Chapter 40: Snap of the Fingers

In Car Six.

In the rearview mirror, Yan Jing watched the cars steadily boxing them in. He eased the steering wheel right, drifting toward the outer edge of the road.

Just ahead on the right lay the buffer zone.

Beside him, Tiger gritted his teeth and suggested:

"Go left! If we enter the buffer zone, they'll definitely catch us! It doesn't matter if we can't slow down—rock walls will appear on both sides in the final stretch. We can brake by scraping against them!"

"That might be a bit too tricky to pull off," Yan Jing said with a smile. "My driving isn't necessarily that good."

"But if we let them catch up, they'll ram us off the track!"

Burning with anxiety, Tiger glanced back at the pursuing vehicles, now just dozens of meters away.

The track was lined with piles of discarded Amusement Park rides. If they were forced into those heaps, avoiding a rollover was the best-case scenario.

And if the car did flip, the two of them were as good as dead.

Once a massive vehicle like this rolled, even a First Tier physique wouldn't necessarily survive the crush.

"It's fine. Let them close the gap."

The two streaks of scarlet on Yan Jing's Video Camera glinted with a cold edge. He seemed to already have a plan.

Seeing this, Tiger swallowed his frantic protests. The steering wheel wasn't in his hands, after all.

Tense from head to toe, he clutched his seatbelt and prayed desperately for a miracle.

Yan Jing's gaze flicked between the road ahead and the pursuit in his rearview mirror, silently calculating the timing.

He was waiting for an opening.

The moment the truck hit the buffer zone, both of them felt a sudden drop in speed.

In that brief window, the trailing vehicles rapidly closed the distance.

Since Car Six was already hugging the right edge of the road, the pack collectively steered left, aiming to pin Yan Jing against the track's right wall.

But they quickly aborted the maneuver.

A glaring problem had presented itself.

The buffer zone wasn't wide enough.

While the main track could fit six trucks abreast, the buffer zone could only accommodate three.

That meant if the five pursuers tried to pull up alongside Yan Jing all at once, three of them would be left outside the buffer zone.

The resulting speed difference would quickly break their formation.

Thus, only two trucks could pull alongside Car Six at a time.

Furthermore, only one could initiate a direct collision.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Tiger finally realized this. He exclaimed in pleasant surprise, "If they dare send two trucks to crush us, we'll swerve hard left and take out the middle one first!"

But he quickly remembered something, and his face fell.

"But pulling that off requires incredible vehicle control. Otherwise, we'll just get caught in the wreck..."

Having worked in the Amusement Park for a while, he had witnessed this scenario plenty of times.

Whenever two cars tried to pincer a middle one, it usually ended in a three-way pileup.

But Yan Jing's expression remained unfazed.

The five trucks behind them had maintained a side-by-side formation. Under these conditions, to prevent the convoy from losing control, Car Five—the one Yan Jing had deliberately inspected earlier—would have to take the rightmost lane in the buffer zone.

Sure enough, Cars Four and Five—the two rightmost trucks in the pack—soon broke formation, aiming to enter the buffer zone first and box Yan Jing in.

Yan Jing tightened his grip on the wheel, the corners of his mouth turning up. His opening had arrived.

But right at that moment, an unexpected variable appeared!

In the rearview mirror, several Fear Spirits burst onto the track from nowhere, landing squarely between the pursuing convoy and Car Six!

Faced with this sudden situation, the trailing drivers clearly panicked.

None of these trucks had brakes. To decelerate, they had to scrape against the track's outer walls.

If they scraped against the jagged, uneven perimeter, the fate of the outer vehicle was a foregone conclusion.

More importantly, in the eyes of some of those drivers, these Fear Spirits were absurdly massive...

"If the humans in those trailing cars all have different levels of fear toward 'massive' things, how will these Fear Spirits change?"

Yan Jing asked suddenly, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

"For example, if some are terrified while others aren't scared at all, wouldn't the Fear Spirits appear in different sizes to them?"

Still riding the high of their narrow escape, Tiger blinked in surprise before answering slowly, "It seems you know the rules of our Amusement Park..."

"I just happen to know."

Yan Jing replied calmly.

"That's no coincidence."

Tiger scratched at the heavy suit head he wore, letting out a long sigh.

"There aren't many people in Old Sin City who know the rules of our Amusement Park. Running into you was my bad luck."

He paused, hesitating on whether to reveal everything, but after glancing at the smoldering black flames cloaking Yan Jing, he slowly continued.

"You probably already know that, fundamentally, 'Fear' is a Pathway rooted in the mind."

"The Fear Spirits themselves are always the exact same size. But the moment you feel fear, your mind is already compromised."

"In other words, the rest is just an illusion."

"But empty illusions alone aren't enough to let fear spread and fester. That's why our Amusement Park provides a physical environment as a foundation."

Yan Jing nodded in understanding.

The oversized rides and blaring noises were mechanisms meant to complement those illusions. Paired with attractions that boasted sky-high fatality rates, they grounded those phantom fears, making them feel utterly real in people's minds.

