Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

Yang Ce was watching with his cheeks burning. These two, he thought—really! He hastily started the engine and eased the car toward a side lane.

"How did I fall asleep?" Xia Xue rubbed her eyes, secretly reluctant. She had been having such a lovely dream—her grandmother frying up a whole basin of fried cakes, more than she could ever finish, so delicious—and then she had been woken up. "You were just saying you wanted fried cakes, and then you fell asleep," Yang Ce said, laughing as he drove.

"Huh?" Xia Xue was startled. Had she really said she wanted fried cakes?

"That's right. Later on you probably went to eat them in your dream," Yang Ce went on. "And then you fell asleep."

"I—I did not!" Xia Xue's face went red with embarrassment. But at Yang Ce's words her stomach growled again—eating in a dream did not count, after all.

"Heh. But the breakfast stalls probably aren't open yet. Let's just drive around a bit," Yang Ce said. "We can't park just anywhere, but there's no harm in driving, is there?"

Xia Xue was no longer sleepy now, and considerably more clear-headed. She nodded. "All right, let's drive around. Who knows, we might actually find a clue to the haunted case."

"You're so bent on making a name for yourself you've gone off the deep end. Clues like that don't just turn up because you go looking for them." Yang Ce switched off the heater—it was too warm, uncomfortably so.

Yang Ce drove aimlessly back and forth through the streets and intersections of Songjiang. At four in the morning, the streets held the fewest cars. Now and then a large truck like the one Yan drove would pass by, but they were all just travelers hurrying on their way.

Hm? Yang Ce suddenly froze and rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Had his eyes been playing tricks on him? Puzzled, he raised his head and looked ahead—still a long, straight road.

And yet, in that instant just now, what Yang Ce had seen was something else entirely. What he saw was that there was no road ahead anymore—only a wall, and the actual road lay to the right of that wall.

Had he been hallucinating? Yang Wenru furrowed his brow. By any reasonable account, his willpower ought to be far stronger than the average person's, and his eyesight far sharper too. How could there possibly be any chance of his eyes playing tricks on him?

He was still mulling this over when Xia Xue's scream cut through the air: "Yang Ce, what are you doing? Stop the car!"

"What's wrong?" Yang Ce snapped back to his senses and asked, bewildered.

"What do you mean, what's wrong? Turn right! Can't you see there's a wall right in front of us?" Xia Xue shrieked in terror, her hands flying out on their own to grab at Yang Juehuan's steering wheel, trying to wrench it to the right.

Yang Xutang heard Xia Xue's words and was utterly baffled. What did she mean, a wall ahead, turn right? What nonsense was Xia Xue talking?

Suddenly, Yang Ce gave a violent start as he thought of what he had glimpsed in that fleeting instant. So then—what he had seen just now had not been a hallucination. Or rather, it had been a hallucination, but Xia Xue had experienced the very same one.

Yang Ce ignored Xia Xue and gripped the steering wheel tight, not letting her move it a fraction. He was confident about this road, because when he had shaken off little Dorsk earlier, this was the very route he had taken. So Yang Ce was certain that there really was a road ahead, not a wall—and that the wall was on the right.

"Ah—!" Xia Xue let out a shriek as she watched Yang Ce drive the car straight into the wall. Police officer or not, when it came down to it she was still a young woman. Her nerve might be greater than most, but what good was nerve at a moment like this?

This was no science fiction movie—this was a car, truly and literally, slamming into a great big wall. Xia Xue squeezed her eyes shut in despair. She was still so young; there were so many things she had never done, so many foods she had never tasted, so many places she had never been, so many pleasures she had never enjoyed. Was she really going to die like this? She had never been in love, never made love—she didn't even know what it felt like. If she'd known, she might as well have gone through with it that last time with Yan... Wait. Xia Xue froze. Why wasn't she dead yet? At the speed they'd been going, it should have taken a second at most for the car to be destroyed and everyone in it killed. But several seconds had passed—why was she still alive?

Had Yang Ce slammed on the brakes at the last second? Or swerved right? Xia Xue opened her eyes doubtfully and looked back, only to see a sight that astonished her beyond measure.

The car had passed clean through that wall she had seen, entirely unscathed, and kept driving forward—while the wall behind them was still there.

"What's going on?" Xia Xue's eyes went wide, her face a mask of disbelief. She stared at Yang Ce, breathing hard.

Yang Shuoxuan was deeply puzzled. Ever since Xia Xue had also said she saw a "wall," Yang Ce had begun to wonder. Could it be that he too had run into a haunted-case incident?

Yang Ce slowly pulled the car over to the side of the road and carefully replayed in his mind the instant when the "wall" had appeared and then vanished, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

At the time, he had indeed seen the road ahead as a wall. But after he saw the wall, it was as though something inside his body had stirred into action. Prodded by that something, his mind had cleared in an instant, and the wall before him had ceased to exist.

Could it be that there was something abnormal about his constitution? Or was he simply overthinking, his nerves oversensitive, and all of this was the work of his ability? Yang Shuoxuan was not entirely sure. If it was the ability's doing, that made sense too, since the ability could pass through any object and see what lay ahead.

But he did seem to have genuinely felt something stir inside his body at that moment. Hearing Xia Xue's question, Yang Ce drew a deep breath, steadied his emotions, and asked, "Just now—did you really see that what lay ahead of us wasn't a road, but a wall?"

"Yes! Not just now—right now too!" With that, Xia Xue turned to look back, about to say something, when she froze. After a long moment she said in astonishment, "Hey—where's the wall behind us?"

Yang Ce shook his head and said, word by word, "There was never any wall behind us. Not just now, and not at this moment either."

"Then what I saw just now—was I just groggy from sleep?" Xia Xue was thoroughly confused. How had the wall simply vanished?

Yang Ce was suddenly at a loss. He did not know how to answer Xia Xue, yet he absolutely could not tell her she had been groggy. What had just happened was far too complicated—it might well be a crucial clue in the haunting case. Yang Yongjin had no intention of letting a clue obtained with such difficulty slip away into nothing.

But how was Yang Ce supposed to explain it to Xia Xue? If Yang Ce said he hadn't seen it, then Xia Xue would be sure it was her own hallucination and would not think any further about it. But if he said he had seen it, Xia Xue would certainly ask: if you saw it, why did you drive the car straight into the wall? Naturally, Yang Ce could not explain the ability to her, could not say that he had simply snapped back to normal in an instant. That left him only one other way to put it.

After pondering for a good while, Yang Ce said, "You weren't groggy. I saw that wall too, just now."

"What? You saw it too?" Xia Xue was visibly taken aback, then said, "If you saw it, why did you still drive straight into it?"