Heifeng had the Audi TT pinned at 160 kilometers per hour when the mountain road curled ahead, and his hands and feet moved as one. He breathed out, pressed the brake to settle the chassis, and bled the speed down to 120, then snapped the wheel and let the car's weight pitch into a clean inertia drift. The TT's nose kissed the inside line, tires whispering, and as the tail came around, he rolled into the throttle and slingshotted out of the bend, the speed needle climbing back past 160 in a heartbeat.
The car felt carved from a single piece of metal. Audi's all-wheel drive held the line with stubborn calm, and the custom tweaks Tang San and the team had made for corner entries were paying off exactly as intended. Still, none of that mattered without the person at the wheel. The most significant edge was Heifeng himself, his rhythm unbroken, his corrections so small they looked like stillness.
It did nothing to calm the passenger. Black Widow clutched the door pull, voice going high and thin. "Madman, madman, he's a madman. I want to get out!"
"I don't want to race anymore. I want to go home."
She had thought she was the reckless one. She had felt that her own courage had no ceiling. Then she watched Heifeng storm into a corner at 120 and pivot the car as if gravity had agreed to step aside for a second. At that speed, a normal driver would be praying. At that speed, a normal car would be tumbling down the slope. Yet the TT stayed flat, the arc perfect, the exit tidy.
And the shocks kept coming. Bend after bend, straight after straight, her idea of driving was pulled up by the roots. The U-shaped corners were the worst and the best. Entry speed, angle, throttle pick-up, exit line, they were identical each time, like he had rehearsed the road with his own body. There was no extra movement, no wasted grip. The car obeyed as if it were simply an extension of his hands and feet.
Three consecutive hairpins arrived in a rush. Heifeng threw the TT in at over 100, linked the slides, and flicked out of the last apex still over a hundred. Black Widow stared, ready to ask whether he just liked drifting for its own sake. Her fear had cycled so many times it had burned into something else, a bright, clean thrill that left her cheeks hot. Her stomach, which had been churning, had forgotten to protest.
"U-shaped corner ahead," she called, catching herself and starting to spot like a proper co-driver. "Z-shaped curve coming. Sharp right. Three kilometers straight after that."
They had been hunting for over five minutes when the taillights of the War God GTR finally appeared on a broad curve up the mountainside. Heifeng's right foot stayed steady. The mountain unspooled beneath the TT, and news from the course marshals began to overflow the walkie-talkies back at the starting line.
"Guys, you won't believe this."
"The Audi TT is back in view. I see it coming now."
"What's it doing into this sharp turn? It's not slowing enough. Speed is still triple digits."
"What's it going to try? Wait, it's drifting. It's drifting!"
"Inertia drifts over a hundred through a bend. Do humans do that?"
Another marshal broke in from a different post. "I've got eyes on the TT at a U-shaped curve. Our gun shows 160, 170 on the approach."
"It's entering. Slow down, slow down already."
"It's reducing speed, but it's still more than 120. Does he want to take the U at 120?"
"Impossible, that'll flip."
Silence for a heartbeat, then a collective shout. "He made it. Clean drift at 120 through the U. How is that humanly possible?"
A third voice came on, breathless. "Three-way hairpin ahead. The TT just blasted past me at over 170. Into the first hairpin now. He lifts, but he's still above 110. Wait, he's back on the gas. He linked them. All three hairpins at 110 plus."
Down at the starting line, people listened to the overlapping bursts of disbelief and profanity from the radios as if hearing a folktale told by ten storytellers at once. Heads shook. Jaws clenched.
"Fake," someone scoffed. "You drift a curve at 120 and you die."
"These marshals must be playing it up."
"No one can drift a U at 120 and not roll. He'd be off the cliff."
"Find me the driver who can do that."
The crowd's doubt grew louder than the radios, but the car up on the mountain kept writing its own argument one corner at a time.
Inside the War God GTR, Fujiwara Ichiro had not seen the TT's headlights in his mirrors for a while. Disappointment creased his brow. "They said China's Black Widow was formidable. I prepped for nothing."
He had read the stories in Japan and adjusted his car and his training to meet a real challenge. He had wanted a duel, and the duel had evaporated in the first minutes. His hands were steady on the wheel, his expression tight with boredom.
Kato Jiro, riding shotgun, tried to brighten the air. "Maybe you're simply too strong, Fujiwara-kun. If they can't keep up, let's chase the mountain record instead."
He thumbed the stopwatch on the dash. "Sixteen minutes twenty-seven seconds is the time to beat, if I remember right. Seven hairpins ahead, then the run to the finish. If you string them cleanly, the record is still possible."
Ichiro nodded once. "Then we won't have come to China for nothing."
He drew a full breath, sank deeper into concentration, and let the GTR run. The car's nose dipped as he set up for the sequence, lines in his head like chalk on a board. Then the calm was torn by an incoming snarl of engines, a flare of light in the rearview mirror, and the shape of an Audi filling the glass.
"They caught up," he said, first startled, then pleased. "So the reputation wasn't empty after all."
Excitement woke in him like electricity. This was what he had wanted at the start: to beat a worthy opponent cleanly and take the crown of Asia's road king without excuses. Every nerve felt switched on. He checked his speed for the entry, trimmed it to around 70, the number his body knew would let the car pivot without scrubbing too much time, and focused on what mattered most here. Seven hairpins in a row meant one thing if you wanted the clock to smile.
Continuous drifting, linked perfectly, or you lost the record before you cleared the second bend.