Right now, Boss's car is in a truly pitiful state. The whole body is shiny and bare, without a trace of paint. Although all four wheels are still there, the rubber on them is gone, leaving only four iron rims—this is something you wouldn't even see at a scrapyard. If Boss saw this now, he would definitely kill me.

But how am I supposed to explain all this?

Should I tell Boss: I was driving down the road when suddenly a bolt of lightning struck and sent the car up into the treetops? And that's how it ended up like this... Would Boss believe me?

Wait, what about the road? Where did my big road go? I should be in the city, so how did I end up in a forest? Could it be—

A word uncontrollably surfaced in my mind: time travel!

Could it be that the lightning opened up a wormhole, and I passed through it, and the car's engine was sliced off by the edge of the wormhole?

Would Boss believe this story?

If that's really the case, whether Boss believes it or not doesn't matter anymore, because he can't make me explain it to him now.

I felt a bit amused, a bit expectant, and a bit anxious. With these mixed feelings, I looked around at my surroundings: it seemed I was on the shady side of a mountain. The mountain itself wasn't high, the slope was gentle, but there were a lot of trees, all of them enormous. Between the giant trees were patches of lush grass, and the car was wedged between two huge trees. These two trees were at the lowest point of the valley, just two among countless giants.

It seemed like the Greater Khingan Mountains. In my memory, only there are trees this massive.

The wind blew through the mountain pass, and the treetops let out a series of wailing sounds.

At that moment, what I wanted most was to hear a human voice again. Thinking of this, I couldn't help but jump up, getting ready to climb the big tree and turn on the car radio.

That jump startled me again—I actually leapt into midair, reaching a height far beyond my expectations.

There was no time to think; I grabbed the tree trunk and clung to it, panting on the tree.

After a long while, still shaken, I carefully climbed up the tree. When I got back onto the car, I gently tested whether the car body was stable, then climbed onto the roof and stood on top, looking as far as I could.

They say the higher you stand, the farther you see, but standing at the highest point on the car roof, all I could see were the roots of trees halfway up the slope.

Climbing back into the car, I turned on the radio, but there was no sound at all. Only then did I remember that half the engine was gone, including the car's power supply. How could a radio work without electricity?

I sat in the car for a long time, unable to think of a way out of my predicament. I absentmindedly rummaged through the car's drawer: driver's license, vehicle registration, a pile of useless documents, some scraps of paper with phone numbers and random names... and a fruit knife.

That fruit knife was my only comfort.

I gripped the fruit knife tightly and climbed out of the car again. This time I was careful, cautiously climbing onto the roof and then crawling toward the trunk lid.

The front of the car had been sliced in half, so there was no way to open the hood from inside. I lay on the trunk lid, prying and gnawing at it, and finally managed to get it open, but what I found inside was disappointing.

Aside from some repair tools and a spare tire, there was only a small suitcase, half a bag of peanuts, a few paper packets, and a pile of half-finished bottles of red wine, erguotou, and three or five cans of beer.

Crawling into the trunk, I no longer felt the wind around me. Sitting inside, I absentmindedly opened the bag and started eating peanuts while checking the paper packets.

It turned out Boss had just been to a "farm stay," and these paper packets were the fruits of his labor at the farm: a dozen or so cotton bolls, some unidentifiable vegetable seeds, a few rotten tomatoes, and several dried red chili peppers—all of which confirmed my suspicion: Boss had treated someone's vegetable garden as a leisure spot. He had strolled around the garden for show, and the farmer had packed up some seeds as a reward for his "work." The paper used to wrap these seeds had been torn from an agricultural science book,

and was covered in fragmented sentences, apparently about biogas digester construction techniques.

I opened the small suitcase and found it was a set of outdoor travel tableware, with enough plates, knives, forks, cups, and bowls for two people. Everything was neatly organized and fixed in place, very convenient for travelers—just grab the suitcase and you basically have all the tableware you need.

Inside the case was also a palm-sized outdoor stove and a small pot. If you added a gas canister, you could boil a small pot of water in the wild... Unfortunately, there was no gas canister in the case; the old one was probably used up, and Boss hadn't had time to get a new one.

I sighed and looked at the surrounding mountains. Suddenly, I really hoped I had traveled through time.

Standing up from the trunk, I shouted at the empty mountains, "Did I time travel? I really hope so! World, here I come!"

What kind of world is this?

Sighing, I rummaged through the car again and finally found a baseball bat and an American "COLDSTEEL" machete hidden in a secret spot. Boss had hidden these so well, probably thinking: if he ever ran into any bad guys in the wild, he could use them for self-defense.