Modern Day

The first time I went out on a long-haul run with my Master, I suddenly heard someone calling my name in the middle of the night.

The voice made my heart race.

I leaned against the window to look out, but my Master suddenly yanked me back!

He rolled down the window with lightning speed and spat his cigarette butt out with a fierce flick.

Then, pointing at the pitch-black road outside, he let out a torrent of creative curses!

I was young back then and had no idea who he was yelling at.

I could only curl up in the passenger seat like a shrimp, not daring to make a sound.

Later, I spent over ten years driving long-haul trucks on my own.

I never again encountered a situation where someone called my name in the dead of night.

Until three days ago, when I suddenly received word that my Master had passed away.

When I first started driving freight trucks, I once asked Master out of curiosity: Why did truckers need to perform Chongsha, while bus drivers didn’t?

Master said it was because trucks carried cargo, not people, so what they feared most was running into trouble on the road.

Buses, on the other hand, were always picking people up and dropping them off, so their greatest taboo was disaster striking onboard.

That was why buses didn’t pay much attention to warding off the road itself.

What they cared about was ballasting the vehicle.

Most bus drivers I’d met used stones for it.

Some used stone statues.

Whenever the passenger count hit four or seven, the driver would bring out the Vehicle-Ballasting Stone, treating it as one extra passenger onboard to keep misfortune away.

But recently, I took on a strange job.

A bus driver came to me and asked me to ballast his bus as a living person.

He said that before me, three Vehicle-Ballasting Stones had already shattered on his bus.

At midnight, I woke up in a strange place.

Someone knocked on my truck window and said they were holding a celebration tonight, and asked me to join them.

Still groggy, I got out of the truck.

The village before me was decked out in lanterns and colored streamers.

“Is it a wedding?” I asked the villager. The villager didn’t answer.

Instead, a hazy thought came to me: I seemed to have come here to escort the bride.

I turned back to look at the heavy truck I’d driven here.

It was empty. But why did I remember it being packed full of things when I arrived?

What had I been carrying? For a moment, I couldn’t recall.

When I turned back again, the villager who had come to call me was gone.

I went out northwest to haul coal in a big rig.

That morning, we were lined up waiting to load our trucks.

All of a sudden, we heard someone shouting.

“Oh no! There’s someone buried under the coal pile!”

A bunch of us ran over to help.

But even after we dug all the way to the bottom of that mountain of coal, we didn’t find so much as a shadow of a person.

The worker who had shouted was starting to panic.

Stammering, he tried to explain, “That’s not right. I saw it clear as day.

There was a pair of wrinkled human hands sticking out from under the coal pile!”

“If you pass the scene of a car accident, don’t stare.”

“If someone tries to hitch a ride at midnight, don’t stop unless you have to.”

“And don’t think driving a big rig makes you so intimidating that trouble won’t come looking for you.”

Those were the warnings my Master gave me.

For more than ten years, I kept them close to heart.

But tonight, I made an exception.

At midnight, I came across a family of four trying to flag me down.

The moment the husband saw my headlights, he dropped to his knees at the roadside and kept kowtowing.

Their black sedan was sitting crookedly off to the side, as if it had broken down.

All four of them looked badly shaken. I let them climb into my truck.

Pale with fear, the husband told me that a strange red sports car had been chasing them along the mountain road just moments ago.

I told him not to worry. I was driving a heavy truck; no car would dare mess with me.

Just then, the radio began reporting a traffic accident. On the very stretch of mountain road we were driving along, a red sports car and a black sedan had been involved in a serious crash.

The driver of the red sports car had died at the scene.

At a construction site, five coffins were dug up-four with something inside, one empty. Strange things kept happening at the site.

In less than three days, two workers had already been sent to the hospital.

Someone had asked me to go there and haul the coffins away.

But the expert the site had hired kept blocking me at every turn, refusing to let me move them.

