Ten Day Ultimatum

Qi Xia stepped out of the lottery center with a check in hand, heading straight for the taxi.
“Wow, that was quick, young man!” the driver remarked, standing outside the car with a cigarette between his fingers. His sea-blue vehicle stood out starkly against the local mint-green taxis.
Qi Xia didn’t respond, simply pulling open the car door and settling into the back seat.

“So, are we heading back now?” the driver asked.
“Yes,” Qi Xia nodded. This time, however, for safety’s sake, he chose to sit in the back.
“Got it,” the driver said, tossing the cigarette butt to the ground and extinguishing it with his shoe before sliding into the driver’s seat. “Speaking of which, aren’t you planning to explore Jinan a bit? I have an old buddy here, and if you’re not in a hurry…”

“I am in a hurry,” Qi Xia replied. “Just drive.”
“Oh…” The driver nodded, a bit awkwardly.
Qi Xia recalled the last time he was in Jinan, when he had wasted half a day at the bank and eventually returned home with a large bag of cash. He’d planned to surprise Yu Nian'An back then, but this time, there was no time for formalities. He needed to get home as quickly as possible and take Yu Nian'An to a safe, open place.

With that in mind, Qi Xia pulled out his phone to call her, intending to ask her to pack a few pieces of clothing for the coming days.
He opened his contacts and selected the first entry, marked as {A}, and dialed the number. He had deliberately assigned this label to ensure Yu Nian'An’s contact would always be at the top of his list.
After waiting more than ten seconds, no one answered. What’s going on… Qi Xia thought, puzzled. In his memory, Yu Nian'An was never one to stray far from her phone. Why wasn’t she picking up?

He hung up and tried several more times, but still no answer. His anxiety steadily grew.
A glance at the time showed 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 said, looking up.

“Really?” The driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror, then checked the time.
Three and a half hours to cover three hundred and fifty kilometers. It was tight, but for an experienced driver, not impossible. As long as he maintained a speed of one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour on the expressway, he could probably make it just in time.
Opportunities to earn two thousand five hundred yuan in one day were rare. The driver looked slightly incredulous.

“I’m not joking,” Qi Xia said. “Just drive safely.”
The driver began to piece things together. Who hires a taxi for an intercity trip unless they’re trying to avoid attention? Train and high-speed rail tickets required a real-name system[1], but taxis didn’t.
In other words, this man likely had just won the lottery. Only prizes over one million yuan required collection at the provincial center—his winnings might be even more than that.
The driver shook his head with a sigh.

He’d always heard that winning the lottery was even less likely than being struck by lightning. It was hard not to feel discouraged watching someone so young hit it big while he was already middle-aged and still grinding out a living.
In the backseat, Qi Xia caught the driver’s expression in the mirror, and the corners of his lips curved slightly. For an ordinary person, sitting just a few feet away from a lottery winner would naturally stir up all kinds of thoughts.
A thief’s heart without a thief’s courage, Qi Xia mused silently.

This driver was one Qi Xia had deliberately chosen. While waiting outside a hotel, he’d seen the burly man getting scolded by a thinner colleague for cutting the queue—groveling for forgiveness in an almost laughable way.
In that moment, Qi Xia saw through him.
Everyone wants to make money, and no one’s better than anyone else—but this guy was too timid. He was not the type to resort to killing and robbing.

The driver’s expression flickered through several emotions before he finally gave a resigned sigh and focused on the road.
Qi Xia leaned back again and tried dialing Yu Nian'An once more. Still nothing.
In the silence of the car, memories of what had happened at End Point flooded back. It had felt too real to be just a dream. He reached for his left shoulder. There was no injury now, yet he clearly remembered the deaths—Han Yimo, Qiao Jiajin, Tian Tian, Officer Li, Zhang Shan, and Ole Lu—all had died there. He himself had died, and yet here he was again, in his former life.
If that was the case, had those people also returned to their own worlds?

It all felt like some bizarre, twisted prank.
As night fell, the lights lining the expressway guardrails flickered on. Though he had only spent three days in that godforsaken place, it felt like forever since he had seen lights in the night. The blur of passing streetlights brought an unexpected sense of comfort.
The driver, clearly eager to earn the bonus, didn’t hesitate once they hit the highway. He maintained the speed limit exactly. Like most people, he was simply striving to feed himself three meals a day.

Qi Xia resolved that even if they didn’t make it in time, he would still give the man the five hundred yuan.
The driver tried to make conversation several times, but soon realized that Qi Xia wasn’t very chatty. Instead, he turned on the radio to ease the awkward silence.
“You are now listening to 89.7 Traffic Broadcast.”

A deep, composed voice came over the airwaves—it was a popular station among ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) taxi drivers. “It is now exactly nineteen o’clock in Beijing. Let’s take a look at the comments from netizens on the online platform.” But after that line, there was a noticeable pause, nearly ten seconds of silence—an obvious on-air blunder.
“Haha!” the driver chuckled, a touch of schadenfreude in his tone. “Young man, look at that! These days, anyone can buy their way into a broadcasting job, huh?”
Qi Xia frowned slightly. Something felt off.

Broadcasters are usually trained to handle irrelevant comments with composure. Even under pressure, they’re quick to identify key content. But this host had gone silent for too long.
“It seems we have some strange comments coming in from the online platform, ha…” the host said again, his tone noticeably strained. “The platform has received dozens of messages reporting a mysterious crack above the entrance of the Qingyin Expressway near Qingdao. We’ll reach out to the traffic police to verify whether this crack is part of a signpost or another structure. Please be careful and avoid the area if you’re driving through.”