In a flash of lightning, the driver’s pupils shrank. He frantically yanked the steering wheel, and the advancing taxi moved like an ugly fish, shrinking its head and twisting its waist. Pulling off a hearse-like drift, it narrowly avoided the red truck ahead by a hair’s breadth
Everyone in the car was still in a state of shock.
The driver of the red truck was also scared half to death. He rolled down his window and hurled a barrage of curses at the taxi driver:
“You son of a bitch, driving without looking, did you feed your eyes to the dogs?! Daring to cut the lane on a curve, hope you catch AIDS from a hooker! Driving so fast, are you rushing to reincarnate as your mom and her paramour’s bastard?!”
This was followed by an unending string of varied, non-repeating national profanities.
However, since the two vehicles were heading in opposite directions, no matter how rich the truck driver’s vocabulary or how full his lung capacity was, his furious curses were gradually swept away by the wind in the outskirts.
The taxi driver’s face went deathly pale at first, then turned an ashen, livid hue.
This was an accident no one wanted to see.
But accidents happen all the time.
Ji Xun sighed in the backseat and said in the tone of someone with experience, “See, danger exists at all times. Do you know how many people die in the world every second?”
“I don’t fcking know, who the fuck knows how many people die in the world every second? Shut the fck up!” the driver roared in a fury. “The car ending up like this is all your f*cking fault!”
“Master driver, you’re not being right,” Ji Xun said. “Talk if you want to talk, but how can you curse at people?”
“I’ll fcking curse at you all I want!” The driver seemingly couldn’t speak without using the word ‘fck’.
“Cursing, huh? Then let’s curse at each other properly,” Ji Xun said. Then, propping his arm against the back of the front seat and pushing off the floor of the car with his feet, his entire body nimbly passed through the gap between the two front seats and landed in the passenger seat.
“You—” The driver’s expression changed drastically. The transparent protective shield separating the driver and passengers couldn’t hold back his bursting shock and suspicion. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
“I don’t want to do anything, just want to curse with you properly,” Ji Xun said frivolously. “The prerequisite for cursing at each other properly is that we should at least be face-to-face, right?”
As he said this, he looked back at Huo Ranyin.
Huo Ranyin seemed completely speechless at him. He lazily lifted his eyelids to return a glance, then went straight to looking down at his phone, having absolutely no intention of helping him curse.
Probably, it wasn’t just Huo Ranyin who was speechless; the driver was speechless too.
The driver held it in for a long time, eventually swallowing his anger back down, though his body seemed to swell up a bit more—swelling until he looked somewhat like a fully inflated balloon stuffed into the driver’s seat.
“…It’s my fault,” the driver finally said. “I won’t curse at you anymore. Hurry up and go back to the backseat.”
“While the vehicle is in motion, how can I climb back and forth? How dangerous is that!” Ji Xun said.
“…” You f*cking know it’s dangerous too? So the one who squeezed from the back seat to the front just now wasn’t you, but a monkey spirit possessing you?!
The driver’s face was full of suppressed frustration.
He stared blankly ahead.
The road became increasingly remote, and signs of human habitation gradually disappeared. The distant mountain ranges drew closer and closer—massive, heavy, and profound—pressing down along with the gloomy sky.
The car, which had been driving so fast in the bustling city, had actually slowed down here. It got slower and slower, dropping all the way to 40 km/h.
“Driver,” Ji Xun suddenly said. “Why are you driving so slowly?”
“Better safe than sorry,” the taxi driver said grumpily, throwing Ji Xun’s own words right back at him.
Just as his voice fell, a white sedan suddenly appeared in the rearview mirror.
Compared to their taxi, the white sedan was driving extremely fast, and with a clear target—it came straight for them!
A few hundred meters took less than a few dozen seconds.
Ji Xun, who had been rambling a bunch of nonsense before, was exceptionally decisive this time. Without a word, his hand shot out like lightning. His arm reached right around the car’s protective shield and grabbed the steering wheel!
The driver seemed completely unprepared for Ji Xun to do such a thing. He turned his head in astonishment, his blank eyes reflecting Ji Xun’s face… But Ji Xun didn’t hesitate at all, cranking the steering wheel all the way to the left.
The car wobbled and staggered like a drunkard full of liquor…
Right at this moment, the white sedan behind them T-boned them!
The exact moment of a car crash didn’t seem as thrilling as it was presented in movies and TV shows.
The people inside only felt a shockwave rush straight through their internal organs. This shockwave didn’t bring much pain, but it almost knocked away half of their consciousness.
With his senses of the outside world halved, Ji Xun felt as if he were delayed in a closed-off space for a long time before he heard the heavy, distant sound of the collision.
He opened his eyes; everything in his vision was a blur, as if he had suddenly contracted severe myopia.
Hurry, hurry, it’s going to be too late…
He counted silently in his heart, and his willpower finally seemed to take effect, beginning to disperse the thick fog shrouding his eyes.
His vision began to focus. First, through the rearview mirror, he saw the taxi’s trunk and the left rear door that had popped open in the crash. Next, he saw the shattered protective shield at the driver’s seat and the deployed airbag.
The driver had fainted.
Bleeding from the head, he was buried in the airbag, motionless.
How is he… Ji Xun thought with effort. Just as he struggled to prop up his body, there was another “click.”
The sound was very soft, but it pierced Ji Xun’s eardrums like a needle.
From the white sedan that had hit them, people came out.
Two people, one on the left, one on the right; one tall, one short.
Both wore crash helmets that tightly protected their heads, preventing them from being injured in the crash.
In their hands, they both held guns—iron-gray, ice-cold guns.
