I felt a faint sense of unease, so I had the driver, Xiao Wu, drop me off on the way to the airport.

Xiao Wu was deeply puzzled when I made this request, but Liu Yuan was already completely drunk and fast asleep, snoring like thunder, so Xiao Wu didn't ask Liu Yuan's opinion and followed my instructions, dropping me off by the side of the ramp.

"There are no taxis here, and you can't turn around. Why don't I drop you off at the airport, so you can easily get a taxi?"

Xiao Wu still worriedly tried to dissuade me as I got out of the car.

"It's okay, you guys go ahead. I have something to take care of. Don't worry about me."

I got out of the car quickly and, ignoring Xiao Wu's words, hurried off in the opposite direction of the car.

After walking about three kilometers, I got off the one-way highway leading to the airport and managed to hail a taxi.

"Where to, sir?" the taxi driver asked.

I had already planned my destination: "Near the long-distance bus transfer station in the north of Tianjing City."

"Oh, sir, aren't you going the long way around? The state-run bus station is not far from here..." The taxi driver's hand hovered over the meter button as he repeatedly confirmed my destination.

"I know, let's go."

"But, we're in the south of the city now, and where you're going is in the north, the distance..."

The taxi driver's tone sounded a bit hesitant. I understood that this was a common tactic for taxi drivers to overcharge, but I didn't care.

I said to the driver, "I'll pay extra."

As soon as he heard me say I would pay extra, the taxi driver's tightly furrowed brow immediately relaxed, and he greeted me with a beaming smile.

"That's right," I added, "No need to use the meter. A flat rate of five hundred. I'm in a hurry, so don't take any detours, and get me there as quickly as possible."

When the driver heard that I was giving him five hundred, he was overjoyed, but he was also a little hesitant, afraid that I would go back on my word.

I simply took five hundred-yuan bills from my wallet and tossed them into his hand.

"Can we go now?" I was a little impatient.

He carefully examined the banknotes to make sure they were real, and then immediately said with a smile, "Sorry for the wait, sorry for the wait, let's go, let's go..."

It is said that every taxi driver is a living map of their city. They know many small roads and shortcuts and can take passengers to their destination in the shortest possible time.

Obviously, the taxi driver taking me to the long-distance bus transfer station was a living map familiar with all the major and minor roads in Tianjing City. Although he took small roads, they were all shortcuts.

The driver was bored, so he turned up the volume of the radio in the car. The traffic channel radio station was playing a song by Jacky Cheung, and the driver even hummed along. It seemed that this unexpected windfall of five hundred yuan made him very happy.

Suddenly, the song stopped, and the radio urgently broadcasted a traffic accident report. Just not far from where I got out of the car, there was a car accident. A car and a truck collided head-on, and the scene was extremely tragic.

Hearing this news, I gasped. It turned out that the feeling of "unease" that had forced me to get out of the car earlier had once again come true.

I recalled the twists and turns of my journey back to Tianjing from the western desert.

When I first came out of the desert, I stopped a long-distance truck at the edge of the desert. The driver was a kind man who gave me a ride for a while. Later, because we were going in different directions, I got out of the car and continued to wait for passing vehicles by the roadside.

In this way, I hitchhiked all the way to a small town nearest to the desert. When I reached a place with people, danger came with it.

Since coming out of the desert, I often felt a inexplicable sense of unease. At first, I didn't take this unease to heart, but eventually this unease turned into a real danger that happened to me.

The first time I felt uneasy, I was on a commercial street in a small town, desperately looking for a way back to Tianjing City.

It was unrealistic to walk back to Tianjing from a small border town on the edge of the desert. I needed to take transportation, and transportation required money, but I was penniless.

Out of desperation, I once thought about working in this small town to earn travel expenses, but this idea was quickly abandoned.

Because I discovered that the strange clothing accessories I was wearing were actually made of gold. Gold is a hard currency everywhere, so I quickly took off these gold ornaments and exchanged them for money.

Because the pure gold content of the gold accessories was not high, all the accessories removed from the clothes were exchanged for only about two thousand yuan, but this money was more than enough for travel expenses.

Just as I came out of the gold shop, feeling satisfied, I suddenly felt a sense of anxiety and unease, which made me feel short of breath and my heart tighten.

Since this was the first time I had experienced this, I thought it was a case of acclimatization, an adverse reaction from not drinking water or eating for a long time. I thought I was just hungry, so I didn't take it to heart and continued to walk forward, intending to find a restaurant to eat some mutton and drink some mutton soup.

But in the next second, a piercing pain occurred in my heart. This feeling gradually spread, and I had to stop, covering my chest to adjust...