Electronic Nezha

Chapter 82 End Number 213
When we walked out of the noodle shop, all four of us were flushed and drunk. Sun Zhancheng was about to get his car when I waved him off and said, "Forget about this. I'll figure it out myself. Let's go our separate ways."

Cheng Sihai said, "Aren't you going to lead us to find Chen Bing?"

Wu Lianfeng asked, "What's wrong? Weren't we getting along pretty well, brothers?"

I said, "Although we're not friends, I still want to advise you not to drive after drinking. Whether you listen to me or not is up to you. If something happens, don't blame me. Let's call it a day." I was utterly disappointed in the four of them. As four pigs standing on the cusp of success, they had indeed been fat and strong at one time, but a pig is still a pig. You can't expect anything from them.

Sun Zhancheng laughed and said, "I didn't realize this young man was such a law-abiding person."

What kind of talk is that? How can you say you "didn't see it"?
I said, "That's fine."

Duan Shoujiang grabbed me and said, "We still don't have the money!"

I shook him off and said, "Follow your procedures, I'm a 'law-abiding' person." I was angry! Other vendors hide spoiled fruit at the bottom of their boxes and sell it mixed in, but I always pick it out when I see it. You say I'm breaking the law? All I did was transfer your money to someone else's account, uh, maybe that's a little bit illegal...

Sun Zhancheng stopped Duan Shoujiang, climbed into the passenger seat of my car, and said, "Why don't we all ride in your car?"

The other three responded quickly. Duan Shoujiang and Cheng Sihai got into the car from the left, while Wu Lianfeng stood on the right, handed over the car door handle, and sat down. In the blink of an eye, they were all neatly packed into my car.

I sighed and got into the driveway: "Let me emphasize again, everything you do today is my decision!"

“Listen!” Sun Zhancheng said, “You didn’t stop us from drinking just now.”

As a result, Xiao Wu could no longer speak, and more importantly, communication between me and Liu Zhenhua became a problem. I fumbled around in the car door for a while to find a pair of earphones with sticky wires, put them on, and dialed Liu Zhenhua's number. He said to me, "You should still head east."

Once on the road, Sun Zhancheng and the others kept lighting cigarettes, and I reminded them, "Cigarette ash!"

Cheng Sihai placed an empty cigarette box on the armrest between the driver and passenger seats. The four of them tapped cigarette ash into the box from various angles. In less than two hours since morning, the four of them had finished a whole box of cigarettes.

There were traffic police checking for drunk driving at the intersection ahead. When it was my turn, I opened the window and the smell of smoke and alcohol in the car almost knocked the policeman over.

"How much did you drink?!" The traffic policeman quickly shoved the breathalyzer into my mouth, as if he was really looking forward to me blowing a record.

I blew the alarm after I finished, and even blew it again.

"They drank, but I was the driver and didn't touch a drop." When I said this in a righteous tone, I could tell that the traffic policeman was both disappointed and relieved.

"It's commendable that you didn't drink, but smoke less. Can you even see the road?" From the outside, you can't see anything inside our car at all. The windows are all milky white. Now, when we open the window, huge plumes of smoke are billowing out. The cars behind us are saying there's a fire ahead.

After getting back on the road, Sun Zhancheng said, "That was close! Luckily I didn't drive."

I suspect this was Xiao Wu's doing. Although we were generally heading east, there was absolutely no need for us to cross this intersection. Xiao Wu probably just wanted to scare Sun Zhancheng.

Sun Zhancheng stubbed out his cigarette and suddenly asked me, "Does your car have self-driving capabilities?"

"Huh?" I was taken aback by his question. With outsiders around, I was the one who was driving, but these past few days it had been freezing cold, and sometimes Xiao Wu would inevitably make slight adjustments to the direction. I didn't expect Sun Zhancheng to be so observant.

Just then, Liu Zhenhua called, excitedly saying, "Dad, there's progress!"

"What's the progress?"

