[Supernatural Instances] [Closed Setting] [A Battle of Wits and Human Nature] [Folk Horror] [A Mental Hell] [A Male Lead Who Breaks the Deadlock] [Dual Protagonists]
On a stormy night, emergency room doctor Gu Yuan accidentally boards Bus 444. Its license plate doesn't exist, its conductor is a paper effigy with half a face, black fog churns outside the windows, and the phones never get a signal. There are only three rules: get off at each stop and complete the task, collect 13 tickets, and reach the final stop alive. Anyone who fails will be "cleared," erased from the world entirely.
With his cool, almost ruthless crisis-management skills, Gu Yuan joins forces with Tang Xiaotang, a university student with yin-yang eyes. Together, they fight their way from a "ghost school" to a "ghost wedding inn," struggle through a "corpse-oil restaurant," and survive a "mirror maze." There's someone even more dangerous on the bus: Old K, who has 10 tickets and has survived aboard for two years. He uses newcomers as cannon fodder and will create a massacre if that's what it takes to get the final ticket.
Just as Gu Yuan collects his 12th ticket, the bus suddenly careens out of control toward the final stop. Ghosts and monsters invade in force, and Old K goes mad. As Tang Xiaotang lies dying, she recognizes the driver's face: a patient's family member whom Gu Yuan personally declared dead after a medical dispute. The bus is actually a hellscape built by the consciousness of Gu Yuan, who has been in a vegetative state for half a year. The 13th ticket is the final choice: live on, or vanish forever.
