Please DO NOT copy, repost, or share the translation. Click the translator’s name to check their other works. Enjoy this translation? Give the novel a decent rating on Novelupdates. Thank you!

    Xiu Ma sat in the driver’s seat, turning the key, unaware that the car was already running. The accelerator was surprisingly responsive, and driving it felt easier than it looked.

    “You don’t even remember to pull out the spare key for your own car,” he muttered, cursing the boss before slipping the key he’d been given into his pocket.

    As he drove to the street corner, a faint sense of unease crept over him. He pulled out the key again and pressed the unlock button a few times. At the entrance to a bathhouse ten meters away, another car’s headlights flashed briefly. Unfortunately, Xiu Ma was too focused on the key in his hand to notice, so from his perspective, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

    Nothing out of the ordinary, perfectly normal, business as usual.

    Except for the car’s interior, which felt slightly different from usual. The smell of cigarette oil was stronger, but such a minor difference wasn’t enough to catch his attention.

    Maybe he switched from Esse Burst to Golden Leaf, Xiu Ma thought. Every truck driver eventually treads the greasy path, just like every handsome Northeastern lad ends up becoming a burly, rough-around-the-edges man. At this thought, he glanced up at the rearview mirror.

    Good. Still handsome.

    Maintaining a rare moment of optimistic self-admiration, Xiu Ma spotted the unlucky boss emerging from the bathhouse’s main entrance. He was shuffling in slippers, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips, hesitating briefly at the door before stepping inside.

    For the next half-minute, the boss sat silently in the passenger seat. Only when the cigarette in his hand had burned down to a stub did he turn his head to stare at the young man.

    “So, what’s your take on my car?”

    “Take?” Xiu Ma said, one hand resting on the steering wheel. “It’s got some power.”

    “Anything else?” Boss Yu clearly wasn’t satisfied with that.

    Xiu Ma pondered. He wasn’t exactly skilled at giving compliments.

    “Doesn’t this car need some airing out?” he said, switching to nitpicking instead. “The cigarette oil smell is pretty strong.”

    Yu Tianbai didn’t get upset at the criticism. He slowly raised his hand to the window and flicked the cigarette butt out.

    “None of what you said is about my car.”

    Xiu Ma looked utterly baffled.

    “Do you know why?” Yu Tianbai asked him.

    “How am I supposed to know your twisted logic?” Xiu Ma shot back.

    Yu Tianbai watched him in silence for a long moment before finally speaking. “Because you’re not driving my car at all.”

    Xiu Ma wasn’t usually afraid of making mistakes—unless they were undeniably his fault. He knew his expression must look foolish right now, so he turned to glance at the backseat.

    Driver’s seat, passenger seat, steering wheel—it was identical to Yu Tianbai’s car. Who could tell the difference?

    “What good would it have done to warn you?” Yu Tianbai said calmly, his expression unchanged. “Was I supposed to run out butt-naked and yell at you not to drive the wrong car?”

    His gaze swept toward the backseat, and suddenly froze.

    “That smell—it’s not cigarette oil.”

    Muttering to himself, he leaned forward, bracing himself against the back of Xiu Ma’s seat to peer downward.

    “It’s gun oil.”

    Xiu Ma’s breath caught in his throat. He turned with Yu Tianbai to look at the backseat, which seemed impossibly deep, unreachable, covered in a dark, red-patterned fabric.

    “Whose car is this?” Xiu Ma asked instinctively.

    “I’d say you’re the most likely person here to know,” Yu Tianbai said, still in the mood to banter. “And yet, you don’t.”

    His eyes scanned the car’s interior thoroughly before landing back on Xiu Ma’s face.

    “Did you see anyone strange inside earlier?”

    Strange people? Everyone around here was pretty strange.

    “There was one—no, two,” Xiu Ma said, rubbing the tip of his nose. “The ones who tried to hijack our cars earlier.”

