The rumbling sound of engines echoed along the highway in the dark night, and a white van was speeding along the mountain forest road.\ "Uncle Lin, this is already the third night, and we haven't found any clues," Jiang Yilu, gripping the steering wheel, said irritably to Li Lin. "Your crazy idea isn't working. Maybe the killer has already hidden away to lay low." Beside him, Li Lin, dressed in civilian clothes just like him, sat quietly.\ Originally, Li Lin's plan was for Jiang Yilu and him to disguise themselves as ordinary passengers and drive an ordinary car along this section of the mountain forest road where incidents had occurred, waiting for the killer to make a move so they could catch this highway murderer. But the past two nights had yielded nothing—they hadn't discovered any targets.\ "You must be persistent in your work, young man!" Li Lin smiled, clearly full of confidence.\ "What if the killer has noticed us? We're here every day," Jiang Yilu asked while driving.\ "No, we're driving different cars and wearing different civilian clothes every day. Trust me, young man, I guarantee the killer will show up," Li Lin said as he looked out the window. He noticed the forest on both sides of the road rapidly retreating into the distance, bathed in a dim red glow under the headlights and streetlights, creating a very strange atmosphere. The rolling hills all around, shrouded in darkness, seemed like enormous sleeping monsters staring at them, giving him an inexplicable sense of fear.\ "It's really strange, Uncle Lin," Jiang Yilu said, gazing ahead in confusion. The road ahead of them was unusually quiet; since they entered this section of the forest road where incidents happened, they hadn't seen a single car coming from the opposite direction, which was completely different from the busy traffic of the past two days. "Why are there so few cars today? It's really odd."\ "That's even better. Maybe this roadside murderer prefers to strike in such an atmosphere," Li Lin said calmly. However, for some reason, he too felt an inexplicable eerie sensation that evening.“Uncle Lin, these past few nights have been really strange. Whenever I drive into this stretch of road, I get a weird feeling, like someone is watching us, or like there's always a car following us. It makes me check the rearview mirror for no reason, but I can't see any car behind us. It's really strange. Uncle Lin, I've also been having bad dreams lately, and I have a foreboding sense of something bad. I even smeared black dog blood and talisman water on the bullets in my second magazine, just in case!” Jiang Yiluo spoke as he noticed that thick fog was slowly rolling down from the mountainsides on both sides of the road ahead. He couldn't help but step on the brake and slow down, letting the car move slowly into the fog-shrouded road.
“It's just your psychological feeling, which proves that your mental resilience is very weak. You're too inexperienced. Learn from me and turn pressure into motivation. I'm not bragging; the more pressure I'm under, the better I work. You're too timid, Luozi! There are no ghosts or spirits in the world. You're just too afraid of death, hahaha…” Li Lin actually laughed out loud.
When the car entered the fog-filled curve, the forests on both sides and the road ahead instantly became hazy and unclear. In the dense fog, all the scenery turned indistinct. The fog spread like an endless sea, engulfing both the car and the people in a boundless white world.
“Why is the fog so thick?” Li Lin couldn't help but frown.
“This damned night fog, why is it so dense!” Jiang Yiluo also complained.
“Dada-da-da” — a sound of a vehicle approaching came from the white fog up ahead. For some reason, both Li Lin and Jiang Yiluo felt a sudden dizziness from the sound, making them very uncomfortable.
Before the two could react, a black van suddenly shot out of the white fog opposite them with a “swish” and headed straight for their car.
