I was speechless for a long moment, the lingering warmth still on my lips. 

I told Yu Baijin, close your eyes. 

He did so without hesitation, probably thinking I was going to return the favor.

But he wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, and I was even less a prince. 

To prevent flying glass shards from injuring him by mistake, I freed my still-intact left hand, bent my elbow, and used brute force to smash open the car window that had already cracked into a spider web pattern.

I reached my hand out, gripped the door handle—the spring lock had failed. 

I drew out my dagger again, wedged it into the deformed, jammed door gap, and pried it open just enough of a narrow crack to push the car door open together with Yu Baijin and crawl out.

A few minutes later the fuel tank would probably catch fire. 

We needed to get away from here early.

“Check yourself. Any bleeding, fractures, joint dislocations.”

I tried to stand up. 

Both legs were fine, not many superficial wounds either. 

As for my dislocated right shoulder, I was experienced in handling injuries of this degree. 

My left hand felt along my right upper arm, I held my breath and concentrated, and with a “crack” I reset it. 

It hurt a little, but it no longer restricted common movements like lifting or pushing and pulling. 

I felt genuinely fortunate from the bottom of my heart: affected by the explosion, overturned, falling from a slope dozens of meters high and still not dead—the two of us truly had hard lives.

Yu Baijin lifted his own shirt, checked the old wound on his abdomen, moved his cervical spine around, then shook off the dust and ashes from his body, smiling as he asked me in the darkness: “What about you? You’re not hurt, are you?”

The night was deep and quiet, the somewhat bleak wind rustling through the forest. 

I stood somewhat at a loss amid the mess all over the ground, hesitating for a long time before opening my mouth: “…Thank you.”

If not for his hand supporting the curled seat above my back, my spine would probably have already broken into several sections. 

Realizing this fact made my mood even more complex and unfamiliar. 

Unwilling to explore the deeper meaning in this, I asked him and also asked myself:

“What do we do?”

There was no doubt that I had been targeted too. 

The other party obviously came with the purpose of killing us. 

Because I was also involved in Rong Wanqing’s disappearance case? 

Or did all personnel related to her need to be eliminated? 

On the other hand, her disappearance itself had not yet been characterized. 

I couldn’t presumptuously define it as kidnapping. 

Assuming Tiaotiao’s testimony was credible, Rong Wanqing might also have fled on her own.

That place held threats for her.

Moreover, both Yu Baijin on the night of the incident and the two of us tonight had encountered pursuit and assassination after leaving the sanatorium. 

What secrets were hidden in that seemingly peaceful and tranquil place?

But we absolutely couldn’t go back now. 

If the other party had already grasped our whereabouts, my residence wasn’t safe either. 

But if we followed Rong Wanqing’s hint and left the city, with heaven so vast and earth so wide, where should we go to find her?

“Baby.”

“…”

“Hey.”

While I was spacing out, Yu Baijin rubbed my hair, clearing away the dust and foreign objects between the strands. 

I blocked him somewhat uncomfortably, but he grasped my hand in return and said: “I actually have a place to go.”

“Where?”

“Come with me.”

His palm was dry, broad, with an irresistible warmth, pulling me to passively take steps, advancing deeper into the forest. 

Here stretched several hectares of undeveloped wilderness. 

Viewed from above on a map, it was like a green prison, with highways as chains separating us from the neighboring city—completely unknown territory.

After walking far, I still couldn’t help but look back at that pile of smoking car wreckage. 

Police sirens came from far to near, like birds circling in the sky, yet I developed a strong intuition: I was bidding farewell to the peaceful life I desired.

Step by step, walking toward the abyss.

Yu Baijin hummed a tune as he walked ahead of me, holding my hand, sounding like he was in a good mood, as if we hadn’t just narrowly escaped death but were preparing to go on an outing, camping in the wild, planning to watch the long-awaited sunrise tomorrow morning.

He was even whistling. 

