Chapter 25: The Nineteenth Cycle of Time

When I was awake again, I was once again back to the moment when the older woman was walking to her seat with the pressure cooker in her arms.

Li Shiqing reflexively covered her neck the next moment she saw the older woman, and a violent gasp sounded in her throat as if a broken bellows was being pulled, unable to breathe properly at all.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, it's all in the past."

Xiao Heyun, who had also experienced this near-death agony, knew from the first glance that the pain from the last time was still with her, and heartily took the little girl into his arms, stroking her back while gently reassuring her.

"And I'm still here, we're all here."

Poor Li Shiqing, she was just an ordinary college girl who had been brought up to "improve with others", and the most violent arguments she had ever encountered were just a few verbal arguments between classmates.

She had thought that being bombed non-stop was the limit of what she could encounter, but she didn't think there was anything more frightening.

"Too, too fierce ......"

I was so scared that I couldn't shed a tear.

Recalling the numb look in the older woman's eyes as if she had killed a chicken, Li Shiqing covered her neck and could still feel the bone-chilling coldness in her throat, and even the air she could only inhale with difficulty had a taste of blood.

The cold, bloody chill seemed to burrow desperately through the slit in her throat and into her limbs, freezing every inch of her soul to pieces.

It is a coldness that penetrates deep into the marrow of your bones.

"Don't think about what happened before, think of it as a nightmare, some dreams are over and done with, the important thing is that we are alive now. "

Xiao Heyun was already unconscious from blood loss when Li Shiqing's accident happened, so I didn't see what happened to her afterwards and I don't know why she was so scared.

He also tried to hold Li Shiqing's hand over her neck to snap her out of it, but Xiao Heyun's heart fluttered as soon as he felt the awful coolness of her hand.

Little girls don't die too many deaths from PTSD, do they?

Boy's heart was worried and sad, but he was not very good at comforting people, so he clumsily took Li Shiqing's hand and held her in his arms, repeating over and over again.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid ......"

Perhaps it was the warmth of Boy's body that dispelled the chill that penetrated her bones, or perhaps it was the encouragement from her companions that sustained her on the verge of collapse.

"Better?"

Boy looked down at her and asked worriedly, "If you really can't stand it, we'll get off at the next stop, forget about it for a while and go and get in the right mood."

At Boy's suggestion, Li Shiqing hesitated for a moment, but eventually shook her head and slowly straightened up from Boy's arms.

"No, we can't waste any more time cycling, who knows what will happen next time."

She said, "I'm okay, I can still hold on."

"Are you sure?"

Boy had his concerns written all over his face and had to double check.

"I mean it, if we're really uncomfortable, we'll get out of the car and get some air."

"Really."

Li Shiqing nods again.

Boy was even more upset when he saw how Li Shiqing tried to carry on despite being scared to death.

It's so cruel to grow up like that.

"That's fine."

But at his companion's insistence, he could only let out a long sigh and respected her insistence.

"The last encounter with the older woman made me sure of one thing."

Li Shiqing always unconsciously strokes her neck when she says, "That older woman, eighty percent of the time, has a problem with her mental state."

"Huh?"

Boy was dismayed.

"Isn't it obvious? What sane person could do such a thing?"

"Not the mentally challenged kind."

She shivered as she spoke.

"I could not feel any emotion belonging to a human being at all in her eyes or expression."

She is afraid when she is hurt, hesitant when she hurts someone, and struggles when she wants to kill someone, all of which should be normal "human" emotions, but she feels none of them.

The feeling the older woman gave her when she tried to kill her was like a stone.

Or is it the kind of stone that has stood in the waterfall, still hard enough not to wear away even after decades and centuries of being pounded by the rapids.

It is as if even if there are worn parts, that is what it is willing to let the water take away.

"There's no way to communicate with someone like that, let alone try to convert her."

Li Shiqing took Boy's hand in return and said, "Even if she's acting calm now, it's to hide the real face that could put a man in his teeth."

How can you shake a man who is completely devoid of emotion?

Does the rushing current that rushes through the riverbed care what the rocks that are already there in the riverbed might think?

"One thing we've been neglecting to do is ......"

She was so pale that she could barely speak.

Sensing her fear, Boy gripped her hand even harder.

"We're up against a madman who's going to blow up a busload of people with a bomb."

She finally came face to face with this fact, in an exceptionally harrowing process.

If what they had experienced earlier had been like a disaster movie, the close confrontation with the older woman was a living thriller.

In each of the previous "explosions", they faced what seemed like a routine dilemma - finding the killer, finding the explosives, finding a way out - and although the process was difficult, the difficulties were more unknown and only revealed themselves to them inadvertently.

In particular, the first few "checks" were almost always uneventful, like a farce, paralysing the little sense of alertness they had managed to develop on previous occasions, while at the same time giving them a certain sense of luck.

It was only when they were hit in the face with reality that they came to their senses.

As for Boy's "older women look easier to subdue" routine, it's a tear in the eye.

"What the hell have you been through ...... hey, forget it."

Boy looks at Li Shiqing as if she has suddenly matured and wants to say something several times.

But he chose not to ask; after all, his back was still aching, so why bother to irritate anyone.

"So what do you want to do? Is there something about my plan that you think isn't good enough?"

He was not resistant to the idea that his companions would question his plans.

"There was nothing wrong with our plan, we just overlooked a few points."

Having died once, Li Shiqing has finally cleaned up the dependency mentality and is learning in earnest to add to the omissions in Boy's plan.

