No one knew how those “people” had appeared.
After the bus hit the ring expressway, it didn’t stop once along the way, maintaining a steady speed of eighty kilometers per hour.
Yet the number of passengers inside the bus had undeniably increased.
Perhaps only Li Yinhang noticed it. Perhaps everyone on the bus did.
But no one dared to say it aloud.
She lowered her entire body, pressing herself down, nose filled with the suffocating, stifling heat of the enclosed space.
The bus air-conditioning was set to sixteen degrees, the vent directly above her head.
The gusts of cold air were strong, audible with every hiss.
Her fingers clenched tightly; the cold wind and her sticky sweat crawled like insects along her hairline, down into the hollow of her neck.
…There were definitely more people on the bus.
That sense of presence refused to leave her mind—but she couldn’t pinpoint where exactly they were.
Perhaps someone was silently observing her from behind.
Perhaps it was the man seated two rows ahead, a small patch of closely-cropped hair visible on his scalp.
Perhaps he was silently twisting his head 180 degrees, staring in her direction.
…
The human imagination was a natural gift.
And for the past week, that gift had been honed to an extreme.
At first, there were just a few strange disappearances.
A friend returning from an outing might carry a bag of milk tea back, only to find that everyone who had gone to the cinema earlier was gone.
Or a heavily pregnant chemistry teacher, droning at the bottom of the class rankings in a second-year humanities class, lecturing with a soporific monotone. Students slept through the lesson, only the class monitor kept up appearances, scribbling in their language workbook under the guise of taking notes in chemistry.
When the monitor was startled by a sharp clatter and looked up, the only thing on the ground was a rolling whiteboard pen.
Frustrated, the monitor stood up and accused, “The teacher left because of you.”
The situation escalated overnight.
A housewife, watching a drama with her husband on the sofa, noticed water running endlessly in the kitchen.
Worried about the water bill, she walked over, only to find a stack of foam-filled dishes in the sink.
Her daughter had disappeared.
Along with her old slippers, which clattered as she walked.
Returning to the living room, it was eerily quiet.
The TV was showing a sports match; a freshly opened pack of cigarettes sat in the ashtray, as if someone had just taken it out from under the coffee table.
In the warm, ginger-colored light, the reflection of the housewife appeared in the family portrait hanging on the wall—confused, alone.
Disappearance incidents quickly escalated into “disappearance accidents.”
Television channels displayed a frozen-color screen, repeating reminders: citizens should stop unnecessary outings.
Data proved it was no safer to stay in one place; wandering outside offered no faster escape either.
The world itself seemed to have developed an irreparable, strange bug.
This wasn’t mere speculation.
Five months ago, on February 5th, at precisely six in the evening, millions of people saw a massive dialogue box in the sky, beneath clouds painted in the fiery reds of the setting sun, at the position of the sun itself:
[sun.exe not responding. If you continue to wait, the program may respond]
[Do you want to end this process?]
[End Process Cancel]
The box disappeared within exactly one minute.
For those sixty seconds, it caused a storm online.
The most popular theory was that Earth itself had glitched, and aliens were performing system maintenance.
But that idea was quickly mocked—after all, if aliens were maintaining a system, why would they be using Windows 16?
The dialogue box appeared in multiple languages, hovering over cities around the world.
Above the vast rose plantations of Bulgaria.
Under the ocean-like starry sky of Tekapo, New Zealand.
Beside the plane window carrying children to an Australian summer camp.
The controversy ended when an overseas art collective came forward to claim responsibility, explaining that it was their performance art—projecting humanity’s deepest fears of reality onto the sun.
Although they didn’t provide sufficient equipment to actually achieve such a grand artistic feat, by then, people had grown weary of the discussion.
That explanation was enough to let the world move on to the next trending social topic.
Later, some enthusiasts compared tens of thousands of photos.
Due to time zones, the dialogue box had appeared at night in some locations.
Yet its position remained precisely aligned with the sun’s path.
Still, most ordinary people had long since lost interest, giving a single impressed nod before moving on.
Life went on, no flesh lost, no change in routine.
Who would have thought, five months later, the world would end up like this?
It made one wonder: that familiar Windows 16 popup—why had it appeared in the first place?
