Fast and Furious

Tang Wulin had barely stepped out of Le Zhengyu's villa when his mind began racing—how long could his bank balance last, which jeweler could deliver in the middle of the night, and whether there was some backdoor into the presale channel for "Starsea Dream."

But before he could put the first step of the "Golden Buffer Pad" into action, a low, familiar engine growl with a metallic edge suddenly blended into the night wind.

He froze.

The sound was neither hurried nor slow, like the calm breathing of a predator after locking onto its prey.

He slowly turned toward the end of the suburban highway—two beams of snowy white light tore through the darkness as a silver-gray Audi A8 approached at an unhurried pace, its headlights like two icy blades in the night.

"...Fuck." Tang Wulin's heart skipped half a beat.

He could have drawn that car's silhouette with his eyes closed. The streamlined body, the chrome grille, even the character "Yue" in the last two digits of the license plate were as clear as if they had been etched onto his retina.

The Audi slowly decelerated, and the window lowered halfway, revealing Gu Yue's face, as if carved from ice and snow—except the ice had now melted into volcanic lava. Her gaze pierced through the night and pinned him firmly in place without the slightest wavering.

"Get in!" Le Zhengyu's voice suddenly exploded beside him. Only then did Tang Wulin realize that this strategist had already grabbed the keys and rushed to the garage door, the grin on his face replaced by seriousness. "Don't just stand there! That's the 'Destruction Ride'! If we don't leave now, you'll be holding a 'physical apology ceremony' right on the roadside!"

Only one command remained in Tang Wulin's mind: run!

He spun around and sprinted toward the villa gate. Behind him came the faint scrape of Audi tires rolling over the gravel road. The sound drew closer and closer, like Death's second hand counting down.

Bang! He shoved the door open. Le Zhengyu had already started that flashy bright-blue Porsche 911, its engine roaring as though it had just left a racetrack. Tang Wulin dropped into the passenger seat, not even having time to fasten his seatbelt before Le Zhengyu floored the accelerator. The rear of the car swung out in a beautiful arc, and they shot straight onto the main road.

"Gu Yue's driving an A8! She launches faster than you, but she can't beat me at high speed!" Le Zhengyu said as he turned the wheel. The Porsche weaved nimbly through traffic like a fish.

In the rearview mirror, the Audi A8 rapidly closed in. Its headlights stretched into two blazing white bands in the night, as if they were about to nail them to the road.

"She's really chasing us?!" Tang Wulin clutched the handrail for dear life, feeling as though he were on a roller coaster—the kind without safety bars.

"Of course! You smashed her 'lifeline'! If she's not chasing you, who else would she chase? And you just ran away, which is basically a triple critical hit on top of her anger." Le Zhengyu rolled his eyes, then added, "What you did is even more outrageous than the third plan."

The two cars tore along the suburban ring road one after the other. The Porsche's acceleration was indeed fierce, but the Audi A8's stability and torque were nothing to scoff at. The distance between them gradually shrank.

Just then, police lights flashed at the intersection ahead. Two traffic cops on motorcycles blocked the road and signaled for them to stop.

"We're done for. They're going to cut us off!" Tang Wulin's heart clenched.

Le Zhengyu merely sneered. "Cut us off? Today, they ran into a professional escape duo."

He didn't ease off the gas. Less than ten meters from the officers, he sharply turned the wheel. The Porsche skimmed along the shoulder, barely avoiding the blockade as its rear wheels kicked up a cloud of dust. The police sirens shrieked through the night, but they had no chance of catching up.

"That's dangerous driving!" Tang Wulin shouted.

"Compared to your 'physiological trembling' whenever you face Gu Yue, this is nothing," Le Zhengyu shot back. At the same time, he glanced at the rearview mirror—the Audi A8 had actually gone around the traffic cops too. Its headlights were even closer now, close enough for them to almost make out Gu Yue's slender fingers gripping the steering wheel.

Just then, Tang Wulin's phone rang.

The screen displayed the name "Gu Yue." He instinctively wanted to hang up, but Le Zhengyu slapped the back of his hand. "Answer it! Don't let her think you're too guilty to even hear her out!"

Tang Wulin braced himself and answered, connecting the call to the car's Bluetooth system.

"Tang Wulin." Gu Yue's voice came through the speakers, calm and low, yet stabbing into his eardrums like an ice pick. "You're running fast, but let me tell you, it's useless. Every step you take only makes me more certain—you not only destroyed my phone, you're trying to evade responsibility. Stop at the next exit. Immediately.

"Otherwise, you won't just be paying for my phone. You'll be paying for my car too, along with your sleep for the next month."

Cold sweat broke out on Tang Wulin's forehead.

"Gu Yue, I..." He had barely begun to explain when Le Zhengyu silently mouthed beside him, "Don't agree! If you stop, you'll enter 'interrogation room mode.' There's no negotiating then!"

