After the Divorce, My Wife Is Impossible to Coax - Chapter 30 

Chapter 30 

An Zhaoyu was a person defined by self-conceit and a certain overbearing nature. She only allowed herself to pursue others; she had zero interest in those who offered themselves up to her, even if they were willing to die for her.

She was, quite frankly, a bit of a nuisance.

Thus, she felt nothing—bordering on boredom—toward the Beta team member who had suddenly appeared in her backseat. Having given her warning, she ignored the person and boarded the plane.

It was clear now that Alphas like Jiang Qizheng were all talk. He swore he’d risk his life with her, yet he didn’t dare register to compete with Wen Su, nor did he have the guts to sneak into her backseat like this “clueless” teammate. Did he really think she’d be moved to tears by a few fake, “heroic” words and divorce her wife for him?

Daydreaming.

He couldn’t hold a candle to Lu Shen. An Zhaoyu slowly started the engine. The reflection in her helmet’s visor showed the landscape retreating, soon to be replaced by clouds bathed in golden light.

“Can you skydive?” Captain An asked. In the pilot’s seat, she was very different—steady, smooth, her lean posture radiating a sense of absolute security.

In the back, Lu Shen nodded slightly. Skydiving was a mandatory survival skill; she had passed the training before ever stepping onto a medical flight.

Why aren’t they talking? A newbie? An Zhaoyu glanced at the monitor for a few seconds, watching the figure in the back, then looked away.

If the person in the back were Lu Shen, she might shamelessly say that if Lu Shen couldn’t do it, she’d carry her down—provided Lu Shen paid her in pheromones. But the person wasn’t Lu Shen, so the conversation ended there.

At this moment, Captain An had plenty of jokes in her head, but unfortunately, every single one was meant for Dr. Lu back in their bed.

The Game of Waypoints

The rules of the Golden Eagle Sprints were fascinating. Before the race, the flight path was a secret. There were eight waypoints in total. Every plane was fitted with a sensor. Once everyone was ready, the first waypoint was revealed simultaneously. Only the first nine pilots to reach the point and complete the task would be given the coordinates for the second.

By the final waypoint, only two planes would remain to compete. The first to finish the task was the champion. It was at that final waypoint years ago that the Chief Pilot had met his accident.

An Zhaoyu completed the first few waypoints smoothly, maintaining a steady lead. The tasks involved complex, flashy maneuvers: flying through aerial tunnels barely wider than the fuselage or navigating obstacle courses with specific rolls.

While these tasks sounded daunting to some, An Zhaoyu’s daily work involved literal life and death. Her standards for herself had always been higher than this; she played with these maneuvers during training all the time. To be honest, while the Alphas hyped this competition up to be a death trap, her actual experience so far was… relatively low-pressure.

Lu Shen, sitting behind her, could feel her relaxed state of mind. It was much calmer than when they were on actual emergency rescue missions.

The Radio War

As they approached the seventh waypoint, the onboard computer announced the location: The Death Triangle. It was exactly as An Zhaoyu had predicted. The “Death Triangle” was a patch of ocean between 20 and 30 degrees North latitude, famous for disappearances that modern science struggled to explain. Legends told of ghost ships and planes vanishing into thin air.

That’s where Jiang Nian went missing, An Zhaoyu thought. I wonder if Lu Shen would want to see this place?

Estimating they would arrive in thirty minutes, An Zhaoyu switched on the radio to listen to a suspense novel. This was her biggest quirk—when driving a car, she listened to music, but when flying, she needed “atmosphere.”

(She hadn’t listened to suspense novels when Lu Shen accompanied her during her pregnancy because Lu Shen was easily scared. Back in high school, when the teacher let them watch horror movies during breaks, Lu Shen would turn pale. An Zhaoyu had eventually forced the class to switch to the nightly news instead. Someone afraid of ghosts became a doctor… quite cute.)

The background music for the audiobook used a waterphone a haunting, screeching instrument that made the hair on the back of Lu Shen’s neck stand up. Her scalp felt numb.

Meanwhile, the Omega in the pilot’s seat was completely enthralled, even humming a happy tune because she had already guessed the murderer’s identity.

Just as the plot reached a climax—Zzzzt! After a burst of static, the radio switched to a children’s channel.

An Zhaoyu’s brow furrowed. She twisted the dial back to the suspense channel. We aren’t even in the Triangle yet, and the magnetic field is acting up?

But two minutes later, it switched again. This time, An Zhaoyu didn’t miss the slight movement of the “newbie’s” shoulders in the back. Radio controls were available to both seats.

Before An Zhaoyu could snap, the speakers began playing a high-pitched, adorable nursery rhyme. It sounded familiar—it was the same one An Zhou loved to listen to while playing with toys at home.