In essence, 'Fear' sprang from the human mind.

Because of that, the perceived size of a Fear Spirit varied from person to person.

"If the Fear Spirits' true size doesn't change, those trucks just need to plow straight through them. The impact should be minimal,"

Yan Jing said, feeling the crisis wasn't over yet.

But Tiger shook his head.

"Just watch. You can't avoid fear just by telling yourself not to be afraid. As long as even one of them succumbs to it, we're likely in the clear."

He clearly spoke from experience, knowing that not everyone could keep their composure.

Right as Tiger spoke, Car Two suddenly swerved hard to the left, its massive chassis violently veering as if trying to dodge an invisible colossus.

In that driver's eyes, the entire sky had been blotted out by a sudden "giant." Overcome with terror, he subconsciously cranked the steering wheel.

And that single turn triggered an instant chain reaction.

The five trucks were driving side-by-side with almost zero distance between them. Car Two's sudden turn violently sideswiped Cars One and Three on its flanks.

In a split second, all three vehicles spun out of control, violently crashing into the rocky wall in a tangled mass of metal.

"BOOM!!!"

Seconds later, amidst deafening explosions, Yan Jing watched a mushroom cloud of fire bloom in his rearview mirror.

These trucks really weren't actual vehicles.

They had practically zero safety features.

No wonder Tiger had been so frantic.

Caught in the rolling shockwaves, the surviving Cars Four and Five were battered heavily. Their frames wobbled, nearly rolling over, until a burst of dark light flashed and forcibly stabilized them.

Yan Jing saw it clearly. The dark light emanated from Car Four, and alongside it manifested the phantom of a Mirror.

It was covered in cracks, and as the dark light pulsed, two more fractures spiderwebbed across its surface.

The fractured glass reflected the explosion that had just occurred.

A Day Selection Ritual.

The Player in Car Four had activated their Day Selection Ritual ability. It seemed to be a form of reflection—shockwaves surged out from within the mirror, canceling out the external blast waves.

"We've got an expert,"

Tiger said, his face sinking as he looked back and saw they hadn't all been wiped out.

"Cars Four and Five both seem to be driven by the deputies of that twintailed woman."

"I didn't expect them to actually have a few tricks."

"What do we do now?"

He looked to Yan Jing, clearly having accepted the man as their leader.

The buffer zone was ending. They were about to enter the final stretch hemmed in by rock walls. If those two cars caught up at the last second, accidents could happen.

But Yan Jing stayed silent, merely driving the truck steadily onward.

Tiger pursed his lips and ultimately held his tongue.

He could tell that this man had a plan of his own.

Second by second ticked by.

The three trucks drove onward in a triangular formation.

One leading, two trailing.

Finally, a pair of towering rock walls appeared at the edge of their vision, boxing the track in like a deep canyon.

This meant there were only three hundred meters left to the finish line.

Right then, Cars Four and Five made a new move.

Both vehicles accelerated, attempting to drive toward Car Six from the left.

Tiger's heart leaped into his throat.

If Yan Jing chose to accelerate now, they definitely wouldn't be able to slow down before the finish line, and they would slam straight into the end-of-track buffer wall.

But if they didn't, the two cars on the left would pin them against the right wall, grinding them into scrap metal.

'What do we do, what do we do, what do we do...'

Steeling himself, he stuck his head out the window, preparing to try and stop the two trucks.

What happened next brought him even greater despair.

A ghost woven from white cloth materialized above Car Five. Strips of white fabric cascaded down, enveloping both Car Four and Car Five to form a barrier.

Tiger's heart went cold.

Even if he acted now, he likely wouldn't be able to break through that barrier of white strips in time.

"It's over. We don't even have a chance to fight for our lives..."

He slumped back in his seat. With the protection of the white strips, even if Yan Jing did try to swerve left and ram Car Five, Car Six would likely be eliminated first.

His mind already flashed with images of the truck exploding and blowing them to pieces.

But right as his resolve crumbled, in a daze, he thought he heard the crisp sound of a finger snap.

An instant later, in the rearview mirror, several gaps miraculously tore open in the impenetrable barrier of white strips.

One after another, pitch-black, bloodstained Thorns burst forth from those gaps, growing with wild abandon.

Tiger couldn't see what was happening inside the barrier, but along the white strips on the right side, gorgeous blooms of blood blossomed one after another.

It was obvious—something inside Car Five was being skewered.

A split second later, both shrouded trucks spun wildly out of control.

They slammed straight into the rock wall.

Explosions rang out once more!

Like a grand fireworks display, amidst the billowing smoke, the pitch-black Thorns lengthened and unfurled before finally freezing in place. Atop the charred husks of the vehicles, it looked as though blossoms of flame had taken root, forming a beautiful yet eerie landscape.

In the passenger seat, Tiger stared at everything happening in the rearview mirror and remembered the crisp finger snap he had just heard.

Then he remembered Yan Jing deliberately requesting to inspect two of the trucks earlier—one of which had been Car Five...

He slowly turned his head, staring blankly at Yan Jing.

He couldn't help but shudder.