The speedometer’s red needle swept past one hundred and forty kilometers per hour in an instant.

Ruan Yu’s heart lurched into her throat, her breath tightening.

Outside the median barrier, the police car had matched the pace and pulled alongside Xu Huaisong, the officer rolling down his window to shout through it.

Ruan Yu opened her window and spotted Fang Zhen in the back seat, gun in hand.

Through the howling wind, his voice carried over: “Attorney Xu, the police have set up a roadblock at the interchange ahead! The suspect is very likely driving under the influence — we strongly advise against approaching by driving in the oncoming lane!”

Xu Huaisong kept accelerating, with no time to respond.

Ruan Yu glanced at him, then leaned out the window to answer on his behalf: “Officer Fang, the roadblock may not be fast enough! We just noticed there appears to be a female hostage in the suspect’s vehicle — he may be planning to use her along with a life jacket and rope to jump off the bridge and escape by sea!”

Fang Zhen immediately raised his radio: “Move the roadblock further up! There may be a boat waiting beneath the bridge — prepare maritime operations!”

The BMW up ahead was shrinking in the distance. The moment his words fell, Xu Huaisong pressed the accelerator again, and their speed climbed to one hundred and eighty — pushing toward two hundred.

Fang Zhen’s squad car was slower to accelerate and fell behind, his voice drifting back from a distance: “Be careful — know your limits!”

The engine began to roar, a sound that made the scalp prickle.

Xu Huaisong kept his eyes fixed on the road. As they drew closer and closer to Wei Jin, he spotted an orange freight truck appear directly ahead of the BMW.

It must have driven onto the bridge before the road closure went into effect.

The two vehicles were about to collide head-on. Wei Jin wrenched the wheel and swerved into another lane, his tires nearly leaving the road for a split second.

The freight truck had no such agility. The driver panicked — a jerk of the wheel, a stomp on the brakes — and the truck’s body veered, sliding sideways out of control.

Ruan Yu’s scream died, swallowed hard in her throat.

Xu Huaisong kept his gaze ahead and, without a word, eased the steering wheel in a calm, measured turn, slipping through the emergency lane as the runaway truck crossed their path.

After breaking through the median barrier, the truck continued sliding forward and slammed to a stop across the road with a thunderous boom, blocking every lane on that side.

Fang Zhen’s squad car beside them screeched to a halt.

Ruan Yu glanced back and saw the truck’s cab wedged against the guardrail — it hadn’t gone over into the sea. She let out a breath.

When she turned back, Wei Jin’s BMW was already much closer.

Xu Huaisong adjusted his angle, lining up with Wei Jin’s rear bumper, and was just about to clip it — when the BMW’s sunroof suddenly flew open and the female hostage was shoved halfway out.

At this speed, making contact with the car could easily send the hostage flying to her death.

Xu Huaisong had no choice but to abandon the move and simply stay locked onto Wei Jin’s tail.

Thirty seconds later, two police cars came speeding toward them from the opposite direction.

Wei Jin decelerated with precision. The hostage pitched forward from the momentum, was thrown clear of the sunroof, and flew straight toward one of the oncoming vehicles.

Ruan Yu squeezed her eyes shut on instinct — then heard a piercing screech of brakes.

One police car had stopped to save the hostage.

The other swung broadside to attempt a stop.

Seeing the situation, Xu Huaisong gradually slowed, preparing to cut off the rear.

But Wei Jin, as though he had lost his mind entirely, not only refused to stop — he actually steered straight into the bridge railing along the emergency lane, scraping along it like a fish slipping free, and escaped again.

Xu Huaisong’s brow furrowed deeply. He accelerated again. The squad car spun around on the spot and gave chase.

Ruan Yu’s throat was parched, and she turned to look to her left with tense eyes.

Noticing her gaze, Xu Huaisong kept his eyes fixed forward and said: “After scraping the bridge railing like that, his car won’t hold out much longer.”

She nodded and looked back at the BMW. Sure enough, something had gone wrong — its speed was dropping noticeably, and its heading was veering, unstable.

It looked as though things were settling into control.

