The Beginning

Chapter 30

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get a good deal on this. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get the best out of you.

The following is the Li Shiqing almost-blackened version, which can be left out if you have read the previous chapter and like the good heroine, as a sort of offshoot. Both chapters end the same way, with both getting off the bus.

"Holy shit, that was close!"

Even Boy, who has always been a gentleman, could not help but burst into tears when he woke up again.

"So that bell is a timing device? Or some kind of detonation method?"

It's a terrible feeling to be on the brink of failure, and one that even the ever-peaceful Boy can't accept.

Li Shiqing's situation is no better.

Like Boy before, this time the pressure cooker exploded while she was holding it, and when it exploded, she was left with no bones, and when she came to her senses, she couldn't feel her hands at all.

But even more unacceptable than the physical suffering was the sudden "rebellion" of the driver's uncle at the end.

Li Shiqing never doubted the driver, not even once.

She is not from the city, she came to the city alone, and in order to save some pocket money, like most university students, she usually takes the bus when she goes out.

Her family had a car, and before she went to university, her parents used to drive her to places further away, while she walked or cycled to places not far away.

Learning to take the bus and reading the bus routes was something that came after I arrived in the city.

Since the school is on this line, she rides this 45 route the most and the driver she has met the most on this line is this driver uncle.

When she first learned how to ride the bus, she often had problems, sometimes she overstayed, sometimes she sat in the wrong direction, sometimes she gave up her seat for an elderly person but a young person took it ......

Many times, it was only with the patient help of this kind driver that she managed to reach her destination.

It was the driver's uncle who made her love this humane city and enjoy riding the city's buses.

Unlike the deadly underground and the monotonous and boring taxis, taking the bus is so much more fun.

She likes the low fares, the view of the city from the windows of the car, and the way she can measure every inch of the city.

She loves listening to the locals talking loudly in dialect about the city in the carriage, the brief human bonding each time she gets on and off the train, and the simple but life-affirming few minutes spent with many different people in the car.

Whenever she got on the bus, as long as there were not too many people in the carriage, she liked to sit behind the driver's uncle and make small talk with him from time to time, sometimes without even talking, just sitting in the seat behind him was very reassuring.

Just smile and beg the uncle when you get on the bus, and you won't have to worry about overshooting the station at all.

Although Li Shiqing has never spoken to the driver, she is grateful to him from the bottom of her heart and has always wanted to say "thank you" to him.

To thank him for his kind guidance and selfless help when he was new to the city and helpless.

I also thank him for reminding me every time before I arrived at the station and defending me when I had a scuffle with someone.

When the "bus time loop" incident started, she tried to persuade the driver to stop, to turn around, and even to create various incidents, but each time he insisted on taking the customer to the stop and drove away.

At that time, she was still annoyed by his excessive "dedication" in her mind.

It's not that her companion didn't question the driver's uncle.

As soon as it happened, he sidetracked the driver and asked him if he was mentally unwell and that was why he had the accident.

-- that time, it was she who helped the uncle explain and dispel his doubts.

He questioned the possibility that the driver might have left a bus full of passengers to escape or simply not believed them.

--It was she who rejected his suspicions with absolute certainty, even exclaiming "he's not like that".

It was because of her blind trust in her uncle and her overconfidence in her own judgment that she insisted on choosing the "least difficult" way to get through the game ......

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It turned out to be a lost cause.

The driver really wasn't someone who would leave a car full of people to run away, and what he wanted ...... was for no one to get off.

"Why is this ......" Li Shiqing fell into a deep disbelief and disbelief, muttering to herself, "...... Driver Uncle Why is it like this?!"

No matter how she thought about it, she couldn't relate the vicious "thugs" to the kind and friendly driver.

"Whatever the reason, it is now certain that the driver and the crazy older woman are in cahoots. It is possible that the 'Wang Xingde' that the older woman was hysterically shouting earlier was the driver's name ......"

Boy was also in a bad mood when a sudden change of heart occurred at the last minute, but luckily he didn't know the driver in the first place and didn't take too much of a hit.

"What can we do about this? There's only two of us and we have to subdue two more?"

"Then try again!"

Once the initial shock and disbelief had passed, such a failure to achieve anything was the only thing that fuelled Li Shiqing's motivation.

The feeling of being "betrayed" by someone you trust is even more infuriating than having your neck wiped by a vicious older woman.

