Qi Xia walked out of the lottery center holding a check and headed straight for the taxi.

“Oh? That was quick, young man.”

The driver was standing outside the car smoking. The sea-blue car beside him looked completely out of place compared to the local mint-colored vehicles.

Qi Xia didn’t respond. He reached out to pull open the car door and sat down.

“Should we… head back now?” the driver asked.

“Yes.” Qi Xia nodded, but to be safe, this time he chose to sit in the back of the car.

“Alright then.” The driver threw his cigarette butt on the ground and stamped it out, then got into the driver’s seat. “Say, young man, aren’t you planning to enjoy Jinan a bit? I have an old buddy here. If you’re not in a hurry…”

“I’m in a hurry.” Qi Xia said. “Drive.”

“Oh…” The driver nodded awkwardly.

Qi Xia recalled last time—he had delayed half a day in Jinan going to the bank to withdraw money, finally returning home with a large bag of cash.

His intention had been to surprise Yu Nian’an, but this time, he had to skip all these formalities.

Now he had to rush home as quickly as possible and take Yu Nian’an to escape to an open area.

Thinking of this, Qi Xia pulled out his phone, wanting to call Yu Nian’an and have her pack a few clothes in advance, making it convenient for the two of them to stay outside in the coming days.

He opened his contacts and found the first contact, the person noted as “A,” and directly dialed the number.

This note was something Qi Xia had specifically written for Yu Nian’an. Only the letter A could keep her phone number permanently at the top of his contact list.

After waiting over ten seconds, no one answered on the other end.

“What’s going on…” Qi Xia was somewhat puzzled. In his memory, Yu Nian’an never left her phone, so why wasn’t she answering now?

Qi Xia hung up and dialed several more times, but there was still no answer, which inevitably made him worry.

He looked at the time on his phone—it was already four in the afternoon.

“Driver, if we can get back to Qingdao before seven-thirty, I’ll give you an extra five hundred yuan.” Qi Xia looked up at the driver.

“Really?” The driver glanced at Qi Xia through the rearview mirror, then looked at his watch.

Three and a half hours, three hundred fifty kilometers.

Although it was somewhat challenging, it wasn’t difficult for an experienced driver. As long as he maintained a speed of 120 kilometers per hour on the highway the entire way, he could probably arrive just before seven-thirty.

The opportunity to earn 2,500 yuan in one day was indeed rare. The driver obviously found it hard to believe.

“I’m not lying to you.” Qi Xia nodded. “Drive safely.”

The driver vaguely guessed something. Who would normally choose to take a taxi to another city?

Although taxis were expensive, the only advantage was that unlike trains or bullet trains, they didn’t require real-name registration for tickets.

In other words, the man before him wanted to secretly come to Jinan without anyone knowing, so all things considered, he must have really won the lottery.

Only prizes over one million yuan required going to the provincial lottery center to claim them. Perhaps the actual prize money was even more than a million.

Thinking of this, the driver shook his head helplessly.

He’d heard that the probability of winning the lottery was even lower than being struck by lightning. People really were infuriating to compare. This young man before him had such good luck despite his youth, while he himself was already middle-aged and still doing physical labor.

Qi Xia sat in the back seat, using his peripheral vision to watch the driver’s complex expression in the driver’s seat, and couldn’t help but let the corner of his mouth curl up.

Indeed, for ordinary people, having someone who won the lottery sitting right behind them—who wouldn’t have wild thoughts?

“Too bad you’ll always be someone with wicked thoughts but no wicked courage.” Qi Xia thought to himself.

The taxi driver before him was someone Qi Xia had “carefully selected” from among many drivers. At the time, several taxi drivers were waiting for customers at the hotel entrance, and this rough-looking driver was being scolded by a lean colleague for cutting in line, begging for mercy repeatedly.

At that moment, Qi Xia saw through him.

Everyone wanted to make money, no one was better than anyone else, yet he was so timid.

Such a person could never “murder and rob.”

The driver’s expression remained uncertain for a long time, but in the end he just sighed and honestly kept his eyes on the road ahead while driving.

Qi Xia also leaned back in his seat and dialed Yu Nian’an’s number again, but still no one answered.

In such a quiet environment, Qi Xia recalled again what had happened in the “Land of End.”

It had all been too real, completely unlike a dream.

He reached out to touch his left shoulder. There was no trace of injury now, yet he clearly remembered everything that had happened.

He remembered that Han Yimo, Qiao Jiajin, Tiantian, Officer Li, Zhang Shan, and Old Lu had all died there. He himself had clearly died too, yet he’d returned to his previous life.

If that was the case, could those people have also returned to their own lives…?

All of this was probably just a bizarre prank.

As the sky darkened, the lights on the highway guardrails gradually lit up.

Although he’d only stayed in that hellish place for three days, Qi Xia felt like he hadn’t seen lights at night in a very long time.

The night lights continuously and rapidly moving backward in his field of vision gave him an inexplicable sense of peace.

It seemed the driver really wanted to earn those five hundred yuan. Once on the highway, he maintained the maximum speed limit the entire way.

He was like everyone else in the world, constantly rushing about for three meals a day.

Qi Xia resolved that even if they were late in the end, he would still give the driver the five hundred yuan.

The driver tried several times to make conversation with Qi Xia, but gradually realized this 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 came through. This seemed to be a channel all taxi drivers loved to listen to.

“It is now 7:00 PM Beijing time. Let’s take a look at listener comments from our online platform.”

After the host said this, he was obviously stunned. For nearly ten seconds he didn’t say another word, which could definitely be considered a broadcast accident.

“Haha!” The driver said gleefully. “Young man, you see this nonsense? Are all these hosts nowadays buying their positions with money?”

Qi Xia frowned slightly, feeling things weren’t that simple.

Live broadcast hosts all had very strong psychological fortitude. Even if most of the comments on the online platform were useless, they would immediately pick out key information and broadcast it. So why had over ten seconds passed without a word?

“The comments on our online platform are a bit strange…” The host said in an odd tone. “The platform has continuously received dozens of comments, all saying that a bizarre crack has appeared ‘above’ the Qingyin Highway near the Qingdao exit. We will contact the traffic police as soon as possible to confirm whether this crack is from a sign or other structure. Please be careful when passing through the area.”