Chapter 5

Chapter 5

On the way there, Dashun, Ren Song, and I took turns driving.

When Wang Cheng and the others set out, they were farther from Huai Mountain, and with all that equipment loaded in their vehicle, they had to drive slowly.

We were driving fast, and we were closer to Huai Mountain to begin with. By our estimate, we would reach the Huai Mountain section tonight.

Liu Xun contacted the police several more times, but there was still no trace of those two heavy trucks.

Huai Mountain Old Road cut straight through the mountains. Several stretches along the route had always had poor signal. It was not just that phones could not make calls there; the surveillance cameras often malfunctioned too.

In the car, Liu Xun barely spoke.

Ren Song, on the other hand, was a complete suck-up. One minute he was asking Liu Xun if he was hungry, and the next he was asking if he was thirsty.

Toward evening, we drove into Huai Mountain Service Area. Beyond this point was Huai Mountain Old Road.

Huai Mountain Service Area was built on a large scale, but it was extremely run-down, and very few cars passed through.

The walls of many of the buildings were unusually mottled, as if the bricks had been stripped from somewhere else and used to build them.

Some of the wall tiles still had traces of red paint on them. If you looked closely, you could make out that they had once been part of the character for “demolish.”

Back when I used to drive routes, I had heard the older drivers talk about a village at the foot of Huai Mountain called Zhenya Village.

Because a road had to be built, Zhenya Village had been forced to relocate. Many of the building materials used to put up this service area were salvaged from the demolition waste of Zhenya Village.

Dashun and I went together to the restroom behind the service area. It was called a restroom, but in truth, it had been built in an extremely crude fashion.

Only a few thin tiles covered the roof, and a swaying yellow lightbulb hung from the beam overhead.

As we walked in, an old man wearing a Blue Cloth Gown was coming out from inside. He brushed past us on his way out.

Dashun had been driving with me for a long time, but I had never told him much about Huai Mountain Old Road. Now that he was here, he found it strange too. “Brother Long, this service area isn’t exactly small. Why build it with scrap materials? It makes the whole place feel creepy.”

I went to the sink and twisted the faucet. It took a long while before a trickle of clear water came out. “Back then, everyone was poor. Anything that could be reused was reused.”

In truth, there was another explanation for why Huai Mountain Service Area had been built this way. Zhenya Village had another name: Zhenya Village, meaning Suppression Village.

Rumor had it that the village had been built at the foot of Huai Mountain to hold something down.

Later, after the village was demolished, the road construction kept running into problems. In the end, they had no choice but to use the old materials from the demolished village to build this service area, all for that same idea of “suppression.”

Dashun came over to wash his hands too. Someone had inconsiderately put out half a cigarette by the sink and tossed it onto the counter.

Dashun stared at that half cigarette, suddenly lost in thought. “Did Wang Cheng come here too? He’s been trying to quit smoking lately. Every time he smokes, he only smokes half.”

As he said that, the half cigarette, which had clearly been extinguished for who knew how long, suddenly gave off a tiny spark, as if someone had lit it again.

At the same time, inside the restroom that had been quiet until now, the door of a wooden stall creaked open.

An old man wearing a Blue Cloth Gown hobbled out.

His head was lowered, so I could not see his face.

But his clothes and the way he walked were exactly the same as the old man who had brushed past us earlier and walked out of the restroom!