Chapter 256 - 115: Courage (Part 2)

Chapter 256: Chapter 115: Courage (Part 2)

Six minutes left.

Now, he had to fight for every single second.

He had already mapped out a new route in his head. He rode out of the pedestrian street and turned onto a narrow road. Even though Zhang Shutong wasn’t one to believe in fate, he prayed his luck wouldn’t be this rotten. The side road was dark, and he sped along it in silence. Thankfully, there were no potholes or other surprises. Streetlights began to appear up ahead. He stopped holding back, twisting the throttle all the way. The bike’s rear end whipped out as he swerved onto an asphalt highway—

This was the final road to the docks.

The road finally widened. Roadside trees and streetlights became a blur as they flew past. The tachometer needle hovered near the redline. Just as the port came into view, he suddenly froze. A ship’s horn was already blaring in his ears.

Zhang Shutong was forced to slam on the brakes, nearly wiping out.

It was 5:55. He had left himself a five-minute buffer, but he was still too late.

He had miscalculated one thing. Or rather, he had overestimated the crew’s professionalism. It was a cold day, so they had slacked off a bit, setting off a little earlier than scheduled so they could clock out sooner.

The ferry’s wide hull was already slowly pulling away from the shore.

He was about ten meters from the edge of the dock. The ferry’s ramp was already up, and the vessel was half a meter from the pier.

He knew that distance would only grow: one meter, two meters, three... until it was impossible to catch up.

Without a word, he depressed the clutch, then cranked the throttle to full again. The tires spun, kicking up a plume of white smoke.

Someone had already noticed his actions:

"Hey, you on the motorcycle! What do you think you’re doing—"

He stared straight ahead, praying internally. ’Dad, I hope you had good taste when you picked this bike.’ It was the one he used to take Mom out for rides. They were a loving, romantic couple; he’d surely pulled all sorts of flashy, high-difficulty moves with her in the past.

’So, this has to work, right?’

The gap between the deck and the dock had already widened to a meter.

And there was a bit of a height difference between the deck and the ground.

The dock was higher, the deck lower.

All told, this was only the second day Zhang Shutong had ever even touched this motorcycle. In fact, he’d ridden a bike less than a handful of times in his entire life. He knew of a technique called a launch start: you gun the throttle while simultaneously releasing the clutch at its optimal engagement point, unleashing the bike’s maximum speed.

But he had never actually tried it before. He only had a vague concept of this so-called "optimal engagement point."

Two days ago, on a snowy night, he had learned how to ride. Someone had told him he was a prodigy, a natural-born rider.

He had laughed it off at the time—of course, handling a motorcycle was different from driving a car. But without that previous success, he might not have had the guts to attempt this now.

The passengers on the ferry had noticed him now, too. They pulled out their phones, instinctively clearing a path. Countless eyes were fixed on him as people whispered, pointed, and gossiped. On the dock, workers were starting to run toward him to cut him off.

All kinds of people flooded his vision, but the clamor was shut out by his helmet.

Through his visor, Zhang Shutong ducked as low as he could. The engine screamed, strained to its absolute limit. Dust flew, and the stench of burnt rubber filled his nostrils. Then, he abruptly dropped the clutch, relying on pure instinct to hit that perfect engagement point. The next moment, the motorcycle shot forward, a blur leaving an afterimage in its wake. It flew off the edge of the dock, carving an arc through the air—

The dock, the water, a brief moment of weightlessness—and he and his bike came crashing down onto the ferry.

The tires slammed onto the deck. The shock absorbers bottomed out, then violently rebounded. The bike shot halfway across the deck before skidding to a halt, tires making a teeth-grinding screech against the metal. His body tilted uncontrollably to one side, and he just barely caught himself with one hand and a knee.

The crowd scattered in a panic. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see enraged crew members running toward him, ready to chew him out.

It was 5:56.

’I finally made it onto the last ferry...’

But Zhang Shutong felt no joy, no sense of relief. All that remained was a profound, bone-deep exhaustion.