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Chapter 146 Axe
Gu Mian lowered her head slightly.

His face was hidden in shadow, and the driver couldn't see his expression.

But there was no need to see clearly; the person, who was smiling with narrowed eyes, continued, "This is a stubborn girl; I don't like her at all."

"—Then she died, suffocated. When she died, her face was blue and purple, and her eyes were about to pop out."

At this point, the driver's eerie voice suddenly stopped.

The wind outside seems to be getting stronger, and there's a faint indication that it's going to rain.

Gu Mian seemed to hear a deep rumbling sound from the distant horizon, like the snoring of a sleeping giant beast.

Darkness enveloped the taxi, and the driver drove the vehicle, not knowing where he was headed.

Gu Mian kept his head down, but he noticed a gaze fixed on his scalp. He knew that if he looked up, he would see the driver's distorted face squeezed into the small rearview mirror.

His twisted, grinning face was full of malice. He had practically made his intentions clear, declaring that he was the murderer of the victim he claimed to be, and was now waiting to see the passengers on the bus react in bewilderment.

Gu Mian kept her head down. Another deep rumble came from the darkness in the distance, almost blending into the sound of the wind.

He heard the driver in front exhale, his tone somewhat cheerful: "This is the first interesting person I've met. Isn't he more interesting than all the patients you've encountered?"

Humans are arrogant creatures.

At the same time, they are also creatures that love to compare themselves with others.

These two human characteristics are even more vividly displayed in perverts.

The saying "like repels like" makes a lot of sense.

When people meet someone who is somewhat similar to themselves, they often feel a sense of kinship.

However, when they encounter someone who is remarkably similar to them in some way, most perverts will not feel any sense of kinship, but rather a sense of repulsion.

"I am unique in this world, and I will prove that no one similar to me can compare to me"—this is the thought in the minds of most psychopaths.

The driver stared at the rearview mirror for a while, then his smile returned.

As if to make a better comparison, he continued, "She didn't actually die the most tragically. The person I've seen die the most tragically was a man."

"His name was Zuo Xiaqiu. He was around forty years old when he died. He truly had elderly parents and young children to care for."

Gu Mian had seen this person before. He and the young man who was chasing the wind were in that driver's car. The young man who was chasing the wind abandoned the car halfway and ran away, and the driver even got out and chased after him for quite a distance.

The driver, Zuo Xiaqiu, was so badly injured that his head almost fell off his neck. Before leaving, Gu Mian thoughtfully wrapped his neck up.

"I won't go into the details of why he died; what I mainly want to talk about is the horrific way he died..."

"Actually, I'm not naturally sensitive to gore. No matter what kind of corpse I see, I won't exclaim 'What a terrible death!' or anything like that."

"But this person made me feel real misery, not physically, but psychologically."

"As I said, he's a middle-aged man in his forties, with elderly parents to care for, young children to raise, and a wife waiting for him to come home. The burden on a man of that age is exceptionally heavy; he's constantly overwhelmed by it."

He complained to me that he was exhausted from work every day and couldn't get a good look from his family when he got home.

An aging and faded wife always grumbles and complains endlessly, more annoying than mosquitoes in summer.
Children who are still in school also need to pay tutoring fees, which is another considerable expense;

His elderly parents had some minor ailment, requiring him to sacrifice his rest time at night to stay with them in the hospital.

"He clearly loathed all of this, yet when he was relieved of his burden, he revealed an indescribable expression."

The driver paused at this point, as if recalling something.

"Yes, that day was also a night like that, a rainy night."

As he said this, a sudden, intense light flashed before Gu Mian's eyes, and he turned his head to look out the window.

A thick bolt of lightning cleaved the night sky, illuminating the darkness for a moment, followed by a deep rumble of thunder.

At the same time, the sound of raindrops falling on the car could also be heard.

The dense raindrops fell unexpectedly, pounding on the metal body of the car.

