Before I could make out the license plate and model of the car chasing us, half-human-height plumes of dust obscured the rearview mirror. 

The sharp sound of burning tires pierced my eardrums like an awl, my soul nearly flung from my body. 

This secondhand car I had picked up from an auto repair shop for less than a hundred thousand yuan was like an enraged mad bull. 

Under Yu Baijin’s command, it roared and broke through the encirclement, bursting out from the unguarded back gate of the parking lot, leaving all the pursuing troops far behind.

I clutched the dagger I had pulled from the seat cushion in my hand, tucked it into my sleeve, and roughly counted from the exterior rearview mirror how many cars were chasing us.

“Five… six vehicles.”

I asked Yu Baijin, “Are they the same model that chased you the night before last?”

“Looks like it. All black cars, like a funeral procession, well-trained, except their method of blocking people…”

He was mid-sentence when he made a sharp ninety-degree turn at a T-junction. 

The car body tilted sideways, nearly scraping past the side skirt of an SUV, provoking continuous honking from the other party, before he continued, “Not very sophisticated.”

A trace of frivolous laughter wound through his trailing tone, making me belatedly notice his face. In the arc light of streetlamps flashing intermittently like montage, a bizarre pleasure actually sprouted on his face—pure evil, a heartfelt, sincere anticipation of the impending danger and disaster, like a child born accompanied by destruction, the devil’s son.

He asked me softly: “Baby, which way?”

Before his words had finished falling, he suddenly accelerated, dodging a black car that had nearly bitten our tail. 

He hooked the steering wheel back half a turn, forcibly squeezing it onto the sidewalk, crashing it toward a row of shops with “For Lease” advertisements pasted on their rolling shutters. 

The bumper scraped out a long scorched trace, sparks flying everywhere. 

The ear-piercing friction sound made my teeth ache.

“You’re letting me choose?”

I surveyed the street scenes flashing past on both sides of the road. 

It seemed we had long deviated from the main thoroughfare, driving into the urban-suburban junction. 

Along the way stood many two-story Western-style private residences of various shapes, unevenly competing for the already narrow road, making it even more cramped and rugged, difficult to traverse.

I strived to calm my thoughts amid the chaos and turbulence: when this road reached its end, exactly two fork roads would lie before us. 

One led back to the city center—the prosperous commercial district was an inevitable route, with traffic congestion that would inevitably trigger commotion and even alarm the police. 

But Rong Wanqing’s obvious distrust of the police left me with reservations; if there was a choice, I would try to avoid direct contact with them. 

The other led to the suburbs, sparsely populated, with vast areas of urban villages awaiting renovation and illegally built shantytowns scattered throughout. 

The jagged terrain was very advantageous for shaking off pursuing cars, and unlike the city center’s surveillance-filled areas, this gray zone was also conducive to us adopting “our own methods of response.” 

The most intuitive and important basis was—

“Leave the city.”

This was the “code” Rong Wanqing had left for the two of us, and it absolutely wouldn’t be without purpose.

“Alright.”

Yu Baijin agreed, his tone inexplicably cheerful. 

“Baby and I are in perfect sync.”

But how could things possibly go as desired?

As if seeing through our intentions, the black cars that had pursued us all the way—reduced from six to five vehicles—quietly changed formation and strategy in the process of driving us toward the city’s periphery. 

Three gave direct chase, two flanked, seemingly dispersed but actually concentrated in forcing us onto the mountain road. 

I was shaken until I nearly vomited, yet Yu Baijin was still enjoying himself, no different from driving bumper cars at an amusement park, pretending it wouldn’t cause death: “Baby, it seems we’re going to die.”

“I’m not afraid of dying one more time.”

I said calmly in the swaying, snake-like cabin. “Leave a last word then, I’ll go first—”

“Let’s meet in other identities in the next life,” he said.

I froze. 

The front of the car crashed into a “Road Under Construction Ahead Please Detour” indicator sign in the middle of the mountain road. 

It soared high, leaping into mid-air, tumbling and rolling over our front windshield, smashing into a black car on the right side that was desperately trying to squeeze us down the left cliff. 

Its hood caved and deformed like a nose bridge crushed by a fist. 

With a mutual destruction stance, it crashed into us even more frantically. 