"Guess why Chen Bing suddenly hung up the phone? It was because someone was knocking on his car window. I found out after analyzing the background noise."

Why are you knocking on the glass?

Sun Zhancheng glanced at the back seat: "Who knocked on the window?"

Liu Zhenhua said, "The person who knocked on the glass also said, 'Are you leaving, sir?'"

I suddenly realized and said, "Taxi?"

Liu Zhenhua said, "Yes! Chen Bing was driving a taxi." "How come such an important clue was only discovered now?"

"Because the sound of knocking on the glass is very quiet, it has a very low priority. As for the question 'Master, are you leaving or not?', it was completely deduced by AI based on the collection of monosyllables on site."

"So you're saying it's all speculation?"

"It's pretty close. We took a detour all morning because Chen Bing's car didn't even appear in the surveillance footage, but the area we identified was correct."

"Then how should I check?" There must be five or six thousand taxis in our city. Even if someone takes a taxi to buy groceries across the street, it's impossible for them to ride in all five thousand taxis in their lifetime, let alone check each one.

Liu Zhenhua said, "Although I didn't get a picture of that area, I've marked all the taxis on the roads that lead out of the museum, and all the drivers have shown up, except for one taxi with the last four digits of its license plate being 213."

"Where is he?"

"Don't hang up the phone, just follow my instructions."

Sun Zhancheng asked, "Who are you talking to?"

Wearing only one earphone, I told Sun Zhancheng and the others, "Find me a taxi with the last four digits of the license plate being 213."

Duan Shoujiang asked in confusion, "Isn't Chen Bing the CEO of a tech company? Why does he take taxis when he goes out?"

Sun Zhancheng, however, noticed something different and asked me in a low voice, "You're still someone who's part of an 'organization'?"

As Liu Zhenhua provided more and more detailed addresses, the four brothers seemed to become inexplicably excited. On a small road that resembled the back of a cold storage facility, Sun Zhancheng pointed ahead with shining eyes and exclaimed, "213!"

An ordinary taxi was driving in front of us. It didn't stop even when someone tried to flag it down. But when it noticed a car following behind, it became alert and started to speed up. The last three digits of the license plate were 213.

I muttered to myself, "Now I need to drive in front of him and block him, but I also have to prevent him from doing something desperate and crashing into us."

Sun Zhancheng said, "The steering wheel is in your hands, you don't need to tell us."

Of course I wasn't telling him that; I was giving orders to Xiao Wu.

Just then, an SUV suddenly roared up from behind us, accelerated, and then sped forward in an arc, cutting us off once and then cutting us off again with a "213".

Caught off guard, car "213" ran over an icicle in the middle of the road, then suddenly lost control and crashed into a utility pole. Xiao Wu also ran over the icicle, but his car swerved, and our car swerved sideways, stopping precisely behind car "213," blocking his escape route.

The SUV driven by the instigator sped out of the alley without stopping.

Still shaken, I calmed myself down and said to the four people in the car, "I've found the person. Get out of the car."

"No way?" Duan Shoujiang was also quite frightened.

Finally, Sun Zhancheng said in a deep voice, "Listen to Fengzi, get out of the car!"

I got out of the car and went to the front side of "213". Its right headlight was completely smashed, but it should still be able to drive. It was a car with the windshield tinted. The sign on the light showed the word "Out of Service".

The driver opened the car door and yelled at me, "That bastard in the SUV hit and ran! Did you remember his license plate? You better move your car right now, I'm going to chase that bastard!"

The driver spoke fluent Mandarin and had a bald head with a small mustache.

Sun Zhancheng leaned against the car door and peered into the back seat. There were no passengers in the car. He couldn't help but say with disappointment, "Chen Bing isn't in the car!"

The moment I saw the bald man with the mustache, I also thought Chen Bing wasn't in the car. It wasn't until I realized the "driver's" face looked familiar that I took out my phone and compared him to Chen Bing, and then I laughed.

"Mr. Chen, we've finally met."

(End of this chapter)