about.

  He shrank his body in the cold wind, glanced to the right, and continued waiting for the arrival of the bus.

  After more than ten minutes, another 645 came. The bus hadn't approached yet, but a few people in the crowd waiting for the bus walked out and waved at the bus. Among them were the man and woman who had discussed Xu Mo earlier.

  Xu Mo was secretly puzzled, these people were also taking the 645 bus, why didn't anyone move when that bus came over earlier? Did they already know that the bus had been hijacked? But there was no obvious characteristic of that bus, how did these people notice it?

  Just in this brief moment of hesitation, he was overtaken by others and ended up boarding last.

  Xu Mo stopped thinking and got on the bus, just about to pay the fare, glanced at the bus driver, but couldn't help letting out a soft "hmm" and froze.

  "Huh?"

  This bus driver looks very familiar. He was just seen a little while ago, on the previous bus, sitting in the first seat behind the driver.

  This man had just taken a bus and gone away not long ago, how did he come back and drive a public transportation bus over here?

  Looking at this person's expression, it is completely different from when he passed by just now. When Xu Mo saw him earlier, he seemed to be very tired and his expression was dull, with a look of being lost and disheartened. Now, however, he seems like a different person altogether, that dull expression has disappeared, and the whole person is full of energy and vitality.

  He immediately discovered Xu Mo was looking at him, turned his head around and gazed at him with a displeased tone: "Is there something?"

  "It's nothing." Xu Mo smiled wryly and turned his face away, walking towards the car.

  The driver looked at him again, then turned his head and didn't say much either.

  Xu Mo was perplexed in his heart and hadn't walked many steps before finding a place to sit down.

  In front of him was a young girl, about 15 or 16 years old, wearing a white school uniform with the words "Yu Yang Middle School" on the back, probably a high school student.

  That female student was on this bus at the previous stop, head down fiddling with her phone. When Xu Mo and the others got on the bus, she didn't even look up to take a glance.

  The bus continued to move forward, and after several stops, more people got on one after another.

  Xu Mo couldn't help but feel uneasy in his heart, and he stretched out his hand to lightly tap the back of the female student. The female student turned her head around, looking at him unhappily, "What's wrong?"

  "Ah!"

  Xu Mo saw the student's face and was shocked again. This student, like the driver, looked familiar in a way that couldn't be described. He suddenly remembered that he had seen her on the previous bus, sitting in the same seat as she was now.

  What's going on?

  His heart skipped a beat and he felt an inexplicable sense of fear, momentarily forgetting to respond to the girl student's words.

  The female student saw that he looked strange, ignoring himself and just staring blankly into space. She felt inexplicably annoyed, muttered a curse under her breath: "Psycho!" and stood up to move far away and sit down in another seat.

  Xu Mo thought for a moment and suddenly remembered something. He loudly asked the driver, "Driver, what is the license plate number of this car?"

  The driver didn't even turn his head and said, "62975, what's wrong?"

  62975？

  Xu Mo's face suddenly turned ugly, unable to say a word. Isn't this license plate number the same as that car that just passed by earlier? Did it turn back and come again?

  He turned his head and looked back. At a glance, he saw the two men and women who were discussing him earlier, now sitting in the two seats closest to the rear door.

  Suddenly, he remembered why he had felt something was off when he got on the bus not long ago.

  This man and woman were in that car at that time, sitting in the same seats as they are now.

  He suddenly felt a chill run down his spine, had he seen a ghost?

  At this time, the bus stopped again and arrived at another station. The front door opened and a man got on the bus.

  Xu Mo raised his head and took a glance at the man, and suddenly his whole body shook.