The Charm of That Collision

With heavy doubts, Fang Linyan lifted the shopping basket, placed it before the cashier, scanned and paid, then picked up his goods to leave. But something unexpected happened—as he walked out of the supermarket, the scanner beside the door suddenly let out a series of beeps.

Fang Linyan was still bewildered when a nearby security guard, well-practiced, stepped to the doorway and pressed a hand on his shoulder, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes: "Play nice. Hand it over."

A fat, middle-aged woman beside him jumped up as if injected with adrenaline: "Aha ha! You little scumbag, stealing!"

Fang Linyan felt a surge of indignation, his face flushing red as he said, "I didn't—cough, cough, cough."

The moment he got worked up, he doubled over in a violent coughing fit. The guard thought he was faking it to make a break for it—something that had happened before, costing him half a month's bonus. So this time, he bluntly and roughly grabbed the nearly collapsing Fang Linyan, dragging him inside while shouting for help.

The fat woman scurried over in excitement, the fat on her face jiggling, and as she got close, she raised her arm, clearly aiming to slap Fang Linyan hard a few times.

But in the next second, a terrifying thing happened!!

A low rumble suddenly echoed from the street—a sound everyone recognized as the strained roar of a heavy truck's engine that frequently passed by here. Yet within that engine noise, there was also a sharp, piercing horn.

Then, a heavy truck, carrying a load of at least seventy tons, completely out of control, charged straight in with a blast of cold air, slamming into the supermarket at over eighty kilometers per hour.

The heavy truck shot past less than a meter from Fang Linyan with lightning speed. At that astonishing velocity, the pillar at the supermarket entrance shattered in an instant, the metal framework softening and deforming like putty.

The runaway truck plowed a path of blood, concrete, and metal through the supermarket entrance, drove another twenty meters, and finally crashed headlong into a five-story building behind it.

The building's outer wall was made of red brick, not even plastered, and was estimated to be much older than Linyan himself. How could it withstand such devastation? It swayed twice, then collapsed with a roar, burying half the truck's cab and sending up a massive cloud of dust.

Everyone present was stunned by the gruesome scene, unable to speak for a good ten seconds. It was the victims' agonized screams that finally snapped them back to reality, and they hurried to help.

At that point, who cared about the earlier machine alarm? Fang Linyan naturally joined in the rescue, working until he was drenched in sweat. It wasn't until others noticed him coughing so violently that he even spat blood that they urged him to rest on the sidelines.

When Fang Linyan finally got home, he lay down in bed but tossed and turned, unable to sleep. The two events he had just experienced had left too deep an impression on him—the extreme strangeness of what happened in the restroom, and the terror of the car accident that had been so close!

The shock of facing a wildly charging dump truck head-on, the cruelty and helplessness of life being snuffed out in an instant, made Fang Linyan keenly feel the impermanence and disillusionment of life! His mind replayed the details over and over.

Suddenly, Fang Linyan thought of something so terrifying that a chill ran down his spine, and he felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar! Because if he calculated carefully, had he checked out normally and left without the supermarket machine's alarm going off, that runaway heavy truck would undoubtedly have slammed straight into him!!!

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, and his thoughts immediately zeroed in on a key point.

Why had the supermarket machine suddenly sounded the alarm?

The chance of a machine error wasn't zero, but it was very small, and Fang Linyan dismissed it outright.

The most likely possibility was that he really was carrying an unscanned item on him!

And verifying this was simple—just check immediately.

First, Fang Linyan emptied the supermarket shopping bag and began counting item by item. In just over ten seconds, he was basically sure nothing was missing.

Next came his own person. Fang Linyan habitually reached into his right pants pocket, and his face immediately showed a blank expression. Yes, he had felt something hard in there, and it was square-shaped.

He pulled it out and found it was a phone!

Yes, an old-fashioned, nearly obsolete Nokia 100 bar phone. Young people basically had no use for this thing, but because of its loud volume, durability, amazing battery life, and low price, it was popular among the elderly and could still be found in supermarket stores.

Staring at the brand-new phone in his hand, Fang Linyan was utterly dumbfounded. He never imagined he would have such an item on him. He remembered clearly that he hadn't even gone near the phone section, let alone stolen this phone.

And to be honest, Fang Linyan was using a Huawei or Oppo smartphone these days—why would he steal a senior phone!

Just then, Fang Linyan noticed that the phone in his hand was actually turned on. On a whim, he clicked into it and found three unread text messages. The sender was marked as "Unknown." When he opened the messages, his pupils suddenly contracted, because what he saw next was bizarre to the extreme!!

"You were never meant to see this message. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, your normal life trajectory should have ended abruptly at 9:47:32 PM tonight, death by car accident—one so severe that your body would be hard to find."

This old phone could only hold a limited number of characters per message, so the content cut off there, requiring the next message to continue. Fang Linyan didn't rush to open the next one; his heart was pounding, and his worldview was shaken, because he knew every word in this message was true!

At that moment, Fang Linyan felt his vision darkening. He knew it was his frail body struggling to cope with the intense emotional upheaval, and he might pass out any second. So he took a few deep breaths, grabbed a handful of glucose powder, stuffed it into his mouth, and closed his eyes, forcing his mind blank. Only then did he gradually recover.

It took a full ten-plus minutes for Fang Linyan to steady himself. Once calm, he opened the second message.

"I know you must have a lot of questions right now, but it's not time to answer them yet. Doesn't it feel terrible knowing you have terminal cancer and can only wait to die? Have you ever thought about changing this damn fate?"

Seeing this question, Fang Linyan clenched his fists tightly! His whole body trembled violently.

Yes, after learning the bad news, what he thought about most was fighting back! But after searching through a mountain of information, he realized that so-called cancer treatment was really just "leave it to fate." That helplessness, that powerlessness, was the most despairing thing of all!

In truth, if he could grab fate by the throat, Fang Linyan would charge at it recklessly, strangle it with his hands, bite it with his teeth, ram it with his head! As long as he had one breath left, he would never give up!!!

"Of course. Yes." These three words were squeezed out from between his teeth involuntarily.

He eagerly opened the third message. At this point, he was like a drowning man grabbing at a straw, because even the worst outcome couldn't be worse than now, especially since this mysterious message had already shown something beyond known science.

The third message, compared to the first two, was extremely simple—just one sentence, a few words.

"13th, 00:17, Huichuan Pier No. 5, Silver Case. Not early, not late."

Looking at this sentence, Fang Linyan's expression grew serious. This kind of hint wasn't what he wanted! Only time and place, with no idea what he was facing—charging in blindly carried too much unknown risk. But faced with such a bizarre choice, he had no option! Not going meant waiting to die!!

Rushing in recklessly wasn't Fang Linyan's style; planning before acting was.

So, Fang Linyan immediately opened his phone and started checking maps and information. He quickly found that Huichuan Pier No. 5 had been abandoned for several years, about fifty to sixty kilometers from the city, very remote, with the nearest road almost two kilometers away. The connection between the pier and the road was a dirt path.

After thinking it over, he went straight to an internet café, since only a computer could show satellite images and street views. But when he tried to pull up the images, he got a 404 error. He sighed in regret and decided to scout the area from a distance tomorrow.

Fortunately, there were still about two days of buffer time before the 13th at 00:17, giving Fang Linyan ample time to investigate everything.