American Adventure: My Uncle is Don Quixote

While they were taking pictures and chatting, Anya suddenly noticed a small boxing glove charm hanging from Li Wei’s backpack.

"What’s this?" she asked, taking it for a closer look. "I didn’t know you boxed."

"I’ve learned a little," Li Wei said, a bit humbly. "But this is just a souvenir from a match I went to see."

"Oh!" Anya remembered. "Is he the guy from around Chinese New Year? You told me you watched his match last week."

"Yeah, that’s him," Li Wei said, fiddling with the small boxing glove charm on his backpack. "He’s not bad. Doesn’t look like he has a formal boxing background, but he’s tough as hell and never gives up."

"But being tough isn’t enough in boxing, right? You have to be calm and not lose your head," Anya said excitedly. "I can fight too. I even trained in Sambo when I was little."

As she spoke, she struck the pose of a Russian-style haymaker in her business-class seat.

"But for a non-pro, there’s always a chance for a lucky punch. A one-hit KO if you seize the right moment," Li Wei said after a moment’s thought.

Two weeks ago, at Lin Daohang’s invitation, Li Wei had gone to watch a Golden Gloves boxing match in Brooklyn. For Chen Haisheng’s debut, his technique looked completely amateurish. He dropped his hands multiple times in the first round, giving his opponent several openings to land direct hits to his face.

But fortunately, Chen Haisheng possessed astonishing resilience. In the third round, despite being behind on points, he still looked for an opening to trade blows. Just as he took a punch to the jaw, he landed a straight right on his opponent’s chin, knocking him out on the spot.

After the match, Lin Daohang quietly told Li Wei that Chen Haisheng’s goal was to win the New York Golden Gloves championship and use the exposure to become a professional boxer.

Based on his performance, Li Wei thought it would be a struggle for him to even win a regional title. Still, he offered a few words of encouragement and told Lin Daohang to invite him again once the date for the next match was set.

He was suddenly intrigued. He wanted to see just how far this Chinese-American kid from Chinatown could go.

Chatting with Anya along the way, time flew by. Before noon, they landed at Salt Lake City International Airport. The Boeing 747 cargo jet arrived almost at the same time they did.

The moment they stepped off the plane, Li Wei and Anya felt the warmth of Salt Lake City’s welcome.

Unlike the sticky, oppressive heat of New York, thick with moisture from the Atlantic, Salt Lake City’s heat was a pure, unreasonable force.

It was like an enthusiastic American redneck telling you: "I don’t give a damn ’bout nothin’ else. Just watch me bake ya."

The air was so dry it felt like it could instantly suck the last drop of moisture from your body. Looking out from the airport runway, there was no steel jungle like Manhattan’s to block out the sky—only an unobscured dome of blue and the distant Wasatch Mountains, shimmering and distorting in the heatwave.

"Oh my god, it feels like I just stepped into an oven," Anya said, quickly putting on her sunglasses and a baseball cap. "It’s way too hot."

However, all of that was quickly resolved ten minutes after they picked up their car. The 68°F air circulating from the AC allowed Anya to change into a silk camisole, and she stretched out languidly in the Maybach-style airline seat in the back.

After leaving the airport, the Cadillac Escalade merged as smoothly as a cruiser into the traffic on Interstate 15, speeding southward.

"I’ve already planned our graduation trip," Anya said, lying on the seat with an iPad. "It’s the classic Utah Grand Circle road trip. We start from Salt Lake City on Interstate 15, then switch to Highway 89, and drive to Scenic Byway 12—they say it’s one of the most beautiful drives in the United States of America. Then we’ll pass through Bryce Canyon, Dome Reef, and finally end up at Canyonlands and Arches National Park. Perfect."

At first, they could still see the lingering snow on the Wasatch Front and the scattered modern skyline of Salt Lake City in their rearview mirror.

But as Li Wei stabilized the car at a smooth 80 miles per hour, the traces of modern civilization began to be rapidly devoured by a brutal, overwhelmingly wild landscape.

"Look over there!" Anya pointed out the window, her previously languid eyes lighting up.

It was a unique landscape, the likes of which she had never seen on the European Continent.

On the horizon ahead and to their sides, the once grayish-yellow mountains began to transform. Slabs of red sandstone, as if soaked in blood, jutted up from the earth. Carved by hundreds of millions of years of wind and water, the red rocks revealed an incredible dark-red, wavy texture under the scorching sun.

"Wow!" Anya’s eyes seemed to sparkle. "It looks just like Mars."

It was a geological pressure that made one feel infinitesimally small in an instant.

They drove until three-thirty in the afternoon, when Li Wei, following their planned route, turned the wheel at the junction between Eureka and Nephi, entering Highway 89, which delved deep into the heart of the red rocks.

As they ventured deeper into the hinterlands, traffic on the highway grew increasingly sparse. This region had the highest percentage of public land in the entire American Federation.

This meant there might be no signs of civilization, no police, for dozens of miles on either side of the road. Even gas stations were few and far between, appearing only every few dozen miles.

They drove until 6:00 PM, stopping in a small western town called Pan Kuiqi to refuel and have dinner.

For a fully immersive experience, Anya specifically chose the quintessentially American-style McDonald’s, even getting an order to go when they left.

