A Taste for More

Grim news broke across the racing circuit. Due to severe weather, a sudden, widespread downpour had triggered massive flash floods and mudslides on the Kunwu Plateau. Numerous competitors were affected. Following Tiancheng, racers from three more teams—Echo, Xinyuan, and Northern Realm—vanished one after another, while multiple other drivers suffered injuries. The resulting chain reaction sent the stock prices of the three teams' corporate sponsors into freefall, hitting their daily lower limit for two consecutive days. Market analysts racked their brains in utter bewilderment. What in the world was going on? It was just a lost race—why were so many major players dumping shares as if their very lives depended on it? What were they thinking? Do you people love competitive racing that much? Surely not! To make matters stranger, spokespeople for all three corporations remained dead silent for days. No press conferences were held, no interviews accepted, an eerie quiet that put everyone on edge. Whenever executives entered or left corporate headquarters, they wore expressions of such grim solemnity that one would think they hadn't merely lost a driver, but their own mothers. At the Longyuan Relay Station, reporters had already caught up with the race's heavy favorite to win: Ji Jue, driver for Team Haian. "Ah, what a pity... Just a little more... If only we'd been just a little faster, we could have saved them..." Before the camera, the driver spoke with a breath so faint it seemed ready to fail at any moment. As he recounted the event, tears welled in his eyes, choking his voice with sobs: "Back when we set out from Kunwu, their bright smiles and cheerful voices were still so vivid in my mind. Who could have known that this parting would be between the living and the dead..." The tears flowed so copiously that he burned through a whole packet of the reporter's tissues. Such genuine camaraderie, such mutual respect between fierce rivals, brought a tear to every eye and tugged at every heartstring. After all, the driver himself had just undergone emergency medical examination. His injuries had been critical, and fresh blood still stained the bandages around his arm. Yet when the reporter asked whether he would withdraw from the race due to his wounds, Ji Jue gave a resolute refusal! Absolutely impossible. He declared that a little pain in the storm meant nothing; scars only steeled a man's fighting spirit. Even if he were to die, he would die on the track. In short, he would honor everyone's dying wishes, carrying the spirits of all the departed with him across the finish line! He would never let their sacrifices be in vain. Those stirring, blood-boiling words not only made An Ning cringe so hard beside him that her toes could have dug out a three-bedroom apartment, but they also set the entire internet ablaze once more. Thanks to this surge in public attention, the profile of Haichao Industry—poised to finalize its restructuring and merger—skyrocketed as well. At the same time, Tianya Investment struck while the iron was hot and dropped another bombshell: after completing its restructuring, the defense operations and related assets spun off from Yunzhou's Qingtian Industry would be fully acquired by the reborn Haichao Industry, with both parties entering an in-depth strategic partnership. Amid the soaring publicity, all manner of rumors and gossip ran rampant. Absurd jokes like "Haichao Industry plans to strike while the iron is hot and acquire the defense businesses of Echo and the other two" were actually believed by some, leaving people wondering what those credulous souls had in their heads. A restructured firm whose only fixed asset to date was an undeveloped plot earmarked for factory construction, trying to muscle in on the four great defense syndicates of the southern Federation? Had the world gone mad? The fallout from this disaster also prompted numerous organizations and institutions to call for a ban on dangerous events like the Desert Sea Rally, urging everyone to cherish human life. The race organizing committee promptly rebutted and ignored them all. A wave of internet buzz usually lasted only a day or two before fading. Soon enough, the general public shoved the matter to the back of their minds to chase after fresh entertainment scandals. As for the rally's true enthusiasts, they were already locked in vicious arguments across short-video comment sections, forums, and chat groups! After all, under the current circumstances, one powerhouse team after another had dropped out or suffered disasters, leaving drivers injured, crippled, or missing. Nine out of ten pre-race favorites had crashed and burned. Now, the team with the highest odds and loud support to take the championship was Haian—a squad founded