Qi Xia walked out of the lottery center holding a prize ticket and went straight to the taxi.
"Eh? That was quick, young man."
The driver was standing outside the car smoking. The sea-blue car next to him looked out of place among the local mint-colored ones. Qi Xia didn't answer, just reached out, opened the car door, and got in.
"So... are we heading back now?" the driver asked.
"Mhm."
Qi Xia nodded, but to be on the safe side, this time he chose to sit in the back seat.
"Alright then."
The driver threw his cigarette butt on the ground, stamped it out, and got into the driver's seat.
"By the way, young man, aren't you going to have some fun in Jinan? I've got an old buddy here, if you're not in a hurry..."
"I'm in a hurry," Qi Xia said.
"Just drive."
"Oh..."
The driver nodded awkwardly. Qi Xia recalled that last time, he had wasted half a day in Jinan going to the bank to withdraw money, ultimately returning home with a large bag of cash. His original intention was to give Yu Nian'an a surprise, but this time, he had to skip all these formalities.
Right now, he had to rush home at the first possible moment and take Yu Nian'an to escape to an open area.
Thinking of this, Qi Xia took out his phone, wanting to call Yu Nian'an and have her pack a few clothes in advance, making it easier for the two of them to stay elsewhere for the next few days. He opened his contacts, found the first entry, the one marked as "A," and dialed the number directly.
Qi Xia had deliberately set this contact name for Yu Nian'an; only the letter 'A' would keep her number at the very top of his contact list. After waiting for more than ten seconds, there was still no answer on the other end.
"What's going on..."
Qi Xia was a bit puzzled. The Yu Nian'an he remembered would never be away from her phone, so why wasn't she answering now? Qi Xia hung up and dialed a few more times, but there was still no answer, which couldn't help but make him a little worried.
He glanced at the time on his phone; it was already four in the afternoon.
"Driver, if you can get back to Qingdao before seven-thirty, I'll give you an extra five hundred yuan for the fare," Qi Xia said, looking up at the driver.
"Really?"
The driver glanced at Qi Xia in the rearview mirror, then looked at his watch. Three and a half hours, three hundred and fifty kilometers. Although it was a bit tight, it wasn't a difficult task for an experienced driver.
As long as he maintained a speed of 120 kilometers per hour for the entire journey on the highway, he estimated he could make it just before seven-thirty. The opportunity to earn two thousand five hundred yuan in a single day was indeed rare. The driver was clearly a bit incredulous.
"I'm not lying," Qi Xia nodded.
"Be safe, and let's go."
The driver vaguely guessed what was going on. Who would normally choose to take a taxi to another city? Although taxis were expensive, their only advantage was that they didn't require real-name ticket purchases like trains or high-speed rail.
In other words, the man before him wanted to come to Jinan secretly, without anyone finding out. All things considered, he must have really won the lottery. Only prizes of one million yuan or more required collection at the provincial lottery center.
Perhaps the actual prize money was even more than a million. Thinking of this, the driver couldn't help but shake his head. He'd heard the odds of winning the lottery were lower than being struck by lightning.
It was true what they said, comparisons are odious. The man before him wasn't old, yet he had such good luck, while he himself had reached middle age and was still doing manual labor.
Sitting in the back, Qi Xia watched the driver's complex expression in the driver's seat out of the corner of his eye and couldn't help but let the corner of his mouth lift into a smirk.
That's right.
For any ordinary person, with a lottery winner sitting right behind them, who wouldn't let their mind wander?
"It's just a pity you'll always be a man with a thief's heart but not a thief's guts," Qi Xia thought to himself.
Qi Xia had "carefully selected" this particular taxi driver from a crowd of others. At the time, several taxi drivers were waiting for fares at the hotel entrance, and this burly driver had tried to cut in line, only to be cursed out by a wiry colleague until he was begging for forgiveness.
In that moment, Qi Xia saw right through him. They all wanted to make money, none of them were worse off than the others, yet he was so timid. A person like that would never be capable of "murder and robbery."
The driver's expression shifted uncertainly for a long while before he finally sighed and obediently focused on the road ahead. Qi Xia leaned back in his seat and dialed Yu Nian'an's number again, but there was still no answer. In such a quiet environment, Qi Xia's thoughts once again drifted back to what had happened in the "Land of Endings."
It had all felt too real, not like a dream at all. He reached out and touched his left shoulder. There was no trace of injury now, yet he remembered everything that had happened with perfect clarity.
He remembered Han Yimo, Qiao Jiajin, Tian Tian, Officer Li, Zhang Shan, and Old Lu all died there. He had clearly died as well, yet he had returned to his previous life. In that case, could it be that those people had also returned to their own lives...?
This was all probably just some bizarre, cruel prank. As the sky darkened, the lights on the highway guardrails slowly lit up. Although he had only spent three days in that godforsaken place, Qi Xia felt like it had been a very long time since he had seen lights at night.
The night lights, continuously and rapidly receding from his field of vision, gave him an inexplicable sense of peace. It seemed the driver really wanted that five hundred yuan; as soon as he got on the highway, he maintained the maximum speed limit the entire way.
He was just like everyone else in the world, always hustling for his daily bread. Qi Xia secretly resolved that even if they were late in the end, he would still give the five hundred yuan to the driver.
The driver tried to strike up a conversation with Qi Xia a few times, but gradually realized the young man wasn't very talkative. So, he could only turn on the car radio, trying to make the atmosphere less awkward.
"You are now listening to 89.7 Traffic Radio."
A slightly magnetic voice slowly drifted out. This seemed to be a channel that all taxi drivers liked to listen to.
"It is now seven o'clock, Beijing time. Let's take a look at some comments from our online platform."
After saying this, the host was clearly stunned. Nearly ten seconds passed without him saying another word. This could definitely be considered a live broadcast incident.
"Haha!" the driver said with schadenfreude.
"Young man, look at this nonsense. Are all the hosts these days buying their positions with money?"
Qi Xia furrowed his brows slightly, feeling that things weren't that simple. Live radio hosts usually have very strong mental fortitude. Even if most of the comments on the online platform are useless, they would pick out key information to report immediately.
So why had more than ten seconds passed without him speaking?
"The comments on our online platform here are a bit strange, haha..." the host said in an odd tone.
"The platform has continuously received dozens of messages, all saying that a bizarre crack has appeared in the 'sky' above the Qingdao-Yinchuan Expressway near the Qingdao exit. We will contact the traffic police as soon as possible to confirm whether this crack is from a sign or some other structure. We ask all passing vehicles to please be careful and avoid it."