Since the squad car was accelerating to catch up from behind, Xu Huaisong made no reckless attempt to ram Wei Jin’s rear bumper himself — he simply maintained a tight pursuit.

A minute later, the squad car overtook them, its turn signal flashing.

Ruan Yu glanced in the rearview mirror. “Are they moving in for a pincer?”

Xu Huaisong was just about to nod — when a flash of movement caught his eye. From the sunroof of the BMW ahead, a safety hammer was hurled out.

The claw-headed hammer came flying straight toward the windshield on Ruan Yu’s side.

For a fraction of a second, she was so startled she forgot to scream — eyes wide, mind blank.

Then her vision blurred. The hammer that should have smashed through the windshield suddenly changed course.

The car lurched at an angle and shot forward — bang — slamming into Wei Jin’s rear bumper.

The airbags deployed. Both vehicles came to a stop together in the collision.

In the white mist billowing all around them, Ruan Yu lifted her head. For one brief moment, the world went completely silent — as though she could hear nothing at all.

Then the silence was shattered by the wail of police sirens and Xu Huaisong’s voice.

He quickly unclipped his seatbelt and leaned toward her to check: “Are you hurt?”

Ruan Yu stared at him, dazed: “No…” A few seconds passed before something clicked, and she rushed to put her hand on his shoulder. “What about you — are you okay?”

Xu Huaisong shook his head, opened his door, stepped out, then walked around to her side and helped her out.

Ruan Yu’s legs buckled the moment she stood, and she only kept her footing because he caught her and held her against him. Then, in a delayed rush, she began to piece together what had just happened. “The hammer — just now…”

She stopped mid-sentence and stood frozen.

Wei Jin, clearly in a drug-fueled frenzy, had been cornered into flinging a claw hammer out the sunroof in a desperate attempt to force Xu Huaisong to stop.

At that speed, the hammer could easily have broken through the window and posed a direct threat to her life.

In that split second of crisis, Xu Huaisong had wrenched the steering wheel and redirected the car.

So where had the hammer actually landed?

Seeing him unharmed, Ruan Yu turned her head and looked back at his Cayenne.

Along the car’s A-pillar, there was a distinct, deep dent — almost certainly from where the hammer had grazed past.

But that spot was only inches away from the windshield directly in front of him. If the car had been moving even slightly slower, or if his angle had been even a fraction off, the hammer would have punched through the glass and struck him.

The hammer that had originally been aimed at her.

The moment she understood this, Ruan Yu felt the air leave her lungs, and tiny stars began to bloom at the edges of her vision.

Compared to the tension of the chase earlier, this retrospective terror was far more overwhelming — it crushed her, made her unable to breathe.

One step. She had come within one step of losing him.

Her entire body went limp and slowly began to slide down, as though every drop of strength had been wrung out of her, her throat burning as if lit from within.

Xu Huaisong held her steadily. “What is it — are you feeling unwell somewhere?”

Cold sweat cascaded down Ruan Yu’s back in a drenching wave. She clung to his waist with both arms and tilted her head up, tears streaming down her face in an instant: “Xu Huaisong, are you trying to get yourself killed…”

Xu Huaisong glanced at the dent on the Cayenne, then looked down at her and gently wiped her tears with the pad of his thumb, a quiet smile on his face: “Why would I? I calculated the position before I turned the wheel.”

Ruan Yu wiped her tears and hiccuped through her sobs, her voice urgent: “How could you possibly have calculated that?!”

He smiled helplessly. “I really did calculate it. If I hadn’t been absolutely certain it was safe, how would I have had the composure to go ahead and ram Wei Jin’s car to a stop?”

Ruan Yu paused at that. Put that way, he had a point.

She cried for a little while, then slowly dried her tears. She looked around to find police scattered in every direction — some making their way toward Wei Jin’s vehicle, others coming to ask whether they had been injured.

The BMW had suffered a mechanical failure, and only half of its airbags had deployed. Wei Jin was pulled from the car, apparently unconscious.

Ruan Yu herself was fine aside from her still-trembling legs. Xu Huaisong kept his arm around her as he answered the officers’ questions.

