After the police car left, Ding Shi pulled back onto the road. Sitting in the back seat, Brother Kai spoke up, "Ding Shi, where did you get a license?"
Ding Shi replied, "I took the exam. During the prep time before entering the instance, the system was selling items, and a driver's license was among them. For ten yuan, you could take a ten-question theory exam."
The others recalled it then, though they had either skimmed past it or never noticed the driver's license at all. Knowing the system's perverse nature, Ding Shi was certain that treacherous system had deliberately caused everyone to overlook it. Reasonably speaking, something so important should have been on the very first page of items. Yet the system had stashed the driver's license on the penultimate page, grouping it alongside notebooks and other similar-looking sundries.
Chu Yu patted Mumu on the shoulder in the passenger seat. "See? I'm a good judge of character." They had barely left the county town, yet several hundred yuan was already gone. If Ding Shi didn't have a license, they would have had another layer of skin peeled off right then.
Mumu turned around. "Yuyu, as the team leader, shouldn't you consider how to handle having only one license among five people?"
Ding Shi said, "Every city has an exam center. I suggest we go get licensed in Nanyue County."
Chu Yu felt a bit helpless. "All right." There was no telling how much time that would waste.
Ding Shi turned right off the national highway onto the rural road toward Nannan Village. As they passed through the village, noticing very few people around, Ding Shi slowed down and pointed out, "There's a vegetable patch up ahead on the left."
Everyone looked over together and politely praised, "Growing so well." A vegetable patch was just a vegetable patch—what was there to comment on?
Ding Shi's eyebrow twitched, and he prompted again, "There are chickens sneaking bites of the vegetables."
Reaching his arm out from the back seat, Ritian pressed the car horn. The two chickens stealing vegetables flapped their wings and fled. Ritian chuckled, "Cowardly chickens."
Ding Shi felt like kicking him out of the car. Still, he didn't dare say out loud that he wanted to steal the vegetables and chickens; after all, he had no idea where the car's average moral barometer stood. Having only cleared a single casual instance so far, most of them probably still retained their basic moral standards. Ding Shi had no desire to become the odd one out on the team—least of all an outcast judged and ostracized by the rest.
Even if the quest's success or failure, life or death, hung in the balance, Ding Shi still harbored an instinctive distaste for petty thievery. However, if the majority of the team was in favor, he certainly wouldn't object.
Ding Shi's moral spectrum was highly flexible, quite unlike that of traditional good or bad people. If a good person's moral value was 50 to 100, and a villain's was 0 to 50, then Ding Shi's sat between 15 and 85. Within that range, there was nothing he wouldn't do.
The car drove past the village entrance, where a bulletin board stood. Ding Shi glanced at it casually and noticed several wanted posters pasted onto it. He instinctively pulled over to the side of the road. Everyone looked at him, confused about what he was doing. Someone even wondered whether he was displeased that their praise of the vegetable patch earlier hadn't sounded sincere enough.
Ding Shi said, "There are wanted posters."
"Yeah." They looked at one another, and Chu Yu asked cautiously, "They're... growing so well?" Aside from "growing so well," she had no idea how else to praise a bulletin board and a few wanted posters.
Ding Shi explained, "We saw what the robotic police are capable of today. The national highway not only has surveillance cameras, but plenty of patrol cars as well. Why are there still wanted fugitives at large? Haven't the police gone after them? Brother Kai, as our scout, could you go chat with those elderly women across the road?"
Brother Kai didn't get it. "Chat about what?"
Ding Shi said, "I think there might be dark zones."
Mumu caught on first. "Ding Shi, you think we'll be passing through some lawless territories on our way home?"
Ding Shi nodded.
Though Brother Kai didn't fully understand yet, he still walked over to chat with the aunties about the wanted fugitives while the others got out of the car to inspect the posters. About ten minutes later, the car was back on the road.
Brother Kai said, "I asked a lot of questions, but barely got anything useful. One older woman did mention one of the fugitives, though—Fei Lang the Axe-Thrower."
The woman was originally from a village called Heishuigou. With urban development, everyone had left the remote Heishuigou one after another to work in the cities, and the village was eventually abandoned. The woman met her husband in the city, and after retiring, the two moved back to live in his hometown.
Fei Lang's adoptive father was a hunter in Heishuigou who found him in the wilderness. At the time, half of Fei Lang's face had been gnawed by wild beasts, leaving him disfigured beyond recognition. Fei Lang was said to be eccentric and solitary, living alone on the mountain after his adoptive father passed away. Before the village was abandoned, the village chief talked with Fei Lang, but he refused to leave Heishuigou.
Years later, a succession of people reported to the authorities that their relatives had gone missing around the Heishuigou area. The yamen claimed that after a comprehensive police search, no missing persons were found in Heishuigou.
Brother Kai said, "What strikes me as odd is, if the police didn't find any missing persons in Heishuigou, why put a wanted notice out on Fei Lang, the only human left there?"
Ritian didn't quite get it. "Can't we just not go to Heishuigou? If we stick to our route and keep moving, what does Heishuigou or Fei Lang have to do with us?"
No one voiced agreement or disagreement; instead, silence fell as nobody knew what to make of it. Mainly, Ding Shi seemed very serious about it, while the others couldn't grasp his angle.
Ding Shi's thoughts: Wanted fugitives = walking instance coins. It would rid the innocent of an evil while making them rich. A single fugitive was worth five hundred silver dollars. Catch a few, and they could just fly straight to their destination.
The others' thoughts: Does this have anything to do with us? If Heishuigou is dangerous, we just won't pass through it.
Ding Shi's further thoughts: They found no missing persons in Heishuigou, yet Fei Lang of Heishuigou was placed on the wanted list. There was bound to be some hidden secret in this instance.
Still, since he wasn't on the same wavelength as his teammates, Ding Shi dropped the subject for the moment and drove all the way to Nanyue County. Having studied the map, he knew the route well. At two in the afternoon, Team Yuyu arrived at the driver's license testing center. By the time they got there, nearly a thousand players were already lined up waiting to take the exam.
Upon asking around, they learned that some of the players in the waiting hall had spawned in Nanyue County and had been stopped and fined before even leaving the city. Others were players from neighboring counties who had been pulled over by police on the road and escorted along with their vehicles to Nanyue County.
The good news: the testing center didn't close for the day.
The better news: the average wait time was only twenty minutes.
The bad news: the pass rate for Subject Two was 75%, and Subject Three was only 35%.
The worse news: Team Yuyu had to test for a manual transmission. For manuals, the pass rate for Subject Two was 20%, and Subject Three was a mere 10%.
Ten yuan per attempt.
On Brother Kai's first attempt at Subject Two, the engine stalled during parallel parking. On his second attempt, taking Subject Three, he failed gear shifting. On his third attempt, taking Subject Three, he failed gear shifting again. On his fourth attempt, taking Subject Two, the engine stalled while reversing into the garage. On his fifth attempt, taking Subject Two, he finally secured his driver's license.
When bald Brother Kai emerged from the testing grounds, he grabbed Wang Ritian in a fierce embrace, nearly putting on a manly display of tears on the spot. The pressure was just too intense—ten yuan a pop, ten yuan each time, to the point where he hadn't even dared look at Yuyu's expression.
Chu Yu maintained a calm, genial smile throughout. Only she knew that a smile was all she could manage. One by one they entered the exam grounds, one by one they came out to collect money, and one by one they headed back in. Watching their retreating backs, Chu Yu wanted to weep. If they had pooled all the money spent on getting licensed together, it would have been enough to buy and maintain an automatic car.
Chapter 43