"First, we underestimated the older woman's 'force' and overestimated our own strength in our plan."

The fundamental reason why they choose the older woman and avoid the older man is that they feel that "the older woman is better than the older man". Both Boy and she are intimidated by the gnarled muscles of the stronger man, and because there is a comparison figure, they subconsciously feel that the thin housewife is better to "deal with". "to deal with" and subconsciously let down their guard.

"Secondly, we misjudged the psychological state of the passengers on board."

When I think of the crowd that scattered after hearing the shout of "bomb", and the desperation of the older woman wielding a bloodstained knife when no one dared to come forward and no one answered her desperate call for help, Li Shiqing is not without resentment.

After all, they were not only fighting for their own lives, but also for the busload of people.

But she also clearly understood that no one could be blamed for being afraid of such things.

She herself was just a normal person, were the other passengers the kind of Terminators who had special training and could face bombs and thugs as if they were dead?

Boy obviously thought of this too and sighed, patting her shoulder understandingly.

"Emotions are contagious and when one person shows intense fear, everyone is afraid; no one would want to step up to the plate and be the 'first one' who might get knifed in that dangerous situation."

"If we were uniformed police officers it would be fine, but the two of us ......"

She looks at Boy, then at herself.

One is a young man who looks full of bookishness with his glasses, and the other is a small, slender young girl with a youthful face ......

How many people like them will come to help when they shout "there's a bomb"? How can they give others a sense of security that "I'll be fine even if they help" when they themselves look like they can't be trusted?

"It would be too risky to help us without knowing anything."

Convincing someone with a knife or even a bomb is not the same as convincing Boy who is "doing something bad".

Boy has a harmless "I'm a gentleman" air about him, but the older woman with the knife is not a normal person at all. In the confined environment of a carriage, most people's first reaction to such a situation would be to leave the unsafe 'danger zone'.

It's not just about doing bad things, it's also about doing good things.

Recalling the farce of Boy being knifed and passengers panicking and interfering with the driver's driving, Li Shiqing went on to say, "Thirdly, and most of all, we should do ......"

She looked up ahead.

"...... is deserving of a driver's help."

"Seeking the help of a driver?"

Boy froze and subconsciously worried, "But many times before in the time loop, it was the driver's emotional instability that caused the crash, this driver's reflexes and emotional control may not be that strong, right?"

"Besides, if we know there is danger in the car, can the driver still drive properly and safely? What if the driver's uncle just stops and leaves us in the car and runs away as soon as he hears there's a bomb in it?"

He voiced the biggest concern.

"But you can't deny that without the driver's help, we probably wouldn't have reached our destination, much less dropped the bomb, due to all the mishaps."

Li Shiqing is not prepared to put her life in the hands of the passengers in the car, "Just because we've already taken the pressure cooker last time and came so close, doesn't mean we'll be able to do it every time. What if a few old ladies in the car panic and grab the driver's steering wheel? What if they go to attack the driver and ask him to stop and end up in trouble instead?"

"In case we have grabbed the pressure cooker and the people are under control, only for the driver to have an accident because he was disturbed by the panicked passengers, wouldn't that be an even bigger loss? Who knows what explosive mechanism this bomb has, and whether the resulting collision will trigger an explosion? What if the first few times the crash tanker would be in trouble, all because of the accidental explosion caused by the collision?"

She kept throwing out challenges and arguing her case.

"You have to admit that it's a possibility, don't you?"

Boy was a little confused by Li Shiqing's barrage of questions, but he wasn't one to raise his voice or become irritated by it, so he took a moment to think about it.

"You're right."

After thinking about it, he had to admit that there was a real possibility that her vision could happen.

His suspicion of the driver is a subconscious distrust of people he doesn't know, so he simply puts it down to a "risk factor" and adds him to his "plan" as little as possible.

But as the situation has changed, this "risk factor" has become their best option for risk avoidance.

"We had to contain the older woman and keep her and the pressure cooker separated at all times. In the meantime, if we get help from the driver to make sure he can drive to a safe spot on the bridge, stop and open the door when the pressure cooker is snatched off, the confused crowd can get off immediately and we can throw the pressure cooker under the bridge as quickly and 'safely' as possible."

Unlike Boy, Li Shiqing knows the driver better as she rides the line regularly and occasionally chats together when she sits in the front row.

"Besides, I don't think Uncle Driver would be the kind of person you'd say would leave a busload of passengers and run away."

Boy looked at his companion, who was analysing the situation as if he had been "upgraded", and was shocked and speechless.

"All right, then, do as you say!"

Boy looked at the clock and a familiar sense of urgency followed.

"What should we do first? Go and find the driver?"

"No ......"

Li Shiqing shakes her head and looks over at Boy as she hears the beep ahead of her.

"We should find reliable help first."

The author has something to say: Seeing so many readers who questioned why none of the passengers on the bus went to grab a knife or throw a bomb, I can only be pleased to say that I am worthy of my readers, all of whom have such high moral standards, and I applaud you for such questioning.

But you forget that I wrote this bus with a "premise" which is the tone of the whole book, that there are hardly any young people on board at any point, either old men and women or idle middle-aged and elderly people who use crutches to stop them?

Middle-aged people are going to be in trouble, on the old and the young family how to do yo, probably because I am older, may consider the problem no way hot-blooded it ............

"Each book in the "Open" series is about how ordinary people like us break the shackles of fate.