"If the driver has a problem, we'll restrain him too! If the driver won't open the door for us, we'll find a way to open it ourselves! If one person or two can't help, then three or four or five!"

Li Shiqing's eyes look like they are on fire.

"I just don't believe it, I know who the real culprit is, where the bomb is and how it went off, and we still can't find a solution!"

Li Shiqing is really intimidating, with a "don't mess with me" vibe that makes even Boy's heart sink.

But now that the arrow was on the string, Boy couldn't think of a better way to control both the driver and the lady, so he went along with Li Shiqing's idea and tried again.

As last time, they each took a note to persuade someone to help, because this time there was a "driver" to subdue, and it was no longer enough to rely on the masked man and the uncle with the bag. They had to use another younger, middle-aged man on the bus, "Uncle Key", as a candidate, hoping to get his help.

The "key man", when he saw what was written on the note, did not agree to help them and ran off the bus at the next stop on East River Road.

"...... What about this?"

Boy, who had already managed to convince Uncle with a bag and the man with the mask, was dumbfounded, "Next time round, we won't have more 'company', will we?"

"This kind of goon can be called a companion?"

After repeated failures, Li Shiqing was already in a state of anger and resignation, and was outright amused at Boy's words, "Someone like Uncle Key is at best a 'dragger', right?"

At this point, she and Boy are good enough not to be mad, and to be able to save people is to be considered a "saint".

Li Shiqing watched indifferently as Uncle Key scurried out of the car in three or two steps, his eyes icy cold.

He had made his own death to get off, and even if he too had entered the time loop, they could not be blamed.

--They didn't drag him into this "hell" of life and death, it was his choice.

Unable to find any other reliable help, the time went on, and the two had to grit their teeth and managed to subdue the older woman according to the previous method.

But at the very moment Boy broke the window with his safety hammer, the older woman, who had been pinned to the ground, screamed and Li Shiqing, who had been prepared to lunge at the older man, was not quick enough to outpace the driver.

The driver, who was driving, immediately kicked the accelerator and crashed straight off the bridge across the river.

The pressure cooker exploded violently the moment the bus hit the water.

.

Waking up again, Li Shiqing took a deep breath and the first thing she did was to check on the keyed-up uncle who had gotten out of his car.

In the new time loop, An An sits quietly in his car, not at all alarmed by the last time loop, and not at all aware that there is a bomb in the car.

"Uncle got off last time too, why didn't he enter the time loop?"

When the intense headache passed, Boy also began to look at the older man and asked in wonder, "Isn't getting out of the car the reason for going into a time loop?"

"Don't think about it, there's no time, now is not the time to think about it!"

Li Shiqing silently withdrew her gaze, unable to say whether she was relieved or a little disappointed.

"Since we don't have to worry about someone going into a time loop, let's pull a few more people together to help try!"

This time, they showed that note to a bus full of passengers, no matter how many could help, as long as there was one more helper, one more person was one more strength.

This time, however, there were more passengers getting off at the "East River Road stop".

The old men and women who were trembling when they got on the bus, but ran as fast as they could when they got off the bus. When Uncle Key got off the bus, he even pushed an old man with grey hair down, without any of the justice that he had shown when he "beat up" Boy.

In the blink of an eye, there were only a few passengers left in the full bus.

Li Shiqing's face was horribly dark.

One passenger, for whatever reason, walked away and shouted into the car as he was getting out.

"Run, you guys! There's a madman with a knife in the car!"

And so this time cycle was the shortest one they had ever experienced.

Almost as soon as he finished shouting, the bomb in the car exploded.

.

Waking up again from the time loop, neither of them could even muster the energy to "work".

"What do you think we're fighting so hard for?"

Thinking of the reason for the last time the time loop inexplicably "died", Boy said wearily, "not to mention the effort, died over and over again, a car of passengers, except for an uncle who paid to help, a hesitant mask man, but no one dared to risk helping, not even if you do not help, but also to drag the leg. You have to drag your feet ......"

"Then we don't want their help."

Li Shiqing grimaced and said through clenched teeth, "We don't want those old men and women to help, we'll call the police."

This time the time loop, they reported it to the police at the beginning.

But time was too short, even if the police came as soon as they were called, they would not be able to get on the bus from the last stop disguised as ordinary people, and could only block the bridge halfway and evacuate passing traffic to avoid further casualties.

