Chapter Ninety-Five: The Unpredictable Stage

The sky over Monte Carlo possesses an especially alluring shade of blue, as if it were forever proclaiming to all who see it: welcome to the Mediterranean.

Looking far out along the coastline, a road that now curved and now ran straight came hurtling into view, with the new rally car driven by Mo Shu and Wang Yining roaring toward them.

Asphalt was Mo Shu’s favorite surface, and the one on which he was most skilled.

After all, he had started out as a circuit racer. Though the methods and techniques of the two forms of competition were not entirely the same, the difference was hardly enough to daunt him.

To speak plainly, though, he had grown rather weary of the Swiss stages of late, with their jolting jumps every few days and road conditions that offered almost no grip at all. More and more, he longed to return to asphalt.

Unfortunately, reality was far harsher than he had hoped. The true ordeal of the race had only just begun.

One reason this Monte Carlo round was so famous was precisely its subtle cruelty. Here, the asphalt road had earned a worldwide reputation as the nightmare of drivers.

The enormous difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and the alternating presence of ice, snow, dry patches, and wet sections, were the defining features of all sixteen stages here.

Most terrifying of all was this: a stretch that had looked perfectly dry during recce could, by the time you woke for the race the next day, be covered in snow, ice, or a nearly invisible glaze of black ice.

What tires should be chosen? What strategy should be used?

At what point in the stage should extra caution be taken?

These were the kinds of questions that left teams, drivers, and co-drivers equally troubled and unable to predict the outcome.

The winner of the Swiss round was again starting first in this event.

As soon as the news broke, it struck the Divine Team and Mo Shu like a hammer blow to the chest.

Yet during recce, Mo Shu had still chosen to complete the route in a single pass, which astonished both Black Gold and Munich Light. Did Mo Shu truly have no reverence at all for the power of nature?

Not exactly. Mo Shu had a mind of his own. He believed that if one pass was enough to see every detail of every stage, why waste the effort on a second?

Besides, Wang Yining was becoming increasingly skilled at making pace notes, and when the critical moment came, she would surely prove useful.

Indeed, they should have been that confident.

But confidence is not certainty, and there is always risk.

Just moments ago, at a bend two kilometers after the start of SS1, if Wang Yining had not warned him in time of the black ice on the road surface, even Mo Shu’s skill might not have been enough to keep the car from sliding off the stage.

And this new car was deeply frustrating to him as well. The engine displacement was too small, the speed too lacking, and it could not be compared with his previous machine.

The more severe problem was that after five kilometers of SS1, the remaining thirteen kilometers were all mountain road. As Mo Shu prepared to enter the hills, he even began to doubt whether this two-liter naturally aspirated engine could bear such a burden.

Seeing the displeasure on Mo Shu’s face, co-driver Wang Yining noticed it at once. Truth be told, sitting in the passenger seat was even more boring for her. Mo Shu did not need her to read out the pace notes at all, and at times she was even close to dozing off.

It was like being on an empty highway where a speed limit of seventy-five suddenly dropped to thirty-seven. It was simply too slow.

“Mo Shu, whatever you do, don’t fall asleep!” Wang Yining pinched her own thigh, determined not to let the driver become drowsy.

“Hm... what is wrong with this event? Today’s racing is practically a contest to see who can go slower!” Mo Shu complained.

Yet within the cars of the other teams, the scene was completely reversed.

The moment Munich Light’s Ron Thomas set off, he nearly rolled the car at the very bend where Mo Shu had almost slid off the road.

In previous years, the years without Mo Shu, he had managed to hold second place at nearly every round, and when Ruth Rhine underperformed, he had even won several rally victories.

But this year, where had these two Chinese drivers suddenly come from?

Mo Shu need not even be mentioned; Thomas had already experienced Mo Shu’s skill firsthand.

But where on earth had that scar-faced Ai Chixiang come from?

Why had no one ever heard of such a figure in the racing world before?

And why, the moment he appeared, had he snatched away Thomas’s title as the eternal runner-up?

Thomas, who had barely managed to squeeze onto the podium in Switzerland, felt utterly humiliated. This year, the team had even spent a fortune building him a new car with better performance and more stable handling.

If he kept up this kind of result, not only would the team begin to consider discarding him, but in the racing world as a whole, there would likely soon be no place left for him at all.

Under that tense and anxious pressure, Ron Thomas made a mistake.

He foolishly and willfully chose not to trust his co-driver. He believed that adopting a conservative strategy from the start, one that refused to push hard, was an insult to him.

In truth, however, he had not only insulted his co-driver; the car now lying upside down had humiliated him beyond all measure.

A sudden crash sounded, and Mo Shu’s heavy eyelids were jolted awake once more.

“What happened? What was that?” If he had not been wearing a helmet, Mo Shu would have slapped himself a few times just to wake up properly.

“I think we hit a tree!” Wang Yining was also tightly strapped into her seat by the harness and could not turn around to check.

“It seems the right rear of the car is damaged. I hope it is nothing serious.” In Mo Shu’s rearview mirror, the diffuser at the car’s right rear had taken on a strange shape. He had probably failed to notice how slippery the road was and clipped a roadside tree trunk by accident.

Mo Shu unconsciously tightened his grip on the steering wheel. On this mountain road, he could not afford another elementary mistake.

“Watch ahead. Hairpin in fifty meters. Brake early,” Wang Yining said, equally unwilling to be careless. At this point, she no longer cared whether Mo Shu needed her guidance or not. Saying a little more cost her almost nothing.

In Mo Shu’s memory of recce, this hairpin was not especially difficult. With his skill, he should have had no trouble taking it at speed.

But in Monte Carlo, he no longer dared be careless.

The entry into the corner seemed fairly smooth, and half the stone in Mo Shu’s heart fell away.

Yet the moment the car began to exit the bend, the steering wheel seemed to lose control all at once, and all four tires appeared to spin uselessly against the ground.

“Damn it! Ice again!” Mo Shu growled.

“What? But it was fine here yesterday.”

“Hold on tight!”

“What?”

“Hold on tight, now! We’re going over!”

“No way, hurry—”

Before Wang Yining could finish the last words, the world spun violently around her.

Crack. Thud.

After several deafening crashes, Wang Yining, eyes squeezed shut in shock, discovered that she was hanging upside down in her seat.

“Are you hurt?” Mo Shu asked anxiously, hanging there as well.

“I think I’m fine. But why did the car roll?” Wang Yining checked herself over while trying to release her harness.

“The ice was too slippery. It sent us straight into a drainage ditch.” Mo Shu sighed helplessly, half his body already climbing out through the window.

Perhaps because this was Mo Shu’s first year competing in Monte Carlo, the rollover still came as a significant blow to him.

But he did not yet understand that in Monte Carlo, a crash barely even qualified as news by the next day.

It was far too common. Even the fans standing by the roadside had long grown used to it.

Sure enough, a group of spectators thrilled by the rollover was already running toward them, followed by a flock of photographers carrying long lenses and camera bodies.

Mo Shu pressed a hand to his forehead in dismay.

In the snow and ice of these mountains, with the car upside down besides, there was simply nowhere for him and Wang Yining to hide.