Chapter 99: Dream 4: Speed and Passion
In mid-September, the weather was not so hot anymore and the breeze in the evening was a little cool.
Students have returned to school one after another and started to work hard. The flood of people in the scenic area has subsided a lot, but Lubo Mountain is still crowded. Every day, buses are happy to transport busloads of tourists up the mountain, like a box of chirping sparrows.
A silver-grey Maserati convertible whizzed past on the winding mountain road. Four young men played the music very loudly. Someone in the back seat suddenly turned around, but they happened to be turning a corner, and the rocks quickly blocked their view.
He said angrily, "Hey, didn't you see what happened just now?"
The baby-faced girl sitting next to me took off her headset and asked, "What did you see?"
He pointed his thumb back: "It seems someone is stopping the car."
The blond guy in the passenger seat opened a can of beer and swayed his body to the rhythmic drum beats. "They must be villagers from nearby. They might want to sell us some local specialties."
The girl with dreadlocks driving the car complained, "Don't buy anymore. I bought a box of preserved vegetables and bitter bamboo shoots yesterday, and my luggage is completely full."
"How long until we get to the top?" the baby-faced man stretched lazily. "My idol is one of the first few to come out, and I want to take a picture with him."
The man in the back seat leaned over to look at the navigation system, frowning. "The organizers are really crazy. Why are there only blue roads in such a remote place? Is there no national highway?"
"I don't know," the blond man said, clapping to the beat, his face full of satisfaction. "But it didn't feel this long last time I came. By the time we get to the big lawn at the top of the hill, it's almost there."
On the long mountain road, the car sped past again.
The man in the back seat was still suspicious. He looked around anxiously, his hair messy in the wind. "Do you think we've just driven this road?"
The girl with dreadlocks lazily propped her head up and steered the wheel with one hand, showing off her skills: "Huh? No, aren't all mountain roads the same?"
The blond man in the passenger seat was holding up his phone to take a selfie, changing eighty expressions in a second. The baby-faced man in the back seat also followed suit, opening his arms and making a heart shape with his hands in front of the camera. Both of them paid no attention to what the man in the back seat said.
"He definitely has! I saw someone stopping the car not far ahead... Hey, hey, hey! Look! It's right ahead!!" The man in the back seat grabbed the blond man in front by the shoulders and shook him, then pointed to a corner on the right side ahead, which was concave and overgrown with grass and trees.
The blond man's phone was nearly shaken off his chest. He muttered "shit" but before he could complain, he caught a glimpse of a waving figure approaching from the corner of his eye.
He was stunned, reached out to lower the sunglasses on his nose and squinted his eyes, and found that there was indeed a person standing there, a young woman with short hair. Her facial features had a sense of alienation and melancholy according to the current trend, a bit like the world-weary makeup in magazines. Her skin was too white, and her dark circles were slightly obvious, and her expression was gloomy.
She was wearing a jacket and jeans, with one hand in her pocket and the other waving a wooden stick.
Blond man: "Wow, visual kei?"
The girl with dreadlocks slammed on the brakes to slow down the car: "Huh? Are you going to the music festival too?"
"Holy shit! That was her I just saw!" The man in the back seat took a closer look, his expression almost cracking. "You really stopped the car? Our car has four seats, right?"
The baby-faced man grabbed the headset around his neck and curiously leaned over: "But we're the only ones in this car, so we can squeeze in."
"That's right, he doesn't look like a bad guy." The blond man stroked his chin and smiled. "Hey beautiful! Want a ride?"
Long Zhu casually threw away the branch and gave a friendly smile, still not very skilled: "I'll take it. I'm going to the top of the mountain."
The girl with dreadlocks boldly hooked her hand and said, "On my way, come on up!"
The man in the back seat almost popped his eyes out and cursed under his breath: "You didn't even ask me, you talk like the car is your own."
The dreadlocked girl laughed and said, "Who got your driver's license revoked?"
Long Zhu stepped forward and suddenly froze when his hand touched the smooth car door.
Why is there only one door in front and back? Where is the handle?
"Hey, this can't be pulled hard!" The man in the back seat saw that the other party was in a daze and was afraid that his beloved car would be damaged. He was about to help open the door from the inside, but he saw the woman support the edge of the door with one hand, jump up neatly, and turn over with a "crash" and turned into a gray shadow. Before everyone could react, the person had already sat steadily in the car.
Four faces were stunned. Finally, the blond man realized it and clapped his hands stiffly. "Amazing."
The sports car accelerated, and its rear wheels rolled over an inconspicuous straight line drawn by branches, and it disappeared into the distance with the roar of the exhaust.
The blond man was very interested in this new passenger. He put his hand on the seat back and turned to chat: "Beautiful girl, are you going to the Hilltop Music Festival too?"
Long Zhu shook his head: "No, I'm going to the Taoist temple on the top of the mountain."
"Oh, Changfeng Temple, it's a 5A rating, very famous," the blond man said eagerly, "Xianren Cave is nearby. We plan to go there after the music festival."
