Chapter 17: Shen Zhengfeng
Chapter 17: Shen Zhengfeng
“What is your name?”
“Li Youde.”
Guided by Yang Qi’s low voice, the man with the birthmark named Li, who was hanging his head, answered very cooperatively.
“Have you been to prostitutes?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t remember clearly.”
“What’s your bank card password?”
“For Agricultural Bank it’s six ones, for Construction Bank it’s four-five-six-seven-six-seven.”
After asking a few random questions, Yang Qi finally got to the main point. “What did you do this evening?”
“Lao Wang and I put on masks to scare the children at the orphanage, and we also pushed a child off the wall.”
Hearing this, Yang Qi was furious, wishing he could push the man right off the second floor.
“Why did you do this?”
“To force the old lady at the orphanage to sell her house.”
“Who told you to do this?”
…
After finishing the series of questions he wanted to know, Yang Qi punched Li Youde and knocked him out cold. He even felt the urge to kill.
“It seems that to find out why someone is so determined to buy the Courtyard, I still need to go find the contact person.”
Yang Qi left Li Youde’s home, crept back to the Courtyard, saw nothing unusual, and climbed back over the wall. He now held a phone he had taken from Li Youde and dialed a number stored in it.
A rough voice quickly answered on the other end of the line. “What do you want?”
“Boss Shen.” Yang Qi tried his best to imitate Li Youde’s voice tone and said, “There’s been some trouble at the Courtyard. I need to report to you immediately.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s hard to explain over the phone, and I have some things to show you.”
“Oh? Alright then. Come to Xiangfeng Club now, room 308.”
Yang Qi was about to agree, but for the sake of caution, he pretended to hesitate and said, “Boss Shen, it would be better if you came to me. The situation is very urgent.”
After a pause of a few seconds, the voice on the other end came through. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The tone was clearly impatient.
After hanging up, Yang Qi turned and walked towards the only entrance of Shuxiang Street, hiding behind a tree by the roadside. At the same time, he summoned the Phantom Chariot and sat on it, his eyes sharp.
About ten minutes later, headlights lit up at the intersection, and a Land Rover drove in. Yang Qi recognized this as the contact person’s car; he had seen it once before, and the license plate was correct.
He started the Phantom Chariot and drove it straight into the Land Rover!
The Land Rover was a pretty good four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle, but compared to the Phantom Chariot, it was nothing. With a dull thud, the entire Land Rover wasn’t just knocked sideways; it was sent flying up into the air like a golf ball hit by a club.
Seeing this, Yang Qi grinned and gave an order to the Phantom Chariot. “Chains.”
Two chains immediately shot out from the Phantom Chariot’s body, piercing into the airborne Land Rover and binding it. This design was originally for traffic police to tow vehicles.
Then, the Phantom Chariot’s body lifted slightly off the ground, its wheels retracted and turned into two jet-like rings of light, allowing the whole vehicle to fly and hover in the air. The Land Rover, bound by chains, dangled in mid-air.
The Phantom Chariot turned and sped eastward, soon reaching the seaside. After setting the Land Rover down, Yang Qi recalled the Phantom Chariot and walked over to the Land Rover.
The Land Rover was mostly destroyed. The airbags inside had squeezed Shen Zhengfeng and his driver, and they were definitely injured, though not fatally.
Yang Qi opened the car door, dragged out the unconscious Boss Shen, then turned back and gave a weird smile to the driver who was still somewhat conscious. “Forget everything that just happened.” Seeing the Hypnosis was successful, he dragged the driver out too and tossed him aside.
He patted Shen Zhengfeng’s face. Seeing no response, Yang Qi dragged him and submerged his head in the seawater.
Splash!
Cough, cough, cough.
Shen Zhengfeng finally woke up. He had been knocked out partly from the impact but mostly from fright. He still couldn’t understand why his Land Rover had been sent flying and then dangled in the air.
“You! Who are you? What do you want?”
Shen Zhengfeng looked at the person in front of him, his fear far greater than Li Youde’s had been earlier. Although the person looked like just a high school student, in Shen Zhengfeng’s eyes, he was undoubtedly a monster. He didn’t believe in appearances.
Yang Qi didn’t waste words and immediately hypnotized him.
“What is your name?”
“Shen Zhengfeng.”
After the usual few questions, he got to the main topic.
“Do you want to buy the Courtyard?”
“No, I’m buying it for someone else.”
“Who?”
“Qiao Liu. People in the underworld call him Sixth Master. He’s a wanted criminal.”
“Why are you helping him?”
“He has some dirt on me.”
“What dirt?”
Shen Zhengfeng hesitated slightly, his neurons struggling, but they were quickly suppressed by Yang Qi’s Hypnosis technique. This man’s willpower was stronger than most people’s. Then he listed a series of so-called dirt, mostly involving drug smuggling and hiring hitmen. This Boss Shen was not the legitimate businessman he appeared to be on the surface.
“Do you know why Qiao Liu wants to buy the Courtyard?”
