Chapter 167 — Two Unlucky Experts [Begging for Monthly Tickets]

Deeds that cannot be proven — Wei Zhao would do them anyway. By the time it was over, Li Cihua would probably be weeping tears he had no way to shed.

Two Yellow Rank experts, dead just like that. Unlucky, if you asked him.

When the van was twenty meters from Wei Zhao, it suddenly surged forward. Wei Zhao could even make out the smug, leering grins on the faces of Li Yao at the wheel and Zhang Long in the passenger seat — but to his eyes those grins were blooms of the night-blooming cereus, withered the instant they opened.

"Heh..." Wei Zhao smiled too, though his smile was strange, and heavy with meaning...

"What's that brat grinning about?" Li Yao was baffled, and his foot pressed the gas without his quite meaning to. In truth the pedal was already flat to the floor; pressing harder accomplished nothing.

"Who knows. Run him over first and ask later," Zhang Long ordered. Wei Zhao's smile had left him thoroughly uneasy in his own skin.

Wei Zhao stood in the middle of the road as though he had not seen Li Yao accelerate at all — like a warrior walking out to meet his death.

"Heh." Seeing that he was about to strike Wei Zhao, Li Yao let a smile spread across his lips...

At the instant the van came at him, Wei Zhao suddenly twisted to the right, slipped up alongside Li Yao's window, and drove one kick into the van's front left tire.

With a great bang, the front left tire burst outright. The van lost its balance at once and veered left, sweeping a curved arc past Wei Zhao, smashing through the guardrail along the national highway, and plunging into the ravine...

The van rolled over several times in the air before striking the bottom of the ravine. After one tremendous crash, waves of firelight flared up...

Wei Zhao glanced down into the ravine and waited a while. When no one came climbing out of the van, and the van itself was burned nearly past recognition, he finally turned to go.

Before leaving, of course, Wei Zhao pushed the short, sharp blade back into the front of his shoe.

Strong as he was, Wei Zhao was not absolutely certain he could burst a moving tire with a single kick. Even if he punctured it, he could not be sure of flattening it outright. So borrowing outside force was the best method.

A blade had long been hidden in Wei Zhao's shoe — a modification he had made on a whim after watching the anime Detective Conan years ago. Not much use, really, but under the right circumstances it could prove absolutely decisive.

Just now, for instance: all Wei Zhao had to do was stretch out his foot and hold his body and leg steady with sufficient resolve, and the blade was more than enough to shred the spinning tire to pieces.

Of course, only Wei Zhao dared do such a dangerous thing. Anyone else would likely have lost their footing and had their own foot shredded off first.

Two Yellow Rank experts — one early stage, one at the peak of the late stage. Even in Songshan City, that made them the best of the best. To die like this was really a bit unjust, wasn't it?

Wei Zhao gazed down at the van, burned beyond all recognition at the bottom of the cliff, and shook his head with a sigh. He wondered what Li Cihua would feel when he learned that both of his Yellow Rank experts had died this way.

What must rankle most was that he had no way at all of proving these two had been killed by anyone but themselves. The scene looked exactly like a traffic accident. Was this what Li Cihua called a struggle among the upper class? Even if he knew it was Wei Zhao's doing, without evidence he could not prove a thing.

But even if Li Cihua came looking for Wei Zhao, Wei Zhao would claim to know nothing at all, leaving Li Cihua with the illusion that those two unlucky creatures had blown a tire and gone over the cliff — let him stew in his own frustration until he choked on it.

Trying to steal a chicken and losing the rice that baited it — a feeling only Li Cihua himself could taste.

Wei Zhao turned and walked to Shen Yushu's Beetle, got in, started it up, and drove off in the direction of the villa district.

This was a stretch of national highway in poor condition, with no streetlights at night, so few cars ever passed through. He had been here all this time and not seen a single vehicle — no fear of anyone discovering him.

When Wei Zhao reached the villa, the place was ablaze with light. He did not put the car back in Shen Yushu's garage, but parked it in the yard of Gu Mengyao's villa.

Wei Zhao happened to have no car of his own to drive, so for the time being he would borrow the car of that girl Shen Yushu. He imagined she would not object.

Perhaps someone had heard the car pulling into the yard, because the villa's front door opened — and the one who opened it was neither Gu Mengyao nor Shen Yushu, but Uncle Qing.

"Mr. Lin, you're back." Uncle Qing nodded to Wei Zhao.

"Uncle Qing, you're still here?" Wei Zhao was somewhat surprised. He had gone off to deal with two Yellow Rank experts and run all the way out to the middle of the national highway; it must have taken him nearly an hour. Yet Uncle Qing had still not gone home.

As a rule, once Uncle Qing had delivered Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu to the villa, he left straight away.

"Mr. Gu is here as well. Do come in, Mr. Lin," Uncle Qing said to Wei Zhao.

"Oh? Uncle Chu is here too?" What surprised Wei Zhao even more was that Gu Pengzhan would come to the villa so late.

Wei Zhao followed Uncle Qing into the villa, and there were Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu, heads lowered, sitting on the big sofa the very picture of obedient children, while on the smaller sofa to one side Gu Pengzhan, face clouded, was lecturing them about something. Only when he saw Wei Zhao enter did he squeeze out a smile. "Xiao Yi, you're back. Come, sit down."

Gu Mengyao gave Wei Zhao a somewhat aggrieved look. Shen Yushu had been right: Daddy's attitude toward him was unbelievably good — so good it was almost excessive, better than the treatment she herself received. When she came home she got a scolding, yet when Wei Zhao came home Daddy was all smiles.

If she did not know her father's character so well, she would have thought Wei Zhao was his bastard son.

If not for Wei Zhao, would she have been in a bad enough mood to go drinking? And besides... she had not drunk so much as a single sip.

Yet the treatment she and Wei Zhao received was worlds apart. She truly could not fathom what Daddy was thinking, being so kind to an idle, philandering playboy. If she told him how Wei Zhao went around flirting with other women at school and in bars, would Daddy still treat him this way?

Of course, Gu Mengyao only thought it. These were words she could not say, and would have been too embarrassed to say.

"Xiao Yi, thank you for your trouble. Tonight's business is all thanks to you," Gu Pengzhan said with a smile.

"It was nothing, Uncle Chu." Wei Zhao smiled. "I didn't really do anything."

"These two children simply will not listen. Old Chen entrusted his daughter to me, and I have not raised her well, letting her run about making trouble with Yao Yao..." Gu Pengzhan said. "If you had not been there, I truly do not know what might have happened."

"Ha, Uncle Chu, tonight's business really isn't Miss Gu's fault, or Xiao Shu's." Looking at the aggrieved Gu Mengyao and the utterly indifferent Shen Yushu, Wei Zhao explained to Gu Pengzhan.