WHF Ch 4 – “She’s married someone else.”

A self-fulfilling prophecy.

This was the first phrase that popped into Xiu Ma’s mind. When he used the term “robber” to rebut Yu Tianbai, he never imagined they would actually encounter armed robbers along the way.

In this day and age, how could someone get a gun?

Lao Wu pushed the gun barrel closer, knocking it hard against the window frame.

“I’m talking to you! Get out of the car, and don’t try anything funny. Only one car passes through here every hour. If a gun goes off, we’ll bury you, and no one will ever find you!”

He roared thunderously, and even from half a meter away, you could hear the wheezing in his throat. Yu Tianbai kept looking straight ahead, but quietly reached down to pull the handbrake.

But before the main parties could react, the “nephew” responded first: “Uncle, didn’t you say we wouldn’t take any lives?”

“Shut up!” Lao Wu immediately redirected his anger. “I told you to act like I was having a fit, but you acted like I was drunk! Listen to your excuse—’self-intoxicated’? Why don’t you just kill yourself!”

“That’s because your acting wasn’t convincing!” Lao Qi retreated a step but maintained his intensity. “You had to pretend to have seizures the whole way, and not a single car stopped!”

Silence fell over the snowy wilderness, broken only by the uncles’ visible breath in the cold air and the rumbling of the car engine.

This time, Lao Wu didn’t flare up. He stared at his nephew and slowly lowered his gun.

“Lao Qi, let me ask you something. Do you really want to marry Fang Hui?”

The nephew’s tense face relaxed for a moment, and then his eyes reddened. He couldn’t speak, just kept nodding.

During this moment of uncle-nephew reconciliation, Xiu Ma discreetly leaned back in his seat and tilted his face slightly toward the driver.

“Do we run?” he asked softly.

“We can’t escape,” Yu Tianbai replied, still staring straight ahead.

Can’t escape?

Yu Tianbai’s expression revealed nothing—not the composure of someone facing death, nor any sign of plotting something. He just stared ahead, motionless.

And he even seemed to be smiling.

Xiu Ma clicked his tongue and turned to look out the window. The uncle and nephew were still glaring at each other with red eyes. Outside, the north wind howled, and cold air seeped through the windows, making their eyes sting.

“Then don’t be afraid of this fight!” Lao Wu shouted with vigor. “Go back and marry her. Your uncle will come to your wedding feast.”

Lao Qi’s mouth twitched as he mumbled something. In the van, Xiu Ma sat up slightly, his left hand moving down into his outer coat pocket.

Just as Lao Wu was about to continue this touching uncle-nephew scene, a muffled noise came from the car.

“What are you doing?!” He immediately raised his gun again, pointing it directly at the driver. “Don’t even think about running.”

“I never intended to run,” Yu Tianbai slowly turned his face toward him. “Why don’t you just shoot now?”

Lao Wu tightened his grip on the gun handle, but his furrowed brows relaxed slightly. The driver was staring at him with a calm expression, red-rimmed eyes, tears silently sliding down his face.

At this moment, Xiu Ma clenched his jaw and leaned back. Under the car seat, invisible from outside, Yu Tianbai was firmly pressing down on the left hand that Xiu Ma had slipped into his pocket.

“What kind of show are you putting on?” Lao Wu asked suspiciously. “Why are you crying?”

Yu Tianbai quickly sniffed and wiped away his tears with the shoulder of his fleece hoodie, then looked at the stunned Lao Qi:

“You just said you want to go home to get married, right?”

Lao Qi didn’t know how to react, glanced at his uncle beside him, then nodded silently.

“I was once in your position,” Yu Tianbai tilted his head back, seemingly trying to hold back tears. He cleared his throat forcefully, “Back then, I was young like you, and fell in love with a woman who could never be mine.”

Outside the car window, Lao Wu slowly lowered his gun. Inside, Xiu Ma tried once more to free his hand from Yu Tianbai’s grip, unsuccessfully.