Was it really a human prank?
A show of force from some unknown power?
Or merely a warning, phrased in a way human logic could comprehend?
Li Yinhang couldn’t figure it out and decided not to think about it.
Life was more important.
Better to stay than to vanish.
As a lowly bank customer service clerk, she shared the dormitory provided by her workplace with a colleague who had just joined a few days ago, choosing to hunker down.
Her colleague, unable to endure three days without washing their hair, went to the bathroom—and never returned.
Li Yinhang didn’t dare to look, fearing she might meet the same fate.
So the dripping water from the unattended showerhead kept falling onto the tiles, ticking away for two whole days.
At moments like this, she felt grateful for her laziness—her snacks were within reach from her bed.
She survived on snacks, silly videos, and her charger, doing her best to ignore the almost mentally tormenting drip of water.
Tick… tick…
Until the rescue team knocked on the door.
Because the number of missing persons had skyrocketed, authorities adjusted their response strategy. Volunteers were recruited to search house by house, moving children, the elderly, and disabled people to temporary “safe cocoon rooms,” or delivering supplies to those choosing to stay confined at home.
Volunteers wore red armbands, typically middle-aged men and women.
Data showed that, so far, no one under eighteen or over sixty had disappeared.
Li Yinhang thought, whether she peeks out or hides, it’s a gamble either way.
Hiding here meant eventually running out of food.
She didn’t want to live alone in an empty apartment, haunted by the drip of water.
Even if she disappeared, she wanted to vanish among the crowd.
So she boarded a temporarily requisitioned double-door bus.
Before she got on, the driver-looking elderly man casually said, “Number three, huh?”
When Li Yinhang boarded, she indeed saw two others toward the back.
One was lying across the second-to-last row, sleeping.
Another had their face covered with clothing, slouched back in the last row, snoring softly.
Suppressing her instinct to greet them, she settled in the fourth row from the back, by the window.
The bus was equipped with a signal jamming device.
This was one of the government’s recent measures against the unexplained disappearances—using strong magnetic interference in enclosed spaces.
But the device’s range and effectiveness were limited.
Full, effective isolation required a cocoon room made of special materials.
So the jammer’s effect was more psychological than practical.
Unable to use her phone, Li Yinhang let her mind go blank, trying desperately to ignore the drip of water that had haunted her for days.
Tick… tick…
The bus had taken only three adults from this apartment complex.
The bus stopped and started, picking up some people and dropping others off.
Some children were sent to the children’s shelter.
A volunteer duo, one old, one young, reported for temporary duty at a station.
Some men boarded but changed their minds, intending to wait for their wives to return.
At first, Li Yinhang peeked curiously at new passengers, attempting to make small talk.
But she soon grew tired.
Even at less than a third capacity, the bus didn’t feel crowded.
Everyone was a stranger, naturally cautious, scattered across the seats, and had no interest in chatting once seated.
Li Yinhang quietly became a turtle at the bottom of the river, saying nothing.
They passed a long bridge over a river.
A small car lay skewed near a bridge pillar, burned to nothing but its steel frame. The burnt leather smell of airbags seeped through the windows. Half of the front hood had been blown away, hanging from the railing, scraping against the wind with a shrill metallic screech.
Squeak… twist—squeak—
Li Yinhang didn’t want to think about how the accident had happened.
Her gaze shifted back to the bus, attempting to count the number of people aboard.
But the next moment, the bus entered a tunnel.
Complete darkness surged forward.
When the white light returned, Li Yinhang’s retina felt a strange misalignment.
…Inside the bus, it seemed something had appeared that hadn’t been there before.
But reality replaced that fleeting afterimage too quickly.
She didn’t even have time to figure out what had changed.
But her sixth sense told her that something had definitely appeared.
Just now, the bus hadn’t been this full.
Nor had it been this deathly silent.
A myriad of thoughts raced through Li Yinhang’s mind.
Layer upon layer of fear pressed down, making her increasingly unwilling to lift her head.
She nervously fidgeted with her fingers, unwilling to be the first to make a sound.
But in her effort, her knuckle cracked loudly.
—Crack.
In the overly quiet bus, the sound echoed eerily.
For a moment, Li Yinhang’s throat muscles tensed.
