Si Teng (Rattan) – CH 003

Chapter 3

Even with her mind in a daze, An Man knew driving at night was dangerous, especially on a winding mountain road. Locals would say it’s “99 bends; even a ghost would find it hard to navigate.” No one has actually counted the bends, but each one was steeper than the last, winding up several mountains in a spiral pattern. The top bend was truly like a cliff thousands of feet high.

By the time she reached the 30th or so bend, An Man opened all the windows. The cold wind whistled in, chasing away any drowsiness. Sparse trees jutting out from the mountainside looked like lurking, sinister figures. An Man’s heart skipped a beat several times, and her back was covered in cold sweat, then hot sweat.

The mountain was incredibly quiet at night. Occasionally, a bird would chirp, startled from its nest. It was late December, and the moon was waning, a pale crescent in the sky, like a cold, watchful eye. No matter how many turns she took or how far she drove, looking up, its gaze seemed to follow her, leaving her with no place to hide.

This unique, almost otherworldly silence finally allowed An Man’s mind to slowly regain clarity.

The tires rumbled over the rough mountain road. She began to carefully recall everything that had happened that night, frame by frame, like an old film slowly unwinding…

—After drinking the tea laced with tranquilizers, Qin Fang slowly closed his eyes…

—Hesitating again and again, she reached out to knock on the door of room 188…

—Zhao Jianglong, holding a rolled-up book, kept hitting her face and head, saying, “Tell me, where did I, your Brother Zhao, go wrong? Explain it to me!”

—Unable to defend herself against Zhao Jianglong’s beating, she curled up, protecting her head and face as he punched and kicked her. Her ribs still hurt, a dull, lingering pain…

…

Suddenly, An Man shuddered and slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded forward several meters, the tires screeching against the pavement. A few meters ahead was a cliff; beyond the dark rocks lay a vast, seemingly endless expanse of thin air.

From beginning to end, she had never touched a knife!

When Zhao Jianglong was beating her mercilessly, she tried to bite him, claw at him with her fingernails, and even grabbed the leg of the coffee table, wanting to use it to hit him, but there really wasn’t a knife, definitely!

She was just confused at the time. There were only she and Zhao Jianglong in the room. Zhao Jianglong was injured, and he looked like that…she thought she must have accidentally hurt him. Then, in a panic, she drove away in the middle of the night.

Where could she go? Could she really escape? Besides, fleeing would only confirm her guilt, wouldn’t it?

An Man had a bad feeling.

No, she had to go back.

She forced herself to calm down, took a deep breath, and prepared to restart the car. Just then, the rearview mirror suddenly flashed brightly. Before An Man could react, there was a loud crash. The immense force of the impact pushed the car forward several meters, and the front end plunged into emptiness. An Man, fearing they were about to plummet off a cliff, screamed hysterically. Just as she screamed, the car door was violently yanked open. A tall man roughly grabbed her hair and dragged her out, throwing her to the ground. Her scalp burned with pain as she struggled to get up. The man then stepped on the back of her head, stamping her face into the dirt, and roared, “You bitch! Where’s the stuff?!”

***

Qin Fang felt extremely cold.

It felt as if someone had placed several powerful fans next to his bed, blowing directly at him, and the blanket had somehow been lifted off. He tried to find it but couldn’t. The fans made a whirring, buzzing sound, and in the background, seemingly from far away, he could hear An Man’s screams…

Qin Fang jolted awake, his eyes snapping open. He was completely disoriented. His head throbbed with pain, his heart pounded, and he felt short of breath—like altitude sickness. He struggled to sit up in the back seat, leaning his head against the headrest. Then, almost instinctively, he glanced out the window.

In the distance, An Man was curled up on the ground, convulsing. A man was standing over her, his hands on his knees, seemingly resting after kicking her. Another man, wearing a baseball cap, was kicking her stomach and shouting, “Who are you? Where’s the stuff?!”

Qin Fang instinctively thought it was a dream, but even in a dream, he couldn’t allow anyone to mistreat An Man like that. He roared, called out “An Man,” and pushed against the seat to open the door. Just as he moved, the car made a creaking sound and slowly tilted ominously. Qin Fang felt a chill run down his spine, and suddenly he froze, unable to move. After a second or two, he slowly raised his head to look ahead.

