Trapped in the Same Day for a Thousand Years: Wu Chen, This Time I Owe You!

Welcome to Trapped in the Same Day for a Thousand Years, exclusively produced by Feilu Novel Network, written by Sang Ze and performed by Wang Xiaomo and Lao He. Lei Cheng sprang to his feet and stared at Wu Chen. Wu Chen had once mentioned that Lei Cheng feared his older brother might kill him. At the time, Lei Cheng had guessed Wu Chen was a core member of some powerful family; otherwise, he could not have known about it.

Even within Hongfa Industries, only a handful of people familiar with the company's leadership dared make that guess. Hongfa had sealed off all news afterward. Anyone outside who had heard even fragments of the story had to be someone extraordinary.

Then Li Ruobing had called Wu Chen, only for him to talk back to her without hesitation. That had all but confirmed Lei Cheng's guess: Wu Chen was no ordinary man.

Neither of them had brought up the Lei Family's ugly business again.

Lei Cheng's final impression of Wu Chen was of a young man with powerful connections, formidable abilities, and ruthless methods.

He had not thought Wu Chen knew much about his family's affairs. At most, Wu Chen had probably heard a few things.

But now Wu Chen had given him a phone number and said that if he caught its owner, he would learn the truth about the car crash ten years ago.

Lei Cheng could not stay calm. That crash, ten years ago, was the one thing that could still strike a nerve.

"You said we really were fated to meet?"

Under Lei Cheng's wide-eyed stare, Wu Chen brought up fate once more.

Lei Cheng's gaze flickered. He thought for a moment without speaking, then slowly sat down.

Only now did he finally understand why Wu Chen kept saying they were fated to meet.

They had met because they happened to play the same private-server game. But fate did not mean Wu Chen had merely recognized Lei Cheng when they met. It meant Wu Chen knew him, knew some of the Lei Family's affairs, and could even help him. That was what made their meeting fateful.

Lei Cheng recalled the subtle look on Wu Chen's face when he had first entered. He realized he had misread it. Wu Chen had not reacted that way simply because he recognized him. He knew much more.

Lost in thought, Lei Cheng looked back at his phone screen.

"Whose number is this?"

"I never intended to get involved in your family's affairs."

Wu Chen casually lifted his teacup but did not drink. "Even when outsiders like us know something about your family, it's hard for us to interfere. But Brother Lei, meeting you today made me feel that heaven has treated you unfairly. You're a good man, yet you lost your mother as soon as you were born, your wife died in a car crash—or rather, a murder—and you've had to endure your own brother turning against you."

Wu Chen shook his head and sighed, as though he truly felt the injustice of Lei Cheng's life.

He took a sip of tea, set down his cup, and continued, "You helped me today. We barely know each other, but you did me a great favor. It's only right that I return it."

The phone number had originally been meant as a bargaining chip to secure a spokesperson. Now it had become repayment for Lei Cheng's unsolicited help.

Wu Chen would not owe Lei Cheng a favor. He would make Lei Cheng owe him one.

Lei Cheng could tell from what Wu Chen had just said that he truly understood him. Wu Chen even knew that he had lost his mother at birth—and that was forty-two years ago.

He glanced again at the number in the message, then looked up. "Whose phone is it?"

"Have someone check. With your resources, Brother Lei, finding the owner of a number won't take more than a few minutes."

Wu Chen did not answer directly.

Lei Cheng fell silent, then tapped his screen and forwarded the message.

He sent it to a trusted subordinate.

Then he prepared to make a call.

"Oh, right," Wu Chen said. "This man changed his name, and he has two identity cards with different ID numbers. He stopped using his original identity long ago. You'd better have your people check his household registration and get the photo attached to his current identity. It's been ten years, but you should still recognize him."

Wu Chen paused, then added, "And before you find him, don't let anyone call that number. You could count the people who know it on one hand. Tip him off, and he'll run. He might even leave the country overnight."

Lei Cheng gripped his phone and listened without a word until Wu Chen finished. Then he placed the call.

It connected almost immediately.

"I just sent you a number. Find out everything about its registered owner. Keep it confidential. Get me his photo first if you can; the rest can wait."

Lei Cheng hung up and stared straight at Wu Chen. Then his expressionless face opened into a bright, natural smile. "Not bad, little brother. No wonder you've got even Li Ruobing eating out of your hand."

"I do all right." Wu Chen smiled.

"Tell me honestly, little brother. How do you know about my family's affairs?"

"You seem to know them rather well."