He whistled that little tune from Kill Bill when the female assassin dressed as a nurse made her entrance—the woman in the film with her graceful waist, wearing a single-sided eyepatch and thin high heels, walking leisurely into the hospital room.

She was about to assassinate the comatose female protagonist, not knowing she had already awakened and was waiting for an opportunity to counterattack.

The light and melodious whistle turned, and murderous symphony music pounced over, like a sudden cold wind drying the cold sweat on my forehead.

“You have a residence nearby?”

Honestly, I had no patience to accompany him in playing coy. My phone had suffered heavy damage in the tumble-dryer-style car accident. When I pulled it from my pants pocket, the screen had already cracked into several pieces. The screensaver twitched and shifted, flickering on and off like a dying candle for a while, unable even to serve as a flashlight, before completely declaring itself scrapped.

I was vexed in my heart, but I didn’t discard it on the spot. In case the people pursuing us refused to give up and searched all the way following the crashed car down the cliff, items dropped along the way would undoubtedly expose our location.

“Get out quickly,” I emphasized. “The terrain here is unfavorable to us.”

“Ahhh—”

But he lazily drew out his voice, seeming to turn his head back toward me.

“What does darkness make you think of?”

A question requiring no thought. “Ambush.”

“That’s so like the answer you’d give.”

In the lightless environment, his laughter was low, pleasant, with an almost seductive tenderness, yet it made me inexplicably embarrassed: “What do you think then?”

“Intimacy.”

He said: “Darkness makes me feel very close to you.”

Whenever he approached me, he always brought me bad news, crisis, tidings of death, but also brought me passion, affection, sweet illusions.

He was the Grim Reaper holding a scythe, leading me through rose fields.

“Almost there.”

Clearly just groping blindly through the bushes without purpose, yet after walking for about half an hour, I was surprised to discover that in the depths of the dense forest floated several points of ghostly firelight, phantom-like, drifting uncertainly. 

Drawing closer, the points connected into patches, and voices could be heard faintly. 

This scene really made it hard not to think in supernatural directions, yet I dared to conclude that our current walking distance was definitely not enough to traverse the entire forest. 

I immediately grabbed Yu Baijin, who hadn’t stopped walking: “How can there be such a place in the forest?”

“Mm-hmm.”

But he took the opportunity to interlock his five fingers into my finger gaps, changing to a more secure grip, pulling me toward him, against his arm. 

“You can commonly understand it as a ‘ghost market.’

“Only—the kind that does illegal transactions.”

Lurking in the protective forest at the border of two cities, a marketplace that only opened at night. 

Each stall hung a wind lantern, their faint light stretching in an unbroken line, snaking for over a hundred meters like a river leading to another world.

Most customers wore black or dark colors, wearing hoods or masks to disguise their appearance. 

There were also those who showed their faces openly and frankly—these mostly looked like people not to be trifled with. 

This type of person’s temperament wasn’t hard to recognize. 

I would generally take the initiative to avoid them, to prevent triggering friction or disputes that would place my employer in an unfavorable position.

But traveling with Yu Baijin, I actually developed a bizarre sense of security. 

I was already beside the most dangerous person in this world; the rest were nothing to fear. 

I only needed to mind my own eyes, not “inadvertently” glancing at the items for sale or services being peddled at the stalls—those were not things I could afford.

And at the end of this street market, where trees provided cover and human traces were rare, three mobile prefab houses stood abruptly. 

Square and regular, with the common appearance of construction sites or disaster areas, yet upon closer inspection they were not made of the usual prefab materials. 

The walls had been reinforced with alloy, and the windows used one-way bulletproof glass.

Yu Baijin led me to stand before one of the doors, pushed open the sliding cover of the fingerprint unlock screen, pressed his right index finger on the touch area, and with a “beep” the verification passed. 

He breathed a sigh of relief and flashed me a toothy smile.

“Welcome to our ‘safe house.'”