Chapter 58: Living well
Towering buildings blocked the light falling onto the street. The municipal government had just replaced the highway's central divider with flower beds to beautify the surroundings. Dense traffic backed up into a long queue, stretching from the top of the overpass to the road beneath it, then on into the dusk-hazed distance, where tall buildings rose on either side.
The main road and its surroundings bustled with activity. Steam rose from a beef noodle shop, and someone came out of a store carrying wastewater and splashed it into a roadside drain. Occasionally, a few fashionably dressed women passed by, chatting and laughing beneath parasols held to protect their skin, offering the people in buses, taxis, and cars a little relief from the frustration of the traffic jam.
But for the three men in a black 212 Jeep with military plates, the traffic jam was not the most maddening part. What really drove them to despair was that they had actually lost their way in this forest of steel.
Three young men occupied the driver's seat, the front passenger seat, and the back seat of the military vehicle, all in uniform. The driver had the darkest complexion of the three. Looking into the dim interior from outside the Jeep, one would probably find his most striking features to be his two bell-like eyes, far whiter than the surrounding skin.
The 212 Jeep's interior was roomy and spacious. A grown man weighing 170 or 180 jin could sit comfortably with plenty of room to spare.
Yet the second young man, sitting in the front passenger seat, gave the impression that his broad shoulders were pressed against the right-hand door, leaving him little room to stretch, like a tiger trapped in a cage. He turned around and spoke to