Chapter 458: Wu Chen’s Condition

Chapter 458: Wu Chen’s Condition

Whenever Li Ruobing had bet against Wu Chen in the past, she had lost, and lost big. She’d lost the right to be jealous, owed him a hundred shoulder massages, and even had to kneel and apologize.

She had sworn long ago never to bet with him again. She understood that if Wu Chen was willing to bet, it meant he was sure he’d win.

Now, though, she found that no matter how much she lost to him, it didn’t seem to matter much.

They had come this far together, and Wu Chen would never truly harm her.

So there it was.

The strength in her bones made her badly want to beat him just once, and she was no longer afraid of losing.

Fine. A bet it was!

“But,” she said, changing tack and tilting her chin up at him, “my dear Mr. Wu, first you have to promise me you still don’t know who sent someone to ram Mao Rusong. Right?”

“Right. I promise that as of this moment, I don’t know.” Wu Chen smiled.

“And apart from this footage, you won’t look into anything else.”

“Of course.” He smiled. “It’s only ten minutes. I’ll be lucky to fast-forward through the footage. Where would I find time to look into anything else?”

“And before Mao Rusong was hit, you hadn’t gotten any tip or information that he would be. Right?”

“Right, right, right.”

Wu Chen understood now. To win this time, Li Ruobing meant to box him in from every side. Or rather, to make sure he couldn’t cheat.

So some things had to be agreed up front.

Only the surveillance footage, with a ten-minute limit!

No advance tip that Mao Rusong would be targeted.

No investigating through any other channel.

“Good!” Once she’d finished her questions, Li Ruobing smiled. “So what are we betting?”

“What do you want to bet?” Wu Chen asked back with a smile.

“Let’s bet… that you’re not allowed to add any more women!” she said after a moment’s thought.

“Fine. And your stake?” Wu Chen nodded.

“That’s the bet. If you win, you can have as many as you like. If you lose, no more.”

“Do I look stupid to you?”

Wu Chen laughed. He could tell she was trying to play him. That wager only benefited her. She couldn’t lose either way.

She couldn’t stop him from taking other women in the first place. So winning gained him nothing, while losing would cost him plenty.

“Hmph!” Li Ruobing gave a soft snort. Not the least bit annoyed at being seen through so fast, she simply skipped over it and went on, “Then my stake is…”

She stopped.

She hadn’t thought of one!

Because the stake she’d set for him was enormous!

For a man who did as he pleased the way Wu Chen did, promising never to take another woman, however lightly he’d agreed to it, meant a very great deal!

In an age of free love, not even the law cared how many women he had! Yet this bet would restrict an important freedom for the rest of his life!

It would affect him forever!

So…

“You say. Something equal. Name your condition.” Unable to come up with anything, she tossed the question back to him.

“Marry me,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Hm?” Li Ruobing froze.

“I said, if you lose, you marry me!” he repeated.

“What?” She was still stunned.

His condition, the stake he’d named for her, gave her a strange feeling. It was clearly something hugely important, and yet it felt as though he was still going easy on her!

Li Ruobing had once sworn she would never marry. She was committed to staying single.

She didn’t believe love and marriage were the same thing.

Two people who truly loved each other would naturally spend their lives together.

But since meeting Wu Chen and making things official with him, her thinking had been shifting day by day. Especially since she wasn’t his only woman. That put a certain pressure on her.

A “strong man” like him, the kind who had once existed only in her imagination, was naturally someone she meant to hold tight.

So in truth, she had long since thought about marrying him someday.

He had many women, but the one who married him would certainly be her!

And yet.

She had only thought about it. Until the moment actually came, even she didn’t know whether she really would.

Marriage, or remaining partners forever, she wasn’t sure.

That was why his condition really was a big one.

But even without the bet, she felt there was a very good chance she’d marry him someday anyway.

“Going easy on me?” She laughed.

“That counts as going easy?” Wu Chen thought a moment, smiling. “Then let’s add one more. If you lose, you definitely marry me. And… starting today, you call me ‘hubby.’”

Su Qingying had been calling him “hubby” for a long time.

Outside marriage, whether a woman would use that word came down entirely to temperament.

