Ding Weihai couldn’t believe this. He quickly stood up and walked to the doors of the bus. He wanted to push the door, but his hand seemed to be blocked by a wall of air and he couldn’t touch the door at all.

Ding Weihai seemed to have lost all his strength and sat on the ground in a daze, muttering to himself, “…How could this happen?”

An Rugu’s yin and yang eyes scanned the entire bus, looking at everyone inside; she made a preliminary judgment. 

“After you got on the bus, one of your three souls and seven souls¹ was taken away by the bus, so you will be imprisoned inside the bus. All the souls of the other passengers have already been swallowed up by the bus. If you continue to stay here, you will become like them.”

When the other passengers heard this, they felt a little surprised. So this was how it was?

Ding Weihai was speechless, feeling like the whole world had collapsed. He didn’t know what to do. He begged as if he was grasping a life-saving straw, “Please, take me away with you, I don’t want to be trapped on this bus. I have money, I have saved a lot of pocket money, I will give it all to you. By the way, my parents also have money. As long as you save me, my parents will give you a lot of money.”

“Your parents have already made arrangements with me.” An Ru raised her head and looked out the window, “I will take you away.”

She stepped towards the door at the back of the bus, looked over at the three other living people, and said, “You come here too.”

Seeing that the bus kept going, Ding Weihai quickly shouted to the driver, “Driver, stop the car, I want to get off!”

In a deep voice, the driver spoke the truth, “I can’t control it.”

Ding Weihai: “…”

After working hard for so long, this driver turned out to be just a decoration?

“No need to stop.”

An Ru stood at the door and turned to look at Shang Yue next to her.

She had been full of happiness since she had seen the yin qi on the bus, thick and heavy. From the moment she got on the bus, she has been eating to her heart’s content, and her soul has become more solid. As she ate, she muttered to herself, “What a great job this is.”

The black cat had also become a little greedy when he saw the yin qi. He was sitting beside Shang Yue, his mouth opened wide to eat the yin qi thick in the air. He looked completely different from how he was originally resisting to get on the bus.

“Are you full? It’s time to go to work when you’re full.”

Hearing this, the ghost and the cat nodded, wiped their mouths, and agreed.

… …

The other passengers merely looked at An Rugu with miserable gazes, without any hope in their hearts. Occasionally, a few people smiled, but their smiles were extremely bitter.

“It’s useless. No matter what you do, you can’t get out.”

“More than twenty of us ghosts together can’t escape from this bus. What can you do by yourself?”

“No need to try, just accept the reality.”

When they first found themselves locked inside the bus, they used various methods to escape, but there was an invisible barrier surrounding the bus, and they were completely unable to break through it. Years of hard work have yielded no results, which has weakened their will to resist and forced them to accept reality.

They were trapped inside this bus for all eternity.

They couldn’t live or nor could they die. They wished they could have died long ago in that accident and not survive only to face this never-ending prison.

The old professor staggered up to An Rugu, a trace of expectation flashed in his eyes, and then fell silent again.

But whether outside the bus or inside, he has tried countless methods to rescue the people on the No. 18 bus but never succeeded.

How was it possible that just a random person could do it?

… … translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

However, An Rugu did not listen to their pessimistic words. Instead she gestured with her hands and began to recite the Golden Light Mantra.

“The Xuanzong of heaven and earth has ten thousand roots. I have cultivated it for hundreds of millions of kalpas and proved my magical powers. Within and outside the three realms, only the Dao is supreme…”

Excessive evil spirits were the root cause of the formation holding the bus in place. As long as the evil spirits were eliminated, all problems would be solved.

As time passed, under the surprised eyes of both humans and ghosts alike, a dazzling golden light burst out from An Rugu’s body, illuminating the entire bus as if it was bright daylight. The yin qi surrounding the bus was completely dispelled by the golden light spell. Wherever the golden light reached, the yin qi disappeared.

Ghost passengers in the car: “!!!”

They were almost blinded by the golden light and hurriedly hid behind any shelter they could find, hoping to protect themselves.

However, the power of the golden light was wielded according to the intentions of the person who was chanting it, so it would not have caused them particularly great harm.

Suddenly, there was a click, and the invisible barrier outside the bus shattered.

At the same time, under everyone’s stunned eyes, the bus gradually slowed down and finally stopped.

The driver was shocked when he saw this. As if he had suddenly thought of something, he pressed the button to open the door at the back of the bus. He had pressed this button countless times before, but there had never been any response.

But this time, the bus had somehow become normal, and the back door opened in response.

“Alright, get out of the bus.” An Rugu said, “Your souls are all here now, too.”

The four college students came out of their daze and looked at An Rugu with admiration in their eyes. Considering this level of special effects, this must be a great master of cultivating immortals!

They wanted to become her disciples on the spot, but thinking that they were in such a strange place, they just touched their noses and decided to get out of the bus first.

… …

When they got off the bus, An Rugu turned on her navigation app. It showed that she was in the eastern suburbs of Nancheng, very close to the original departure point of the No. 18 bus. She looked to her left and saw that the area was very remote. The bus suddenly appeared but there was no one around to be scared.

She thought for a while, then turned to look at the more than 20 passengers now outside the bus. With a complicated expression, An Rugu asked, “Where do you want to go? If you want to be reincarnated, I can do that for you. If you don’t want to… then, my haunted house is short of some employees, are you interested in a job?”

The ghost passengers looked at each other and started discussing matters with their relatives and friends.

In the end, more than ten people chose to reincarnate, and the remaining ten people wanted to linger in the human world and agreed to go to her haunted house. This included the driver.

So, An Rugu asked the driver to drive the bus to Tangchi Village.

I Livestream Divination to the World translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com

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T/N: When life sends you ghosts—make them sell lemonade at your haunted house.

FOOTNOTE:

1. Different Chinese beliefs put a person’s soul at either 1 , 2 , 3 , or 10. Daoists in particular believe that a person has 3 and 7 souls. ↩︎