Lei Cheng was especially good at creating a relaxed atmosphere. One expression, one smile, and he could put someone at ease.

"Brother Lei, you know there are things I can't simply talk about. I'm not deliberately hiding anything from you, but I'm sure you understand."

Wu Chen sounded deliberately mysterious. After everything that had happened, though, Lei Cheng did not take it as an act. He assumed there was a force—or perhaps a vast, powerful organization—behind Wu Chen, one with secrets he could not casually reveal.

There was no powerful force behind Wu Chen. His family ran a noodle shop.

But Lei Cheng believed there was. Wu Chen also knew Lei Cheng would investigate him and discover his family background.

Once Lei Cheng saw it, Wu Chen was confident he would decide the records were fake, planted by Wu Chen to thwart anyone investigating him.

He might keep digging, but he could never find the powerful background he imagined Wu Chen had, because it did not exist.

And the less he found, the more terrifying he would imagine Wu Chen's background to be. In his mind, Wu Chen would only grow more mysterious and formidable.

"I understand. Families like yours tend to be..." Lei Cheng left the thought unfinished and changed the subject. "Ah, forget it. Let's talk about something else."

"Oh, right, little brother. I heard someone nearly got into a fight with Old Lu at a restaurant last night, then settled it with a few words. They say he's Li Ruobing's boyfriend."

"That was you, wasn't it?" By "Old Lu," he meant Lu Guangnian. Word had spread everywhere. Lu Guangning had slapped the wife he had always doted on, and the story had swept through East Sea's business circles in just one day.

"Yes, that was me."

Wu Chen smiled. "People are exaggerating. Brother Lu and I had a little misunderstanding yesterday. We talked it out. It was nothing."

The two went on to chat about this and that: businesses in East Sea, family connections, and other local affairs.

Lei Cheng meant to test Wu Chen. But even though Lei Cheng had spent nearly ten years in East Sea, he would not know its affairs as well as Wu Chen if he stayed a hundred.

Lei Cheng's phone chimed. He opened the new message, and his expression changed abruptly. Veins stood out on his forehead, and his eyes grew bloodshot.

Fury surged through him, held down by sheer force.

He stared at the screen for a long while.

"Little brother." Lei Cheng slowly raised his eyes to Wu Chen. His voice was grave. "This time, I owe you. From now on, whatever you need, just say the word. I'll walk through fire for you. If I don't come through—"

"You can have my head."

Wu Chen knew why he had reacted that way. The information on the number's owner had arrived—probably the photo. Lei Cheng had asked for that first, and with the right connections, an ID photo was easy to retrieve from the household registration system.

He had recognized the man: the killer who had driven a truck into their car ten years ago, leaving three dead and one gravely injured. The man who had killed his wife!

Lei Cheng would never forget that night ten years ago: the truck roaring toward them, its high beams blinding him.

It had happened without warning.

The truck had struck the Mercedes S-Class carrying Lei Cheng and sent it tumbling more than ten meters. A little over ten seconds later, the car caught fire and exploded.

Lei Cheng had been in the back seat with his wife. Their driver, who also served as a bodyguard, and an assistant had sat in front. Three of the four died at the scene.

Lei Cheng had survived through sheer luck.

As the car rolled, his lack of a seat belt had thrown him out into the roadside shrubs.

He had more than a dozen fractures, a branch had pierced his neck, and he had lost a great deal of blood by the time the ambulance arrived. Even so, he survived.

He spent seventeen days in intensive care and nearly three months more in a private recovery ward. He pulled through.

While Lei Cheng was hospitalized, Hongfa Industries was shaken by turmoil and personnel changes.

Before the crash, Lei Cheng and Lei You had already clashed openly. Their power struggle had gone on for nearly half a year, though neither had completely broken with the other. Many people within Hongfa suspected Lei You was behind the crash.

During his hospitalization, Lei Cheng gave the police multiple statements and followed their investigation. His trusted subordinates also reported to him regularly. He knew no one was obstructing it. No one dared: whoever interfered would immediately become the prime suspect.

But the investigators still could not establish who had done it.

The truck driver had fled after the crash. Police found the truck that same night. Its owner had reported it stolen two days earlier.

The original owner was questioned through the night, but eventually cleared and released.

He truly had not done it. The person who had driven the truck and caused the crash remained unidentified.

The police had only one clue to the driver's identity: traffic cameras along the route had filmed the person through the windshield before the crash. He was a man wearing a black leather jacket, a black baseball cap, and a white mask.

The cameras had caught his face, but the footage was blurry, and only his eyes were visible. There was no way to identify him.