Tang Wulin gritted his teeth, swiped his finger, and hung up.

The car fell into a second of dead silence.

Then Gu Yue's voice exploded from the speakers again, this time a roar of utter fury. "Tang! Wu! Lin!"

That low-pressure aura seemed to travel through the radio waves, freezing even the Porsche's air conditioning into an icy blast.

"Fine. Very fine." Her tone sounded like she was sharpening a blade. "If I don't catch you, then I'm not Gu Yue."

Le Zhengyu smiled bitterly. "You've completely ignited nuclear-level demon mode 2.0 now. Her goal isn't just making you pay for the phone anymore. She'll make you pay for the car, emotional damages, and maybe even hold a 'Public Apology Rally.'"

In the rearview mirror, the Audi A8's engine suddenly rose in pitch, like a beast entering a full sprint. The distance between them closed by at least twenty meters in seconds. Gu Yue had clearly abandoned fuel-saving mode and switched straight into sport mode.

"She's going to pass us!" Tang Wulin cried out.

Le Zhengyu swiftly turned the wheel, cutting the Porsche into the inside lane and narrowly blocking the Audi's path. Less than half a meter separated the two cars, and the faint screech of metal scraping against metal sounded especially piercing in the night wind.

"Are you insane? We're going to crash like this!" Tang Wulin was nearly strangled by the seatbelt.

"If I don't do this, she'll slap a 'Target Captured' label on your rear bumper." Sweat had formed on Le Zhengyu's forehead too, but that devil-may-care smirk still hung at the corner of his mouth. "Listen. I'll count to three. We change lanes, lure her onto the wrong road, then lose her in the service area."

"Three, two, one—go!"

The Porsche suddenly cut toward the outer lane, and the Audi A8 reacted with incredible speed, following right behind. Le Zhengyu deliberately slowed down at the fork. Once Gu Yue followed, he abruptly jerked the wheel and charged into the service area entrance on the right. Gu Yue seemed not to have expected that move. She couldn't brake in time, and her front end scraped along the curb in an arc before she barely managed to stop.

"Beautiful!" Tang Wulin had just breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Gu Yue push open the door and step out. Her canvas shoes struck the asphalt in a crisp rhythm, each step like a countdown.

"You really think you can lose me?" she sneered, taking out her phone and starting to make a call.

Le Zhengyu's expression changed. "Damn, she's calling for backup!"

Sure enough, seconds later, another black SUV drove in from the highway's main road and entered the service area. Ye Xinglan was behind the wheel. Gu Yue climbed into the passenger seat, and Ye Xinglan floored the accelerator, once again biting onto the Porsche's tail.

"This is it. It's turned into a convoy hunt." Tang Wulin's heart sank.

"Don't panic. I've still got one move left." Le Zhengyu pulled out a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment and put them on, then handed Tang Wulin a baseball cap. "We're switching cars!"

As it turned out, several shared cars were parked in the service area lot, including a bright yellow Smart. Le Zhengyu parked the Porsche in a corner, dragged Tang Wulin into the Smart, and started it. Small and nimble, it zigzagged through the parking lot before slipping out through a side exit.

Gu Yue's SUV reacted half a beat too slowly. By the time it turned around, the yellow Smart had already vanished into traffic.

"That was a real urban guerrilla operation." Tang Wulin didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Don't celebrate too soon. She'll definitely find a way to check the surveillance footage." Le Zhengyu stared ahead. "Our goal now is to find a stretch of road where we can shake her off completely, then package you up and deliver you to her so you can apologize."

And so, the chase switched back and forth between the city and the suburbs: at one moment, they raced side by side across elevated highways; the next, they slithered through narrow alleys. Traffic cops had chased them, cameras had filmed them, and even enthusiastic bystanders had recorded videos and posted them online. Tang Wulin felt as though he had evolved from "the culprit behind a phone repair accident" into "a nighttime highway fugitive."

Finally, on a narrow one-way street, Le Zhengyu drove the Smart into the underground parking garage of a large mall. The two abandoned the car and continued on foot, taking a freight elevator from the other end up to ground level, then blending into the crowd of people returning home late.

Gu Yue's car circled the garage entrance several times without finding them, and she could only withdraw for the moment.

Tang Wulin collapsed onto a bench outside the mall, panting as though he had just run a marathon.

Le Zhengyu patted him on the shoulder. "Congratulations. You survived for now. But you know this is only halftime. Next, you have to face the real judgment—pay for the phone, pay for the car, pay for the repairs, and use that 'Three-Step Fire-Quenching Method' to completely put out her anger."

Tang Wulin looked up at the city's neon lights, with only one thought in his mind:

Gu Yue's Audi A8 had only been a warm-up tonight. The real battlefield was still waiting for him.