The five men clearly understood this fact, which was why they showed no shame after doing such a thing.
Ning Wei stared at Wang Chunxia, and once again confirmed with her, "This is your choice, right?"
Wang Chunxia nodded, silently mouthing two words.
Ning Wei and the others remembered these two words vividly from a previous encounter.
Wang Chunxia said, "Thank you."
She closed the car door heavily, and the bus quickly disappeared from their sight.
The mountain roads here twisted and turned. Without the bus's headlights, they were plunged into darkness.
Tang Tang looked up at the dim moon and angrily kicked a stone on the ground, "It's all this dim moonlight that makes these bad people so arrogant!"
Mei Nan sighed. She wasn't blaming the moonlight at all, but rather the passengers who stood by and watched!
Their hearts were like this moonlight, covered by a layer of grey gauze, their consciences obscured.
"Let's go. Since they kept mentioning the final stop, we have to go to that place," Song Zhi walked ahead, beckoning them to follow.
Fortunately, there was scattered moonlight and this group of teammates fighting side by side. Even though the place was somewhat frightening, their hearts remained steady.
So far, no forks in the road had been found, so they followed the road the bus had taken.
It had been a long time since they had walked for so long, and before long, Zhu Yulian started complaining about her sore legs.
"It's okay, let's just treat it like a spring outing," Mei Nan comforted everyone.
Tang Tang replied with a wry smile, "That would truly be a peculiar spring outing!"
Half an hour passed, then another hour.
It seemed Wang Chunxia had been right; walking on foot would take at least four to five hours.
From initial excitement to eventual weariness, all that could be heard was the scuffing sound of their shoes on the asphalt road.
"Still so far to go!" Yuan Yuan, who was usually quiet, couldn't help but sigh to the sky.
"Look! Is that fire in front of us?" Zhu Yulian suddenly ran excitedly to the front, pointing in a direction.
Everyone looked in the direction she indicated. Indeed, there was a fire in the distance, and it looked quite substantial.
"Is something burning?" Mei Nan estimated the distance and concluded that the fire was vast.
"Whatever it is, let's go take a look. It's part of passing the trial anyway," Song Zhi had already started treating everything that happened along the way as experience for clearing the trial.
With a goal in sight, everyone quickened their pace.
Although the fire looked close, the winding road took at least twenty minutes to traverse.
Ning Wei had a premonition of something ominous, and without realizing it, she found herself at the front of the group.
She was the first to reach the burning area. The fire wasn't on the road, but halfway up the mountain slope.
She walked to the edge of the road, lowered her head, and looked down. The raging fire reflected in her eyes, which she observed closely and very clearly.
The others quickly caught up. Tang Tang was the first to exclaim, and everyone else looked even more astonished.
The one burning on the mountainside was the very bus they had ridden earlier!
The inferno engulfed everything. It was unknown if anyone inside had a chance to survive.
"Should we go down and see?" Song Zhi was unsure if this was a good suggestion.
"The fire is too big, we can't go!" Mei Nan always managed to point them in the right direction with clarity and no emotion.
Throughout the long process of clearing the trial, everyone was constantly growing.
They crouched by the roadside, watching the bus burn fiercely, flames consuming everything within. Perhaps it was also burning away all the sin.
No one knew why the bus had ended up on the mountainside.
No one could explain why it had caught fire.
And the fate of those inside, whether they had escaped, remained unanswered.
Only after the bus had completely burned out did everyone feel their legs go numb from standing or crouching.
In the moonlight, they could see the dark interior.
"Let's go, we should leave," Tang Tang said softly to Ning Wei.
Ever since seeing the burning bus, Ning Wei had been silent. The others dared not disturb her.
While others were unaware, Ning Wei, due to her special identity, could clearly hear the pained screams from inside the bus as she watched.
Therefore, she knew that no one inside had survived.
Ning Wei lowered her gaze. Her teammates were already massaging their numb legs.
"Let's go," she said softly, knowing everyone was waiting for her to give the word.
No matter what happened along the way, it could not stop their forward progress.
In the real world, their families and friends were waiting for them.
This was their deepest desire, and the reason they persevered.
Just as everyone prepared to turn and leave, the now-extinguished bus suddenly exploded.
Before Ning Wei and the others could react, they were thrown to the ground by the immense shockwave.
They lay scattered, none of them conscious.
In the distance, a bus marked with "444" slowly approached and, in the blink of an eye, appeared where they lay unconscious.
The attendant and the driver jumped from the bus. They looked at the familiar bus below and silently averted their eyes.
"Have you made up your mind?" the driver asked the attendant in a low voice.
The attendant approached Ning Wei and lightly traced her features with her decaying finger.
One was beautiful and moving, the other terrifying. Yet, in this scene, they were unexpectedly harmonious.
"Let's carry them up," the attendant's hoarse voice echoed.
The driver sighed softly, then, working with the attendant, they lifted all seven of them onto the bus.
As they carried them, the attendant complained about how heavy they were. The driver silently exerted more effort, allowing the attendant to have an easier time.
Once everyone was back on the bus, it set off again. Where this journey would lead now depended on the decisions of the attendant and the driver.
A hint of relaxation on the attendant's face, she broke off a finger and playfully poked at this and that.
As she leaned closer to Ning Wei, intending to play a prank, the ring on Ning Wei's hand suddenly emitted a red light, directly blasting the attendant away.
The driver, as if accustomed to it, kept one hand on the steering wheel and pulled the attendant, who was stuck to the windshield, back into the bus.
He said to the attendant earnestly, "Chunxia, don't provoke Ning Wei anymore. She's not an ordinary person!"
"Don't call me by my name!" Hearing her name, the attendant reacted even more intensely than being blasted away.
The driver knew her sore spot and quickly apologized, admitting his mistake.
The attendant then lost the mood for playing and sat in a seat, looking intently ahead.