Chapter 9

Chapter 9

I opened the car window again. This time, wind blew in, and the fragrance scattered in an instant.

Zhang Qing stammered, “I-I don’t know what came over me just now. All of a sudden, I felt like none of you were good people, like you were all trying to hurt me. I just wanted to jump out of the car and run…”

Jiang Shuang drew her knees up and hugged herself tightly.

She had felt the same thing as Zhang Qing. The only difference was that over the past three months, she had already experienced it countless times.

“It’s all right, Jiang Shuang. Don’t be scared.”

When I spoke, Jiang Shuang lifted her head and met my eyes in the rearview mirror. She pressed her lips together and nodded.

Then I turned to Fan Qian and warned him coldly, “You’d better keep your hands to yourself.”

“I don’t care what your master sent you here to do. Right now, you’re sitting in my car. If this trip doesn’t go smoothly and I don’t catch your master, I’ll take your life as compensation. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and try me.”

Fan Qian’s gaze darted around before finally landing on the Soul-Whip in my hand. Then he slowly looked away again. “I-I understand. I won’t dare.”

We drove until a little after four in the afternoon. By then, we weren’t far from our destination.

But because everyone had drunk too much water earlier, the people in the car really couldn’t hold it anymore.

So I found the nearest service area and pulled over.

The service area wasn’t big. It only had a small convenience store and a public restroom.

At that hour, the sun was still blazing overhead, and the surroundings were quiet.

A few truck drivers who had stopped to rest were lying in the shade, asleep.

Jiang Shuang also went to use the restroom. I told her that if anything happened, she should scream, and I’d be right outside.

Just then, the convenience store owner came out. She was a middle-aged woman with her hair braided and coiled up.

There was a mole at the corner of her mouth. She waved at me and said, “Driver, want a boxed meal? We’ve got boxed meals in the store, freshly made.”

I waved her off. “No thanks. We’ve already eaten.”

I walked around to the back of the car to check whether the ropes securing the load were tight enough.

At that moment, one of the drivers cooling off nearby asked casually, “Where are you headed? Don’t see many big trucks on this road.”

“Xiaogu Village. Delivering some stuff,” I replied.

“Why go there?”

The driver frowned as soon as he heard the village name. “If you’re going there, you’d better watch out for them stiffing you on the job. That place is famous around here as a village of lazy bums.”

“The whole village doesn’t farm, and they don’t go out to work either. I heard they used to be rich once, and now they’re still sitting around waiting for money to fall from the sky. Most of the time, they just get by by marrying their daughters out and collecting bride prices.”

“How did a village like that get rich in the first place?”

“Who knows?”

The driver waved a hand. “That village is remote, and they don’t really deal with outsiders. People say they used to be involved in all kinds of shady business.”