“Xu… Liunian.” Qi Xia nodded slightly. “Very poetic.”

“Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Xu Liunian smiled faintly, still keeping her eyes forward while driving. “I thought this name would make me a big star, but in the end, I became a taxi driver. Haha.”

Qi Xia weakly chuckled along with her a few times, but in the next second, his expression turned cold.

“Xu Liunian, what kind of joke are you playing with me?”

“What’s wrong?”

Qi Xia extended his bloodless hand and pointed at the taxi professional qualification certificate in front of him.

“The photo on here… is indeed you.”

“Yes, this is my car, so it has my professional qualification certificate hanging on it. Is there a problem?” Xu Liunian showed a puzzled expression.

“Don’t play dumb with me…” Qi Xia suddenly coughed several times, then took a deep breath and said, “Your professional qualification certificate is hanging here, which means this car truly belongs to you… so who are you? Why is there a car that belongs to you in this city?”

“I don’t understand.” Xu Liunian shook her head. “Customer, do you always chat with people like this?”

“How could a ‘participant’ possibly be brought here with a car?!” Qi Xia felt like his worldview was about to shatter.

Although talking about a “worldview” in this bizarre place seemed somewhat laughable, the existence of the woman before him truly exceeded Qi Xia’s range of understanding.

He had thought that those “native residents” who were like walking corpses were all former “participants”—they had stayed here too long, so they had gone mad and lost themselves.

But there was actually someone like Xu Liunian…

Her behavior was strange, but her thinking was clear.

She had her own property in this city.

“I really don’t understand.” Xu Liunian shook her head. “Customer, if you’re deliberately looking for trouble, you’d better get out of the car now.”

Qi Xia forcefully shook his head, trying to keep himself as alert as possible, and also hoping to use this method to ensure that what he was seeing wasn’t a hallucination.

“Xu Liunian…” he called out.

“What now?” The woman before him no longer had her previous politeness, her tone filled with impatience.

“Driving a taxi, how many customers can you pick up in a day?” Qi Xia changed the topic and started chatting about everyday matters.

“I…” After hearing this question, Xu Liunian was clearly stunned, as if she had never thought about this question before. She pondered for a long time before speaking. “You seem to be my first customer today…”

“Then how many customers can you pick up in a week?” Qi Xia asked again.

Xu Liunian felt that there was a dark area in her mind that had been hidden for a long time, which was slowly being torn open by this man’s questions one by one.

Before meeting this man, she felt everything about herself was fine.

But after meeting this man and hearing just a few questions, the painful memories in her mind poured out like an overturning sea.

“I seem to… not have picked up any customers for a week…” Her expression began to become dazed, her eyeballs constantly moving, as if pondering something.

Qi Xia noticed that his questions were shaking the other party, so he continued to press: “What have you been eating and drinking this past week? Where do you go after you finish for the day?”

“I… I…” Xu Liunian’s expression gradually became panicked. She was on the verge of collapse. “I haven’t eaten anything for a long time… When there are no customers, I just keep parked by the roadside…”

“You’ve been parked by the roadside… for how long?” Although Qi Xia’s tone was calm, his hair was standing on end, afraid of hearing some bizarre answer.

A loud screeching sound erupted as Xu Liunian slammed on the brakes, stopping the car hard in the middle of the road.

Her lips trembling, she looked ahead, and her gaze became somewhat different.

There was emotion in those eyes, completely unlike the walking corpses on the street.

“I’ve been parked by the roadside for two years!!!” She roared out in a broken voice, then burst into tears. “Oh my God… what’s happened to me?!”

“Two…” Qi Xia’s throat moved slightly as he swallowed. “You haven’t eaten, drunk, or slept, and you’ve been parked by the roadside for two years?”

She extended her hands to look at them, finally understanding.

“It’s this car… When I saw this car in the city, I was completely entranced, as if possessed…”

“What’s strange about this car?” Qi Xia asked.

“This is the tool I relied on to make a living in the real world! How could I possibly see this car here…” Xu Liunian suddenly turned around, finally noticing Qi Xia’s blood-stained clothes. “You’re injured?”

“It’s fine…” Qi Xia shook his head. “This injury doesn’t matter… Are you clearheaded now?”

Xu Liunian’s hands trembled as she examined Qi Xia’s injury, only now discovering that the wound’s surface had been crudely treated. The entire area of flesh had been burned by high temperature. Although the bleeding had stopped, the burn marks were very severe.

“You’re so seriously injured… If we don’t find medicine quickly…” She choked up mid-sentence. “I almost forgot, there’s no way there could be medicine here…”

“Yes, this place fundamentally lacks the conditions for us to survive.” Qi Xia looked into the distance with disappointment. “Xu Liunian, I don’t have much longer. Can you help me with one last thing?”

“You… you tell me.”

“Keep driving forward.” Qi Xia said. “I want to escape from here. I want to see the edge of this city.”

Xu Liunian looked at Qi Xia somewhat sadly, knowing that his ability to remain conscious at this point was basically a miracle.

“Alright, I’ll take you to the city’s edge. You have to hold on.”

She shifted into gear again and shakily restarted the car.

Qi Xia rested his head against the car window, watching the scenery gradually receding outside.

He coughed lightly twice, feeling something in his throat pressing on his windpipe, making breathing extremely difficult.

As his life was about to enter the countdown, what Qi Xia saw wasn’t a revolving lantern, but those dilapidated, rapidly receding high-rises.

He remembered that day when he also got into a taxi and resolutely rushed to another city.

He had thought that when he returned to his hometown again, he and Yu Nian’an could live a good life.

But he never expected…

On the deserted street, Xu Liunian drove the car very fast. Qi Xia bit his tongue hard to keep his consciousness alert.

Before long, his mouth was filled with blood, and then he opened the car window and spat out a large mouthful of bloody water.

“Are… are you alright?” Xu Liunian asked anxiously.

“I’m fine.” Qi Xia wiped his mouth and said softly, “I feel very good right now. I don’t need to worry about ‘staying alive.’ I haven’t felt this relaxed in all these days.”

The two sped forward in silence. The car drove for nearly another half hour.

“Hey… are you still alive?” Xu Liunian slowed down the car, extending her right hand to constantly shake Qi Xia. “We’ve reached the city’s edge. How are you going to escape?”

Qi Xia used all his strength to turn his head and open his eyes, struggling to look ahead. A few seconds later, his pupils gradually dilated.

Before them was a highway toll station. The sign above was already covered in rust, the text indistinguishable.

Following the highway toll station’s gaze forward, wide roads stretched out ahead.

The roads extended in all directions, endlessly.

Very, very far away, other high-rises could be faintly seen.

“So this place has no edge at all…” Qi Xia’s lips moved slightly, once again crushed by the scene before him.

Man-Goat’s previous words slowly echoed in Qi Xia’s ears: “We are far more magnificent than ‘religion.’ We have a world!”

Yes, if this place wasn’t a city at all, but rather a world, how could one escape?

“Where do we go next?”

Xu Liunian turned to look at Qi Xia, only to find him lying lifelessly in his seat.

His gaze carried a trace of confusion, a trace of resentment, a trace of unwillingness—even in death, his eyes wouldn’t close.