Two-faced didn’t know what “个个抛” meant, but it clearly wasn’t anything good. Just as he was about to retort, he suddenly noticed several chunks of rubble on the road ahead, each about the size of a human head. At a glance, they were definitely higher than the car’s chassis.

On the left was a coal truck, on the right a sheer cliff, and ahead were rocks higher than the car’s undercarriage. Two-faced had no choice but to slam on the brakes.

The Corolla skidded badly, sliding diagonally toward the cliff.

Two-faced’s old 1.6-liter Corolla, though one of the very few in its price range to have front and rear disc brakes, didn’t come with ABS as standard. When braking hard, the wheels could easily lock up, leaving two black skid marks on dry, rough asphalt. But on this slick, icy road, locked wheels turned the car into a sled.

The Corolla shot toward the cliff at high speed. Two-faced frantically turned the steering wheel, but all four wheels were already sliding, not rolling, on the snow, and the steering wheel had no effect on the car’s direction.

It all happened in an instant—no matter how quick your reflexes, there was no time to jump out and escape. The extreme terror made the short man in the back seat scream, while Two-faced had only one thought in his mind: this car still had a 40,000 yuan debt—if the car was wrecked and people died, who would pay it off?

“Ka-ka-ka!” Three ear-piercing crashes, and the Corolla suddenly stopped at the edge of the cliff. The huge inertia threw everyone inside forward. The woman, sitting in the middle of the back seat with nothing in front of her, was thrown onto the handbrake lever between the two front seats, her hat flying onto the dashboard. Along with it, a pitch-black object flew forward, smacked into the gear lever with a “pa,” and fell at Two-faced’s feet.

The car was eerily quiet. The woman lay slumped between the two front seats, muttering in a strange, mocking tone, “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da…”

Two-faced, still in shock, turned to look at the woman—she only had half a head!

Two-faced’s mind went blank, his hands and feet went cold, and he was completely stunned.

His first thought was: How am I going to pay for a human life?

His second thought: With half her head gone, how is she still talking?

The three men from Shanxi were pale as ghosts, silent. Two-faced, full of suspicion, nervously reached down to pick up the black object at his feet. He’d thought it was the woman’s missing half-head, but when he picked it up, it turned out to be a Walkman. The Walkman had been knocked onto the play button, and some part inside was stuck, causing it to endlessly repeat a woman’s voice: “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da…”

Suddenly, Two-faced realized what was happening. Unable to contain his anger, he shouted at the gray-haired man beside him, “You’re tricking me into transporting a corpse!”

“Don’t shout, don’t shout, we can talk this out!” Gray-haired said, picking up the red hat and clumsily putting it back on the half-headed woman’s corpse. The two other men in the back seat reached over and pulled the woman back. Two-faced saw that the woman had returned to her previous posture, slumped in the back seat, bright red hat and scarf, only her glasses showing.

Two-faced felt a chill all over. Out in the wilderness, facing three big men and a corpse, he had no idea what to do. The Walkman was still playing that creepy “da-da-da” sound. One of the Shanxi men took it and turned it off, and the car fell silent.

The snow was falling harder and harder. The wipers swept back and forth, but nothing could be seen through the windshield. The big truck from earlier had long since disappeared into the darkness, probably already around the mountain.

“We can’t stay here—if we fall off, it’s all over!” Gray-haired said. “Let’s check the car. If it can still move, let’s pull over and talk.”

At this point, safety was the top priority. Two-faced ignored the corpse in the back seat, turned on the Corolla’s hazard lights, and got out with Gray-haired to check the car.

Only then did they see that the front bumper was hanging over the edge of the cliff by more than half a foot, with three wheels still on solid ground. Two-faced breathed a sigh of relief. He took out a flashlight and shone it under the car. It turned out that two head-sized rocks had wedged themselves between the Corolla’s chassis beam and skid plate, and those two rocks were braced against a boulder at the cliff’s edge, saving the lives of all four people.

The chassis beam wasn’t bent, and though the skid plate had two dents and one broken connection, it didn’t affect driving. The three Shanxi men checked the car with Two-faced. The short man, looking shocked, suddenly blurted out, “Damn, this is Qijia Puzi!”

“Damn” is a Shanxi dialect curse, similar to “damn it.”

All three Shanxi men looked terrified. The short man suddenly dropped to his knees in front of the Corolla’s back seat, kowtowed, and muttered, “Sis, it was your sister-in-law who wouldn’t let me get involved back then… As your brother, I’ve let you down. Please be merciful… Don’t take me with you… My family… No, all of us still have big families at home!”