Chapter 4: Entering the Valley Again

Today was the day to set off.

Mali had completed all the preparations and then rested for two days, adjusting his body and mind to the best state, ready for the long journey.

After breakfast, he made a cup of coconut latte as usual.

This was also very simple; it was just adding coconut milk to coffee. Whether it was authentic or not was hard to say, but it tasted quite good.

Afterward, he packed the coffee machine and one hundred capsules along with two bags of milk into his mountaineering backpack. Also thrown in was a book titled "Breaking Big Cases from the Start."

It had no special meaning; he just grabbed it when he went to the library to get the atlas last night, just in case he had nothing to do when he couldn't sleep at night.

Mali pulled the zipper, and his peripheral vision caught the wall clock.

He didn't know if it was his hallucination, but he felt the second hand seemed to have moved a little, but when he looked closely, it seemed it hadn't.

Ever since he woke up from the hospital, he found that all the mechanical watches he could find in the city, big or small, were almost all frozen at 11:21.

So strictly speaking, Mali actually didn't know what time it was.

Under the shroud of the red mist, there was no difference between day and night; the light was always in a hazy, neither bright nor dark state.

The date and time on his phone were set by himself, because not knowing the time always felt a bit strange, and it wasn't convenient to plan his schedule, and he couldn't even tell if he had stayed up late or eaten on time today.

After living in such a muddled way for two days, Mali made up his mind.

—There had to be a time. Regardless of whether it was accurate or not.

8:29. Mali finally sat in the modified G300p, inserted the key into the ignition switch, and started the engine.

The off-road vehicle slowly drove onto the road.

Mali drove very slowly because motionless cars and electric scooters could be seen everywhere by the side of the road.

Occasionally, there were motorcycles and bicycles lying in the middle of the road, and coupled with the low visibility in the red mist, Mali basically never shifted into second gear, only able to crawl slowly, taking nearly two hours to reach the toll station.

And even if he got on the expressway, the speed couldn't really be increased much.

He still had to carefully avoid the stationary vehicles on the road, but the number was much smaller than in the city, and there were no electric scooters or bicycles.

This was still because Mali had already cleared it once when he drove the Seal before; otherwise, if he encountered a situation where several cars were side by side, he would have to find a way to drag one of them away.

Fortunately, the newly replaced laser fog lamps and ARB headlights were very useful, increasing the visible distance by a full two times, from the original less than ten meters to about twenty-four or twenty-five meters now.

By the time Mali drove to the end of the expressway, the time had already reached 3:00 PM.

He simply got out of the car to have lunch first, refilled the fuel tank with the diesel he had placed there in advance, and then continued forward.

From here on, the originally smooth and wide asphalt road seemed to have been rudely cut off by some mysterious force, and one could even see different structural surfaces inside at the fault.

Further ahead, the familiar scenes all around disappeared, replaced by a strange valley covered with black stones.

These stones of various shapes had once hindered Mali from continuing to drive, but in front of an off-road vehicle with raised suspension and changed mud tires, they seemed to have become not so insurmountable.

The G300p slowly drove into the valley.

Mali could hear the clattering sound of stones under the tires, and the car body rose and fell with it, like a ferry in a rainstorm.

He held the steering wheel, staring tightly ahead, constantly weighing and calculating in his heart, bypassing those stones that were too large or had edges that were too sharp.

Occasionally, he would look down at the tachometer and oil temperature gauge on the dashboard.

One person and one car traveled silently in the valley like this until the time reached 9:20 PM.

Mali parked the car beside a giant rock about six or seven meters high.

After entering the river valley, he had been driving for more than 5 hours continuously. Based on the average speed multiplied by time, he estimated he had traveled about 60 kilometers, far exceeding the distance of his last walk.

He hadn't encountered any danger along the way, but his spirit had been tense, and he was very exhausted now.

So he got out of the car to stretch his muscles and bones.

Mali regretted not replacing the driver's seat when he was modifying it before. The original seat wasn't comfortable to sit in. In fact, for the sake of reliability and ease of maintenance, this car sacrificed too many things; even the windows were hand-cranked, basically having nothing to do with comfort.

He didn't understand why anyone would want to drive this kind of car in the city; maybe rich people had more special ideas.

When he was doing black labor at the auto repair shop before, Mali had seen many stranger cars and car owners. In comparison, this G300p was already considered good.

And no matter what, he was driving a Big G, which could be considered a turn for the better.

While comforting himself, Mali tore open a pack of compressed biscuits for dinner. He hesitated and didn't pair it with luncheon meat. This was only the first day on the road, and he didn't know how long it would take to get out of this valley, so he decided to be a bit frugal.

Today's breakfast and lunch were quite good, and the nutrition should be enough. Dinner could be appropriately simpler.

However, the taste of the compressed biscuits was really not very good. Mali didn't even finish eating, frowned, wrapped up the rest, threw it into the glove box, and prepared to get in the car to sleep.

Even though he brought a sleeping bag and a tent, he still didn't dare to sleep in the red mist outside, especially after leaving the familiar city.

In comparison, having the protection of iron and glass in the G300p could at least make him feel more at ease.

The night passed without incident.

Because he went to bed early, Mali woke up before 7:00 the next day. He rubbed his somewhat sore waist while opening the car door.

He first got out of the car to check the few simple little traps he had set up around the car.

Including three plastic bottles, a matchbox, and stones he had tied up with thin thread, none of their positions had changed.

This also meant that no person or animal should have been nearby last night.

Mali didn't know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or be disappointed by this result.

He finished washing up with mixed feelings, ate breakfast, and set off on the journey again.

The second day was as usual, except for one time the car got stuck, which Mali easily solved using the recovery boards.

Before going to sleep, he read three chapters of "Breaking Big Cases from the Start" and found that this detective novel he grabbed casually at the library was actually quite good. Although its fame was far inferior to "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," it felt even better than the latter in terms of reading interest.

Besides that, he also checked the fuel gauge. The needle had almost finished the third grid, which meant that the 96L of diesel in the main fuel tank had already consumed nearly three-quarters, or 70L.

Mali noted this number, then opened a barrel of diesel and refilled the fuel tank.

Like last night, he also set up traps around the off-road vehicle.

As a result, when he got out of the car to check in the morning, he found that the stones hadn't changed much, but the matchbox and plastic bottles were no longer in their original places. ===== CHAPTER 5 =====