The person who came out of the passenger side went around toward the rear of the taxi. He was looking for Huo Ranyin. Since the T-boned collision had damaged the left rear door, he had to go around from the back.
The other one, the person in the driver’s seat, stopped directly at the open door of the white sedan, which placed him right outside the taxi driver’s cabin.
The taxi driver’s window was open.
Something was inserted through the open window.
Ji Xun’s line of sight, across the shattered and twisted protective shield of the driver’s seat, met with the muzzle of a gun.
The deep, pitch-black muzzle was like the eye of an abyss.
The eye of the abyss stared right at him.
His gaze slowly moved upward, stopping at the chest of the tall killer. He couldn’t go any higher; the car roof blocked Ji Xun’s view. He couldn’t see the tall killer’s face. He could only see the index finger hooked on the trigger, pressing down as the figure outside slowly bent over… like a giant slowly crouching down to kill an ant beneath its feet…
“Bang!”
A gunshot rang out.
It didn’t ring out in front of Ji Xun’s eyes; it rang out behind the taxi.
Following the abrupt gunshot came the chaotic sound of a shootout. The sounds, like the bullets themselves, appeared swiftly and disappeared swiftly. In the instant the gunshots ceased, a tragic howl pierced the sky, shrill as the cry of a night owl.
It wasn’t Huo Ranyin’s voice!
The person holding the gun was distracted for a split second. An opportunity. Two choices: open the door and flee, or…
Ji Xun lunged forward suddenly, his arms passing through the gap in the protective shield. The remaining sharp edges of the shattered shield slashed through the sleeves on his arms. He tried his absolute best to shift his attention away from those spots, focusing solely on his hands. His hands firmly gripped the gun barrel in front of him!
The owner of the gun barrel, the helmet-wearing killer, also bent down. Ji Xun couldn’t clearly see the face hidden behind the visor; only a pair of ferocious eyes, like a hungry wolf’s, seared an impression into Ji Xun’s mind.
The hungry wolf swung its sharp claws.
Fire flashed from the muzzle.
“Bang!”
“Bang!”
Two gunshots rang out, one in front and one in back, at almost the exact same time.
With Ji Xun forcefully lifting the gun barrel, the first gunshot fired a bullet that grazed diagonally just above Ji Xun’s head, piercing the taxi’s roof. The other gunshot—a bullet from Huo Ranyin’s handgun—carried wings of fire and gunpowder, shooting straight into the arm of the killer outside the driver’s seat!
A burst of blood appeared.
A second tragic howl followed closely. Seizing the opportunity, Ji Xun violently snatched the gun from the killer’s hand.
In the blink of an eye, the tables turned. Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin, who were supposed to be the prey, had become the hunters!
The wailing killer outside the car door was dragged away, and Ji Xun’s line of sight cleared up again. Then, hearing some movement outside, Ji Xun gripped the handgun and looked back, just in time to see Huo Ranyin pulling a rope from the trunk and tying up the two killers one by one.
He breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back into the passenger seat, his body and mind relaxing… He hadn’t been relaxed for more than a few seconds when the door was yanked open. Looking out, he saw Huo Ranyin’s tense face.
Huo Ranyin pulled open the door and quickly looked Ji Xun up and down. When he saw the blood staining the sleeves of Ji Xun’s clothes, his expression changed drastically, and he immediately used his hands to tear open the slashed fabric—
“I’m fine, not hurt, it’s the driver’s.” Ji Xun finally found his tongue, which had felt as if a bird had snatched it away. His brain was still numb and sluggish, so he could only try hard to raise his hand and pat Huo Ranyin’s shoulder. “Aichmophobia…”
Only then did Huo Ranyin notice the shattered, jagged protective shield nearby.
“Oh right, help me check my head!” Ji Xun finally felt a belated wave of nervousness. “It wasn’t plowed into a trench by a bullet like Tan Mingjiu, right?”
“What on earth are you thinking about all day long? Is now the time to worry about this?” Huo Ranyin cursed in a low voice. His face looked terrible, but his hand movements were meticulous. Raising an arm to block the space between Ji Xun and the driver’s seat, he half-supported and half-carried him out of the car.
Once he was out, the sharp objects were out of sight.
Ji Xun felt half-alive again. With his stagnant brain finally turning, he immediately remembered the driver who was still unconscious in the airbag in the driver’s seat.
Huo Ranyin was faster than him.
By the time Ji Xun looked over, Huo Ranyin had already walked over to the driver’s seat and pulled the door open—
The chubby driver squeezed inside shifted as if reflexively… seemingly finally waking up from his faint.
“How are you feeling?” Huo Ranyin leaned down, keeping his gun muzzle pointed toward the ground. “Don’t move around to avoid secondary injuries. I’ll call an ambulance right now; it should be here soon.”
However, the driver still struggled to move.
He first shifted his head bit by bit, struggling to align his chaotic, blood-smeared eyes with Huo Ranyin. Then he began to move his arm. His arm was wedged under the seat, looking twisted. The harder he struggled, the less he could move, looking exactly like a bug caught in a splint.
“Don’t move!” Huo Ranyin warned a second time.
But Huo Ranyin’s approach suddenly made the driver nervous. He gave a sudden, hard yank and pulled his arm out, tearing off a chunk of flesh in the process. Beneath the skin, his tissues quivered slightly, and fresh blood snaked downward—but he was instantly pinned down by Huo Ranyin.
Huo Ranyin’s eyes lowered slightly.
A trace of a contemptuous sneer seemed to flash across his dignified expression—a hint of cat-and-mouse mockery. The mocking smile rippled outward like water, then vanished.
He pinned down the driver’s hand, and he also pinned down the gun the driver was holding.
That bloodstained gun.