“That was my first time in the Northeast, and I immediately fell in love with the most beautiful girl in the village. I was determined to marry her, so when I returned to the Northeast, I brought along the bride price money, but I never expected—”

A gust of cold wind blew in, and Yu Tianbai blinked rapidly several times, choked with emotion as he said: “She’s married someone else.”

Silence fell over the snowy ground. Under the car seat, Xiu Ma’s left hand was still trapped by Yu Tianbai, who was now prying open his fingers one by one. Above this silent struggle, Yu Tianbai continued his emotional performance.

“For her sake, I never married. But before their child was even grown, the father had an accident, and the mother ran off with someone else. After that, I never returned to Beijing. I stayed here watching over the child as he grew up, treating him like my nephew.”

With that, the moving love story abruptly ended. Now it was Lao Qi’s turn to sniffle, while Lao Wu no longer aimed his gun at them. He sighed silently, his voice hoarse as he asked Yu Tianbai:

“And where is the child now?”

Another muffled sound came from the car as Yu Tianbai finally managed to snatch whatever was in Xiu Ma’s hand.

“He’s right here,” he answered calmly, slipping his hand into his own pocket and turning to give Xiu Ma a glance.

Xiu Ma breathed angrily, raising his head to meet Yu Tianbai’s gaze—loving yet somewhat smirking.

Huh?

The young master looked outside, then back inside, quickly processing what had just happened both inside and outside the car. He stammered:

“Ah… yes, right, Uncle.”

The last two words were practically forced through gritted teeth, which only deepened Yu Tianbai’s half-smile.

“So,” but in the next second, Yu Tianbai returned to his role as the devoted good man, “you can kill me, you can take my car, but I only ask that you spare my nephew’s life. I was planning to take him to Tibet, to the Potala Palace.”

Lao Qi dramatically sobbed and pulled his uncle’s arm. “Uncle, let’s let them go!”

Still holding the gun, Lao Wu stared intently at Yu Tianbai and asked, “Why are you going to Tibet?”

Yu Tianbai took a deep breath, wiped his nose, then placed his hand on Xiu Ma’s shoulder: “To pray to the gods, so he can be a happy child who is loved.”

The area fell completely silent. Sunlight broke through the clouds onto the snowy plain, as if they were all standing atop the Potala Palace, bathed in Tibet’s sacred light.

Except for Xiu Ma, who was dodging the affectionate hand of his dear “uncle.”

“You may go,” Lao Wu finally lowered his gun completely. He nodded toward the road ahead, where snow stretched endlessly.

Having wiped his hands clean on his “nephew,” the “uncle” silently nodded, casting grateful looks at the two men outside the car. Then he closed the window, locked the doors in one swift movement, and floored the accelerator, kicking up snow that made Lao Qi on the ground cough.

It was noon now, and the snowy ground wasn’t as cold. Lao Wu turned his head first, tucking the gun back into its holster, and trudged through the snow toward the road. Lao Qi was still blowing his nose when he noticed the other person was gone. He hurriedly secured his hat and ran after him.

“Uncle, uncle! Wait for me!” He ran for a while before catching up with Lao Wu. “Aren’t we going to stop cars here anymore?”

“We’ll change locations. This place clashes with the gods.”

The uncle strode ahead vigorously while the nephew hesitated.

“But, uncle, that driver didn’t look old enough to be the blond guy’s uncle, did he?”

At this question, the man ahead slowed his pace.

“And the blond guy’s mom must be quite different in age from the driver, right?” Lao Qi continued thoughtfully behind him. “It’s quite strange that he would fall in love with a woman so much older than him.”

Lao Wu stopped and pulled his fallen suspenders back onto his shoulders.

“What do you know,” he continued striding forward. “It’s called a May-December romance.”

In the quiet, peaceful snowy wilderness, Lao Qi still couldn’t figure it out.

“Wait, uncle, they were driving north on the highway.”

Seeing the man in front stop again, Lao Qi rubbed his nose bridge with his fingers and asked: “Is Tibet north of Jilin Province?”

