Chapter 72#
Chapter 72: Drinking the First Soup (2)
The main road was ahead, and footsteps were behind.
Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou both quickened their pace and ran forward.
Although He Hailou usually exercised, he was more accustomed to revelry and turning day into night. His breathing was slightly rapid. While running, he didn’t forget to say to Gu Chenzhou: “Do you think they dare to hack people in the street?”
“Didn’t you say they are related to foreign forces?” Gu Chenzhou’s breathing was more even. He took this time to look back and said to He Hailou, “Since they are related to those forces, they must have participated in the riots. Rioters even dare to rush into the government to smash things…”
What he didn’t finish saying was: Compared to this, what is hacking people in the street? It’s simply weak!
He Hailou’s laughter rang out in the night.
The noise of horns in front, the sounds of chasing and cursing behind, were very close yet very far from them. Only the conversation of the two running side by side was so intimate, so familiar, visible in a blink of an eye, touchable with a stretch of a hand.
He Hailou had a slight moment of distraction.
Since leaving the fight scene, the two had been running. Plus, seeing the road just after turning the corner, they would soon leave the intricate alleys. Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou’s hands had let go. Accompanied by this sudden complex and strange feeling, He Hailou unconsciously reached out to Gu Chenzhou again—then he was pushed away forcefully by Gu Chenzhou!
Unsteady for a moment, He Hailou was pushed back several steps by the force on his arm before he could stand firm. As soon as he stood firm, he looked at Gu Chenzhou, just in time to see Gu Chenzhou jump back in the opposite direction from him. At the same time, a long knife flew between the two and landed straight on the road outside the alley!
A passerby who happened to pass by the alley entrance was startled. Reflexively turning his head to look at Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou, his face changed immediately, and he ran forward at once.
Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou, who rushed out of the alley one after another, understood the passerby’s behavior very well: Any ordinary person facing a dozen burly men rushing out with machetes, as long as his brain was still normal, would definitely pretend not to see or quickly avoid; similarly, any normal person facing the pursuit of a dozen burly men rushing out with machetes, as long as his brain was still normal, would quickly pack up and prepare to escape.
Obviously, Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou were both normal people. He Hailou, who was eager to fight when facing five or six people just now, only glanced back and immediately turned around and ran away neatly like Gu Chenzhou.
Although the two rushed out of the alley at different positions, they obviously had no intention of choosing different directions to escape. One went left and the other went right, and they merged again after just a few big steps.
“Find a car, we’ll drive away.” Gu Chenzhou said quickly to He Hailou, looking left and right at the same time. Before he could look twice, he saw He Hailou running beside him directly pull a motorcycle driver off his bike. The driver was driving slowly along the roadside, overly curious, and frequently looking back at them.
“Here!” He Hailou shouted to Gu Chenzhou. This seemed a bit redundant. When he pulled the person down, Gu Chenzhou had already run past him, grabbed the handle of the motorcycle, lifted the bike that hadn’t completely fallen, straddled it, and said to He Hailou, “Get on!”
He Hailou was about to get on, but his foot was grabbed by the passerby he pulled down, who cursed loudly. He kicked the person away impatiently, but with this delay, the pursuers behind had caught up. The man running at the front holding a stick raised his hand and smashed it towards He Hailou’s head!
Gu Chenzhou’s face sank. He started the motorcycle directly, turned the throttle to the bottom, and crashed into the opponent!
The man with the stick was startled, but before he could dodge, he was knocked flying by Gu Chenzhou and fell to the ground. Then Gu Chenzhou twisted the front of the bike hard. The motorcycle made a circle at an angle of nearly 30 degrees to the ground and returned to He Hailou’s side.
This time, He Hailou jumped onto the back seat accurately almost without waiting for Gu Chenzhou to stop the bike.
Feeling the weight on the back seat, plus an arm wrapping around his waist, Gu Chenzhou understood and accelerated. The bike rushed onto the road like an arrow leaving the string!
Behind them, the group of Hui people who didn’t catch anyone talked loudly to each other in Arabic. A few of them aggressively grabbed the motorcycle owner pulled down by He Hailou, beat him up, and asked for the license plate number of the motorcycle.
