The moon broke free from the clouds and lit the winding mountain road, tracing the muscular lines of the black car’s body—like a leopard in the jungle, running down its prey.

The tires screamed against the asphalt, sharp and relentless.

Zhou Jin knew that Seventh Uncle and his man still had their guns. Even if they managed to force the car to a stop, there was a strong likelihood of being shot in the process.

Police sirens wailed in the distance. Backup was close but couldn’t close the gap; if Seventh Uncle’s group was allowed to break through the next checkpoint, it would not only make the pursuit harder—there was no telling what else might happen in the meantime, or whether more lives would be lost.

Lost.

She hated those two words.

Zhou Jin narrowed her eyes. She could see that the red sedan up ahead still had a roof rack—a horizontal bar across the top, for luggage. That meant grip points.

She steadied her thoughts, rolled down the window at her side, and asked Jiang Hansheng: “Can you catch them?”

Jiang Hansheng seemed to have already understood what she was about to do. Cold sweat was forming in the palm of his hand on the steering wheel, yet when he spoke, he was remarkably calm.

“The next bend,” he said.

“Alright,” said Zhou Jin.

She worked her stiff, aching wrists for a moment, then leaned toward Jiang Hansheng and pressed a kiss to his cheek—fleeting, barely a brush of her lips.

“I’ll settle accounts with you when this is over.”

She said it, then thrust both arms out the window, gripped the roof of the car, and her slender body slipped upward like a fish darting through water.

She knelt on the roof of the car. Mountain wind howled and roared, whipping her hair into wild chaos, the force of it so fierce it nearly choked the breath from her lungs.

Zhou Jin’s heart was hammering. The bitterness, the fury, the injustice she had carried buried deep inside her for years—all of it seemed to surge up in this moment, igniting her blood until it seethed and raged through her entire body, crashing against the walls of her chest.

She could not be afraid. She could not retreat.

Taking advantage of a wide bend ahead, Jiang Hansheng pressed the accelerator and swung out to the far side, forcing the red sedan to hug the inner edge of the mountain road.

The engines roared. The two cars drove side by side, neither able to change lanes.

Seventh Uncle turned to look—and found himself meeting the eyes of the man in the driver’s seat. Those dark eyes stared back with an expression that gave nothing away, cold and mechanical as if all human feeling had been stripped from behind them.

Seventh Uncle recognized the face. He cursed under his breath—this man just won’t disappear—and with deep, seething hatred, raised his gun and aimed at Jiang Hansheng.

At that exact, critical instant—thud—something slammed down hard onto the roof of the car.

The vehicle gave a faint shudder. Seventh Uncle’s head snapped upward, startled entirely out of the thought of firing.

Before she jumped, Zhou Jin had felt a flutter of anxiety—she couldn’t be fully certain she would make it safely. But then the image of Seventh Uncle seizing the chance to shoot Jiang Hansheng flashed through her mind. She set her heart. And she leapt without hesitation.

She landed on the roof of the red sedan. The momentum of the speed nearly threw her straight off. Zhou Jin reacted instantly—both hands clamped onto the roof rack with a grip like iron, every muscle in her arms locked to their absolute limit.

The night wind carried a bone-deep chill, and as it screamed past her she felt as though she were submerged in a surging river, swept up in a fierce and invisible current——

She ground her teeth, summoned everything she had, steadied her center, then rolled over in a single movement and pressed in toward the window.

Seventh Uncle had barely registered what was happening before a dark shadow fell over him—and a foot drove into his chest with punishing force.

Seventh Uncle was thrown backward. His hand, gripping the already-chambered gun, jerked sideways. The gun discharged involuntarily, a muzzle flash crackling through the darkened interior like lightning.

Bang bang—two shots, both punching through the roof.

Zhou Jin came through the window and threw herself onto Seventh Uncle, seized his wrist, and wrenched it with ferocious force. The gun flew from his grip and disappeared beneath the car seat.

Seventh Uncle was no young man—but he was far from helpless. Pushed to the absolute edge, his eyes went red, and something savage came alive in him.

His right hand clenched, knuckles cracking, and his fist hammered into Zhou Jin’s stomach again and again, heavy as iron.

