“Fuck!” “Shit!” Xin’s body slammed into the door to the left, while Wayne almost crashed into Yong and caused the entire vehicle to derail.

“What the fuck!?” Yong turned and held the steering wheel as tightly as possible so he would not crash into the vehicles in the left lane. “What!? What happened?”

“Find a way to get off the road and park!” Xin screamed, his voice was broken: “We’re haunted right now! The entire car’s haunted! Where’d you keep the artifacts!?”

“Under your seats and glove compartment.” Yong was only paralyzed by this information for a very brief moment: “We must - we must activate it at once, and then I’ll find a place to stop the car. You got it? We don’t have much of a chance.”

“Got it.” Wayne pulled out a small black polyester bag from under his seat. He pulled the zippers open and took out a bagua mirror, three folded talismans, and one wooden coin.

Xin also found a small red polyester bag from under his seat. Inside of it he found a wooden figurine, a string of beads with wooden and amber beads strung in an alternating order, and also three folded talismans.

“That’s it? That’s all we have?” Xin asked.

“Bang bang bang!” Two pale, slender hands with long, slightly crooked fingers banged on the windows on the right. Pale faces with wide grins but unsmiling, widely open eyes stared through the glass. Fog and frost formed around the faces, and crawled towards the windshield as well.

“Use them! Use them!” Yong almost screamed.

Xin and Wayne slammed the talismans against the windows closest to them. The papers instantly burst into bright hot flames, scorching their hands and releasing waves of red energy, blasting the human-shaped figures away from the window. The fog and frost on the two windows disappeared. The darkness outside was lifted, but only for a little bit.

“The figurine has  spells on its back. Read it out loud!” Yong said.

“Daode Tianzun, Taishang Laojun. We are your humble students, and we require your aide.” Xin read the two lines of words on the back of the figurine. 

“Again!” Yong raised his voice. The vehicles in front of them seemed to be deliberately slowing down to push them back. So all he could do was to slow down. Yet from the rearview mirror, he could see that the vehicle from behind was gaining up, its front bumper must be only a few inches away from their SUV’s tail. “Wayne, give the coin to Xin, it’s a sacrificial piece to Daode Tianzun. And turn the bagua mirror forward, it should dispel the illusions. NOW!”

Xin grabbed the wooden coin from Wayne, placed it against the bottom of the figurine then chanted again: “Daode Tianzun, Taishang Laojun. We are your humble students, and we require your aide.”

The wooden figurine began vibrating gently, Its body warmed, and the words on its back glowed in a plain golden light. Shortly, words made of golden energy floated away from the figurine, like they were cut out from extremely thin paper being carried away by wind, or hot airflow from a fire.

A beam of light shot from the bagua mirror the moment it was pointed forward. Darkness burned and was pushed to the side. The golden words floated towards the back of the mirror, and before long, the road ahead became clear.

Yong could finally see clearly what was ahead. But in front of their SUV was not the road. It was the metal railing on the side of roads. He stepped on the brakes, only to find the vehicle speeding up - his foot was on the gas pedal.

“Boom!” The black SUV bumped into the air from the collision, its body rotated and flipped as it crashed against the road on the other side. None of the three men got a chance to see if there was any incoming traffic.

Wayne’s seatbelt malfunctioned, he went through the windshield, with his face and shoulders crashed and slashed; Xin’s face hit the window to his left; Yong banged his forehead against the steering wheel. It would seem that the airbag malfunctioned as well.

Lucky for them, there was no incoming traffic on the other road. The SUV was on the ground sideways, the driver’ window facing the sky. Wayne was now out of the vehicle, lying at the far end of the road. Xin was unconscious in his seat, his head dangling. Yong grunted and wiped the blood dripping from his forehead. He tried to roll down the driver side window - it worked. The whining from the electric mechanism in the door indicated the thing was damaged, but the window was opening, albeit slowly.

A pale hand with crooked long fingers grabbed the upper edge of the half open car window. Then another hand. Then both hands pulled, lifting a pale, sickly looking face up the window.

A female face, wide grin, bloodshot eyes, pale face crawling with dark veins. Yong tried to read for the bagua mirror - it was on the passenger’s side window. He needed to unfasten his seatbelt first.

The seat belt jammed, he could not unfasten it. Hair - it was bushes of black hair that tangled the lock. The same black hair that wrapped around Yong’s neck and gradually squeezed, tighter and tighter.