48 Hours a Day

“Where did you meet that cyber enforcer?” “On the travel bus, from Toulon to Marseille. He was holding a laptop, and he was the only person on board who could speak English. I had no other choice. How about you?” “Monaco, casino, I met a young couple that hacked poker machines.”

“Do you speak French?”

“Yes.”

“You’re so lucky. It’s nice to enter a quest with no communication barriers,” the man with piercings sounded envious.

Zhang Heng simply smiled.

“Sorry, I just asked two questions. You can

man with piercings was very cautious, he was also very upright and insisted on not taking any advantage.

He was also a relatively alert person. Those who were not cautious wouldn’t be able to survive a competitive mode quest. This made Zhang Heng regret his previous proposal about the division of labor.

“Have you met other players?”

“No, I came here from Marseille. You are the first player I met.”

The answer of the pierced man also confirmed Zhang Heng’s conjecture that each player would be placed far apart from each other. It basically eliminated the possibility of them meeting before the faction selection process. The skin color of every player in this quest was also different. ‘Piercings’ was a typical white man, and it was only by coincidence that Zhang Heng got to keep his original skin color. Hence, it wasn’t realistic to recognize a player by skin color. “You said you kidnapped someone from the Black Nest. What did you ask him?”.

“I wanted to know how many people from Black Nest were assigned to capture Leah and how powerful Black Nest’s forces in Grenoble are. For the first question, the person that I captured didn’t have clearance to know about it. He only told me that those secrets were in the hands of a man named Vincent Naceri. As for the second question, Black Nest’s armed forces in Grenoble are not as powerful as I thought they would be. However, they can ask the police to help them when it is necessary. I abandoned the car on the bridge because I was worried that they might notify the police to set up a roadblock.”

Then he thought for a while and asked, “How much do you know about Edward?”

“Not much, I only know that he is an important R&D staff member of CTOS. He is supposed to be very skillful, but no one has seen him before, and there are no photos of him either. He said that he would contact us after we rescue Leah.”

“My situation is similar,” Piercings concurred, “If you know where this guy is, force him to hand over the evidence to you. After that, you can tie him up and bring him away to complete the main quest. We don’t need to go through so much trouble.” “I have no further questions. Do you have anything else to ask?” Zhang Heng said. “How do I contact you?” Piercings asked.

“Oh, my phone…” before Zhang Heng could finish, his phone screen suddenly lit up, and he received a message.

“I am Little Boy. Please tell me you are not with the man in the picture.”

Zhang Heng looked down and saw the Piercing’s somewhat blurry face in the attachment. In the photo, he was holding the steering wheel with both hands. “There’s bad news,” Zhang Heng said. “What’s wrong?” Piercings frowned. “Yor face was indeed blocked when you jumped off the bridge, but remember how you said that Black Nest could make use of Grenoble’s police force? Your face was captured by a high-speed camera.”

“Damn!” Piercings was shocked.

By then, Zhang Heng had already sent out a text message— ‘hold Vincent off a little longer.’

Three seconds later, Zhang Heng received a reply from the Little Boy, “I turned off his cell phone and blocked the call, but there are other people around him. You can use another phone to request the photo from the police station and send it to his subordinates. Optimistically, you still have 20 seconds to leave the bar.”

“We have to go,” Zhang Heng put away the phone and said.

The two got up one after the other, attempting to slip out of the bar unnoticed. Moments later, all the bar’s patrons suddenly stood up.

Leah said over the microphone, “OK, it’s tonight’s bonus event! Please hold the hands of the people around you. Don’t be shy… it’s okay if you don’t know each other. We are a family! Let’s sing together!” Piercings fiercely glared at a random man in the bar who tried to grab his hand.

However, amid the obstruction by the flow of people, Zhang Heng noticed that the screens of several mobile phones flickered almost simultaneously. Two men were standing near the door, and they reached out and took out their phones from their pockets.

“It’s too late,” Zhang Heng said. Glancing around him, he spotted a toilet sign. “Go over there!”

Black Nest’s goons in the bar had received a photo from Vincent. The person in it looked familiar.

They had been observing every single customer in the bar and had already spotted the man with piercings for a long time now. When they saw the photo, they immediately remembered who the person was. However, when they turned around, the man with piercings had disappeared. The Asian who was with him was gone as well.

The bar was not that big. They had appointed someone to guard the door, and if they failed to locate them after looking around, they would know that they must be in the toilet. Zhang Heng and Piercings were now in the men’s toilet. It had no windows; there was an exhaust fan in the southwest corner.

Piercings stepped on the urinal with one foot and placed the other on the wall to remove the exhaust fan mounted around eight feet. He did not expect it to be so firmly installed. As he was just beginning to break a sweat, Zhang Heng tossed a screwdriver to him.

“Really?! The world has people who come to the bar with this kind of stuff on them?”

Piercings were shocked.

“Stop talking nonsense and quickly disassemble it.” Zhang Heng had temporarily assembled a screwdriver with the Infinite Building Block. He had tested it before, where if the item was just an ordinary object, the system wouldn’t notify players that it was a game item.

In contrast to Piercings, Zhang Heng wasn’t that worried if they could leave the bar safely because he still had the Evil Wall with him. If the current method failed, he could melt the wall in front of him right away. The Evil Wall had a limited number of uses, though, so he was reluctant to use it unless it was his last resort. His relationship with Piercings was also limited to this cooperation, and Zhang Heng surely didn’t want to expose his trump card so quickly.

As Piercings frantically unscrewed the mountings of the ventilator, Zhang Heng looked for something to block the toilet door. After a while, they heard someone kicking on the door. Fortunately, Piercings had managed to remove all the screws in time. Seeing that the exhaust fan was now loose, he tossed the screwdriver away and pulled it out with force.

After a short hesitation, he looked at Zhang Heng said, “You go first!” before drawing the pistol from his waist. He then crouched down, aiming in the direction of the toilet’s door.

There was no time for niceties. Zhang Heng picked up the screwdriver on the ground, stepped onto Piercings back, and pulled himself into the hole of the vent.