The scene around them was chaotic and noisy.

Ruan Yu leaned against Xu Huaisong, her color slowly returning in the afternoon sunlight of past three o’clock, though her mind was still hazy and drifting. She watched in a daze as two ambulances arrived — one loading Wei Jin onto a stretcher and taking him away, the other continuing further on to collect the hostage and the freight truck driver.

After a while, traffic officers and an insurance adjuster also arrived to handle the scene and assess the vehicles for damage.

Xu Huaisong hadn’t stopped for a single moment, yet he hadn’t let go of Ruan Yu for a single moment either. It wasn’t until the tow truck had taken the car away that he finally looked down at her and asked: “Feeling any better?”

Before Ruan Yu could answer, an unfamiliar police officer stepped forward and shook Xu Huaisong’s hand: “Comrade, we are deeply grateful for the contribution you made to our apprehension operation. We just discovered a yacht beneath the bridge that appears to belong to the suspect’s accomplices. If you hadn’t given chase when you did and cut off that route, the whole situation would have become far more complicated once it moved to the water.”

Xu Huaisong freed one hand to shake his and replied mildly: “Not at all.”

The officer glanced at Ruan Yu — who was clearly still in shock — and said apologetically: “Please, let us take you both back in a squad car first. We’ll have you checked over at a nearby hospital.”

The two of them went to the hospital for a full examination. By the time the results came back, they were confirmed unharmed. They also heard that Wei Jin had regained consciousness, but was temporarily unfit for interrogation due to a mild concussion and was under close police watch.

The flight to the United States had taken off hours ago. That trip was not going to happen.

Xu Huaisong called a car to take Ruan Yu home. The door closed behind them, and just as they were finally able to catch their breath from the ordeal, his phone rang.

It was Tao Rong calling. The moment the line connected, she asked anxiously: “Huaisong, Mom saw the news about the bridge! Was that you? Are you both alright?”

Xu Huaisong answered her question by question, and on the other end, Tao Rong seemed thoroughly frightened, repeating “that’s good, that’s good” over and over.

Before this call had even ended, Ruan Yu’s phone began to ring as well — also from home.

Both of them turned away and reported their safety in separate corners of the room. When they finally hung up, Ruan Yu asked with a puzzled look: “What’s going on — did the news cover this in detail?”

“I’m not sure.” Xu Huaisong glanced toward the kitchen. “Want something to eat?”

“Let’s just make some instant noodles. I’ll go.”

She was about to head to the kitchen when he stopped her: “Rest for a bit. I’ll handle it.”

So Ruan Yu settled onto the sofa and picked up her phone to check the news on Weibo.

A trending video popped up — Real-Life Hollywood on the Cross-Sea Bridge: Twenty Kilometers of High-Speed Pursuit — Salute to the Hero!

The official television news would naturally lean toward reporting on the police, so it was Weibo that would be hyping up moments like this.

Ruan Yu hit the like button for the hero first, then pressed play.

The video was security camera footage, showing portions of Xu Huaisong’s pursuit from that afternoon. In the background audio, a male voice provided detailed commentary on every single maneuver — right up until the final moment.

He said: “When the hammer was thrown unexpectedly, the Cayenne’s driver made a sharp turn to protect the passenger beside him from harm. That move was actually quite a gamble — that he managed to avoid it was pure luck…”

Ruan Yu’s hands stilled on the phone.

The voice continued: “That said, the driver’s reflexes were already remarkably sharp. After the sharp turn, in order to reduce the risk of the car spinning out, he then used the front vehicle’s bumper as a buffer to bring both cars to a stop…”

Ruan Yu sat motionless on the sofa and heard nothing more after that.

She lifted her head, eyes glistening with unshed tears, and gazed toward the kitchen — at the person calmly tearing open the seasoning packet for the instant noodles.

This man who had once told her nothing but lies had lied to her again.

Of course. In a situation like that, how could he possibly have known for certain he would be able to dodge it?

He hadn’t known.

He simply hadn’t known.

Author’s Note: He hadn’t known…