Just as the driver’s massive hand was about to strike, Qing Li remained composed. In her hand appeared a pair of sharp gardening shears, their blades gleaming and reflecting the driver’s elongated neck and his grotesquely twisted face.
“Snip—”
“Snip—”
The sound of the shears opening and closing echoed as Qing Li played with them nonchalantly. The sharp metallic scrape was no less chilling than a ghost’s wail.
The driver’s pupils widened in alarm. At the last possible moment, his neck twisted back around in a full 180-degree turn to its original position.
So close.
Another second, and his head would’ve been severed by the blades.
This absurd scene had the livestream audience in stitches.
【Driver: That was close! My head almost stopped being my head.】
【Star of today’s show: The shears.】
【Is Qing Li carrying Doraemon’s pocket? How else is she pulling out so much stuff?】
【Driver, my guy, it’s obvious you’re the one slated to die today.】
The driver, visibly humiliated, glared at Qing Li with even more fury, his eyes blazing with resentment that could pierce through her.
“Get back to your seat. This is your last warning,” the driver hissed, his voice icily cold.
Qing Li smiled arrogantly, her tone unhurried. “But I really like the driver’s seat. How about… we switch places?”
The driver’s dry, withered face twitched. Anyone watching might think he was furious, but Qing Li squinted and noticed an unusual burst of sinister energy.
Beneath the driver’s skin, something like bulging veins began to swell. His eyes widened, nearly popping out of their sockets. The swollen veins soon formed tumor-like lumps, densely covering his face.
Viewers with trypophobia screamed in terror as they stared at their screens.
Disgusting! Absolutely disgusting!
“If you can’t beat your enemy, make them nauseous instead. Driver, that’s an unethical strategy!” Qing Li quipped cheekily.
Her words had barely left her mouth when the driver’s elongated neck also began to bulge with tumors, which seemed to crawl toward his head as if alive.
“Kill you—”
“Kill you—”
The shrill, bloodcurdling voice rang out, each repetition more piercing than the last, grating on everyone’s eardrums.
Qing Li’s bright eyes turned serious. She subtly formed a hand seal, faint sparks of lightning flickering at her fingertips.
The bus jolted more violently, and the ghosts seated around began staring hungrily at Qing Li, their eyes brimming with greed. They were waiting for the chance to share in a feast of fresh flesh.
Just then, Chu Ci lazily raised his slender hand and tapped the bus window with his fingers. The once-hungry ghosts immediately retracted their gazes, now behaving like scolded children.
Time seemed to freeze as the scene unfolded.
The driver, now unrecognizable as human, had a head swollen to the size of a yoga ball. Beneath the nearly transparent, overstretched skin, thin tendrils squirmed and wriggled faintly.
With his jaw grotesquely split open, he no longer held back and lunged toward Qing Li with ferocious intent.
“Boom—”
Qing Li arched her waist backward, sliding her body to dodge his attack. Her hands gripped the large gardening shears, now crackling with purple lightning that flickered and sparked menacingly.
Without hesitation, she raised the shears and aimed at the driver’s elongated neck.
“Snip—”
The blades clamped down on his cervical vertebrae, producing a chilling cracking sound as they bit into the bone.
A flash of cold resolve glinted in Qing Li’s eyes as she pressed harder.
“Snip—”
The second cut severed the driver’s neck completely. Tiny arcs of electricity surged along the wound, searing it black on the outside and charring it to ash within.
“Aaaah—”
The driver let out a guttural, anguished roar. His massive head rolled uncontrollably down the aisle, leaving behind a trail of foul-smelling blood.
“Giao～”
Sitting by the aisle, Wang Ge, a yellow-haired young man, was splattered in a spray of filthy blood. He let out a strange, pained cry, only for the blood to splatter into his mouth.
“I… ugh…”
He doubled over, retching so hard that tears streamed from his eyes. He had hoped to remain uninvolved, but his bad luck betrayed him.
Why is everything going wrong for me today?
Likewise, Bai Yueyue and Li Tao, who were also covered in blood, looked utterly disheveled. However, they dared not move a muscle in the horrifying scene before them, fearful that a single misstep would result in their own demise at the jaws of the monster.
At the same time, a grim realization dawned upon them—this eccentric, self-proclaimed mystic Qing Li might actually have some real skills!
“Rumble… rumble…”
With its headless driver slumped over in the seat, the bus, now without a pilot, veered wildly out of control, swaying violently from side to side.
Qing Li, thrown off balance by the sudden lurching, stumbled with the bus’s inertia. The driver’s massive head, seizing the opportunity, shot into the air and lunged at her, jaws wide open.
Qing Li’s eyes sharpened as she noticed something horrifying—the driver’s gaping maw was no ordinary mouth. Within his throat, countless tiny tendrils extended outward, writhing madly as they reached toward her, attempting to burrow into her own mouth.
【What the hell was that?】
【I couldn’t see clearly—it looked like insect tentacles.】
【Ugh, so gross! Is the driver’s head a freaking bug nest?!】
【This driver has no decency. Even if Qing Li destroys him, those bugs in his head might still take her down.】
【Forget just her, the whole bus is doomed at this rate!】
While the viewers’ speculations ran wild, Qing Li, present on the scene, had a much clearer view of the horrifying truth.
Those bugs were far more than just disgusting—they were parasitic.
If handled improperly, they could infest their host.
—
System Alert: Ding! Popularity Value 100,000 reached. Unlocking Hint 2.
Hint 2: Whatever you do, don’t leave the bus.
—
System Alert: Ding! Popularity Value 200,000 reached. Unlocking Hint 3.
Hint 3: There are items in the shop that can greatly increase the player’s survival chances. Time to shop impulsively!
—
At the critical moment, the system’s sluggish reminders suddenly chimed in.
Qing Li’s lips twitched in annoyance. This ridiculous system waited until her popularity value hit 100,000 before giving her a hint—blatantly sabotaging her. And Hint 3? What was that nonsense? It might as well have “shameless profiteer” written all over it.
Still, now wasn’t the time to argue with the system. The immediate priority was dealing with that monstrous head.
Qing Li moved swiftly, appearing at the driver’s seat in a flash. The large shears in her hands transformed into a massive hammer, which she swung directly at the front windshield, shouting, “Eighty!”
“Crash—”
The windshield shattered instantly into countless shards. An icy, bone-chilling wind rushed in, raising goosebumps all around.
“Goodbye and good riddance!”
At that moment, the driver’s enormous head was hovering over the bus roof, ready to lunge and bite through Qing Li’s neck in one go. However, just as it descended, Qing Li delivered a powerful kick.
The yoga-ball-sized head was sent flying out of the shattered window.
“I’ll be backkkkk~~~”
The driver’s enraged roar grew fainter and fainter as it disappeared into the distance.
—
“Y-you killed the driver!”
Li Tao, who had been frozen in shock the entire time, finally snapped out of it. He pointed at Qing Li with trembling hands, his voice trembling with both fear and a hint of reproach. “If you kill the driver, how are we supposed to reach the final stop?”
His words instantly awakened the other two players.
Bai Yueyue, her face pale as a sheet, furrowed her brows tightly. She sighed in frustration. “Our task is to reach the final stop. Now that the driver’s gone, doesn’t that mean we’ve failed?”
Though her tone carried no explicit accusation, her expression betrayed her dissatisfaction.
Deep down, she couldn’t help but think: If it weren’t for this mystic’s defiance of the driver and insistence on switching seats, none of this mess would have happened!