The breath locked in Zhou Jin’s throat. It felt as though her organs had all been shifted from their places. The sheer, overwhelming pain knocked the strength from her body.

Seventh Uncle seized her by the throat, twisted his body, and forced Zhou Jin’s head out through the window.

A crushing, total suffocation swept over her. With his hands on her throat, she could barely breathe, and her vision was blurring. She couldn’t see Seventh Uncle’s face—only the cold, brilliant moon, and the howling rush of the night wind filling her ears.

Zhou Jin’s pupils widened and began to lose focus. The ringing in her ears grew shrill.

“Zhou Jin!”

Jiang Hansheng’s right hand was trembling—barely perceptibly. No one could know what it had cost him to maintain his calm. In the fraction of a second it took him to think, he turned the steering wheel toward the mountain side.

At this speed, even the slightest deviation in angle could pose an enormous threat to the vehicle beside them.

The bodyguard at the wheel assumed Jiang Hansheng was attempting to force them off the road and instinctively jerked the wheel toward the inner edge of the mountain path.

The car lurched violently to the right. Its front end scraped along the inner guardrail, and sparks showered in all directions from the friction of metal against stone.

Under the force of the impact, Seventh Uncle’s center of gravity shifted. He pitched forward—and the grip of the hands around Zhou Jin’s throat slackened sharply.

Zhou Jin seized the opening. She drove her knee into his abdomen and pushed hard. Seventh Uncle’s back crashed against the door on the opposite side.

His hands released her. Cold air rushed into Zhou Jin’s throat in a desperate, gasping flood. She coughed violently, her whole body shaking beyond her control.

When Zhou Jin had finally steadied her breathing, she pressed a hand to her throat—raw with a metallic taste—and sat up, looking at Seventh Uncle through still-hazy eyes.

Seventh Uncle’s gaze dropped toward the floor. Hers followed.

The gun.

In the split second that followed, both of them lunged for it simultaneously. Seventh Uncle was faster—his hand closed on the gun first. But Zhou Jin’s eyes were quicker than her body—both her hands shot out and clamped onto his wrist and the barrel at once.

The black muzzle was right at Zhou Jin’s ear. A fraction of an inch more—just a fraction—and it would be pointed directly at her eye.

Both of them poured everything they had into the struggle, back and forth, neither yielding. Zhou Jin pushed against Seventh Uncle’s hand, forcing the barrel away from her degree by degree.

Seventh Uncle ground his teeth, unwilling to lose. He glared at her with vicious intensity, then abruptly released the pressure—and with a sudden, cunning shift, stole the gun back and shoved Zhou Jin down into the gap between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, pressing the muzzle to her head and firing again.

Zhou Jin wrenched the barrel aside at the last instant. As the bullet left the gun, it was already off course—and it punched straight through the skull of the bodyguard in the driver’s seat.

Blood sprayed across Zhou Jin’s face. The burning heat of it sent a violent shudder through her whole body, leaving her mind momentarily blank.

The sudden, shocking turn of events froze both Zhou Jin and Seventh Uncle where they were.

The steering wheel was no longer in anyone’s control. It began to spin wildly left and right. The car swayed, scraping the inner guardrail on the right, then swerving back to collide with Jiang Hansheng’s vehicle on the left.

By now both cars were approaching their absolute maximum speed. Beyond the bend they had just come through, another great curve lay ahead—directly in their path.

And beyond that curve—a cliff.

The situation was growing more desperate by the second. Jiang Hansheng didn’t hesitate—he gunned the engine, overtook the red sedan, and wrenched his steering wheel hard. The black car swept cleanly across and cut in front of the red sedan’s nose, blocking it.

The collision was brutal. The car door deformed on impact. The tires shrieked against the road surface, trailing white smoke.

Zhou Jin shoved Seventh Uncle aside and hauled herself up without hesitation, forcing her way into the driver’s seat and pushing the bodyguard’s body aside, gripping the wheel.

She was about to hit the brakes when Seventh Uncle shouted “Get out of the way!” and lunged for the steering wheel. The car lurched out of control and slammed toward the mountain wall on the inner side.