Long Zhu: "Immortal Cave?"
"Haven't you seen it?" the blond man pulled out his phone. "There's an Echo Cave in town. They say paranormal activity happened there before, but then it collapsed for some unknown reason. Locals were digging a road and uncovered a rock mound that looked like a human, so it became a new tourist attraction."
He moved the screen of his mobile phone to show Long Zhu. Although the stone statue was a little short in weight, it did look like a young man dressed in southern Xinjiang clothes. Tourists were vying to take photos with it. There were also people setting up stalls nearby dressed in similar costumes to the stone statue: offering services such as immortal guidance, fortune-telling, physiognomy, and naming.
Long Zhu: “…”
Humans are really weird sometimes.
"The fortune tellers in these scenic spots are all liars. They are not as good as me." The blond man was proud.
The baby-faced guy came over and said, "You can also read palms? You're so good at it."
The man in the back seat said with a sour face: "What can he do? His family believes in this, so he probably learned it from them."
"If you don't believe me, let me calculate it for you," the blond man held the baby-faced girl's hand. "Look, it's very obvious on yours. This forked island pattern shows that you tend to lower your boundaries in relationships because of your soft heart, and you're more likely to meet a scumbag!"
The baby-faced man retracted his hand in disgust: "You are confusing the cause with the effect! I am not interested in the love line, as long as the life line is long enough."
The girl with dreadlocks laughed heartily and stretched out her right hand: "Let me see it too."
The blond man readily agreed: "You look very lucky. No one can defeat you."
Amidst the laughter, the blond man turned around and flirted at Long Zhu: "Beautiful lady, let me show you?"
Long Zhu replied, "Okay." Then he spread out his palms.
The blond man asked cunningly, "How old are you, beauty?"
"Me?" Long Zhu thought for a moment, staring at his palm: "I've been dead for twenty years."
They were stunned for a moment, and the blond man interrupted the silence with a laugh: "Pfft! You're really humorous, hahaha. Twenty years old, right? That's not too different from us."
He didn't take it seriously at all: "Hmm... Judging from these palm lines, you are very defensive. It will be difficult for you to have close friends. In the end, you will lose a lot and live a lonely life."
The blond man changed his tone and said, "But as long as you are willing to let go of your guard and break down the barriers, your life will change. If you don't know how to do it, why don't we add each other on WeChat and I can teach you?"
Long Zhu: "Uh, that's troublesome, forget it."
Blond man: “…”
The girl with dreadlocks laughed in a gloating manner.
"Hey, does anyone else think the navigation is wrong?" The man in the back seat rubbed his hair irritably. "We've been driving for an hour and we're still not there, and there are no other cars on the road."
"Did we take the wrong road?"
"How could this be?" The baby-faced man clutched his phone and suddenly exclaimed, "Look at the organizer's official Weibo account!"
"How the hell could this happen?" The man in the back seat almost jumped up: "Did I really get it right?!"
The official of the Hilltop Music Festival issued an urgent notice three hours ago. Due to the impact of the landslide that blocked the village road two days ago, the route leading to the Hilltop lawn has been changed. They probably didn't update the navigation and are still driving along the previous route.
"Hmm? Then what should we do? According to the updated route, we have to go back to the foot of the mountain and take a detour up from the back," the dreadlocked woman murmured, "We'll miss the opening performance."
The baby-faced man was about to cry: "Hey? I even brought a telephoto lens to take pictures of my idol."
Long Zhu frowned: "Take a detour?"
Then there's no point for her to hitchhike, she might as well walk up by herself.
The blond man was still checking the traffic information, muttering in confusion, "No wonder we're the only car on the road. But why did the entire route change? This is weird. Don't we usually just use the other road? The road doesn't just disappear out of thin air..."
Long Zhu suddenly raised her eyes and felt something intuitively. She became alert and vigilant from her relaxed sitting position. Her peripheral vision quickly caught a palm-sized stone that suddenly rolled down from the right and was about to hit the front of the car. She swung her right hand like a blade, and the stone was split into two by the sharp spiritual power and flew off the cliff.
The person next to him thought he had just avoided a small rockfall and, still in shock, held onto the car frame and asked, "How about we roll up the roof?"
Long Zhu leaned forward, looked around, then closed his eyes and released his spiritual energy.
In places that ordinary people cannot feel, she "saw" in this way that tiny frictions and collisions were occurring between the mountains, and it seemed that some force was forcibly intervening, increasing the trend of this collision and squeezing.
The road won’t disappear out of thin air?
Hard to say.
"Brake! Brake!" The blond man suddenly changed his lazy posture and hunched over in his seat. "There's a rock ahead!"
The girl with dreadlocks frowned, sweat dripping down her cheeks: "I'm already braking. If I brake suddenly on this mountain road, I'll fly out!"
Far ahead, a huge rock is abruptly embedded in the right side of the road. It seems that this rock has grown on the rock wall rather than fallen from the mountain. It is just that the mountain has changed, and its growth has squeezed the space on the road.
