Saturday morning. Zhang Lei headed back to the dealership.
Before leaving he caught his reflection in the mirror. Old gray jacket, baseball cap pulled low — not as a disguise, but because the dark circles from last night's card game were brutal and he didn't want people thinking the unemployed guy was falling apart.
The excuse was ready-made — he'd left in a hurry last time, still had a pair of work boots in his locker. Steel-toed ones he'd worn daily for car washes, the caps scuffed white, but the soles still had life in them. Shame to throw them out. Wang Defa was never around on Saturdays — off to some local auto dealers' association lunch. Zhang Lei knew this pattern cold after three years. Every Saturday at eleven he'd head out, drink until three or four in the afternoon, come back with his face red as a baboon's ass.
Zhang Lei had picked his window deliberately. Nine forty-five.
A customer's white SUV sat out front with its hood up. Xiao Ma was helping them diagnose an engine rattle — Xiao Ma was the dealership's only salesperson, twenty-three, talked too much, hardworking but not particularly sharp. Su Qing sat in her corner behind the computer doing accounts, an Excel spreadsheet glowing on screen, her fingers moving fast across the keyboard.
She looked up when Zhang Lei walked in. Her lips moved but she didn't speak. Her gaze flicked toward the back garage, then toward the entrance — confirming Xiao Ma wasn't watching — before she gave Zhang Lei a small nod in that direction.
Zhang Lei registered the gesture. He nodded back and headed straight for the rear.
The garage lighting was dim. One of the two overhead fluorescent tubes had burned out; the remaining one flickered, casting the space in a stuttering half-light. The floor was bare gray concrete, a puddle of engine oil in one corner that nobody had cleaned up, a few empty oil bottles tossed beside it.
Six cars. Three were familiar faces from before — the silver Corolla sat in the far back, nose to the wall, a thick layer of dust on the windshield. After the customer had backed out, it had probably been shoved into the corner. Wang Defa hadn't gotten around to dealing with it. The other three were new acquisitions: a white Honda CR-V, a black Volkswagen Passat, and a gray Toyota Camry. All three gleamed — waxed, tire dressing on the rims, polished to a shine. These were Wang Defa's money-makers.
Zhang Lei stood in the garage entrance and surveyed the space. He listened for a few seconds — up front, Xiao Ma was still explaining something to the customer about "that rattle might be a loose belt." The voice wasn't getting closer.
He began.
Vision on. The sensation behind his eyes — that channel-switching feeling — was getting smoother every time. Like tuning a radio, one twist of the dial and he was through.
Silver Corolla — known. Frame-welded wreck. Skip.
White Honda CR-V: he swept the undercarriage — clean. Engine bay — normal. But beneath the interior panel of the left rear door, a dark water stain had seeped into the hidden corner of the door frame. Flood-damaged car. The body had been heat-dried and showed nothing on the outside, but the foam layer inside the door frame had gone moldy.
Zhang Lei pulled out his phone, snapped the CR-V's plate number and position. Then in his notes app: White CR-V, flood damage traces inside left rear door, foam mold.
Black Passat: undercarriage intact. Engine — problem. A repair patch on the side of the engine block, some kind of filler material smoothed over the outer surface, but internally he could see the metal crack still running through it. An engine-leak or crack-repair job. Drive this thing enough miles and the engine would simply die.
Notes app: Black Passat, engine block side crack, repaired with filler. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Gray Camry: this one he studied longest. Undercarriage clean, engine normal, transmission fine. But on the underside of the hood, the VIN plate area showed clear signs of welding — the entire identification plate had been cut away and re-welded back on.
A cloned car. Or a stolen vehicle with a new identity.
Zhang Lei took a deep breath. This one was the worst. The flood car and the cracked engine were quality issues — they cheated people out of money. A cloned VIN was criminal — this wasn't just dirty business anymore. This was dancing on a knife's edge.
His fingers actually hesitated while typing. He noted: Gray Camry, hood VIN plate re-welded, suspected clone.
He'd been running the vision for close to three minutes now. His temples were starting to swell — not severe, but he could distinctly feel a vein pulsing on the left side. He shut off the ability, closed his eyes for two seconds, rubbed his eye sockets. When he opened them, his vision returned to normal — six cars became ordinary metal and glass again, exteriors gleaming, showing no defect whatsoever.
But he knew.
Six cars. Four with problems. Four out of six. A two-thirds failure rate.
Zhang Lei locked his phone and pocketed it. He grabbed the work boots — still in the locker — and went out through the back. Passing the front desk, Su Qing glanced at him.
"Got them?"
"Got them."
Su Qing pointed at a paper cup on the desk. "Water."
Zhang Lei took it and drank. Plain boiled water, cooled.
"Boss Wang not in today?" He asked, already knowing the answer.
"Dealers' lunch." Su Qing kept her voice low. "Won't be back till three or four."
Zhang Lei set the cup down. "Thanks. I'm heading out." Visit g.com for the full chapter.
"Mm." Su Qing didn't say more, eyes already back on her ledger.
Zhang Lei walked out the front door carrying those scuffed work boots. Mid-March sunlight already had some warmth to it — it fell on his face with a faint itch. He stood at the entrance and looked up at the storefront bearing the sign "Defa Used Cars." The sheet-metal sign was peeling. The red characters had faded to a dull pink. In the lower right corner, the words "Honest Business" had curled up at one edge, flapping in the breeze — twitching back and forth like it was slapping its own face.
Four cars. Given Wang Defa's pricing habits — double the buy-in — each one netted him at least twenty or thirty thousand in dirty profit. Combined, over a hundred thousand. A dozen deals like this per year and he was pulling in five or six hundred thousand. No wonder he had a dealers' association lunch to attend every Saturday.
And if these cars got sold — the frame-welded Corolla could snap in half on the highway, the flood-damaged CR-V's electrics could short and catch fire at any moment, the cracked-engine Passat would drop dead at enough mileage, and the cloned Camry didn't even bear thinking about — every one of them was a time bomb rolling down the road.
Zhang Lei rode his scooter home. On the way he scrolled through the notes one more time. Four entries, four plate numbers, four different problems.
This wasn't for reporting to anyone. He wasn't a hero.
This was leverage.
If Wang Defa tried to make more trouble — accusing him of theft, blackballing him in the industry, rallying others to freeze him out — Zhang Lei had this in his back pocket. Enough to speak from a position of strength.
When the day came that he needed to use it, he'd know how.
Halfway home, Su Qing sent another WeChat message:
"You were in the back for a while."
Zhang Lei typed back one-handed, the other on the handlebar: "Checking if my old tools were still there."
Su Qing sent back an "oh." Then, ten seconds later, another message:
"Xiao Ma stepped out for a phone call just now. Lucky timing."
Zhang Lei slipped the phone back into his pocket. The corner of his mouth lifted, just slightly, without him meaning it to.
That woman.