Trying to take the long blade from the male corpse’s hands directly would most likely end in death.

The bus would suppress vengeful ghosts to the greatest extent, but that didn’t mean the ghosts’ killing patterns were nullified. Provoking a ghost would still get you killed.

Otherwise, with people and ghosts coming and going on the bus, the blade wouldn’t have remained for this long.

The "Gao Tian" in the flask had also performed a series of strange ritualistic actions on the male corpse before safely taking the blade from its hands. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

These rituals must have had the effect of suppressing the ghost, allowing "Gao Tian" to take the blade and retreat unscathed.

The real Gao Tian now took out the Ghost Transformation Spear tip from under his overcoat, plunged it straight into the back of the male corpse’s head, and forced the tip several centimeters into its skull.

As he did this, Gao Tian felt as if his heart would stop. He wasn’t sure if the flask’s prophecy was absolutely correct, or if it was just some kind of trick—an Illusion Technique from a Supernatural Artifact. If this failed to seal the male corpse and instead enraged it, he would lose another life today.

Gao Tian’s sudden, terrifying actions in his seat once again left Su Jiu and Ling Feifei, in the rows before and behind him, utterly stunned. Zhou Yan even shrieked:

"Hey! You bastard, have you completely lost your mind?

"If you want to die, go find somewhere else to do it! Don’t drag the rest of us from the apartment down with you!"

Gao Tian ignored him. After the spear tip pierced its flesh, the male corpse in the seat ahead remained perfectly still, maintaining its dead state with no sign of turning around to kill him.

It seemed the flask’s prophecy was, for the moment, proving to be correct.

He had replayed the other "Gao Tian’s" actions in his mind a thousand times. Seeing this, his doubts vanished. As quickly as he could, he stabbed the male corpse in its left shoulder, right shoulder, and back. Only after confirming that there were now four new holes in the body did he promptly withdraw. After putting the spear tip away, he pressed his palms together and bowed piously in a show of repentance.

’Are these actions really going to work?’

Su Jiu clamped a hand tightly over her mouth, cold sweat beading on her forehead as she stared at Gao Tian. She didn’t understand why he was doing all this, or what he would do next.

Gao Tian ignored the confused stares of the other three. Now, the sealing ritual for the male corpse was complete. He should be able to safely take the rusty long blade from its hands without any backlash from the ghost.

Although Gao Tian himself didn’t understand the principles behind it.

He stood up, reached right over the male corpse’s shoulder, placed a hand on the blade’s hilt, and pulled hard, attempting to wrench the rusty weapon from the corpse’s grasp.

The male corpse’s strength had been immense to begin with. On top of that, its body had held this posture for so long that parts of its palm had fused with the long blade, making it extremely difficult to pull free.

Gao Tian didn’t dare use too much force, for fear of touching other parts of the male corpse. He tried several times from an awkward position, a cold sweat starting to bead on his brow. At last, the unmoving blade showed a hint of give. Gao Tian then put his entire body weight into the pull and, tearing away a layer of the corpse’s skin along with it, finally yanked the blade out of its hand.

After losing the rusty blade, the male corpse in front remained completely still, as if the four holes he had made successfully kept it suppressed.

"You lunatic. You actually pulled it off,"

Zhou Yan muttered from behind as he watched the scene unfold.

As a resident who had completed two green-text missions and had a decent amount of common knowledge, he of course knew the long blade in the male corpse’s hand was most likely a Supernatural Artifact. But what sane person would go after it? The male corpse was clearly a trap. Who would dare to touch it?

He never thought that Gao Tian’s seemingly suicidal actions would actually pay off. He had gotten the long blade without triggering the male corpse’s killing pattern. It was enough to make anyone burn with envy.

Ling Feifei, beside him, said comfortingly,

"Don’t be so anxious, darling.

"More ghost passengers are bound to get on the bus soon. Since these ghosts aren’t fighting back, let’s see if we can snatch a Supernatural Artifact from one of them.

"We’ll get an even better one for ourselves."

Zhou Yan watched Gao Tian with jealousy and nodded.

"Mm, okay. We’ll do that."

He truly looked down on Gao Tian, a newcomer to the apartment. ’If that guy can do it, why can’t I?’

Meanwhile, having acquired the rusty long blade, Gao Tian held it in his hands and carefully rubbed its surface.

After he had claimed the Human Skin Gloves from the chat group, a package had really appeared outside the apartment. Inside was a pair of thin, membrane-like gloves that, at a glance, didn’t look like they were made of human skin.

After Gao Tian tentatively put them on, the gloves completely merged into his skin and disappeared. At the same time, a stream of information entered his mind. The instructions for the Human Skin Gloves were simple: the user just had to place their hands on a Supernatural Artifact they wished to appraise, and after 15 seconds, all known information about it would be automatically transmitted into their brain.

Now that he had the long blade, Gao Tian immediately activated the Human Skin Gloves, placing both hands on the blade’s surface.