With a dark, sinister look, he told me: “These five coffins can’t be moved by anyone within seven days. Whoever moves them will be the one buried inside.”

The rich playboy offered to treat me to dinner.

Under his guidance, I ordered a lavish feast for ten: king crab, lobster, precious French caviar, the works.

Then he gave me a malicious smile.

“Baby, if you can’t finish all this, you’ll have to pay for it yourself, you know.”

He thought I didn’t know about the livestream camera on his chest, where the chat was flooding with mockery aimed at me.

“Shocked now, aren’t ya? This meal costs 680,000 yuan total. Where’s a broke girl like you gonna find that kind of money?”

“Did you see how greedy she looked when she ordered? I’m dying laughing.”

“Did she really think it’d be that easy to take advantage of a rich guy?”

“Gold Digger Hunting Squad scores again! Bros, share the stream so we can enjoy the show!”

In the spotlight of the livestream, I didn’t panic like they imagined. I simply picked up my knife and fork, flashed a pair of playful little fangs, and smiled.

Hunting?

As an ancient beast famed for its appetite, I’ve always been fond of a certain human saying.

The most skilled hunters often appear as prey.

After I died, my boyfriend’s grief moved God.

God gave me a chance to be reborn, sending me back to my boyfriend in a stranger’s face.

If he fell in love with me again, I could come back to life.

But when I returned to him, he already had a new girlfriend.

In our seventh year together, Liang Qiezhao was getting married into another family for business reasons.

The night we broke up, we were unusually calm. “I’ll move out as soon as possible,” I said.

“There’s no need for that.” The man sat hunched by the window, slowly and methodically clipping a cigar as he gave his instructions. “I’m transferring the title of this apartment to you. It’s closer to your office.” “Your old car is getting on in years and should be replaced. I’ve also left some money in your primary account.” “As for the future… if you run into any trouble and it’s inconvenient to contact me, you can call Secretary Qin.”

He spent a long time clipping that cigar. The cut was perfectly smooth, yet he kept his eyes down, inspecting it repeatedly. He didn’t light it, nor did he look up for a long time.

Behind him, clean, even snowflakes were drifting down. I suddenly remembered Christmas Eve that year. Regent Street was bustling with people under the Angel Lights, snow falling all around us.

Twenty-seven-year-old Liang Qiezhao had held my hand tightly. He held on until our palms were damp. And even then, he couldn’t bear to let go.

I’m a delivery driver.

Just as I used my lightning-fast reflexes to snag a hundred-yuan errand order for a box of condoms, Before I could even gloat for two seconds, I realized with a shock that the delivery address was my boyfriend’s apartment.

I grabbed a meat cleaver and charged into the elevator.

There was another man in the elevator wearing a raincoat, clutching a large sledgehammer in his hand.

Just as I reached out to press the button for my floor, several lines of twisted text suddenly floated before my eyes.

[Is the Cannon Fodder Female Supporting Character coming online already? The male lead’s clingy ex-girlfriend.]

[Holy crap, that’s the Hidden Plot Killer next to her! Is the first act really this intense?]

[She’s about to become the first victim. Once the male lead finds her corpse, he’ll go berserk and take out the Killer to get his revenge.]

[But isn’t the male lead with the official female lead right now?]

[What do you know? A ‘White Moonlight’ only reaches her ultimate power once she’s dead~]

My finger froze in mid-air. The mirror-like surface of the elevator doors reflected the shadow behind me.

The Raincoat Man was silently raising his hammer, the shadow looming over the back of my head.

The very second the wind from the hammer’s swing pressed down on me, I spun around abruptly.

I didn’t swing my blade; instead, I slammed my hand heavily onto his shoulder. “Brother, let’s talk.”

He froze mid-motion. “Can you let me go slaughter that cheating couple first?”

I gripped the handle of my cleaver, gritting my teeth. “Then I’ll come back and let you hit me with that hammer.” “?”