    As he spoke, Yu Tianbai’s expression remained unchanged, but his eyes shifted to the window. Outside, a car sped past with a roar.

    Silver-gray body, sliding side door, small displacement, an enticing market price of no more than sixty thousand yuan. Yes, that was the other Wuling Hongguang on this street—Yu Tianbai’s car.

    Watching his own car zoom by, Yu Tianbai cursed with perfect enunciation, “Fuck your mother!”

    Xiu Ma knew the curse wasn’t aimed at him, but it sure felt like it.

    “Move to the passenger seat,” Yu Tianbai said, his voice quickening.

    “Ever driven a Ferrari?” Xiu Ma asked, staying put.

    Yu Tianbai glared at him, his face screaming, What’s that supposed to mean? Xiu Ma didn’t turn to look. He just gave him three words:

    “Hold on tight.”

    The next second, their car shot forward like a firecracker that had just gone off, tearing down the one-way road.

    Meanwhile, in Yu Tianbai’s actual car, Tu Laoqi was clapping his hands in glee.

    “No wonder it’s you, Uncle! You got this car started in no time flat. If it was a train, you’d probably have that running too!”

    Old Fifth suppressed a grin, waving his hand dismissively.

    “No big deal. Just professional expertise.”

    Laoqi’s face lit up with surprise. “Uncle, you really studied transportation?”

    Squeezing past the one-way road at the bathhouse entrance, the open road ahead stretched wide. Old Fifth gave his nephew a meaningful look, then glanced at him again after a couple of seconds.

    “Didn’t study it formally. I’ve just dabbled in cars.”

    “Dabbled in cars? That’s still impressive!” The car jolted violently, and Laoqi’s voice pitched up and down. “I’ll have to try it sometime.”

    “Don’t you dare follow that path,” his uncle said, his expression turning stern. “You’re just like your dad, always wanting to dabble in everything.”

    Laoqi grinned mischievously, but his restlessness didn’t last long before he had another question. “But, speaking of which, we were after those guys. Why’d we end up taking their car?”

    “You don’t get it,” Old Fifth said with confidence. “As long as you’ve got the goods, you’ve got leverage. There’s bound to be something valuable in this car. If we want to pressure them, we’ve got plenty of ways to do it.”

    The car kept moving forward. Laoqi didn’t fully understand but nodded enthusiastically. Amid the hum of the engine, he kept praising his uncle, who had even popped the hood to hotwire the car.

    Old Fifth basked in the mix of genuine praise and exaggerated flattery, settling on a neutral expression as he sat up straight and kept driving. When you’re in a good mood, you tend to want to talk more, and the Tu family was no exception. But just as Old Fifth was searching for words, a car suddenly cut in from the left side of the road.

    “What the fuck—don’t you know how to drive?!”

    He whipped his head to the left in a fury and locked eyes with the very target he was chasing.

    Yu Tianbai’s arm was propped casually on the window, in a relaxed pose that would’ve gotten him pulled over by traffic police in an instant. Maintaining a speed of 120 kilometers per hour, he shouted something at their car.

    But the wind was too strong, and whatever his target said was drowned out by the buzzing engine, leaving only a wide, carefree grin.

    Old Fifth kept his eyes on the man, his hand swinging back to slap his nephew repeatedly.

    “Put your seatbelt on,” he said, then turned to look at his nephew again. “Put your seatbelt on!”

    On the auxiliary road leading to the Jingha Expressway, the two cars raced side by side for barely ten seconds before the one on the right surged forward.

    “Shit,” Xiu Ma cursed, instinctively swerving for a split second. Then he glanced at Yu Tianbai. “You worried about crashing your car?”

    Yu Tianbai didn’t look at him. “Crash it all you want. If you stop it, I’ll pay you extra.”

    Xiu Ma burst out laughing, as if savoring the moment. He hooked his thumb under the shoulder strap of his seatbelt, gave it a tug, and with a click, let go. The car shot forward. Yu Tianbai was slammed back into his seat by the inertia, momentarily dazed.

