Step Back! Master is Here! - Chapter 47
Chapter 47: Arriving at the Terminal
“People like me?”
The conductor started laughing, but in an extremely vicious way. “Then do you know, little monk, that people like me can let you live if we want to, or make you die if we want?”
“I think you want us to live,” said Tang Luo with great confidence.
“You’re smart, little monk,” said the conductor.
Tang Luo pointed to Lin Zi-ang’s corpse. “When he died, your anger didn’t seem to be fake. Of course, that kind of anger seemed more like a wave of anger out of ‘loss’.”
“I’m a corpse transporter!” The bus suddenly shook, and the driver cursed out loud, “F*cking bald donkey!”
“I do have hair,” said Tang Luo. “How can I be counted as a bald donkey?”
The origin of the phrase bald donkey was from traveling monks who begged alms with their donkeys in earlier times.
Many monks had tarnished the reputation of monkhood by idling around, stealing, or cheating under the guise of alms-begging. Thus, the locals would shout every time they saw those evil monks with their donkeys, “Run, the bald one is coming with the donkey.”
After a while, bald donkey became a derogatory term for the monks.
Tang Luo had hair and no donkey, so he couldn’t be considered a bald monkey.
Even when he had been traveling to the West, he could be called bald dragon at most, strictly speaking[1].
“We do want you alive.” The conductor knelt in the seat in front of her, leaned over, and said, “But you don’t know that sometimes, living is more painful than dying. Besides, we want both living people and corpses. Don’t get over yourself and pick and choose…”
“Ha!”
The conductor didn’t even finish speaking when a firm and loud yell interrupted her words.
Auntie Shufen’s broom, which she had been holding in her hand the whole time, successfully dodged the obstacles in the way and, with a perfect curvature through the air, fell on the conductor’s face.
It was the kind of broom for sweeping floors at home. It was not plastic, but an entire piece of wood.
If one plucked the horsehair away, it would feel pretty similar to a golf club.
The conductor let out a shrill scream as she fell backward down in the aisle.
She covered her face with her right hand, but blood continued to flow out between her fingers—the injury was bad!
After one successful move, Auntie Shufen yelled again, “Hey!”
The blood-stained broom swept across, slamming toward the three corpses standing in a row like she was waving a baseball bat.
Puff! Puff! Puff!
Three sounds, like one smashing a watermelon, echoed one after another.
Auntie Shufen’s sweep actually broke the corpses’ heads!
The sharp braking sound rang, and the bus stopped suddenly.
The driver stood up and looked behind, astonished.
‘What’s going on? Someone actually dares to resist? Do they not know what death and fear are?’
“Ah!! Go and die!!”
Before the driver could manipulate the corpses to do something, the conductor was already shouting in a shrill voice.
The originally seated young man and old woman rose abruptly and rushed to Auntie Shufen in a completely abnormal athletic manner.
In a hurry, Auntie Shufen could only wave the broom in her hand wildly.
The top of the broom first hit the young man. His body shriveled at the moment of touching the broom.
He turned from a complete person to skin! A vivid-looking human skin!
Yet this human skin did not lose its drive because of its shriveling. It directly wrapped the broom, making it extremely heavy.
Auntie Shufen couldn’t hold it and let it fall.
Similarly, the old woman’s body shriveled and turned into skin, heading for Auntie Shufen to wrap her.
Auntie Shufen, who was half-standing, had no space to dodge.
The human skin’s speed was fast, so she could only watch that creepy face occupy the entirety of her sight.
A sticky, cold feeling covered her entire face. It was like a snake wrapped around her face.
“AHHHHH!”
It was a scream more intense than the earlier shrilling.
The human skin covering Aunt Shufen’s face suddenly died, slipping down Aunt Shufen’s body.
Ring…
The crisp bell sounded during the scream.
The driver, who would logically have rushed to help, had squatted and pressed his hand with the ball against the conductor’s face.
There was a twisted smile on his face.
As the conductor kept struggling, the crisp bell ring echoed.
Black aura rose from her head and the driver’s hands, along with a suffocating, stinky odor.
Once they smelled it, K and the other two bowed down sideways and started vomiting.
After a moment, the bell ring stopped.
The driver let go of his hand, and the conductor slowly erected her upper body, then her lower body. She stared straight ahead.
Her cheeks were sunken, and there were no pupils in her eyes, but only the white.
“She was gonna die anyway,” said the driver with a smile. “May as well reuse the waste.”
He shook the bell on his wrist, and the three headless corpses, as well as the conductor’s corpse, moved into a line. They opened their arms and legs to divide the bus into two separate spaces.
“Stop making trouble for me, or I don’t mind bringing a few more corpses back.” The driver’s voice came from the other side.
He had already returned to his seat and started the bus. He was dutiful. Even if people died in and out of the bus, he had to drive to the final station.