The man who looked like the leader waved his hand, and a man next to him went aside to make a call: “Hello, is this Captain Wang? I have a favor to ask. There is a motorcycle with license plate XJ8836. The owner is with us. His bike was robbed by outsiders… Yes, simply too rampant… That’s right, we want Captain Wang to help look after it, check the road surveillance, and see where this motorcycle is going… Of course, it’s a case, big or small… Captain Wang has cooperated with us for so long, the one we trust most is Captain Wang! As for the new guy, no one dares to buy his account! …”
The call was finished quickly. This man returned to the leader’s side and switched back to Arabic, saying: “It’s done according to your instructions!”
The leading man had dark skin and wore a Hui hat embroidered with star and moon patterns. He nodded and said a few words to another person. That person immediately handed over Gu Chenzhou’s wallet he was holding to him.
The leading man opened the wallet and looked. First, he took out a thick stack of money from the wallet and handed it to the person next to him. Then he took out the cards inside, which were not many, probably four or five, one by one to look.
One gold bank card, two credit cards from different banks, and two other membership cards from unknown places.
After looking over and over again, he didn’t see any specific information. The leading man said with a sullen face: “Take these cards to see Manager Wang tomorrow and see if he can give the information of this account. Two outsiders getting into trouble will likely run away immediately. Let’s split up and guard the airport, bus station, and train station!”
“Okay.” “Okay.”
Agreements rang out in twos and threes. The group walked back the way they came. Only at this time did a kind passerby call an ambulance to send the motorcycle owner, who was smashed by a few sticks and groaning on the ground, to the hospital.
Only twelve minutes had passed.
In a small alley three streets away from the incident, Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou got off the motorcycle and walked directly to a taxi parked outside the alley without an owner.
He Hailou was wondering when he saw Gu Chenzhou take out a tool from his pocket, fiddle with the lock of the taxi driver’s seat twice, pull the door, and actually opened it!
He Hailou’s eyeballs were about to fall out: “How do you know this?”
“A subject in training.” Gu Chenzhou said. He originally wanted to sit in the driver’s seat, but after glancing at He Hailou beside him, he changed his mind, “Do you know the way to the airport from here?”
“Of course.” He Hailou raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” Gu Chenzhou switched positions and sat in the passenger seat, “You drive.”
He Hailou whistled happily, took a few steps forward to sit in the driver’s seat, and was about to pull out the wires to ignite and start, but found that Gu Chenzhou, who got in the car first, had already completed this step for him. He sighed slightly, released the handbrake, shifted gears, stepped on the gas, and reversed. In the blink of an eye, this taxi had disappeared into the big waves of traffic like a swimming fish.
People used to racing cars rarely drive steadily even on ordinary roads, let alone He Hailou who always liked excitement?
Gu Chenzhou hadn’t sat in the passenger seat for long when this small green taxi turned from a swimming fish into a swordfish, then from a swordfish into a piranha. Finally, the piranha grinned ferociously at the small fish around it, completing the ultimate evolution from river fish to sea fish, from piranha to killer whale shark in an instant!
The increasing inertia made Gu Chenzhou, who was looking down and thinking, look up at the front. He looked for a while, then involuntarily looked at the speedometer on the driver’s side, and then—he silently fastened his seat belt, and by the way, pulled one for He Hailou sitting in the driver’s seat, silencing the car that had been reminding the driver to fasten the seat belt with lights and sounds.
When Gu Chenzhou leaned over, He Hailou’s driving speed slowed down a bit. He glanced at the seat belt tied to him, half complaining and half explaining: “Forgot, this thing is uncomfortable tying people up.”
With this interruption, Gu Chenzhou didn’t think about the previous things anymore. Hearing He Hailou’s words, he thought to himself, have a car accident once, and you’ll know whether this thing is comfortable or not—but given He Hailou’s identity, even if he didn’t pay attention to safety himself, there were plenty of people paying attention for him. If He Hailou really didn’t have the habit of wearing a seat belt, the car he usually drove was probably modified or added with some equipment to replace the function of the seat belt…
“How long until the airport?” Gu Chenzhou asked.
“Twenty or thirty minutes,” He Hailou replied.
Although the current state was somewhat similar to fleeing for their lives, neither of them took this matter too seriously, and their tone was no different from usual chatting: Neither of them was the type to swallow their pride for safety when getting into trouble. Even if Gu Chenzhou’s identity didn’t work well in this place, He Hailou was still the nephew of He Nanshan who was inspecting here. He Nanshan had been managing border affairs for many years and could grasp evidence of collusion between domestic and foreign forces. How could he not have power here? —I’m afraid this power is quite significant.