Li Shiqing and Boy had no idea that the end result of calling the police would be this bus driving alone on an empty road ......

The older woman in the car gave a strange laugh and peeled back the restriction valve when she saw that the road block to the bridge was stopped with a barricade.

.

"It's not a good idea to keep dying like this ......"

After dying several times, Boy came to his senses and stopped Li Shiqing from "mechanically archiving and reading" the file.

"There's no way we can stop both the uncle and the aunt, so we might as well try to 'take them all on'."

"All of them?"

After so many fruitless attempts, everything seemed to be back to square one, and Li Shiqing was so tired that even when Boy came up with a new plan, he couldn't muster up the energy.

"Didn't you say you knew Uncle Driver well? Why don't you go and probe Uncle Driver and see if there's a way to 'turn him around'."

Boy This is a "stop-gap" measure that can only be used as a last resort.

He pushed up his glasses.

"This uncle has been running this line for so long, there's always some reason to assist an older woman in something like this, right? Maybe it's coercion, maybe he's got a grip, or emotional entanglement or something, figure out the source and get the problem sorted out, maybe we can pull the driver in."

To be honest, Li Shiqing has a grudge against her uncle's "betrayal".

But in the back of her mind, there was also a vague expectation that Uncle would choose to do this because he had "something to say" and was not just a bad person.

Li Shiqing still remembers the glance of the uncle.

Someone with that kind of guilt and pain in his eyes shouldn't be a cold killing machine.

After a moment's hesitation, Li Shiqing looked ahead at the timing uncle who was driving and gritted his teeth.

"Yes!"

Pretending to stretch in the car, she paced unobtrusively next to the driver and began her own tryst.

"Uncle, didn't you sleep well last night?"

Li Shiqing said, pretending to be joking, "I see you seem to be in a very low spirits today."

"Huh?"

The driver gave her a look and, perversely, did not answer.

Li Shiqing was not discouraged and continued to pry, "Is it very tiring for you to drive like this every day? How do you take care of lunch? Do you want to go home for lunch?"

"Help yourself to some random food."

The driver said casually.

"Huh? No one delivers food? I thought you all had food delivered. Won't your wife and children help serve the food?"

Li Shiqing wanted to start with the situation of his family.

After all, the most common scenario if you are coerced is that your family has been kidnapped.

Once again, however, the small talk stuck, and the driver chose to be silent as soon as he heard Li Shiqing's words, as if he had clearly wandered off.

"Uncle Driver ......"

Li Shiqing wanted to ask more, but out of the corner of her eye she saw a dump truck coming in front of her and her face changed.

"Uncle driver, uncle, watch out for the car in front of you!"

Bang!

The moment the bus hit the dump truck, a searing wave of air swept over everyone.

.

"He doesn't take my word for it."

Waking up again, Li Shiqing looks out of the car window and feels the urge to simply crash into it.

"Every time the key issue came up, he was silent."

She really didn't want to go on.

So be it, do what you have to do, break it, there's nothing worth saving in this busload of passengers anyway.

From naivety at the beginning, to guilt and responsibility towards Boy, to the excitement of refining the plan step by step, and finally to the attempt not to turn back until the wall is broken, Li Shiqing feels that she has burned up all the enthusiasm, perseverance and passion she could have in her life.

But even at this point, the possibility of a breakthrough is still not found.

How should I control a driver who is driving?

His two feet were on the accelerator and the brakes, his hands were on the steering wheel, the doors were hydraulically pneumatic and they couldn't open them without him opening them with all their might.

The emergency door opener was "betrayed" by the driver when it exploded, as Mask Boy tried, and it was simply broken.

The lives of a busload of people were already in the hands of the driver, not to mention a terrifying older woman with a bomb and a tiger in her sights.

Boy was also so tired that his whole head seemed to explode, and all his plans and schemes became a muddle, and he couldn't even think calmly.

The two physically and mentally exhausted young men collapsed in their seats like two salted fish that had been thrown in the car.

After a while, the familiar "East River Road Station" announces the station again.

"Whatever, get off first!"

Boy wiped his face and leapt to his feet.

At Li Shiqing's disgusted gaze, Boy pulls his companion up by his side.

"Since we can't break the game in the car, let's get out and figure it out!"

He led Li Shiqing to the back door, clutching her wrist tightly and not letting go.

"Forget about it for now, get off and loosen up!"