As the sun began to set, they arrived at a scenic campsite on the edge of a cliff.

There were no artificial light sources here, only a flat, red rock plateau. Before them lay a bottomless canyon, and at the edge of their vision, the Entrada Sandstone formations were being dyed a blood-red by the afterglow of the sunset.

Due to Utah’s high-desert climate, the temperature difference between day and night was drastic. In the short half-hour after sunset, the temperature plummeted from 95°F to below 59°F.

Anya pulled out a pure cashmere shawl and hopped excitedly out of the car, spreading her arms to welcome the incredible desert evening breeze.

Li Wei went to the trunk, ready to pull out and assemble the inflatable camping tent.

Just then, he noticed what looked like a small rock under the Cadillac Escalade’s right rear wheel, making the vehicle slightly unbalanced.

He glanced around. There wasn’t another soul in sight. The only witness, Anya, was happily standing in front of the car, enjoying the wind.

Li Wei thought for a moment, then quietly gripped the side of the car and engaged his core—

LIFT!

With the boost from his 3.0 Strength, Li Wei stealthily lifted one corner of the four-ton, bulletproof Cadillac Escalade.

His face flushed red with effort, Li Wei quickly kicked the rock away and set the car back down steadily.

’Sigh, my current strength is still too weak,’ he sighed to himself. ’Without using Rage, I can only lift it a tiny bit.’

...

A few minutes later, a luxurious, heated camping tent connected to the car’s trunk was firmly pitched on the hard red rock.

As Li Wei started a smokeless campfire in front of the tent, the orange glow instantly banished the high-desert chill.

Night fell completely, revealing a sight Li Wei could never see in New York—above them, in a sky free of light pollution, the brilliant Milky Way stretched across the cosmos like spilled diamond dust, looking close enough to touch.

An occasional meteor streaked by, vanishing into the silent, red abyss.

Anya leaned against Li Wei’s shoulder, holding a cup of mulled wine she had just taken from the car’s cooler. Listening to the wind whistling through the deep canyon, she sighed contentedly. "It’s so beautiful here, so quiet."

"I just checked," Li Wei said pointedly. "We’re the only two people in the entire campground today."

"Are you saying..." Anya, perhaps due to the wine, gave him a sultry look. "You want to... here..."

"What do you think?" Li Wei asked.

"I think we can," Anya said, touching her lower abdomen. "I think I might be ovulating. It’s not my fault."

Li Wei didn’t call her out on her excuse, instead leaning in and kissing her directly.

Carrying the subtle, spicy aroma of cinnamon and cloves from the mulled wine, the kiss began as a tentative touch but soon became as aggressive as the wild winds that swept across Utah from day to night.

Anya let out a muffled hum, and Li Wei deftly took the wine glass from her hand, placing it steadily on the camping table beside them.

The next second, Li Wei’s large hands wrapped around her slender waist, lifting her onto his lap.

Anya’s incredibly expensive cashmere shawl slipped from her smooth shoulders, revealing the thin silk camisole underneath. She felt a slight chill as the breeze blew past, but she quickly discovered that Li Wei’s body was as hot as an erupting volcano, radiating an intoxicating male scent.

On this red rock cliff, with no one else for miles around, the restraints of civilized society were completely stripped away.

Keeping her wrapped around him, Li Wei smoothly stood up and pulled the heated mattress pad out of the tent.

He gently laid Anya down on the soft, moisture-proof fleece blanket. The silk camisole slid softly to her ankles, and the firelight gilded her magnificent curves in a dazzling golden-red.

Reaching out to touch her, Li Wei instantly smiled, while Anya’s face burned crimson.

He teased her deliberately, slipping his fingers between her lips.

Anya glanced at him, blushing, then obediently sucked on his fingers.

In this vast wilderness, she looked up at the Milky Way and felt her senses infinitely amplified. In less than five minutes, she was gushing, her release even spattering onto the dry sand nearby.

...

Amid the extreme dizziness and sensory overload, the vast universe itself seemed to spin and fall with her, ultimately dissolving into a blindingly brilliant white light in her mind.

The night passed without another word, the campfire slowly dying out before the dawn.

Early the next morning, Li Wei packed everything up, and he and Anya got back on the road.

As they drove deeper into Utah, the traffic became even sparser, and Li Wei noticed that the next nearly 200 miles were completely uninhabited.

Although his Cadillac Escalade, retrofitted with an auxiliary fuel tank, had a range of over 500 miles, running the AC for long periods would consume a lot more fuel.

Just then, Anya realized the moisturizer she’d brought wasn’t working as well as she’d expected. She asked Li Wei to find a rest stop so she could reapply some more.

"I see a desert town about five miles ahead. Says it has high-octane gas and a designer coffee shop," Li Wei said, turning his head. "What do you think? Want to take a break?"

"Perfect. I was just thinking I’d like to get out and stretch my legs," Anya said, stretching in the back seat and smoothing out her skirt.

The Cadillac Escalade’s heavy tires rolled over a hot speed bump, and the vehicle drove smoothly into the red rock town, which felt as if it were cut off from the rest of the world.

"That’s strange," Anya said suddenly, looking through the window. "Look at those women outside."

"What about them?" Li Wei turned to look and raised an eyebrow. "Why are they dressed like that in this heat?"