Luckily, she wasn’t enduring the seconds alone.
Behind her, a man’s voice trembled as he tried to steady himself: “Driver… could you stop the bus? I feel… unwell…”
The driver didn’t respond.
…It was unclear whether this was unexpected or entirely predictable.
After the silence was broken, the man’s courage surged. He strode toward the driver’s cabin to see what was going on.
As he passed Li Yinhang’s seat, a hand suddenly shot out from the side, blocking his way.
Tensed, Li Yinhang jumped.
…She hadn’t even noticed someone sitting directly in front of her.
The man glanced down and saw silver hair.
A black hair tie held a neat scorpion braid that draped halfway over the collarbone, contrasting sharply with a black choker adorned with a silver chain around the slender neck.
Facing this well-formed shoulder, the man’s courage returned.
“Don’t worry, miss, I’ll check it out,” he reassured.
Then, Li Yinhang heard the young man’s crisp, calm voice: “Don’t move.”
…He didn’t contest being called “miss.”
Before the man could recover from the shock, the driver’s seat—where a person should have been sitting—suddenly erupted with a mass of colorful balloons.
Vibrant purples, blues, reds, and greens.
The saturation was so strong it hurt the eyes.
A young woman in the front row screamed, pressing her feet to the seat edge to avoid the rolling balloons that seemed almost like heads.
Then, from the hundreds of balloons, emerged a comically shaped, stubby-limbed creature… a mushroom.
Red-capped, dotted with white spots, it looked exactly like the power-up mushrooms hidden in the bricks of Super Mario.
It flailed its cap dramatically, as if straightening a hat, giving itself a pompous air.
Its short limbs made it look like an adorably clumsy pet.
But no one witnessing this surreal scene laughed.
The mushroom awkwardly hopped forward, stretching out its stubby hands.
“Welcome, everyone, to the world of Universal Gravity! Pikachu is honored to be your guide! Welcome to the trial level—”
Li Yinhang froze.
For her mere twenty-four years of life, this scene was beyond comprehension.
Instinctively, she scanned the reactions of the others, especially the silver-haired youth who had stopped the man from approaching the driver.
…He wasn’t looking at the most eye-catching mushroom.
His eyes swept across the bus at incredible speed, counting everyone on board.
Li Yinhang copied his movements, counting herself.
Excluding the mushroom, there were eleven entities.
Yet she didn’t dare call them “people.”
Before she could speculate further, a half-formed figure slowly rose from the first row.
…Another one?
The word that leapt to her mind was out of place.
The young man wore an outdated half-long black coat with a turned-up collar, a two-piece set. His build was hard to discern; only the curve of his neck suggested an elegant aura.
His skin was pale, as if lit by the sudden burst of light that had pierced the tunnel earlier.
His mid-length hair curled slightly at the shoulders, giving him a solemn, refined air.
Most importantly, he was closest to the mushroom, almost on the same horizontal line.
Yet he showed no fear, holding an apple steadily in his hands.
…And he appeared genuinely focused on studying the mushroom.
Li Yinhang observed him carefully again and noticed something off.
His gaze at the mushroom was unfocused, sleepy…
…He seemed simply not awake yet.
Before Li Yinhang could draw any further conclusions, a shattering sound behind her made her shrink.
The man in the second-to-last row had grabbed the red emergency hammer attached to the window and smashed it hard.
As the glass shattered, wind at eighty kilometers per hour gusted in, making Li Yinhang squint.
Before she could calculate her chances of survival by jumping, the man was already clutching the window frame.
In such a bizarre situation, fleeing was natural.
However, after half his head protruded, he stopped.
No one knew the inhuman torment he endured in that moment.
Everyone saw him slump back into his seat, face pale, hands clawing at his skin as if a swarm of flapping insects writhed beneath.
Boom!
After the muffled burst of matter, under everyone’s gaze, a layered, shining mushroom unfurled from his neck.
Snowy white liquid dripped down his shoulder, seemingly the mushroom’s secretions.
The mushroom’s sharp, girlish voice scraped across everyone’s scalp like live wire.
“Please listen carefully to the trial-level instructions—”
“First, once the dungeon is activated, do not attempt to forcibly exit—”