The only problem now was not to be blocked by those people. Although traffic control in Sangzan had been lifted, the riots obviously hadn’t completely subsided. Plus, this place wasn’t usually a particularly stable and safe place. The scene just now, not to mention the beaters and the beaten, even the surrounding passersby were used to it… In this way, to ensure safety, they either notify the official forces now or play for time. Taking advantage of the time when the other party’s people haven’t been deployed yet, leave Sangzan quickly. Mainly out of the other party’s sphere of influence, these people are not state machines, where can their hands reach again?
“Where to later?” Gu Chenzhou didn’t particularly want to alert the official people at this time. Once this matter broke out, with the two big mountains of the Yu faction and Wang faction standing there, the private agreement between him and He Hailou might not be so easy to continue.
He Hailou obviously didn’t intend to use this power either. He replied to Gu Chenzhou: “Coming here without seeing the grassland is like not having been here… Let’s check the time of the nearest flight later. If it really doesn’t work, we’ll transfer first.”
Gu Chenzhou nodded slightly and took out his mobile phone to send a text message to Wei Xiangjin.
He Hailou didn’t speak anymore, continued to accelerate, and sped towards the destination!
The one-hour journey was completed in less than half an hour.
When the brightly lit large airport appeared in sight, Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou got out of the car with leisurely expressions but fast steps. As soon as they entered the airport, they went to the counter to ask about the departure time of the fastest flight.
They were lucky. The two nearest flights were both half an hour later, one flying to a southern city and the other flying directly to the grassland.
He Hailou chose the one flying to the grassland. He was about to take out money, but saw Gu Chenzhou reach into his pocket, take out a few unfamiliar wallets, count the money inside, which was about enough, and take it all out to buy the tickets.
He Hailou’s expression was very strange.
“Theirs?” Leaving the counter, He Hailou asked Gu Chenzhou in a low voice.
“Convenient.” Gu Chenzhou gave the other party just one word.
He Hailou sincerely gave Gu Chenzhou a thumbs up. They passed the security check together and walked towards Waiting Room No. 3 on the ticket.
At ten or eleven o’clock at night, there were not as many people in the airport as during the day, but not few either. The two sat down in a corner. He Hailou took a magazine from the shelf next to him and flipped through it casually, then turned his gaze to the entrance: “How long do you think it will take for them to come over?”
“Fifteen minutes?” Gu Chenzhou said a time casually.
“Hmm,” He Hailou was confident in his driving skills, pondered and said, “I guess twenty-five minutes.”
Whether it was fifteen minutes or twenty-five minutes, if the other party didn’t mobilize enough manpower, it would still be quite difficult to search for a person in the airport on a large scale. Neither of them cared too much. One took out his mobile phone to edit messages, and the other flipped through the magazine idly to kill time.
He Hailou was holding a home decoration magazine. He wasn’t really interested in these. While flipping through it casually, he glanced more calmly at the mobile phone in Gu Chenzhou’s hand.
23, 87, 66, 15.
Several numbers were entered onto the phone screen, saved as a draft, then different numbers, saved again.
Thinking with his knees, he knew Gu Chenzhou wouldn’t be so bored as to enter numbers for fun at this time. He Hailou wondered if the other party was habitually cautious like this, or because he was nearby, so he deliberately used numbers that only he understood to save what he wanted to save…
He Hailou’s thoughts wandered for a moment. He stared at Gu Chenzhou’s phone screen and got distracted, then found that the other party opened a game button at the bottom of the menu, called up a Pac-Man game, and played it very calmly…
He Hailou: “…”
Fuck!
The world changes too fast, I can’t understand it at all!
“Here they come.” Suddenly a voice came into He Hailou’s ears.
He Hailou responded subconsciously: “Hmm?”
“Those people.” Gu Chenzhou turned to look at He Hailou, put away his phone and said.
He Hailou reacted this time too. He followed Gu Chenzhou’s gaze and saw a few people coming down from the elevator—not many, just four or five, two of whom they had seen before.
The two stood up tacitly, didn’t turn around and run, but separated unhurriedly and mixed into the crowd. From time to time, they adjusted their direction according to the position of those people.
“Dear passengers, flight A3397 to Ishvish Grassland is about to take off. Passengers going to Ishvish please go to Ticket Gate 3 to check in and board in time.”