Everyone in the car burst into screams. The man in the back seat no longer cared about his car and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Do you want to jump out of the car? Hey!"
A hand suddenly rested on his shoulder.
The man in the back seat turned his head and saw only the dark right eye of the short-haired woman next to him, which was not covered by her bangs. The other person's expression was calm, without any panic at all. "Do you want to reach the top of the mountain on time?"
The man in the back seat widened his eyes and said, "What's the point of talking about punctuality at this moment..."
Long Zhu said to himself: "Then listen to me."
After that, she took advantage of the man's shoulder in the back seat to jump to the front of the car by stepping on the front seat. She half-knelt and pressed her hands on the hood of the car, instantly wrapping the car body with spiritual power. Seeing that the boulder was getting closer and closer, everyone in the car closed their eyes in fear, but they took off with a shout of "rise". A strong sense of weightlessness came over her, and the girl with dreadlocks unconsciously let go of the steering wheel. At this moment when time almost slowed down, she found that the car actually flew up, like a bouncing skill in a game, drawing a perfect arc in the air, and then stepped over the boulder obstacle and landed on the opposite road.
"boom"!
The silver-gray Maserati left a phantom on the spot, and its speed did not decrease at all, continuing to move forward at lightning speed.
"Ahhhhhhhh!!!!" The two people in the back seat clung to the front seats, their voices cracking with fear. The blond man clutched at the seatbelt in vain, his sunglasses tilted on his nose, his whole appearance a complete embarrassment. Only the girl with dreadlocks in the driver's seat yelled, "Holy crap! Wow! This is awesome!"
Then, the nearby mountain road "stopped acting." The blue asphalt road swayed like a ribbon floating in the water, rising and falling with the waves. The rolling hills seemed to come alive, the rocky massifs swimming like fish, happily moving between heaven and earth. It was a terrifying spectacle straight out of a video game! They watched helplessly as a normal road vanished from thin air due to the shifting of the rocks, or a massive mountain suddenly appeared blocking the way!
"Oh my God! What is that!"
The towering mountains rise from the ground, and they are like a derailed train, about to crash straight into the flat and hard mountain wall.
The height was over a hundred feet, and there was no chance of crossing.
"Step on the gas."
Long Zhu quickly clasped her hands together to gather spiritual energy. Just before the car approached the mountain wall, she struck out with one palm. A sound of mountains collapsing and the earth cracking was heard. She actually opened a hole in the mountain wall, and the sports car passed through it unimpeded. The moment they came out of the tunnel, everyone discovered that there was a cliff below.
There is no way out.
Everyone on the bus thought in despair: Is this really hopeless?!
Long Zhu raised his head slightly, and a spiritual net formed in his palm, which caught the entire car and threw it upwards like a swing. Amid the fierce shouting like a pig being slaughtered, the scenery in front of him began to spin and roll. The sports car also opened its top at the critical moment, and finally rushed into a meadow in a daze.
After a harsh brake sound, the car finally stalled.
The four of them stared at the endless green fields in front of them and the crowded music festival stage in the distance, and they remained in their senses for a long time.
"Oh my god, this is so cool!" The girl with dreadlocks came to her senses, unbuckled her seatbelt, got out of the car door, and walked around the car, her face full of excitement: "Hey guys, we even made it to the front!"
The blond man climbed out of the passenger seat, clutching his heart. "Are we not dead?"
The man in the back seat threw himself on the hood of the car, tears welling up in his eyes when he saw the dents on it. "I just bought a Maserati and only drove it once..."
The baby-faced girl didn't care about her idol's performance in the distance. She looked around in disbelief: "Where's that girl? How did she disappear all of a sudden?"
Everyone looked around in surprise.
There is no one else around.
Aren’t they under an illusion?
But if it was an illusion, how did I drive up that road just now?
"I know!" The blond man's eyes lit up, his hands clasped together, his expression extremely excited: "It's an immortal! The immortal is showing me the way!!"
…
A dusty woman appeared outside Changfeng Temple. Her hair was messy from the wind and mixed with a lot of gravel. Her designer jacket was also covered in dust.
She walked in as if nothing had happened, and the tourists pointed and talked, automatically making way for her.
Long Zhu dusted himself off and thought: How do you draw the dust-purifying talisman?
Uh, it seems like I draw a note head first, and then...
The familiar bell suddenly rang, interrupting her thoughts.
After a while, the tour guides nearby seemed to have received a notice and began to use their small loudspeakers to inform the tourists in their groups: "Due to a landslide, we can't return the same way later. We have to take an extra 20 kilometers..."
Long Zhu walked towards the charity hall with familiarity.
What just happened on the road was not a landslide or earthquake mudslide at all.
That is the shape given by heaven and earth.
But someone like Little White Bird would never disregard other people's lives and make such a horrifying move.
unless……
She turned her gaze towards Zhuzhai.
There was a "problem" with his way of self-cultivation.
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