Tang Luo was very appreciative of such free labor.
As for the others, they almost vomited out their bile.
The corpse smell did not disperse. The trio’s faces were scarily white, and they continued to vomit.
They simply had no extra energy to continue making trouble. Thus, accompanied by the sound of vomiting, the bus moved on.
As they vomited their guts out, Auntie Shufen and Mico suddenly felt less uncomfortable. The dizziness and weakness from vomiting slowly disappeared, and strength returned to their bodies again.
“Okay now?”
The two straightened their bodies and saw that K was still bowing down in extreme agony.
On the other side was the monk who had distanced himself from them.
Upon sensing their gazes, he turned his head to smile a little.
“Blessing?” Auntie Shufen almost yelled out loud.
Fortunately, she held himself back in time.
‘He’s not a little monk, but a great master!’
Tang Luo pointed to the front, shook his head, instructing the two not to make noise.
The two decided to trust the master who had blessed them and quieted down.
Thus, K was the only one left vomiting. He continued retching for a while until he couldn’t hold on an more and almost passed out.
The vomiting sound’s disappearance was probably within the driver’s anticipation. He continued to drive, and the bus entered the range of Fengmen Village from the deserted mountain road.
Sparse houses on the two sides of the road could be seen.
The style was a little ancient, looking like a monster with bare fangs and brandish claws in the night.
Auntie Shufen and Mico shuddered at the sight.
Not long after entering the village, the bus finally stopped after several turns.
The engine was turned off, and the vibration disappeared.
The driver’s voice sounded from the front of the car. “The terminal has arrived… I mean, the terminal of the life you once lived. Oh, I don’t think you can hear anymore.”
“I didn’t think you were literate,” replied Tang Luo.
“Eh?”
The driver realized something was wrong. The corpse poison he had released was enough to leave these people half-paralyzed. Even if they didn’t pass out, they couldn’t possibly answer him with such a strong and calm voice.
The driver shook the bell in his hand and manipulated the corpses blocking his sight, making them move away. He wanted to see what was happening.
At the same time, a hint of oily green appeared in his eyes, allowing him to see in the dark.
‘It seems that the strangely dressed man with white clothes and white hair is talking?’
Bang!
A sharp gunshot echoed.
Before the driver saw what was happening, he blacked out, and his headless body collapsed, smashing on the bus floor.
The stupid corpse transporter didn’t know about the power of firearms!
The corpses standing on the back of the chairs lost control and collapsed simultaneously.
The sounds actually made the nearly unconscious K open his eyes again.
In the darkness, he saw a blurry man in white. He seemed to be holding… A gun?
K heard the aunty called Li Shufen ask, “Master, why do monks use guns?”
“Who said that monks can’t use guns? You’re too fixated on the externalities, Benefactor.”
Tang Luo took it for granted.
It was said that even if one consumed wine and meat[2], Buddha remained in one’s heart.
At a level like his, one would not stick to formalities and external objects. Whatever was convenient would be used.
The driver did have some special means as a corpse transporter. Nevertheless, he was still human, and humans died when shot in the head.
Tang Luo stood up and said, “Let’s go. This is the terminal.”
The driver had brought all of them to the terminal, assisting in their mission. Also, he provided Tang Luo with some power of virtuous merits.
If they could encounter such a helpful person on every mission, it would be perfect.
He recalled Jack the Ripper from the last time. He only knew how to rot in the corners like a stinky fish or a smelly shrimp.
‘I, Tripitaka, am the most annoyed with this kind of shady people.’
They walked out of the bus. The rain that had been falling since the beginning of their mission had already stopped. They could see a few stars and a bright crescent moon high up in the night sky.
Tang Luo looked around.
The large open space under their feet was not concrete ground, but a stone-ground made with a lot of gravel.
The sound of footsteps on it was clearly audible.
There was no wind, nor any sound of frogs or insects.
In the open space, in addition to the bus from which Tang Luo came down, there were two other buses that looked the same.
The front of the car faced an exaggerated-looking door. There were no hollowed-out spaces in the middle of it. Instead, it was completely solid.
It felt like the gate of some castle.
Beside the main gate, there was a small room similar to a gatehouse or guard room. There was no light inside, and the door was tightly closed.
There was a concrete wall of more than two meters high around it, and some broken pieces of glass could be vaguely seen on it.
Behind the bus, there was an empty space without any building.
This was the terminal, Fengmen Village. Its perimeter was rectangular, the size of a football field.
As a small village terminal in the mountain with only three buses, this size was too large.
The iron gate was naturally open, through which one could see the fields on the opposite side of the road.
Even further away, there were only mountains.
On one side, one could see a three-story building. On the other side were only mountains.
[1] the character Tripitaka rode a dragon that turned into the form of a horse in the novel Journey to the West
[2] consuming of wine and meat are forbidden in common rules for Buddhist monks