“Dear passengers, flight A3397 to Ishvish Grassland is about to take off. Passengers going to Ishvish please go to Ticket Gate 3…”
“Dear passengers, flight J7591 to Changjing City, Yanghuai Province is about to take off. Passengers going to Changjing please go to Ticket Gate 7 to check in and board in time.”
“Dear passengers, flight J7591 to Changjing City, Yanghuai Province is about to take off. Passengers going to Changjing please go to Ticket Gate 7…”
A sweet female voice sounded on the broadcast in the waiting room. Passengers came to Ticket Gates 3 and 7 in twos and threes, consciously queuing up to check in.
The four or five people chasing Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou split into two parts at this time, one part walking towards Ticket Gate 3 and the other towards Ticket Gate 7. The queues in front of these two ticket gates were not long, twenty or thirty, thirty or forty respectively. They looked at the people back and forth, waited until everyone walked inside, and the ticket inspector at the gate prepared to pack up, before slowly leaving the ticket gate and regrouping.
“Did you find anything over there?”
“No, what about Ticket Gate 7?”
“None either.”
After exchanging information briefly, one person said: “I don’t know if people in other places have found them? What about the station?”
This was actually not wrong. Compared to the airport where checks were strict in all aspects, running to the station with heavy traffic was obviously a more suitable and appropriate idea. Therefore, chasing people this time, only five people were assigned to the airport in total, which was somewhat perfunctory.
“Let’s make a call…” Another person just said, when he saw the ticket inspector at Ticket Gate 3 look at the information and move the microphone on the check-in counter.
His heart moved, and he quickly pricked up his ears, hearing the ticket inspector say: “Passengers Zhang Youlin and Lin Fangxing of flight A3397, please pay attention. The plane is about to take off. Please go to Ticket Gate 3 immediately to check in and board. Repeat: Passengers Zhang Youlin and Lin Fangxing of flight A3397, please pay attention. The plane is about to take off. Please immediately…”
Hearing this, he suddenly realized he was blind and asked his companion beside him: “What were the names of those two again?”
Several companions looked at each other: “Wait here for those two?”
Before they finished speaking, two people hurried past them, took out their tickets and handed them to the ticket inspector.
One of these two people was forty-five and the other thirty. The forty-five-year-old one was also half-bald. Seeing this, the few people finally confirmed it, turned around and walked to other places one after another. Some people called to contact those squatting at other bus stations and train stations to exchange news…
At this time, Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou walked out of the crowd. The two came to the ticket gate, just in time to hear the ticket inspector say to the two people in front of her: “Yes, sir, your flight is not this one. Very sorry, this is a mistake in our work…” After explaining, she saw Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou again, “Two gentlemen, are you?”
“This flight.” Gu Chenzhou handed the two tickets to the ticket inspector.
The ticket inspector was stunned for a moment, operated on the small computer at the check-in counter, quickly passed it, and apologized: “Very sorry, please go ahead, the plane is about to take off. Our program here may have suddenly had some errors. I will report to the superior later.”
Walking into the passage behind, Gu Chenzhou took out his mobile phone and made a call. The first sentence after connecting was: “Thank you, Young Master Qi.”
The voice on the other end of the phone was quite young. He quickly said: “I don’t deserve this address from Young Master Gu! It is my honor to help Young Master Gu,” he was smart enough not to pay attention to what Gu Chenzhou and He Hailou were doing together, and why they temporarily asked him to find someone to modify information in the background and swap shifts with others, but said, “Young Master Gu wants to go to Ishvish, right? It’s a bit early. The grass there may not have grown completely yet, not particularly beautiful.”
Gu Chenzhou smiled and said: “I’m afraid I won’t have time to come when it’s truly beautiful. Since I’m here this time, I’ll drop by to have a look. I’ll have a good chat with Young Master Qi when I come back.”
The voice on the phone said repeatedly: “Okay, okay, I’ll wait for Young Master Gu here!”
At this time, the two had already walked into the cabin door and sat down in their seats. The crew member walked up to them and reminded Gu Chenzhou, who was still holding the phone, to turn it off.
Gu Chenzhou hung up as told and pressed the power off button.
Not long after, the fuselage trembled slightly, slid across the runway, and flew into the sky—
Outside the porthole, the sky was blue close to black.