7 Living on the edge

Road rage is the all too common condition that afflicts otherwise generally ordinary and normal mortals. In any other scenario, they are the nicest, sweetest and all around good men and women your grandparents would surely love to meet. Put these nice, charming and delicate individuals behind the wheel, however, and watch them morph into all terrain, four wheel drive sociopaths.

In their minds they know they shouldn't be impatient, irate and irresponsible whilst at the wheel and driving, but in front of them would be the boundless, open and uncharted road, just waiting for them to conquer it. If only it wasn't for this annoying dumb *ss in front of them driving at a slovenly twenty miles in a thirty mile per hour lane.

Liu Yan Yan was such a woman. When she sat behind the wheel, she owned the road. Anyone else who might be currently sharing it with her at the time should consider themselves to be incredibly blessed and lucky that she graced them with her startling presence. Not only was she beautiful, but she was blessed with such incredible skill in the driver's seat.

Shouldn't it only be natural and expected that others revere and adore a beauty with great driving skills such as her? Sure, her chest was (a little) minute and just (a little) flat, but her face was small and ovoid like a fairy's from heaven, her waist thin and legs supple, smooth and long. She didn't understand what was there to complain about? If she was sharing the roads with them, they should celebrate and grovel at her very expensive designer heels.

Oh, and they should probably always stay out of her lane and not try to overtake her. Otherwise she would run them off the road, pull over, grab her tyre iron from the back of the trunk and bludgeon them into a sorry and gibbering mess. They'd live, sure, but have to contend with never ever eating solids for the rest of their lives.

The car tore through the city streets at a terrifying and break neck speed. Almost out of reflex, Kiran and Ga Eun tacitly reached for the door frame handles for some sense of stability and reassurances. Kiran was pleasantly surprised when Ga Eun reached out and held onto his hand. Despite her unruffled appearance, she too must have been unnerved by the frightening speeds at which the sedan was being pushed beyond its limits.

They ran so many red lights that it felt like going past a parade of Christmas decorations and squeezed through so many alleys, but made it miraculously through without so much as a dent or scratch on the car's paint job. It had to be acknowledged, the beauty at the wheel could drift with the best of them.

Oddly enough, Yan Yan would bring the car to a screeching halt every now and then and wait a good half a minute for their pursuers to catch up and then begin the game of cat and mouse all over again. During these quiet moments of repose, she would find the time to hum a tune and casually tap her fingers atop the steering wheel.

It wasn't so much that this was still a chase, but Liu Yan Yan was leading her trackers along whilst she searched for a quiet, obscure and derelict place to lead them to. At this point it was obvious to the four cars chasing behind them that they were being played around with, but since they still had the obvious advantage in numbers, the ignored the observable goading into a potential trap. And this immensely pleased Yan Yan, whose smile continued to grow brighter and larger as time passed. Looking at the red aggro dots on the mini map, Kiran was able to count eleven pursuers spread out into a 4-4-2-1 formation in the trailing vehicles.

Perhaps what was most shocking to Kiran Bei at that time, however, was that he noticed an obvious change to Ga Eun and Yan Yan's levels whilst the chaos was reigning free on the roads and they began to head towards the outskirts of the city. Their levels were actually rising steadily. He looked more closely at the two women's status bars and confirmed this to be true. Hong Ga Eun went from level 21 to level 28 and Yan Yan's rose to level 25 from level 20.

"Ga Eun, did you just suddenly become stronger? Weren't you both just at the beginning stage of the Seeking Insight stage?" He turned and solemnly asked his wife, who sat to his left, for confirmation.

"You can tell that? How?" Ga Eun was slightly surprised and impressed by her husband's perception.

"Yes, so how did you do it?"

"It wasn't much, we just lowered and hid our true cultivation levels to deceive the enemy. You still haven't answered my question..." Ga Eun gently moaned.

"So you've been pretending to be sheep all this while?" was the only response she received in return from Kiran.

"It's not pretending. We're sheep swimming with sharks, so it's even more imperative that we're stronger. Otherwise we wouldn't have survived this long." Ga Eun replied with purpose, but she playfully stuck out her tongue at the end to tease her husband.

As Kiran pondered over this reply, he couldn't help acknowledging the strength and determination of this wife of his and her secretary. He knew that while she had told him of their situation over these past two years previously, but he now realised how severe things must have been to force them to build such determined and strong will power. Going forwards, he resolved to be someone that his wife could count and rely on.

To accomplish that, he needed to be strong. It wasn't pure physical strength that he was after, but the strength to shoulder and adapt to any and all crises he might encounter. If anyone tried to harm his people, he would destroy them. If his people ever did something wrong first, he would never berate them in public, but only do so behind closed doors. If the sky fell, he would prop it up and shoulder it himself.

It was around this time that Yan Yan started to slow the sedan once more. They'd reached the edge of the city and before them stood an old and abandoned construction site. It was late in the afternoon and not yet sunset, but the sky had begun to change its hue to a warm violet and a cooling breeze blew by. As their sedan tore through the locked gate and entered the site, the four pursuers also caught up and began to box them in and block their exit path.

Ga Eun pulled out a pair of silver hourglass gauntlets from her wedding storage ring and began to put them on. Yan Yan reached into her chest... *ahem* Yan Yan reached FOR the long and trailing silver necklace at her chest and pulled it off. It turned out to be a small metallic whip or lash. The three alighted from their car once it was parked and waited for their would be hunters to arrive.

"Let's go be heroes, I guess." Kiran whispered, as he checked his ponytail to ensure it was fully secure, and gazed into the distance at the approaching four cars.