A moment later, a stream of information did indeed light up in Gao Tian’s mind:

[Terror Blade]

Effect: Sacrifice one human life to dismember one ghost.

Origin: Unknown

Remarks: None

...

So this was the effect of the Terror Blade.

Simple. Horrifying.

To activate it, one had to kill a living person.

For such a steep price, the power it granted was astonishing. Even though ghosts were immortal and indestructible, a single swing from the Terror Blade could dice a ghost into mincemeat.

The Terror Blade’s effective range was approximately ten meters.

Furthermore, the living person chosen as the sacrifice did not need to give their consent.

Gao Tian looked at the long blade in his hand. Even though he had been mentally prepared, he was still shocked.

This blade... everything about it was just wicked. To think it used a living person as its price.

But its power was also undeniable.

At the very least, it was certainly better than the purely negative effects of something like the Ghost Transformation Spear. Gao Tian carefully put away the long blade. He now had a primary weapon to fight ghosts with. He no longer had to run around various supernatural "dungeons" carrying the utterly abstract Ghost Transformation Spear.

Having dealt with the male corpse, Gao Tian began to observe the situation inside the bus car.

The next stop was still about three minutes away.

In the driver’s seat sat a dark silhouette. The movement of its arms clearly showed it was turning the steering wheel. It looked no different from a normal driver.

Except that its hands were made of wood.

The one driving the bus was a humanoid puppet. Controlled by invisible strings, its arms and fingers were extremely nimble, capable of performing all the actions of a human driver.

Although the only restriction on the bus was that passengers couldn’t kill one another, no one was suicidal enough to test the waters by attacking the driver.

Just then, another thought suddenly occurred to Gao Tian.

’Will my actions just now be treated as a prophecy from the flask and carefully observed by the next Gao Tian, in the next spacetime?’

In other words, as he was placating the male corpse with that strange ritual and successfully taking the blade, out in the unseen world beyond the bus, another pair of giant eyes had been watching his every move. Just like when he had been outside the flask, watching the bus within?

If that was the case, it meant Gao Tian was trapped in a self-perpetuating temporal vortex. Each generation of Gao Tian was doing the exact same things, heading toward the exact same end.

Gao Tian instinctively wanted to raise his head and look outside the bus.

He wanted to see if those giant eyes from outside the flask were still watching him, as insignificant as an ant inside this bus car.

But in the instant he was about to look up, Gao Tian stopped himself. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, refusing to do what the "Gao Tian" from the previous spacetime had done.

’I have to change something, no matter how small, in every time loop.’

He was not a puppet of fate, an actor for spacetime.

At least, in this cycle of the loop, the act of looking up had been forcibly suppressed—and changed—by Gao Tian.

With a SCREECH, the bus began to slow as it approached the next stop.

At some unknown point, the bus had carried them into a boundless wilderness. Although its four wheels were still on a paved road, in the fields beyond it, Gao Tian saw countless human-shaped silhouettes impaled on stakes. They swayed left and right as the night wind blew, making a RUSTLE RUSTLE RUSTLE sound.

They were scarecrows.

It seemed they had arrived at a paddy field.

It was just that the number of these scarecrows in the fields was immense; a casual glance revealed hundreds, if not thousands.

Would a normal farm put thousands of scarecrows in its fields?

This definitely wasn’t a normal place. Less than ten minutes after boarding, the bus had driven out of the city center. That wasn’t nearly enough time; they had been quietly transported by the bus into the Inner World.

"Scarecrow Hollow. Now arriving.

"Passengers wishing to disembark, please collect your personal belongings and exit through the rear door."

The mechanical female voice sputtered intermittently from a malfunctioning, old-fashioned speaker.

Gao Tian tightened his grip on the Terror Blade. He saw the front door of the bus CREAK open and a long shadow fall across the floor. A new passenger was getting on.

On the screen, the passenger count, written in red, jumped to 6.

The passenger boarding at Scarecrow Hollow was a slow-moving old woman. She was hunched over, leaning on a cane, and walking seemed to be a great effort for her.

From the outside, she didn’t look much different from a normal old woman.

...if it weren’t for the black cross stuck upside-down in her head.

The cross was over half a meter tall and embedded deep in the old woman’s head, certainly having pierced all the way through her skull. As soon as she entered the vehicle, the other end of the cross scraped against the ceiling of the Supernatural Bus, making a metallic CLANG.

The handful of passengers, including Gao Tian, held their breath as they watched the old woman slowly make her way down the aisle. Although the bus was supposed to suppress all the ghosts on board, who knew if a ghost would actually obey the rules? They were immortal and indestructible; what would happen to them if they did kill someone?

The old woman with the inverted cross in her head fixed her murky gaze in Gao Tian’s direction and walked straight toward him.

CLICK.

On the red-lettered screen at the front of the bus, the passenger count, which had just jumped to 6, jumped again to 7.

The old woman hadn’t even sat down yet, and another new passenger was already getting on.