"The rain came, the thunder roared, the wind blew—all of it was prepared for a funeral, carefully arranged by the master of the funeral."
"And now, you're on the road leading to that funeral."
Lu Mingze's voice seemed to drone on and on.
At first, he thought something supernatural had happened. Then he saw a child appear beside him.
The child wore formal clothes, a flower pinned to his collar, and his hair was neatly combed, like some noble aristocrat.
Lu Mingze continued, "Brother, no funeral welcomes uninvited guests."
He seemed unwilling to let Lu Mingze go on. Coldly, he scolded him, "If I'm your brother, then what gives you the right to speak here?"
At that, Lu Mingze actually revealed a strange smile.
"How interesting, brother. You seem to have changed. You used to be so polite."
Lu Mingfei replied impatiently, "Polite? Sorry, but that seems to be something only the weak need."
Then Lu Mingfei waved his hand, and Lu Mingze's body began to blur like an illusion.
At that moment, this version of his brother, Lu Mingze, had become far too interesting.
It was as if he had experienced things that Lu Mingze himself had never experienced.
Lu Mingze smiled again and teased, "Brother, you have no idea how terrifying the master of this funeral really is."
"People can't imagine just how terrifying a god's power can be."
A glint flashed in Lu Mingfei's eyes. He spat at the hazy apparition as it finally dispersed like smoke:
"A god? That's ridiculous."
"Just an oversized reptile..."
Lu Mingze replied with a playful air, "You don't need love anymore, my brother?"
Lu Mingfei answered without hesitation:
"Love? I'm past that childish age. Mature people don't need to rely on affection given out of pity."
The next moment, when Lu Mingze had vanished completely, the gears of time seemed to start turning again.
Dense raindrops battered the windows one after another. Chu Tianjiao's incessant chatter continued, while Chu Zihang gave him the occasional impatient response.
But then Chu Zihang sensed that something was wrong.
The windshield wipers whipped back and forth like mad, but they couldn't clear the torrential rain pouring onto the windshield.
The world outside warped into a stream of dark, shifting shapes as the car sped along. Streetlights stretched into dying golden threads.
The Maybach was like a silent black beast, still charging ahead at an astonishing speed under Chu Tianjiao's command.
But the navigation had long since failed, and the needles on the dashboard occasionally jumped erratically.
Chu Zihang sat silently in the passenger seat, seemingly hearing nothing but the engine's low growl and the roar of the downpour battering the car.
His heart began to pound. He hurriedly looked ahead. Under the headlights, the asphalt gleamed with an eerie sheen, and the empty road was unsettling enough to raise goosebumps.
There were no guardrails or streetlights on either side of this elevated road, making it seem deeply abnormal.
Chu Tianjiao pressed the accelerator. The speedometer needle steadily climbed to 120 kilometers per hour, yet the car remained as steady as if it were gliding across a sheet of black ice.
"Buckle up."
Chu Tianjiao's voice carried over, unusually calm, even tinged with a focus that was hard to describe.
Chu Zihang instinctively glanced toward the flowing darkness outside the window. At first, he thought it was just his imagination.
But soon, his pupils contracted sharply.
It wasn't his imagination.
In the darkness at the edge of the elevated road, just behind and to the side of the Maybach, where there should have been nothing, something was writhing.
They clung to some invisible boundary. At first, they were only hazy, wavering outlines, like black curtains being torn by the wind.
But as the car accelerated, those shapes quickly grew distinct.
They were shadows.
Human shadows.
But they had no definite features and no clear division between their limbs. They were human-shaped masses of black, thick as tar, appearing one after another, then in groups, growing out of the endless rainy night behind them.
They made no sound, yet moved as fast as ghosts, gliding in a way that looked nothing like running as they pursued the speeding Maybach.
They drew closer and closer.
Chu Zihang held his breath.
He saw that the nearest shadow was almost level with the rear window.
It had no face, but Chu Zihang could sense its bloodthirsty yearning.
The shadow's edges stretched longer and longer, as if trying to reach out with tentacle-like limbs and touch the smooth car body.
"Dad, I think we've run into something evil."
Chu Zihang's voice trembled. He had long since forgotten his resentment toward his father; the fear rising inside him was impossible to suppress.
"Don't look outside." Chu Tianjiao's voice remained steady, but the veins on the back of the hand gripping the steering wheel stood out slightly.
The car seemed to be going even faster.
"Thump!"
A faint but distinct muffled sound came from the car door on Chu Zihang's side.
Chu Zihang whipped around, his neck stiff.
A flat black face was pressed against the window, only a few centimeters from his own.
It had no eyes, only two deeper hollows, but it stared straight at him.
The shadow's body was like a boneless mollusk. Part of it was plastered to the car door, while the rest remained connected to the great mass of its kind pursuing them from behind. It twisted grotesquely in the rain and gale, desperately trying to squeeze through the cracks around the windows and doors.
The shadows even let out low growls, making them all the more terrifying and chilling.
That same teeth-grating slapping sound began to come from the windows on both sides and the roof.
More and more shadows gathered, clinging densely to the car like a swarm of black leeches that had smelled blood, trying to "suck the Maybach dry" and kill it.
Chu Zihang's face went deathly pale.
A nightmare.
This was absolutely the kind of scene that could only appear in a nightmare.
A chill shot up Chu Zihang's spine as he looked at the monsters. It felt as if his entire worldview had collapsed.
He wanted to move, to do something, but found himself frozen in his seat, able only to watch as those inhuman shadows writhed wildly outside the windows.
The Maybach kept racing forward, its engine roaring as it tried to break free of the shadows.
Outside the car were the downpour and even more endless, swarming shadows.
Chu Zihang's fingertips dug into his palm. Instinctively, he wanted to check how someone else was holding up.
Or rather, he had imagined that Lu Mingfei would be scared out of his mind too.
Then he looked at Lu Mingfei.
Lu Mingfei was indeed staring fixedly outside, but there was no trace of fear on his face.
The corner of his mouth merely lifted slightly.
Chu Zihang was completely dumbfounded. From that calm, untroubled expression, all he could read was that Lu Mingfei found this a little boring, a little annoying, and even a little beneath him.
That was right—beneath him.
Like a human watching an ant try to move his foot.