barely a few months ago whose sole driver was their factory manager moonlighting on the side? It was beyond absurd. First it was "Tiancheng is undoubtedly the strongest," then "Zhonghui taking it would be well deserved," followed by "Huzun or Echo wouldn't be unreasonable." But by now, everyone was scratching their heads. What the hell was Haian Auto Works? Cries of "In an age without heroes, a nobody makes a name!", "When the tiger is away, the monkey crowns himself king!", "Xinyuan will destroy Haian!", and "Healthy Northern Realm vs. Informed Zhonghui!" erupted everywhere. The stat geeks began laying out numbers and debating logic, die-hard fans hurled insults at opposing camps, and reckless gamblers scouted the nearest rooftops. Amid all the chaos and clamor, after merely a single day of rest, the race resumed— Boundless yellow sands, a journey of a thousand li, crossing the gravel plains and barren wastelands in Stage S3—a trek spanning the full length of Longyuan! In this death zone, where ambient temperatures lingered around sixty degrees Celsius year-round and certain pockets could exceed a hundred at midday, where scorching winds blew by day and extreme chill gripped the night, all remaining contenders faced their most arduous challenge since the start of the race. Yet for some reason, viewers watching the live broadcast caught glimpses of something on the faces of the seven surviving teams... An inexplicable sense of relief? Don't ask. If you must ask, it was braving hardship with a smile! The harsher the environment, the happier we are—if it isn't miserable, we don't even want it! Thank heavens, thank every ancestor in heaven—those wretched bastards were finally done fighting! Everyone could finally just drive in peace. Even if the race wasn't over, at least nobody had to worry about getting shelled by artillery while cruising down the road. Compared to that, daytime heat and nighttime frost were child's play. The only person who had a slight grievance about it was An Ning... "It's so hot..." They had been on the road for barely half a day, and An Ning was already sprawled across her seat, half-dead from the heat. Her face was flushed, her mind seemingly drifting. "Brother Ji Jue, what did you feed me?" "?" Ji Jue kept his hands on the wheel and glanced back blankly. "I don't know what I fed you just now, but if you keep this up, someone's about to eat a knuckle sandwich." "Wuu wuu, you're so mean!" Instantly, tears welled in An Ning's eyes. "Back when you needed me, you called me your precious little darling and did this and that to me! Now that I'm hurt and useless, I'm just 'someone'..." Ji Jue fell silent, seriously contemplating whether he should finish off the drama queen in the passenger seat before the race ended. If he let her run wild, there was no telling how abysmally ruined his reputation would be by the time they crossed the finish line! Or maybe he should just waste a bit of fuel... With a sigh, he switched on the air conditioning. At once, the limp lump in the passenger seat wriggled over, plastered herself against the vent, and narrowed her eyes happily in the cool breeze. The moment she cooled down, her energy returned. She hummed a tune so off-key that the original melody was unrecognizable, amusing herself by fiddling with Ji Jue's tools and gear. She looked entirely like a child with boundless energy to burn. Judging by appearances alone, it was truly hard to imagine she was a White Stag Heaven's Choice at the tier of Regeneration. What Ji Jue envied most was undoubtedly that physical constitution of hers. She had been gravely wounded earlier, yet her recovery was absurdly fast—a single night of sleep had patched her up most of the way. She had even pulled out the threads stitching her heart herself, tied them into a knot, and pinned it to her hairclip, looking utterly bizarre and out of place. Most of the time, she devoted herself to pestering the driver. As a navigator, she did zero work, instead constantly tugging at Ji Jue to chat, asking about everything under the sun. "Say, why are we still bothering with the race anyway?" Bored out of her mind, she crouched on the glove compartment and tugged at Ji Jue's hair. He swatted her hand away in annoyance, but catching him off guard, she reached out again, clipped the hairclip onto his head, and giggled foolishly. She looked ready to annoy him until the end of time if he didn't answer. Bratty kids were the worst. Ji Jue sighed and countered, "Why not?" "Aren't all the rivals gone?" she asked. "Everyone who needed dealing with has been dealt with. After making such a massive scene back there, no one dumb enough to cross us would dare step up now, right?" "Then they won't step up." Ji Jue was far more nonchalant about it, keeping his hands on the wheel as the