Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Three days before it happened, Wang Cheng called me.

“Brother Long, I’m making a run to Huayu Port with Liu Xun and the others. Ask the kids what seafood they want. I’ll bring some back for them.”

“You’re going to Huayu Port with Liu Xun?”

I was a little surprised. Wang Cheng worked for Pengyou Company, which was a competitor of Liu Xun’s company.

When Liu Xun’s father was still alive, we had a decent relationship with them.

But after his father passed away, Liu Xun took over the company.

He was young and had graduated from a prestigious university, so he had never thought much of rough men like us who drove big rigs for a living. Naturally, he didn’t get along well with old hands like us.

“The company hasn’t had much work lately, and my mom’s sick. I want to make some extra money. I already talked to Brother Peng, and he agreed,” Wang Cheng explained over the phone.

“All right, then. Be careful on the road. When you go to Huayu Port, don’t take the old road by Huai Mountain. Spend the extra half day and get on the expressway instead,” I reminded him on purpose.

Wang Cheng sounded a little surprised. “Why? That old road’s open again. It’s faster that way.”

“That road needs a Chongsha every three years. It was closed for half a month last month because of the weather, and the timing lines up exactly with the three-year mark.”

“Big rigs don’t usually take that route either. If Liu Xun and his people are planning to use it, they definitely haven’t hired anyone to do the Chongsha. Just remember not to take it.”

Wang Cheng usually listened to me, and he readily agreed over the phone.

Chongsha is one of the rules in our line of work as truckers. Usually, when a new route opens, you hire an experienced old driver with a strong fate chart to make the first run.

Only after that run goes smoothly do the other drivers dare to take the route.

Back in the day, public security wasn’t great. Big rigs sat high, stood out, and often drove through the night. You could run into anything out there on the road.

I was born with vigorous blood and qi, and my fate chart was strong enough, so I often took Chongsha jobs.

Not only did Chongsha pay a commission, but the drivers who later used the route would also give you a red envelope. It earned more than a normal haul, but it also made people jealous and gave them plenty to gossip about.

Some of Liu Xun’s fair-weather friends were exactly like that. They were young, and these days people rarely talked openly about things like Chongsha anymore.

Every time they ran into me, those guys would be full of complaints and resentment. Add Liu Xun, with his nose in the air, to the mix, and I couldn’t even be bothered with them.

Under normal circumstances, one Chongsha was enough for a new route.

But the old road at the foot of Huai Mountain was famously wrong. The accident rate was too high, and people kept disappearing there.

When that road first opened, my master was the one who performed the Chongsha, and he was also the one who set the rule that it had to be done again every three years.

Truckers tried to avoid that road whenever possible.

Three years ago, I performed the last Chongsha for that road.

It was, without question, the strangest road I had ever driven in all my years of doing Chongsha. Something felt off everywhere along it.

Fortunately, at the time, the relevant authorities had invited in a Mount Tai Stone Gān Dāng and placed it at the foot of Huai Mountain to suppress evil. So during that Chongsha, nothing major happened to me.