Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I switched off the radio. The second half of the accident report was cut short before it could finish.

The man in the passenger seat seemed startled, his face deathly pale.

“How can it be this much of a coincidence? The one chasing us earlier was a red sports car too!”

In the back seat, the man’s wife and their son and daughter all shrank back a little. They looked at one another, uneasy.

“That car accident happened three years ago. The broadcast just now was looking back on old accident news.” I pulled out a cigarette and handed it to the man in the passenger seat.

Only then did the man let out a breath. He took the cigarette and said to me, “What’s your name, brother? My surname’s Mu. Just call me Old Mu. That’s my wife, Luo Ying.”

“My surname’s Long. Long Changdong.” I nodded to Luo Ying through the rearview mirror.

Luo Ying still had her daughter in her arms, with her son sitting beside them. She smiled at me as well.

“We really owe you this time, Brother Long.”

Old Mu sighed and thanked me. “We’d gone to pick up our daughter and were planning to head home together. Who would’ve thought we’d run into something like this?”

“The more I think about it, the creepier it feels. When we get home, we need to find a temple and pray properly,” Luo Ying added.

“Is your daughter in college?”

I glanced at the girl in Luo Ying’s arms. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. Judging by her age, she looked about twenty.

Luo Ying gently stroked her daughter’s head, her face full of affection and pity. “Yes, she’s in college.”

“But it’s not a holiday right now. Why is she going home?” I asked.

Luo Ying’s expression froze for an instant. Then, on the other side of her, her son suddenly started coughing.

It didn’t sound like an ordinary cough. It was unusually hoarse and dry, with a heavy rasp deep in his lungs.

Old Mu didn’t turn around to check on his son. Instead, he warned him, “Mu Xu, hold it in. Don’t make weird noises!”

The boy seemed frightened and immediately stopped coughing.

“Hey, there’s no need for that. If the kid isn’t feeling well, why make him hold it in?” I said to Old Mu.

Old Mu gave me an embarrassed smile.

All of a sudden, the roar of an engine came from far away, growing closer by the second.

Old Mu tensed at once. He looked out the window, and even his voice changed pitch. “It’s that red sports car again! It followed us!”

Blinding headlights shone from behind us as a red shadow came charging straight at us.

I gripped the steering wheel carefully. On the narrow mountain road, that roaring engine sounded like a wild beast closing in on us little by little.

Luo Ying stretched out her arms and pulled her terrified son and daughter into her embrace. In the front seat, Old Mu clutched his head tightly.

I looked through the rearview mirror. The sports car had already closed in on our rear bumper, its convertible top wide open.

The driver had both hands on the steering wheel, but more than half of his head was sticking up past the windshield. His pitch-black mouth gaped wide, as if he were howling.

Was he some kind of street racer?

I drew my brows together and held my lane.

This road had single lanes for going up and down the mountain. It was absolutely not a place for racing.

Piercing blasts of the horn echoed again and again through the empty mountain road. In the biting mountain wind, I could faintly hear frenzied shouting.

The driver of that sports car seemed truly insane. Several times, he risked his life trying to squeeze into the narrow gap between my vehicle and the mountainside.

I refused to give way, so he laid on the horn with everything he had.

The engine roared louder and louder, each blast like Death swinging a scythe over our heads.

By then, Old Mu was hunched in the passenger seat, seemingly so frightened he’d gone a little neurotic, muttering nonstop under his breath.

A bend was coming up ahead. I reassured the family of four, “Don’t worry.”

Using the curve, I turned the steering wheel left, and the massive vehicle swung hard across the road.

That red shadow was instantly forced back and had no choice but to slam on the brakes.

Sparks seemed to scrape across the pavement, leaving several long marks behind.

Once we made it through the bend, the red beast that had been chasing us went silent.