vehicle sped across the barren gravel plains. "Besides, tallying up what we gained, we've already made our money back and then some. It doesn't hurt to keep going." It didn't just not hurt; they had made a killing. Leaving aside the blessings he'd gained, the growth of Deus Ex Machina, and the fully completed Unquenched Fuel, the cratering stock prices of those four corporations over the past few days had brought a windfall to Ji Jue, who had prepared short positions well in advance. The figures in his account were shooting upward every day—an overnight fortune. This single trip had stripped the Third Department clean of materials and secured all the initial equipment needed for his workshop. Not only had he bypassed the most painful phase of capital accumulation that every artisan suffered through, but he could also devote the next few years to studying the Treatise on Xiang Swords without worrying about income. Who said Echo was bad? Echo was downright wonderful! Without those folks from Echo, where else could Ji Jue have found such easy suckers waiting to be sheared? "Hmm..." An Ning tilted her head, studying his face with deep puzzlement. "Still feels strange." "What's strange?" Ji Jue asked. "Since the objective has been reached and the race has no real point, based on your usual habits, you'd definitely have dropped out directly, wouldn't you?" An Ning said. "Something without a clear goal or tangible payoff—in your eyes, isn't that just a waste of time?" Ji Jue fell silent for a moment, surprised to find that he had no retort ready. It was just as An Ning had said: in the past, the moment he realized the race offered no value beyond a scrap of hollow fame, he would have walked away without a second thought. Yet when the reporter asked, why had he refused? He hadn't even hesitated. "Ooh, I get it!" An Ning's eyes suddenly lit up as if an epiphany had struck. "Brother Ji Jue, you just couldn't bear to leave me! You wanted to clear away all the distractions and have a sweet romantic road trip with me, didn't you?!" [???] A hundred thousand question marks sprouted over Ji Jue's forehead. Excuse me? How could an illiterate White Stag who couldn't even calculate the linear vibration of an eccentric shaft arrive at such a baffling conclusion?! "I knew it! You do care about me!" Beaming, An Ning nudged and rubbed his shoulder. "Aww, don't be shy! Manga says tsunderes often miss out on true love, you know! And chasing the wronged lover across the crematorium is super trendy lately. Come to think of it, should I act cold and aloof, scoffing at you with haughty disdain?" "An Ning..." Ji Jue sighed in exhaustion. "Hmm? What is it, what is it?" An Ning squeezed right in front of the driver's seat, leaning close with fluttering eyes and eager anticipation. "Are you going to confess? I'm not an easy girl, you know! Of course, if you're sincere enough, Brother Ji Jue, I might seriously consider it!" "Do me a favor and stop dreaming." Ji Jue reached out expressionlessly, grabbed her face, and shoved it aside with cold ruthlessness. "Women without a college degree are outside my dating criteria, thank you very much." A mere academic disaster who couldn't scrape two hundred points across seven subjects had the nerve to hit on an accelerated master's student from Tianmen University, one of the Federation's top five? Pure delusion! Ignoring An Ning's noisy protests and accusations, Ji Jue directed his Quicksilver to pin her back into the passenger seat and gagged her mouth in the process. At last, silence reigned. Ji Jue's hand brushed across the dashboard. For the first time since their departure, he switched on the radio. Gentle piano music drifted from the speakers, echoing softly through the quiet cabin. He suddenly felt that continuing the race wasn't so bad after all. At the very least, securing a ranking would be good for Haian Auto Works' development. Besides, Yan Jian had rallied so many workers to film a cheer video for him. As the factory head, it wouldn't do to ignore that. He could just consider it an occasional bout of charity—doing something pointless for once... He lifted his gaze toward the view beyond the windshield: a vast world he had never seen before. Even though it was nothing more than arid wasteland and endless yellow sand, devoid of breathtaking scenery, it still brought a refreshing openness to the spirit. The azure sky hung high and vibrant. Beneath the blaze of the desert sun, everything seemed to shimmer with radiant brilliance. "What wonderful weather," he murmured softly. Having cast aside all talk of goals and significance, Ji Jue drove forward along the road that stretched toward an unseen horizon. Gradually, he began lazily humming along with the melody drifting from the radio. Rolling steadily into the distance.