“No. Qiao Liu just told me to find a way to buy the Courtyard. I approached the owner, but she wouldn’t sell. Later, we wanted to force a purchase through extreme methods, but we found out the owner isn’t a simple person. She has connections with a Deputy Mayor in the city. So, after some investigation, I found two locals there and had them use some methods to drive the owner away.”
“Granny Bai knows a Deputy Mayor?”
This was a bit unexpected for Yang Qi. It seemed Granny Bai really wasn’t ordinary.
“Do you have contact details for Qiao Liu?”
“He always contacts me. He doesn’t trust anyone. During the last call, he said he wanted to see the house in one month. It’s been over ten days now.”
Hearing this, Yang Qi fell silent for a moment. This was quite troublesome.
If possible, Yang Qi naturally wanted to resolve this matter today, but it seemed he couldn’t now. This feeling of helpless passivity made him very uncomfortable.
Ultimately, with a strong mindset, Yang Qi asked Shen Zhengfeng some more things about Qiao Liu. Without a doubt, this Qiao Liu was a maniac, and every single thing he had done was enough to earn him the death penalty. This made Yang Qi even more cautious. He wasn’t afraid of anything, except that something might happen to the people at the Courtyard.
He also made Shen Zhengfeng list all his own secret transaction records and criminal evidence in detail. Yang Qi recorded all of this using Li Youde’s phone, and he also copied some communication records and bank transfer records from Shen Zhengfeng’s phone. Then, Yang Qi used a phone to create an email account and uploaded everything into it.
After finishing all this, Yang Qi snapped his fingers, waking Shen Zhengfeng up.
“What did you just do to me?” Shen Zhengfeng cried out in fear.
Yang Qi stepped on him, pinning him to the sand, then opened the email account and made Shen Zhengfeng look through it. Instantly, Shen Zhengfeng’s face turned pale. Although to some extent, recordings alone might not be solid evidence, if someone investigated based on this recording, Shen Zhengfeng would definitely end up in Yu. And there were all those transaction records too. After letting Shen Zhengfeng finish looking, Yang Qi threw Li Youde’s phone into the sea.
“What do you want?” Shen Zhengfeng’s face, pressed against the sand, was distorted. He clearly knew what phone had been thrown away, not the email account.
Yang Qi lifted his foot. Without a word, he flicked his wrist, and the Phantom Chariot materialized out of thin air in front of Shen Zhengfeng. It rose into the air, and the two chains appeared again, binding the Land Rover and lifting it into the sky. Then it released it. As the Land Rover was about to fall into the sea, a beam of white light shot from the Phantom Chariot. Yang Qi had fired a low-level Photon Bomb.
Whoosh.
The Photon Bomb hit the Land Rover. There was no explosion sound, just a flash of white light. The entire Land Rover disintegrated in the air, turning to dust and disappearing. Not only that, the blast’s power affected the sea surface. The whole sea surface caved in as if a sponge were being squeezed—a sign that a large amount of seawater had evaporated. It took several seconds for the sea surface to return to normal.
All of this, seen by Shen Zhengfeng on the beach, felt like a dream or an illusion.
“What is this?”
Even with all his worldly experience, Shen Zhengfeng couldn’t explain one ten-thousandth of what just happened. He had only seen things like this in movies, no, this was even more exaggerated than the movies.
Watching Yang Qi land the incredibly cool flying motorcycle on the beach, Shen Zhengfeng… pissed himself. He was scared out of his mind.
This shocked him more than seeing a ghost.
Was this future technology? Was this person an alien? Or was he like the superheroes often seen in United States movies, characters like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, or the Transformers?
Putting away the Phantom Chariot, Yang Qi stood before Shen Zhengfeng and said coldly, “I want to capture Qiao Liu. Do you know what you should do?”
“Y-yes… I know…”
Shen Zhengfeng trembled uncontrollably. No matter how strong his psychological fortitude was, it had completely collapsed at this moment. What had just happened completely exceeded his realm of understanding, even his imagination.
“How?”
“Huh?”
Shen Zhengfeng paused for a second, then immediately said, “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do!”
Yang Qi said coldly, “First, make Li Youde and the other guy stop doing anything to the Courtyard. Second, wait for Qiao Liu’s call. Notify me immediately as soon as you have any news. Try your best to arrange a meeting with him. You should know very well how to handle the specifics. I know you’re afraid of Qiao Liu, but if you dare play any tricks in front of me, it won’t be as simple as ending up in Yu. I have the absolute ability and authority to make you disappear, just like that Land Rover.”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
Shen Zhengfeng didn’t dare hesitate in the slightest. The methods Yang Qi had just displayed were enough to make him extremely afraid. And the word “authority” in Yang Qi’s last sentence made Shen Zhengfeng’s mind buzz, as if he had thought of something.
“Cooperate well. If you do this properly, I’ll help you erase all your past criminal records.”
This sentence from Yang Qi further confirmed Shen Zhengfeng’s guess. Shen Zhengfeng clearly understood that “erase” didn’t just mean deleting the records in the email, but truly wiping everything away, making him a clean person from then on. And only someone with such authority could be from a country’s special organization. And only with the backing of a state apparatus could they possibly build a flying motorcycle like that!