    Is this what driving a Ferrari feels like?

    The speed climbed, the distance closed, and their car tailed the uncle-and-nephew duo. Xiu Ma jerked the steering wheel, and the car’s front end collided with the other vehicle without hesitation. The impact was so forceful it was practically merciless.

    “You’re actually fucking crashing it?!” Yu Tianbai bolted upright.

    “Shut up and hold on,” Xiu Ma said without turning, pinning him back to the seat with a single sentence.

    He shifted gears, floored the accelerator, and the smoke-filled cabin roared again. Yu Tianbai was pressed tightly against the seatback, half-convinced the car under his butt was about to fall apart.

    But in reality, this unassuming old beast was remarkably capable. It clung to the car ahead, and within five hundred meters, it was back to running neck and neck. Xiu Ma swung the steering wheel left, and the car’s frame slammed into the other vehicle with a solid thud. This second hit was even harder than the first.

    The bumper was definitely gone. Yu Tianbai heard the sound of metal scraping and rolling outside the window, from the front of the car to the back. That kid Xiu Ma was in his element now, gritting his teeth and flashing a grin that only someone his age could pull off.

    He was gearing up for a third hit.

    They should be thankful this chase wasn’t happening on a highway. The storefronts and two-lane road slowed the cars down a bit, forcing them to weave around tricycles and vegetable stalls. The lead car zigzagged into a dirt path between cornfields.

    It wasn’t yet time for plowing, and the fields were filled with half-cut cornstalks. The silver van barreled through, like a war chariot charging across an ancient battlefield, kicking up a cloud of belligerent dust.

    “Don’t run!” Xiu Ma bellowed, wrenching the steering wheel to follow, plunging into the field.

    Dirt roads were nowhere near as smooth as asphalt. If you weren’t careful, you’d blow a tire before long—luckily, Xiu Ma had driven plenty of these roads while wandering around Changchun.

    The intersection ahead led to the main road. If he could cut them off there, the lead car would be trapped in the cornfield, unable to move or escape.

    Under the blazing sun, Xiu Ma grinned confidently. He floored the accelerator toward the lead car, only to see it wobble and slow down. Just fifty meters from his ideal cutoff point, it came to a gradual stop.

    Xiu Ma might drive like a maniac, but when faced with a real chance of disaster, he wasn’t about to ram into it head-on.

    In the sea of cornstalks, the trailing car slowed to a stop as well, its front end sliding right up to the lead car’s rear, inches from a third collision.

    Once the car was steady, Xiu Ma slammed the horn. In the suburban wilderness, the horn blared for a full minute.

    When the horn finally stopped, the man pounding it let out a furious roar:

    “Run! Why’d you stop running? Weren’t you pretty good at it just now?”

    The echo lingered, resonating endlessly. Yu Tianbai slowly opened his squinted left eye, his ears still ringing.

    Inside the lead car, separated by two layers of metal, Old Fifth’s hands were gripped tightly on the steering wheel. Sweat the size of mung beans dripped from his forehead. His nephew was curled up in the passenger seat, too scared to make a sound.

    “Uncle,” he finally managed after a long pause, “why’d you stop? The main road was right there.”

    “This car can’t take another hit,” Old Fifth said, not bothering to wipe his sweat. The beads rolled down his eyelids and landed on his knees. “If we wreck another one, we’re done for. One car’s in the Songhua River, another in the Heilongjiang. We might both end up jumping in after them.”

    Laoqi stammered a few incoherent words, then craned his neck to check the rearview mirror. Finally, he managed a sentence:

    “Forget jumping in the river, Uncle. Someone’s getting out of their car.”

    Old Fifth raised his eyes. In the rearview mirror, he saw a man step out from the passenger side of the trailing car. White long-sleeve shirt, dark athletic pants, and in the frigid early spring of the Northeast, a pair of slippers.

    The man stood in the north wind of the suburban cornfield, grinning at them.

    Note

    This content is protected.