You were supposed to have a fake marriage with the diva, so how did you become her father?

Chapter 273 Accident

As the car slowly drove out of Sichuan, it was almost dark.

Lu Ran leaned back in the passenger seat, holding his phone up to his face, the screen showing Shen Yuege's face.

The signal was still okay, but the video would occasionally freeze, but neither of them wanted to hang up.

"You've lost weight." Shen Yuege stared at the screen, her brows furrowing slightly. "It's only been a few days, and your chin is already so sharp."

"Really?" Lu Ran touched his face. "I think I'm fine. But you, did you stay up late again? You have dark circles under your eyes."

"No way." Shen Yuege subconsciously touched the corner of her eye, then realized that Lu Ran had tricked her, glared at him, and said, "You were just trying to trick me."

Lu Ran laughed: "You found out."

Tan Yu was fast asleep in the back row, with soft snoring coming from intermittently.

This kid is exhausted. These past few days he's been moving supplies, setting up tents, and distributing food in the disaster area. He's been doing everything himself. The blisters on his hands have been breaking and scabbing over repeatedly. Now his hands are almost unrecognizable.

But he didn't utter a sound. He went back to his tent that night and fell asleep immediately. The next day, he got up before dawn to continue working.

"Where's Tan Yu?" Shen Yuege asked.

Lu Ran turned his phone around and pointed it at the back seat. Tan Yu was leaning his head against the car window, his mouth slightly open, sleeping soundly without any regard for appearances.

Shen Yuege couldn't help but laugh: "This child has really grown up this time."

"That's right." Lu Ran turned his phone back. "You didn't see it. When he was moving boxes in the disaster area, he carried two boxes of quilts by himself. His face turned red from carrying them, but he just wouldn't put them down. When the person in charge praised him, he was embarrassed."

"Like you," Shen Yuege said softly.

Lu Ran paused for a moment, then laughed: "I can't do that. I wasn't this good at enduring hardship when I was young."

"When you were young?" Shen Yuege raised an eyebrow. "You're not old now either."

"Too."

The two chatted about random things as the car bumped along the potholed road.

The mountain shadows outside the window grew increasingly blurry in the twilight, and a few scattered lights could occasionally be seen in the distance, probably from some small village.

Traces of the earthquake still remain on the mountainsides on both sides of the road—landslide debris, broken trees, and crooked utility poles.

Some sections of the road have been damaged by falling rocks, leaving large craters that haven't been fully repaired yet, forcing vehicles to detour around them.

"The road over there is difficult to travel," Shen Yuege said on the other end of the screen, her voice tinged with worry. "Tell the driver to slow down, there's no rush."

"I know. It's starting to open up slowly." Lu Ran glanced out the window. "There are a lot of mountains here, and the roads are built along the mountains, winding and turning, so it's definitely not going very fast. But it gets much better after this section."

"Okay." Shen Yuege nodded. "By the way, the third batch of supplies arrived at the distribution center today, and I asked Brother Zhou to coordinate with them. The fourth batch is also being prepared, mainly medicines and blankets, since it gets cold there at night."

"Thank you for your hard work," Lu Ran said.

"What's so hard about it?" Shen Yuege smiled. "You're charging into battle on the front lines, and I'm handling logistics from the rear. Isn't that what I should do?"

Looking at her face on the screen, Lu Ran felt a surge of indescribable emotion.

In the past few days in the disaster area, he has witnessed too much separation and death, too many broken families and desperate eyes.

Every time he saw those things, he would think of Shen Yuege, of her waiting for him to come back to her home in Shanghai, and of her saying, "I'll wait for you to come back and we'll go eat Haidilao together."

At those times, he felt that no matter how tired or bitter it was, it was all worth it.

"Moon Song," he suddenly spoke.

"Um?"

"Once things are completely settled here, let's take a few days to rest. Let's find a place where it's just the two of us."

Shen Yuege smiled and said, "Okay. Where to?"

"Go wherever you want."

"Then I want to go to the beach."

"Okay, let's go to the beach then."

Shen Yuege's eyes curved into crescents, and just as she was about to say something, the scene suddenly froze.

Lu Ran shook his phone, thinking it was a bad signal: "Hey? Yuege? Can you hear me?"

The video feed returned, but it was still choppy. Shen Yuege's voice came through intermittently: "...Signal...bad...you've arrived...call me..."

"Okay," Lu Ran said. "You should get some rest and don't wait up for me."

"Okay. You... be careful......"

Before he could finish speaking, the screen suddenly shook violently.

No, it's not the screen that's shaking, it's the whole car.

Lu Ran instinctively gripped the handrail and looked up ahead. The driver also sensed something was wrong and slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt after skidding a short distance on the gravel road.

"What's wrong?" Tan Yu, who was in the back row, was woken up by the shaking and asked groggily.

"I don't know." Lu Ran frowned and looked out through the windshield.

The mountain path was eerily quiet in the twilight, with only the sound of the wind whistling through the valley. The mountains on both sides of the road lay silent in the darkness, like two giant beasts lying on the ground.

Then he heard that voice.

It wasn't the sound of wind, nor the sound of an engine; it was a muffled rumble coming from underground. It was as if some enormous force was tearing the mountain apart, or as if the entire mountain was trembling.

Lu Ran's pupils suddenly contracted.

His past experience in a disaster area made him instantly realize something—

"Get out!" he shouted, shoving open the car door. "Get out now!"

Tan Yu hadn't reacted yet, but seeing Lu Ran's expression, he instinctively scrambled out. The driver also realized what was happening and pushed open the car door, running outside.

But it was too late.

Lu Ran had just jumped out of the car and hadn't even touched the ground when he heard a loud bang from above.

The sound was like the sky collapsing, or like some enormous thing rolling down the mountain with devastating force, smashing trees and rocks along the way, and rushing towards them with a whooshing roar.

He looked up and saw the stone.

It was a huge boulder, at least the size of a small car, which had broken off from the mountain and rolled down the steep slope, bringing with it a trail of gravel and dust, hurtling towards them.

Time seemed to slow down dramatically at that moment.

Lu Ran saw that the driver had already run a few meters away, saw Tan Yu just climb out of the other side of the car, and saw the boulder tumbling in the air, getting closer and bigger.

He instinctively lunged to the side, but it was too late; the distance was too close.

The moment the boulder struck the car, Lu Ran felt the whole world tremble violently.

Although the boulder hit the truck, because it was very close to Lu Ran, the huge impact sent him flying. Lu Ran only felt as if his leg had hit something.

Then came endless darkness.

……