The car door on my right had already been damaged and cracked in the continuous impacts, yet I felt not the slightest fear of death in my heart, only thinking detachedly: he was right. If there really was an afterlife.

Let us reunite like two ordinary people, in an ordinary way.

I remember once, I accompanied Rong Wanqing and her classmates to the theater to watch a stage play. 

On the way home after it ended, I saved a little boy who had nearly been struck by a neon sign falling from a high-rise building.

That little boy, I couldn’t quite remember clearly—probably around eight or nine years old, with sparse blond hair, smelling of caramel popcorn. 

When the rusty steel frame and neon tubes exploded thunderously at our feet, he forgot to cry for help from excessive shock, standing dazed for a moment before clutching my collar and bursting into tears, revealing the missing front teeth in his mouth.

Rong Wanqing and her classmates were also frightened. 

The scattered remains of the sign separated me from them. Looking at those faces still shaken with terror, I couldn’t remember how, just seconds before, I had broken away from among them, rushed to the side of the little boy walking ahead of us, and held him as we fell beside the sidewalk. 

Passing pedestrians and taxis were stunned by the tremendous sound. 

It took a long time before proper order was restored. 

People gathered around with concern, helping up the child and me. 

The child’s parents also hurried out from a bakery by the roadside, apologizing for their negligence while asking if I was injured, whether I needed medical attention.

I said I was fine.

I couldn’t communicate with them in their language, couldn’t understand the local dialect. 

Later it was Rong Wanqing who got me out of the situation, holding my cut arm and thanking those people, then reproachfully telling me: “Brother, be more careful.”

“Really, running out without a sound like that, how dangerous? You’re also flesh and blood, you can bleed. Don’t do this next time.”

But I couldn’t control it.

Since childhood I had been trained in the ability to sense crisis and killing intent. 

Like a knee-jerk reflex, whenever there was even the slightest disturbance, my muscles’ reaction speed would lead ahead of my brain’s commands, prompting me to take action first, and when necessary, also to serve as a human shield, sacrificing myself to preserve my employer. 

This reflex was indiscriminate, covering all living entities—I would save even kittens and puppies without fail.

It must be for this reason.

That’s why I unbuckled my seatbelt. 

The instant our car broke through the guardrail on the outer edge of the mountain road and lost balance to overturn, I lunged toward Yu Baijin, my hands protecting his head and neck. 

As long as he could adjust his position before the airbag deployed, even if the front of the car plunged down the mountain slope first, I couldn’t guarantee he’d be completely unscathed, but at least I could help him escape with his life.

That was all.

Absolutely not out of personal feelings.

And at that critical moment, as if it had been premeditated, he pulled me into his arms with one hand, gripped the old phone I had given him with the other, pressed the emergency call button three times, then hurled it out the car window. 

Counting down three seconds, the view inverted, countless shards of glass assaulted my body like a rainstorm. 

Before my eyelids closed, I saw flames filling the sky above the cliff. 

Several black cars exploded in succession, the tremendous sound seeming to shake the mountain itself. 

The aftershocks continued endlessly, like waves, like tides, sweeping toward the boundless night.

I truly thought then I would die.

Die together with Yu Baijin, flesh, blood, and bones all pulverized, mixed together indistinguishably. 

Saying this sounds a bit disgusting—I could already imagine his response: “Wow, how romantic.”

But we didn’t die.

The car broke through the roadblock, tumbled down the slope inclined nearly thirty degrees, split through the dense thickets of shrubs plunging downward. 

The shock absorbers were already overtaxed, emitting shrieks as they compressed against the wheel hubs. 

The airbag nearly gave me a concussion. 

My right shoulder also transmitted the dull pain of dislocation. 

One ear pressed against Yu Baijin’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, as if trapped in an elusive dream. 

Near and far was all dense fog. 

I could either retreat or be trapped in place. I just didn’t dare move forward.

What was I afraid of?

After crashing through countless trees and rocks, our car finally stopped sliding, rolling completely twice before flipping upside down deep in the forest. 

I briefly lost consciousness, then was soon choked awake by thick smoke mixed with the smell of gasoline. 

Struggling to climb up, my cheeks were grasped by someone’s hand, lifting my jaw, and a kiss was planted on my rust-tasting lips.

“What a pity, there is no next life after all.”