“Xu… Liunian.”
Qi Xia nodded slightly.
“Very poetic.”
“It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
Xu Liunian smiled faintly, still keeping her eyes on the road as she drove.
“I thought this name would make me a big star, but I ended up driving a taxi instead, haha.”
Qi Xia let out a few weak, forced chuckles along with her, but in the next second, his expression turned cold and grim.
“Xu Liunian, what kind of joke are you playing with me?”
“What’s wrong?”
Qi Xia raised a bloodless hand and pointed at the taxi operator’s certificate in front of him.
“The photo on this… it’s really you.”
“Yes, it’s my car, so of course it has my operator’s certificate hanging there. Is there a problem?”
Xu Liunian wore a puzzled expression.
“Don’t play dumb with me…”
Qi Xia coughed violently a few times, then took a deep breath and said, “Your certificate is hanging here, which means this car really belongs to you… Then who are you? Why is there a car in this city that belongs to you?”
“I don’t understand.”
Xu Liunian shook her head.
“Sir, is this how you usually talk to people?”
“How could a ‘participant’ possibly be brought here with a car?!”
Qi Xia felt like his entire view of the world was about to shatter. Although talking about one’s ‘worldview’ in this bizarre place was a bit ridiculous, the existence of the woman before him was truly beyond Qi Xia’s comprehension. He had assumed that the ‘natives’, who were like walking corpses, were all former ‘participants’.
They had been here for too long and had thus gone mad, losing themselves. But now, there was a person like Xu Liunian… Her behavior was strange, but her mind was very clear.
She had her own property in this city.
“I really don’t understand.”
Xu Liunian shook her head.
“Sir, if you’re intent on making trouble, you’d better get out of the car now.”
Qi Xia shook his head forcefully, trying his best to stay lucid, also hoping this method would ensure that what he was seeing was not an illusion.
“Xu Liunian…” he called out.
“What is it now?”
The woman before him no longer had her earlier politeness; her tone was filled with impatience.
“Driving a taxi, how many customers do you get in a day?”
Qi Xia changed the subject, switching to small talk.
“I…”
Hearing this question, Xu Liunian was clearly taken aback, as if she had never considered this problem before. She pondered for a long while before speaking.
“You seem to be my first customer today…”
“Then how many customers do you get in a week?”
Qi Xia asked again. Xu Liunian felt as though a dark, long-hidden area in her mind was slowly being torn open by the man’s questions. Before meeting this man, she felt that everything was fine.
But after meeting him, just by hearing a few questions, the painful memories in her mind poured out like an overturned ocean.
“I think… I haven’t had a customer in a week…”
Her expression became dazed, her eyes darting around as if she was trying to figure something out. Qi Xia noticed that his questions were unsettling her, so he pressed on.
“What have you eaten this week? What have you drunk? Where do you go after you’re done for the day?”
“I… I…”
Xu Liunian’s expression grew frantic, and she was on the verge of a breakdown.
“I haven’t eaten in a long time… When there are no customers, I just stay parked on the side of the road…”
“You were on the side of the road… how long were you parked there?”
Although Qi Xia’s tone was flat, the hair on his body stood on end, terrified of what kind of bizarre answer he might hear. A loud screeching sound rang out as Xu Liunian slammed on the brakes, stopping the car in the middle of the road. Her lips trembled as she stared ahead, a different look in her eyes.
There was emotion in them, completely different from the walking corpses on the street.
“I was parked on the side of the road for two years!!!” she shrieked, then burst into tears.
“Oh god… what’s happening to me?!”
“Two…”
Qi Xia’s throat moved slightly as he swallowed.
“You didn’t eat, drink, or sleep, and you were parked on the side of the road for two years?”
She held out her hands and looked at them, and only then did she understand.
“It’s this car… When I saw this car in the city, I felt like I was possessed…”
“Is there something strange about this car?”
Qi Xia asked.
“How could I have possibly seen this car here… I never even…”
Xu Liunian whipped her head around and only then noticed Qi Xia’s blood-soaked clothes.
“You’re injured?”
“It’s nothing…”
Qi Xia shook his head.
“This wound isn’t serious… Are you lucid now?”
With trembling hands, Xu Liunian checked Qi Xia’s injuries, only to find that the surface of the wound had been crudely treated. The flesh and blood had been seared by high heat. Although it had stopped the bleeding, the burn marks were severe.
“You’re so badly injured… If we don’t find medicine soon…”
She choked up.
“I almost forgot, there’s no medicine here at all…”
“Yes, this place simply doesn’t have the conditions for us to survive.”
Qi Xia looked into the distance with a sense of loss.
“Xu Liunian, I don’t have long to live. Can you do one last thing for me?”
“Y-you, tell me.”
“Keep driving forward,” Qi Xia said.
“I want to escape this place, I want to see the edge of this city.”
Xu Liunian looked at Qi Xia with a hint of sadness, knowing that it was basically a miracle he could remain conscious right now.
“Alright, I’ll take you to the edge of the city. You have to hold on.”
She put the car in gear again and, trembling, restarted it. Qi Xia rested his head against the car window, watching the scenery recede outside. He coughed lightly twice, feeling something pressing against his windpipe, making it extremely difficult to breathe.
As his life entered its final countdown, Qi Xia didn’t see his life flash before his eyes, but rather the dilapidated, rapidly retreating high-rise buildings. He remembered that day, when he had also gotten into a taxi and rushed to another city without a second thought.
He had thought that when he returned to his hometown, he and Yu Nian’an could live a good life. But he never imagined… On the empty streets, Xu Liunian drove the car at top speed.
Qi Xia bit his tongue hard to keep his consciousness from fading. Before long, his mouth was filled with fresh blood. He then opened the car window and spat out a large mouthful of it.
“A-are you alright?”
Xu Liunian asked anxiously.
“I’m fine.”
Qi Xia wiped his mouth and said softly, “I feel great right now. I don’t have to worry about ‘staying alive.’ I haven’t felt this relaxed in days.”
The two of them sped forward in silence. The car drove for nearly another half an hour.
“Hey… are you still alive?”
Xu Liunian slowed down the car and reached out her right hand to shake Qi Xia.
“We’ve reached the edge of the city. How are you going to escape?”
Qi Xia used all his strength to turn his head and open his eyes, trying hard to look ahead. A few seconds later, his pupils gradually dilated. Before them was a highway toll booth.
The sign above was so rusty that the words were illegible. Looking past the toll booth, wide highways stretched forward. The roads led in all directions, extending endlessly.
Far, far in the distance, other tall buildings were faintly visible.
“So there was never an edge here…”
Qi Xia’s lips moved slightly, once again crushed by the scene before him. The Goat-Head Man’s words slowly echoed in Qi Xia’s ears: “We are far more magnificent than any ‘religion.’ We have a World!”
Yes, if this was not a city at all, but a world, how could one possibly escape?
“Where are we going next?”
Xu Liunian turned to look at Qi Xia, only to find him lying lifelessly in his seat. His eyes held a trace of confusion, a trace of resentment, a trace of unwillingness. Even in death, his eyes remained open.
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