Chapter 142: There Are Six Bullets in the Gun

Chapter 142: There Are Six Bullets in the Gun

Li Maoren’s reaction, and Li Ruobing’s, were both exactly what Wu Chen had expected.

“That’s right. I know guns.” Wu Chen kept that extraordinarily unruffled smile. “Guns are interesting. You have a son and a daughter, Uncle, so you’ll understand—boys are certainly more taken with guns than girls are. Wouldn’t you say?”

Of course Li Maoren understood. That was not remotely the point.

“You’ve had access to guns?” Li Maoren asked directly, eyes narrowing.

“The internet is so developed now. If firearms interest you, the internet is enough. The basic principles aren’t complicated. And if you go looking on foreign sites, you can even find blueprints for some of them.” Wu Chen smiled faintly. He seemed to have sealed the line of inquiry off completely, and Li Ruobing let out a quiet breath.

Then Wu Chen changed tack. “Though I have handled a gun, in fact. A pistol. I made it myself, in my teens. Not a real one, of course—more of a model. It wasn’t metal; I even shaped the trigger out of wood by hand. But the parts and the internal structure should all have been right. I’d say I know guns fairly well…”

Li Ruobing felt the strangeness of that answer with perfect clarity.

It was as though Wu Chen had misspoken, patched the hole with the explanation that he had studied them online—and then immediately gone back and emphasized that he knew guns extremely well, that he had even hand-carved a pistol model. As though he were deliberately making trouble for himself all over again.

Taken as a whole, mentioning firearms among his hobbies had not been a slip at all. It had been deliberate. Otherwise, having covered himself, he should have stopped talking.

But why?

Li Maoren went on watching him through narrowed eyes.

He too felt that something was off. He was looking at Wu Chen from the premise that the young man was his daughter’s fake boyfriend, hunting for a flaw. His whole angle of vision was suspicion.

Learned it online? Knew guns well?

Wu Chen’s logic held. Plenty of people learned about firearms that way. So-called gun enthusiasts were everywhere online; a single search turned up no end of forums on the subject, military forums among them.

Some veteran enthusiasts could recite the specifications of practically every common model from memory.

But Wu Chen had also said he had made a pistol model with his own hands. Model or not, he had dared claim every component was correct. That still lay inside the bounds of reason—it was only a model, and he had said nothing about precision—and yet somehow it felt like too much.

It was strange.

Li Maoren was silent a moment, then turned to his son. “Atai. Are you carrying a gun?”

Li Maoren himself was not in the habit of carrying one. Not for lack of access; he simply had no need. The bodyguards who had come with him were armed, but all of them were outside.

“Uh… Dad…” Li Ruotai’s expression turned odd.

Why did he suddenly want a gun?

Li Ruobing looked uneasy as well. For an instant she seemed to imagine something appalling—then immediately dismissed it. Impossible. Her father was a normal man, not a madman.

“Are you carrying one?” Li Maoren asked again.

“I am…” Li Ruotai reached behind his waist and drew out a pistol.

Li Maoren gestured to his son again, this time tilting his head toward Wu Chen: give it to him.

At that Li Ruotai relaxed instead. He stepped forward, set the pistol on the coffee table, and slid it across.

Wu Chen put out a hand and stopped it.

“Do you recognize this gun, Xiao Wu? Tell me about it,” Li Maoren said.

Wu Chen had known this was coming.

He had shown Li Maoren a “flaw” on purpose, and he had chosen firearms because he knew how deeply Li Maoren understood them. Li Maoren had served in the military as a young man. Under the family’s original design for him he was to have risen through a military career, but certain events at the time made the family revise their arrangements.

Times had changed…

In…