Chapter 455: There’s No Possibility of This Going Wrong

Chapter 455: There’s No Possibility of This Going Wrong

For Mao Rusong to be in a car accident out of nowhere, at a moment like this, the odds that it was a genuine accident were vanishingly low.

Men like Mao Rusong never had ordinary drivers or bodyguards. His driver might not be at Wu Chen’s level, but he was far beyond any ordinary chauffeur. The bodyguard in the passenger seat would be watching in every direction, keeping a constant eye on everything outside the car.

And Mao Rusong was a man who loved his pomp. He went out in a convoy every time, with bodyguard cars front and back. Even someone set on ramming the car he rode in would have a hard time of it.

“How’s Boss Mao? Is it serious?” Wu Chen asked calmly.

“I only just heard. He’s been taken to the hospital. I don’t know the details yet,” Tang Jingbin said. “I’ve already sent someone over to find out.”

“Where did it happen?” Wu Chen asked.

“Ten-odd minutes ago, in Dongpu. They were going through the Tongjiang Avenue intersection when a truck ran a red light and slammed into them broadside…”

“A truck? How big?”

“A heavy truck. Out-of-town plates, they say. A yellow-plate vehicle.”

“Did the driver flee?”

“He ran. They haven’t found him yet.”

Wu Chen asked about a great many details, and Tang Jingbin answered every question. Where he knew, he was precise. Where he didn’t, he was vaguer. It was still enough for Wu Chen to understand what had happened.

Tang Jingbin and Mao Rusong had little to do with each other.

They knew each other, but weren’t close.

Their status was too far apart, their circles too different.

Tang Jingbin had called, and answered every question, because the Qi brothers affair involved Mao Rusong in a big way.

The Qi side didn’t know who Zhuang Xiaodie’s boyfriend was.

Zhuang Xiaodie had always been under Mao Rusong’s protection.

After Qi Chenghong nearly cracked his own skull open, all three Qi bodyguards who had tailed them to stage an accident had ended up dead. The Qi family believed it was Mao Rusong’s doing.

It had started with Qi Chenghong and been blown up by Wu Chen.

Yet Mao Rusong was the one facing retaliation.

And because Mao Rusong wouldn’t sell Wu Chen out or explain anything to the Qi brothers, to them it amounted to an admission: That’s right. It was me!

Whether something happened to Mao Rusong or not didn’t affect Tang Jingbin’s plan to finish the Qi brothers within three days.

But he knew this mattered enormously to Wu Chen!

If Mao Rusong died in that crash, he’d have taken a bullet meant for Wu Chen.

Wu Chen would have blown the affair up this far only to get a friend killed. Produce a consequence that extreme and irreversible, and however hard he struck back afterward, you could still say he’d botched it!

The dead couldn’t be brought back, after all.

If it came to that, Wu Chen would surely feel terrible.

That was how Tang Jingbin saw it.

So the moment he got the news, he’d felt he should tell Wu Chen right away.

“Does Gu Ruibo know?” Wu Chen asked, his brows drawing together slightly, an expression he seldom wore.

The habitual smile was gone from his voice as well.

“He knows. We just spoke. He’s on his way to the hospital. I expect he’ll call you once he has a clearer picture…”

“Mm…” Wu Chen thought for a moment.

“Little Wu, don’t… well…” Tang Jingbin seemed about to say something to soothe him but didn’t. He only said, “Mao Rusong may not be badly hurt. He was in a Rolls-Royce, after all.”

“Ha.” Wu Chen laughed. He knew what Tang Jingbin was getting at. “Mr. Tang, you think I’m… upset?”

“Ah!” Tang Jingbin sighed. That was answer enough. He did.

“You think the Qi brothers did it, Mr. Tang?” Wu Chen asked.

“Who else? Who could—” Tang Jingbin stopped mid-sentence.

Wu Chen had made him think.

Who said it had to be the Qi brothers?

At this stage, if they wanted revenge on Mao Rusong, they’d naturally go to war on every front: pull every string, mobilize every connection, bring every force they had to bear.