Thinking of her cute baby, An Zhaoyu felt a rare surge of patience and forgave the “clueless” teammate for accidentally hitting her soft spot. She calmly switched it back to her mystery novel. I’m flying a plane; it’s not the time to miss the baby.

Lu Shen sat with her head down, biting her lower lip. She placed her hand on the control panel, right over the big red button labeled POWER.

She could imagine how An Zhaoyu would explode. She had seen the Captain make Alphas twice her size cry in the cockpit. But An Zhaoyu had never been mean to her.

She doesn’t know it’s me, Lu Shen realized. When scolding teammates, An Zhaoyu liked to trample on their pride. But Lu Shen had no pride when it came to flying.

She turned the radio off. Right at the moment the mystery was about to be solved.

The cockpit was dead silent for two seconds. Lu Shen couldn’t see An Zhaoyu’s face through the helmet, but she could feel the tension in the air. She could almost hear the sound of Captain An grinding her teeth.

“Who spoiled you? What is wrong with you?” An Zhaoyu’s voice was fierce.

Lu Shen pursed her lips. She didn’t doubt that if they weren’t in the air, An Zhaoyu would be standing in front of her, probably rapping her on the helmet.

“Are you really new? Do you not know the rules?”

Lu Shen remained silent.

“Are you a mute?” An Zhaoyu snapped like a bristling little animal.

Lu Shen stayed silent, remembering how An Zhaoyu used to fight the class reps to change ghost movies to the news just for her. Back then, An Zhaoyu had looked after her so well, but it hadn’t been because of “love.”

What would it look like if An Zhaoyu loved someone wholeheartedly? Would it be even better than that? What kind of person could tame someone as rebellious as her?

Probably the luckiest person in the world, Lu Shen thought. She had once known the feeling of being held in the palm of An Zhaoyu’s hand.

“…Once we land, you better wait for me at the training field!” An Zhaoyu’s voice was cold enough to drop icicles. This person clearly wasn’t here to make her laugh; they were here to give her a stroke.

The “Death” Triangle

For the next few dozen minutes, neither spoke. An Zhaoyu refused to acknowledge the “mute freak” in the back. Less than five minutes from the Triangle, she checked the high-altitude weather: perfectly clear.

But the Death Triangle wasn’t just a name. Using her pilot’s intuition, An Zhaoyu could already feel the slight magnetic anomalies. She decided to make a bold move: she dove below the cloud layer of the troposphere to get an up-close look at the ocean.

As the plane plunged, the blood rushed to Lu Shen’s head. Urban legends flashed through her mind—underwater pyramids, black holes, massive whirlpools. The mystery photos she had searched for out of curiosity seemed to appear before her eyes.

Most importantly, the thought of her mother crashing here…

Even though the black box for flight CF-9507 had been found and the cause was clear—an automated stall protection failure—Lu Shen’s logic was failing her. Stress-induced cortisol and adrenaline surged.

She looked at An Zhaoyu. The Captain’s body seemed to have gone stiff. Her arms moved like a puppet’s, her joints jerking like an ungreased robot. Creak, creak.

Fear crawled up Lu Shen’s shoulders. An impossible thought occurred to her: Has An Zhaoyu’s brain been affected by the magnetic field? Is she going to fly us both into the sea?

Lu Shen tried to call out An Zhaoyu’s name, but her voice wouldn’t come out. Only the roar of the engine filled the silence.

Then, the clouds parted. An Zhaoyu suddenly stretched her arms and sent the plane into a steep dive toward the sea level. With a beautiful barrel roll, the plane skimmed the calm surface of the water like a dragonfly.

No whirlpools. No pyramids. Just the vast, magnificent blue of the ocean.

Ding! The locator pinged. An Zhaoyu had successfully claimed the waypoint.

“Hey, Mute. You okay?” She tilted her head slightly, her voice carrying a trace of smugness. “You didn’t really think there was a ‘Death Triangle,’ did you?”

“Just teasing. That’s what you get for turning off my radio.”

The “stiff, mechanical movements” had been an act. An Zhaoyu guessed the person in the back had turned off the radio out of fear, so she decided to get her revenge. In this world, the only person she was willing to bow to was Lu Shen.

But Lu Shen’s head was spinning. But people go missing here…

“You’ve been reading sci-fi, not the news,” An Zhaoyu said, as if reading her mind. “Crashing here is a low-probability event. It’s just a normal patch of sea. At most, it’s just a bit deeper than usual.”

In all these years, only CF-9507, carrying Jiang Nian, had truly fallen here.

Lu Shen fell silent again. This time, because she simply didn’t want to talk.

An Zhaoyu was, truly, the most annoying person in the world.

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