Lei Cheng was certain his older brother, Lei You, had ordered it. He had no evidence, but no one else hated him enough to kill him. Petty grudges would not have driven anyone that far, and since he did not run the company, a business rival was unlikely.

He also remembered an explosive argument with Lei You in an office four days before the crash. Both had said harsh things in anger. Lei You had even brought up their mother's death again.

Most of all, Lei Cheng remembered the look his older brother gave him before leaving the office: a look that said he wished Lei Cheng would die on the spot.

After leaving the hospital, Lei Cheng had repeatedly acted on his anger, but others had stopped him each time.

He then began investigating personally. He looked into every one of Lei You's trusted subordinates, along with anyone in the company who was even slightly close to his brother or eager to curry favor with him.

He knew his older brother well. Lei You trusted only people who had been with him for years and whose backgrounds he knew thoroughly. He could act decisively, but he was extremely cautious.

So Lei Cheng doubted his brother would have hired an outsider or a professional killer to attack him. That would have been far too risky.

Lei Cheng had a clear direction for his investigation, but after nearly a month of effort, he had found nothing.

A few leads had surfaced, only to go cold.

With no other options left, Lei Cheng tried a crude but useful method: comparing photos, focusing solely on the eyes.

The traffic-camera footage supplied by the police showed only the driver's eyes, so Lei Cheng compared them with photos in the company's personnel files. Anyone whose eyes looked similar went on his list of suspects. He paid particular attention to people who had been transferred or left the company in the months after the crash.

That led him to Xiong Shengjun, who had been deputy supervisor of the Hongfa Group Security Department at the time of the crash.

Five days afterward, Xiong Shengjun had suddenly been transferred from group headquarters to a security manager position at the Hongfa Second Manufacturing Plant in Beiyou Town. It amounted to a demotion.

On the seventeenth day after the crash, Xiong Shengjun abruptly resigned. He claimed he had done nothing wrong and could not bear being pushed out of headquarters.

That seventeenth day was also when Lei Cheng regained consciousness in intensive care. It might have been a coincidence.

What truly convinced Lei Cheng that Xiong Shengjun was the killer was his disappearance after resigning. He seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. Even his ex-wife and son had no idea where he had gone.

Xiong Shengjun was not the only person who had left after the crash, nor the only one who had disappeared. But he was the only one to whom so many suspicious clues pointed.

The similar eyes, the strangely timed resignation, the inexplicable disappearance—and Xiong Shengjun had long been trying to win Lei You's favor. Lei Cheng did not think his brother had killed Xiong Shengjun to silence him. Lei You would not do that to someone who had carried out such an important job for him. Who would ever work for him again if that was the reward?

At the time, Lei Cheng believed Xiong Shengjun had taken a sum of money and fled far away.

Lei Cheng could no longer remember how long he had searched for Xiong Shengjun, or when he had given up. There had been nothing to find, not a single solid lead. In the end, he had no choice but to stop.

By then, he had even wondered if he had been wrong. Perhaps Xiong Shengjun really had been killed and buried on some nameless, desolate mountain where Lei Cheng would never find him.

Ten years had passed. Until he met Wu Chen today, Lei Cheng had heard nothing of Xiong Shengjun and had no evidence against his older brother. But now he had finally seen Xiong Shengjun again. It was only a photograph, and ten years had made the man heavier and changed the shape of his face. Still, Lei Cheng recognized him at a glance.

Sitting across from Wu Chen, Lei Cheng felt as though heaven had finally answered him, as though an invisible hand of fate had brought Wu Chen to him.

He had waited for a chance to turn things around and avenge his wife—a chance that had seemed impossible. Wu Chen had made it possible.

"Little brother, if you ever need anything, ask. Don't treat me like an outsider. From now on, you're my brother."

Before Wu Chen could say much, Lei Cheng made that promise, then sprang to his feet. "I have to go. We'll talk by phone."

Clutching his phone, Lei Cheng hurried out. In the few steps it took to reach the door, he looked at the photograph on his screen twice more.

Wu Chen watched him leave with an odd expression. It was not Lei Cheng's behavior that struck him as strange. It was the fact that, only two days into his new life, he had already gained two men who called him brother: Lu Guangnian yesterday and Lei Cheng today. He wondered how many more he would have in the future.

Lei Cheng was gone, but Wu Chen stayed. He picked up his teacup and took a leisurely sip. After setting it down, he picked up his phone and called Li Ruobing.

That concludes this installment. Thank you for listening, and please join us for the next one!