Word of Mao Rusong’s feud with the Qi brothers should have spread through Modu’s upper circles by now. It couldn’t be hidden, and there was no reason to hide it.

Outsiders might not know why the usually smooth, well-connected Mao Rusong had suddenly gotten three of the Qi family’s trusted bodyguards killed.

And when the Qi brothers called in favors, they might not go into detail either. The full story was rather embarrassing. If Qi Min’s son Qi Chenghong hadn’t acted like a creep, none of it would have happened…

But to outsiders, how it started didn’t matter.

What mattered was that Mao Rusong had already gotten three of the Qi family’s trusted bodyguards killed!

There was no taking that back!

The Qi brothers were bound to retaliate!

At a moment like this, if Mao Rusong suddenly had a car accident, anyone’s first instinct would be that the Qi brothers had struck!

Even Wu Chen had thought so the instant he heard.

But almost at once, something felt off.

From what he knew of the Qi brothers… Qi Jun was a brainless lowlife who owed most of what he had to his elder brother. His elder brother Qi Min, on the other hand, was ruthless and vicious.

But!

Qi Min had a brain!

And he was formidable.

Wu Chen thought it possible, but extremely unlikely, that Qi Min would go to such an extreme over his son’s injury and three dead bodyguards as to send someone to murder Mao Rusong outright.

That was why he’d asked those extra questions and pressed for details.

The more he asked, the surer he was that the Qi brothers hadn’t done it.

Modu was full of restricted roads. Some barred trucks by day, others around the clock.

Tongjiang Avenue in Dongpu District banned yellow-plate trucks twenty-four hours a day. Drive onto it and you’d be fined and docked points.

A yellow-plate truck had to be a heavy truck over six meters long. How had one ended up on Tongjiang Avenue at all?

And after hitting a Rolls-Royce, the driver dared to run?

With cameras everywhere these days, and in a city like Modu, where could he possibly go?

Unless he was blind, there was no way he’d run a red light and plow into the Rolls-Royce in the middle of a convoy.

Every sign pointed to deliberate murder!

And not some cleverly arranged assassination, either. It felt glaringly obvious, as if someone had simply stationed a truck on a road Mao Rusong often used, waited for his convoy to come along, and rammed it…

Direct!

Completely undisguised!

Which… was exactly why it probably wasn’t the Qi brothers.

Qi Min wasn’t that stupid!

If he’d done it, wouldn’t that be announcing to all of Modu that he’d sent someone to murder Mao Rusong? Extreme methods like this broke a major taboo. It was refusing to play by the rules and flipping the table.

Qi Min had plenty of blood on his hands. Wu Chen knew how he went about having someone dealt with, and it wasn’t like this.

Qi Jun was even less likely. He’d dared have Wu Chen tailed only because he didn’t know who Wu Chen was. But Mao Rusong? Without Qi Min’s say-so, Qi Jun wouldn’t dare cause something that could shake all of Modu if you lent him eight hundred times his nerve.

To Wu Chen, this felt far more like someone had deliberately picked the moment Mao Rusong was locked in conflict with the Qi brothers to get rid of him and pin it on them…

Or, put another way, to hide behind the Qi brothers.

When Wu Chen frowned earlier, it wasn’t because he thought he’d botched things and gotten a friend killed.

Never mind the possibility that someone else had done it. Even if the Qi brothers really were behind it, and Mao Rusong really had died in the crash, Wu Chen had no reason to fret.

He could simply reset today.

So… there was no possibility of this going wrong.

What he’d been wondering was this: if it wasn’t the Qi brothers, then who?

Mao Rusong had many friends and a vast network. But by the same token, a man whose business had grown that big had no shortage of enemies and rivals.

“If…” After a long silence, Tang Jingbin spoke again. The more he turned it over, the stranger it seemed. The move supposedly made by the Qi brothers seemed far too extreme. But he knew too little about Mao Rusong, and forcing himself to speculate would get him nowhere.

“If… it wasn’t the Qi brothers, then… Little Wu, who do you think it was?” he asked.