What he saw wasn’t solid ground, but what looked like a deep blue ocean of air, stretching endlessly into the distance, with even some faint stars seemingly floating there. The front of the vehicle visibly began to tilt, but fortunately, it managed to maintain its balance, albeit precariously.

The two men on the other side had obviously noticed the commotion. The one who had been resting sneered and strode towards him. Just as he took two steps, his leg was suddenly gripped tightly. Looking down, he saw An Man clinging to his leg, weakly saying, “Don’t… It has nothing to do with him, really.”

The man actually laughed and jokingly remarked to the man in the baseball cap, “Wow, look at this, she’s risking her life for him, like in a movie!”

His partner, who had dealt with such situations many times before, smiled and walked briskly to the front of the vehicle. He raised his leg and placed his foot on the rear bumper, ready to kick at any moment.

The other man looked down at An Man, his voice calm: “That room, we’ve been watching it 24/7. No one else has been in besides you… One last chance, where’s the stuff?”

Stuff?

What stuff? The stuff Zhao Jianglong was dealing in? An Man trembled, staring intently at the foot of the man with the baseball cap on the rear bumper, her pupils dilated. If she didn’t speak, Qin Fang would die…

She had to stall for time; maybe something would happen in the next few seconds? An Man trembled as she said, “I didn’t check out. My things… I left them in the hotel locker…”

Her lips were already cracked, and the wind quickly dried them, causing a sharp, stinging pain every time she spoke.

A ​​satisfied smile appeared on the man’s face, and he nodded slightly at the man with the baseball cap. The man in the cap understood, cleared his throat with a hint of amusement, and then kicked forcefully.

Whether she spoke or not, the outcome would be the same.

Amidst An Man’s heart-wrenching screams, the car overturned with a crash, kicking up dust from the dirt road. The dust danced in the headlights of the black sedan, but only for a moment. Then came a series of loud thuds, probably from hitting jagged rocks as the car plummeted down. After that, there was silence.

The two men dragged the limp An Man into the car. As they closed the door, they felt the entire mountain tremble. After that, there was complete silence.

The man wearing the baseball cap made a disapproving sound and said, “Wow, that’s quite a deep drop.”

The other man agreed, “That’s why you have to be extra careful driving in places like this. You can’t even be rescued, see?”

***

In fact, when the car plunged off the cliff, Qin Fang hadn’t yet fully grasped whether it was real or a dream. Partly due to the drugs, and partly because he couldn’t process everything so quickly, he remembered that he had been sleeping. Several years ago, Qin Fang and his friends went to the cinema to watch Jiang Wen’s film “Let the Bullets Fly.” In the latter part of the film, when the gang was being chased, Ge You, playing the role of the town official, used a loudspeaker to explain the necessity of eliminating the bandits, tearfully declaring, “Bandits must be eliminated at all times! It’s absolutely necessary! Imagine, you’re with your wife, on a train, eating hot pot and singing songs, and suddenly, you’re attacked by bandits!”

Qin Fang laughed hysterically, slapping his friend on the shoulder and saying, “See? Life is unpredictable!”

How could such a thing possibly happen to him?

Before going to sleep, he watched a variety show and drank a cup of tea. How could he wake up dressed and lying in a car in the middle of nowhere, only to plummet off a cliff the next second?

The moon was still shining; the night was very dark. What kind of dramatic turn of events could have happened in such a short time?

There were no clues, only An Man’s screams and the single phrase he had heard.

—”Who are you? Where’s the stuff?”

Qin Fang closed his eyes wearily.

It’s all fake, a nightmare, a bad dream, just like that woman on the stage who kept approaching but whose face he could never see—it’s all a dream.

Tomorrow, when the sun rises, he’ll open his eyes, and An Man will be lying safely beside him.

Tomorrow will be a new day.

***

With a deafening crash, the car hit the ground, twisting and deforming as if swallowed whole. At the bottom of the ravine, a sharp spike, perhaps a broken tree stump, pierced the car, impaling him from his back to his chest. He had once heard that when someone falls off a cliff, their heart ruptures from sheer terror, but now he knew that wasn’t true. The heart, that vital pump for blood circulation, continued beating until it was pierced by the sharp stake.

The deafening crash startled the crows in the forest at the bottom of the valley, causing them to flap their wings wildly, their black bodies obscuring the night sky like a sudden shroud of fog.

It was late December, around the 20th, the 18th day of the lunar month. The moon had just begun to wane from full, and in a few days, on the 23rd, it would be a half moon, the waning crescent.