The raindrops were heavy, pounding against the metal roof with a resounding thud. Gu Mian felt as if fists were pounding on the roof. "It's raining just as hard," the driver's malicious voice came through the window. "I pulled out an axe I'd hidden under the driver's seat and chopped off a good part of his neck."

If his previous words were merely suggestive of danger, then his current words are a direct and explicit threat.

He told Gu Mian about his evil deeds without any hesitation.

No, he said it on purpose; perhaps he wanted to see the passengers' expressions when they heard it.

Gu Mian lowered his head again, burying his face in the deep darkness, so that no one could see his face clearly.

The driver continued, "I chopped off a small part of his neck, and blood gushed out."

He made a very exaggerated gesture, his tone filled with a deep smile.

"Most people don't have the strength to struggle after their neck is broken in half, but he was different."

"This man, who had been complaining to me the whole way, somehow found the strength to pry open the car door and run out. He was clutching his neck, trying to stop the blood from gushing out."

"The rain that day was just as heavy as today. As soon as he went outside, blood was everywhere, swirling in the rain."

He ran, trudging through the rain in the cold night. I didn't know that someone with half of their neck broken could still have so much strength. I wasn't in a hurry, so I just followed behind him.

"He ran for less than ten seconds before finally stopping, collapsing to the ground as if he couldn't hold on any longer, but his hands were still tightly clutching his neck, as if he were terrified of dying."

"I don't understand. He complains about his job and his family who are like a burden to him. I'm just helping him unload his burdens, so why does he run away?"

He lay in the rain, his eyes still wide open. When he saw me approaching, as if he knew he didn't have the strength to run anymore, he staggered to his feet, then knelt before me, frantically banging his head against the ground.

“‘I can’t die, please spare me,’ I remember him saying that.”

"I remember his head slamming hard into the rain, splashing quite a bit of water, and the blood on his neck couldn't be contained; it flowed into the water."

The driver's voice suddenly changed, as if he were imitating someone else's voice.

The voice was dull, somewhat sobbing, but mostly filled with sorrow.

"I can't die! They're all waiting for me. I have to go back."

"My wife will cry. What will she do if I die?"

Then the driver changed his tone back to his own.

"Look at him, he was complaining about them just now, but he's acting like this before he dies."

"Of course I wouldn't let go of a prey I'd already caught. When he saw me coming, he stopped kowtowing and started crawling desperately in one direction. I remembered that his house was in that direction."

"I watched him mumble something, crawl on the ground for a little while, then I went up and slashed him hard with my knife. Finally, he couldn't move at all, his eyes just staring fixedly in one direction."

I heard him muttering something.

Then his tone changed, and he spoke in a completely different voice.

"I have to go home..."

Just then, the car suddenly stopped.

Gu Mian, with her head down, heard the rustling sound of the driver in front of her, and then it seemed that he opened the driver's side door and got out of the car.

Immediately, Gu Mian heard a knocking sound coming from outside her car window.

He looked down and glanced to the side, and saw a range of undulating mountains not far away.

The driver was standing by his car window. The heavy rain had soaked his clothes, and his wet hair clung to his face, but it did nothing to diminish his smug smile.

The driver, bent over, stood in the heavy rain and reached out a hand to knock on the car window: "We've arrived."

Gu Mian turned her gaze to the driver's other hand, where he was holding a menacing axe.

The author is trying to finish writing this chapter tonight. (jpg)
I discovered a wonderfully sweet and engaging book, "Tomorrow Has Not Yet Arrived" by Ren Qiuming. It tells the story of Lu Yuan, a boy who is reborn at the age of eighteen after the sun goes out, and his savior story. It's a story about saving the world while eating hot pot, singing songs, and playing games.

Thank you to Linqi, Feichazhaiyuanxia, ​​Beizhenaipingqulangwu, and Qixizizaizai for the generous donations (づ￣3￣)づ╭～
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(End of this chapter)