For a woman like Li Ruobing, brilliant, highly capable, and strong-willed, calling him “hubby” without actually being married was very, very hard.

She always called him “darling,” or “my dear Mr. Wu.”

She thought for a moment, then smiled too. “Deal!”

“Let me state it again. Ten minutes. Using only the surveillance, you identify who was behind Mao Rusong’s crash. If you lose, you never take another woman. If I lose, I’ll definitely marry you, and starting today I call you hubby.”

Wu Chen flashed her an OK sign, then turned back to the screen he’d paused earlier. “Start the clock.”

Li Ruobing picked up her phone and opened the stopwatch.

“Go!” she said.

Wu Chen resumed the traffic footage.

Li Ruobing shifted closer until she was pressed right against him and watched the screen with him.

The footage covered a huge span of time, nine and a half hours in all. Nine of those hours belonged to the hit-and-run truck.

Around noon that day, the truck had pulled out of a factory in the suburbs, entered Dongpu District by roads without truck restrictions, and parked in a paid public parking lot.

It stayed there for more than seven hours.

At about 7:15 p.m., the heavy truck pulled out of the lot and was caught by cameras on the main road outside.

At about 7:35, it entered Tongjiang Avenue, where trucks like it were banned outright, and stopped at the roadside for five minutes.

At 7:48, it ran a red light and slammed into the Rolls-Royce as it passed through the intersection of Tongjiang Avenue and Tianshui South Road.

At about 8:23, the fleeing truck stopped on Guangling Road in Dongpu. The driver abandoned it and slipped off into the night, out of range of the nearby traffic cameras.

After that, there was no hope of finding him through traffic surveillance. He would obviously get into some vehicle out of camera range, hide, and be driven away.

Modu was full of cars. No one could know which one he’d gotten into.

The remaining half hour of footage belonged to Mao Rusong’s convoy.

After dinner at a restaurant, Mao Rusong and his entourage had left together in five cars. The cameras picked up the convoy once it pulled out of the restaurant and onto the main road.

At 7:25 it appeared on Dongpu Second Avenue. At 7:40 it turned onto Tianshui North Road. At 7:48, passing through the intersection of Tianshui South Road and Tongjiang Avenue, it was hit.

Wu Chen kept fast-forwarding and skipping ahead.

The most notable stretch was the seven-plus hours between the truck entering the lot and leaving it. The truck never came out during that time, and the traffic system wasn’t linked to the privately run lot’s own cameras, so there was no telling what happened once it went in.

But those seven-plus hours of footage, which caught the lot’s entrance only at an oblique angle, were still valuable.

The driver hadn’t driven out, but he could easily have walked out to get something to eat. The footage came from the Modu Traffic Command Center, and anything of potential use had been stitched in, so the full seven-plus hours were there.

Yet Wu Chen just picked a few points in time, glanced at them, and skipped past it all. Only near the moment the truck left did he switch from skipping to fast-forwarding.

After that it was more skipping, more fast-forwarding.

Li Ruobing watched right along with him until her eyes were swimming.

What, what, what? How the hell was anyone supposed to see anything in this?!

In a mere eight minutes, Wu Chen had somehow run through all the traffic footage in the roughest possible way.

Then he went back, found a few specific points in time, and watched them again, still fast-forwarding.

Smack!

Li Ruobing suddenly reached over and hit the space bar.

The video paused.

“Time’s up, my dear Mr. Wu.”

She smiled and waggled her phone at him. “Come on, tell me. Who arranged for Mao Rusong to be hit?”

For once, she actually felt she had this one won!

She had watched him “solve” the case with her own eyes. She didn’t think she was wiser than he was, but she was no idiot either. Her IQ was very high!

Watching footage the way he had, forget Wu Chen. Even if all the world’s great detectives got together, hundreds of them, and watched it, it would take a miracle for them to see anything!

What’s more!

He wasn’t looking for the driver. He was looking for the mastermind!

The driver might well be a hired desperado who didn’t even know who was behind it, only some middleman.

So… she had it won!

“The mastermind…” Wu Chen turned to her and smiled. “That would be Cao Liangpeng.”