Qi Xia knew this might be his only chance.

As long as he saw that person, he would at least get an answer.

With this thought, he hastily moved his feet and ran toward where the engine sound came from. Before long, that old taxi came speeding over and stopped steadily before him.

“Passenger, where to?” Xu Liunian said, rolling down the window.

“Escape,” Qi Xia answered.

“I can’t do that,” Xu Liunian said with a slight smile. “How about I take you for a ride?”

Without saying another word, Qi Xia opened the door and sat in the passenger seat. At this moment, he felt pain throughout his entire body, especially in his ribs and chest.

Xu Liunian skillfully shifted gears and with one press of the gas pedal, fled with Qi Xia.

Qi Xia gasped for breath heavily, sweat continuously dripping from his chin. His heartbeat could be heard throughout the entire car.

“How wretched,” Xu Liunian said with a laugh. “The famous Qi Xia nearly died in a simple jogging game—isn’t this a project even elementary school students could do?”

Qi Xia didn’t respond. He just stared blankly out the window. Estimating that “Pegasus Moment” had been going on for about an hour, the various “Participants” on the road were clearly running out of stamina.

For them, this game was extremely desperate.

Because few people would know when these omnipresent black lines would stop their pursuit. They would mistakenly think this was a game of “fight to the death.” Under such enormous psychological pressure, people would tire more easily than usual.

If you told someone that running for two hours would let them survive, some people would definitely make it. But if you told them the black lines were relentless until death, many would give up halfway through.

Qi Xia witnessed with his own eyes several participants having their skulls pierced by black lines. The instant their skulls were pierced, the black lines turned downward and split the inevitably dead corpses in half.

Xu Liunian pressed the clutch and lightly tapped the brakes, turning at the intersection ahead to dodge a black line. Then she turned to Qi Xia and said, “You know? If a sharp weapon pierces through the center of the brow, a person dies instantly without feeling pain.”

Qi Xia continued looking out the window without speaking.

“So in movies and TV shows, those people who point guns at their temples or put them in their mouths to commit suicide by bullet are all doing it wrong,” Xu Liunian said. “The correct method should be to press the gun against the center of your brow. Otherwise, there will be unimaginable pain at the moment of death. But maybe the directors think that doesn’t look good enough?”

Xu Liunian spoke as if Qi Xia didn’t exist, slightly turning the steering wheel while looking ahead with a smile, chatting away as if talking to a friend.

“So ‘Pegasus Moment’ is relatively humane. These black lines will prioritize painlessly killing people, then cutting open their corpses afterward. That’s fairly reasonable, right?”

Qi Xia slowly furrowed his brows. He felt Xu Liunian’s logic was becoming increasingly strange.

“So… this passenger, do you have troubles on your mind?” Xu Liunian asked again.

After hearing this, Qi Xia slowly leaned back in his seat and asked in a slightly hoarse voice, “Xu Liunian, what is your ultimate goal?”

“Me?” Xu Liunian laughed lightly after hearing this. “You really are beyond my expectations—to actually approach from my ‘ultimate goal’?”

“I can’t think of any other reason besides this,” Qi Xia replied. “On the surface, you’re Chu Tianqiu’s person, yet you’re helping me ‘Echo.’ You’re not only disrupting Chu Tianqiu’s plans but also disrupting mine, so you neither want someone to ‘become a god’ nor want someone to ‘escape.'”

“You can’t entirely put it that way.”

Xu Liunian drove the car to the center of the road. Just then, a “Native” was crossing the street. She pretentiously stopped the car right there, quietly waiting for that person to pass.

“To me, who ‘becomes a god’ or who ‘escapes’ doesn’t matter, but I must destroy this place.” Seeing the Native walking at an unbearably slow pace, Xu Liunian reached out and lightly pressed the horn.

“Destroy this place…” Qi Xia felt he had heard this “ultimate goal” somewhere before.

Someone had once said to him, “Qi Xia, let’s destroy this place together.”

Was it Lin Qin…?

“This place has already spiraled out of control,” Xu Liunian said, starting the car again. “Even the builder of this place couldn’t imagine it would end up like this. Now gods are hard to control, people are hard to keep alive—it’s completely a second hell in this world.”

Qi Xia felt the woman before him knew many things. She even knew about the “origin” of this place.

“What do you mean by ‘second hell’?” Qi Xia asked.

“I come from hell,” Xu Liunian said with a smile.

“What…” That brief sentence directly stunned Qi Xia.

“But unlike what you’re imagining, I don’t have great abilities. After all, even I’m trapped here,” Xu Liunian shook her head, her expression somewhere between madness and sadness. “I’ve always known that it’s impossible for anyone to come in here to save me. We can’t get out, people outside can’t get in. The ‘Land of the End’ is a blood-stained besieged city. To end all this, the only option is to destroy this place.”

Many people had told Qi Xia before that “we can’t get out,” but Qi Xia had never believed it.

But somehow, when these words came from Xu Liunian’s mouth, they were inexplicably convincing.

“So how exactly do you plan to destroy this place?” Qi Xia asked.

“I can’t do it on my own at all,” Xu Liunian said. “If necessary, I’ll provide as much help as possible to the strong people here. As long as someone can kill ‘that person,’ this place will lose its meaning to exist.”

“Strong people?” Qi Xia furrowed his brows, thinking about Xu Liunian’s behavior all along, then asked, “Like me and Chu Tianqiu, for instance?”

“No.” Xu Liunian shook her head. “Though Chu Tianqiu is clever enough, he’s not my first choice.”

Qi Xia felt there was more to Xu Liunian’s words, so he asked, “Then who are these ‘strong people’ you’re referring to…”

“You and Wen Qiaoyun.”

The moment the three words “Wen Qiaoyun” came out, Qi Xia was clearly stunned.

“Me and… Wen Qiaoyun?”

Qi Xia looked at Xu Liunian with furrowed brows, feeling this was somewhat strange. Could it be that in Xu Liunian’s such extensive memory, she believed that woman named Wen Qiaoyun was even stronger than Chu Tianqiu?

At this moment, a Participant saw the car driving on the street. His eyes instantly widened, then he ran to the middle of the road and waved his hands.

He seemed to see a floating log in a torrential current. As long as he could grab onto this log, he would survive in this pitch-black torrent.

But Xu Liunian acted as if she saw nothing, accelerating at full power and directly ramming into him.

The man’s legs instantly fractured. His whole body fell onto the hood, injuring his internal organs, then subsequently spat out a large mouthful of fresh blood that stained the entire windshield.

Xu Liunian still didn’t stop the car. After knocking the person to the ground, she ran him over.

“Qi Xia…” Xu Liunian called out softly. “Did you see? ‘Natives’ cannot die, but ‘Participants’ are not worth mourning over in death.”