Unable to see Lao Wu’s expression from behind, they could only see his shoulders begin to heave as he started breathing heavily. Then he suddenly slammed his gun to the ground, cursing loudly: “Son of a—”

On the northbound highway, in the van, the two men sat in silence.

The performance over, the clown offstage, all traces of the earlier scene had vanished. Yu Tianbai’s eyes were still slightly red, blinking unhurriedly under his baseball cap. Xiu Ma, however, seemed restless, his fingers tapping as he crossed his arms, brows tightly knit.

“Tell me,” the person on the left spoke with a relaxed tone, “why would you carry this thing when you’re out working?”

Yu Tianbai’s right hand emerged from his pocket, holding something that gleamed in the light—the butterfly knife he had just snatched from Xiu Ma. Silver handle, mirror-like finish, an extremely hard-to-find brand in China.

And very expensive.

The young master not only didn’t answer him but didn’t even turn his eyes. Yu Tianbai bit his lower lip, tugging at the corner of his mouth, and directly flicked open the blade. Crisp and pleasant—anyone who’s played with one knows that only properly priced knives make such a clean, sharp sound.

He stared at the light reflecting off the blade and chuckled softly: “Oh, yours has been sharpened too.”

This time Xiu Ma did turn his head, looking past the knife straight at Yu Tianbai’s face.

“That’s very expensive.”

“I know.” Yu Tianbai steered with one hand, casually tossing the open knife and catching it precisely by the safe handle, then closing the blade smoothly.

He watched with satisfaction as the disdain on the young master’s face transformed into undisguised surprise, and replied casually: “When I was young and foolish like you, I liked playing with these too.”

Then he held up the knife handle and asked Xiu Ma: “So were you planning to use this against someone with a gun?”

“That’s still better than what you did!” Xiu Ma shouted, inhaling sharply and flicking the hair from his forehead. “You could have driven away when they were arguing, but you had to put on that whole act.”

Yu Tianbai slowly lowered his arm, the smile fading from his face. He asked:

“You wanted me to step on the gas while they were still pointing guns at us?”

“What else?” Xiu Ma challenged with folded arms. “Wait until they actually attacked before running?”

For the third time on this highway, Yu Tianbai hit the brakes, but this time the atmosphere was very different. Both men remained tense, not turning to face each other.

Half a minute later, the person on the left asked softly: “You were actually afraid, weren’t you?”

Xiu Ma didn’t turn, just exhaled stiffly, blinking rapidly.

“Then let me tell you something that will make you even more afraid,” Yu Tianbai turned his head first, his bright eyes looking at him. “The gun those guys had was real—a Type 81, six hundred rounds per minute, effective range of four hundred meters, requiring almost no precision, and most importantly, this gun never jams no matter how many years it sits unused.”

He slowly moved closer to Xiu Ma’s face, continuing deliberately: “If you want to choose mutual destruction with me, then next time I can just hit the gas and run. Our corpses can flee together.”

This wasn’t the first time Xiu Ma had locked eyes with him, but beyond Yu Tianbai’s clear eyes, Xiu Ma could see his white-hot burning flame, and the genuine, absolute indifference in his gaze.

Seconds later, the white demon leaned back in his seat and calmly said: “Your phone is ringing.”

Only then did Xiu Ma remember how to breathe. He sniffed hard, lowered his gaze to look at the screen on the car window, then grabbed the phone and pressed it to his ear.

Meanwhile, Yu Tianbai shook open a cigarette pack, put one in his mouth, and pushed open the car door. He chose to wait outside mainly because he had seen the caller ID and didn’t want to listen to this family conversation right after an argument. He wanted to dislike this kid a little longer.

But he overlooked one thing: the window was still open. So when he stood by the roadside, he clearly heard the first sentence from the phone speaker in Xiu Ma’s hand:

“He finally kicked you out of the house?”

It was the rough voice of a middle-aged woman.

Now it was Yu Tianbai’s turn to lose his composure. He hunched his shoulders with the cigarette in his mouth, the lighter burning quietly in his hand. He kept replaying in his mind the caller ID he had just seen.

Mom.