In the instant before the collision, Zhou Jin’s eyes were still fixed on Jiang Hansheng.

She thought—

Why is it that every time we see each other, we end up fighting?

The red sedan struck the mountain wall and came to a grinding halt. Every airbag deployed.

In the darkness, the hazard lights blinked steadily at every corner of the car. Behind them, police lights in red and blue pulsed closer and closer.

Jiang Hansheng watched the other car finally come to a stop. Before he had even allowed himself to fully exhale, he glanced to one side—and the cliff was already terrifyingly close.

He yanked up the handbrake at once. But the black car shot forward with an unstoppable momentum.

The front end slammed hard into the stone guardrail at the cliff’s edge. The car’s center of gravity pitched forward, and for a sickening moment the vehicle was on the verge of going over entirely.

The windshield exploded inward in an instant. Glass fragments scattered like a sudden downpour, pouring across Jiang Hansheng in a crashing torrent.

Under the force of the impact, he felt nothing—nothing except a vast, spreading numbness and a spinning dizziness that swallowed everything else.

His vision filled with chaos. Only the headlights flickered dimly, on and off.

Through the blur, he saw thick black smoke beginning to pour from beneath the hood. A moment later, a fierce, open flame leapt up.

Every physical reserve Jiang Hansheng had was spent. His throat moved beneath his pale skin.

He closed his eyes, slumped back in the driver’s seat, and said her name, barely above a whisper.

“Zhou Jin.”

Police sirens. Shouting voices. A chaotic, tangled din—all of it swallowed beneath the high, relentless ringing in his ears.

Zhou Jin felt as though she were sinking in deep water, her body drifting down and down, without end—until someone reached from behind and caught her, drew her into an embrace, warmth spreading through her like something she had forgotten…

The man pressed his lips to the side of her ear, and said, as though making a plea—

“Zhou Jin, I need you.”

Her heart contracted around a sharp, twisting ache. She caught fragments of sound through the haze—the shrill ringing in her ears receded like a withdrawing tide, and she floated upward toward the surface, the sounds growing clearer as she rose.

“Zhou Jin! Zhou Jin!”

“Officer Zhou!”

Zhou Jin came awake with a start, her heart lurching as if suddenly remembering how to beat. Her eyes snapped open, and above her was the night sky and a pale, cold moon.

Her head was still spinning. For a moment she couldn’t make sense of where she was—and then her colleagues were pulling her out of the car together, helping her to her feet.

“Jiang Hansheng…”

Her lips moved. The moment his name left her, full consciousness returned. She struggled upright from the ground and looked toward the cliff ahead.

She saw his car. She saw the fire. The burning, roaring fire.

Zhou Jin’s expression went completely blank. Without thinking, she started moving toward it—and had taken only two or three steps when the flames surged suddenly higher, and a sound like the earth splitting open shook the air.

Bang.

The car was swallowed by the inferno, blasted apart. Charred fragments, still trailing embers, scattered everywhere across the road.

Zhou Jin froze. It felt as though some immense terror had torn her soul to pieces. In that moment, every drop of blood in her body ran cold.

Something flooded the back of her throat. She couldn’t even form a sound.

She walked forward. Faster. Nearly running—and then she stopped.

She saw him. Through the wall of blazing fire, beneath the red curtain of flame rising into the sky, she saw two police officers supporting Jiang Hansheng on either side, helping him make his slow, laboring way toward her.

He raised his head. His eyes met hers. He pressed his lips together, thin and still, and said nothing.

The tears that had been gathering in her eyes broke at last, and the anguished sob she had held locked in her throat finally broke free.

Zhou Jin ran toward Jiang Hansheng. She threw her arms around him with everything she had, crying and shouting all at once: “You scared me to death!”

“……”

Zhou Jin’s hands gripped his clothes and refused to let go, clinging to him the way someone drowning clings to the only thing keeping them afloat. “Just now I thought you were still in the car—I almost wanted to die myself, Jiang Hansheng!”

“Zhou Jin…” Jiang Hansheng was at a complete loss, and tried gently to push her away.

Zhou Jin held him even more desperately, her face pressed into the hollow of his neck, sobbing so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. “You really scared me to death…”