Chapter 2

Ye Qing's fingers on the steering wheel turned white, and his face was ashen. He made several calls to his father, but the busy tone on the phone made him realize that his father's injuries might be far more serious than his mother had described.

He wished he could instantly teleport to Zhongyun City and fight with the families of those who had beaten his father, but the remnants of his rationality told him he couldn't do that.

Because the next day's local morning news headline would likely read: "Severe Accident at Local Factory, Factory Manager Acts Ruggedly, Assaults Injured Parties' Families."

The road ahead remained congested. Suddenly, he sharply turned the steering wheel, and Ye Qing drove the minivan in reverse, taking an alternate route.

Ye Qing was very familiar with the roads around Zhongyun City. He backed up the car to avoid getting stuck in a traffic jam. However, the small road he chose was in poor condition, originally built for trucks by a local kiln. After the kiln closed, the bumpy road was rarely used by locals.

The Wuling Wuling minivan, with its rear-wheel drive and high ground clearance, was almost like a half-off-road vehicle when empty, so Ye Qing wasn't afraid of the rough road.

He drove through fields of farmland and a small village. As the minivan passed through what looked like huge craters from a nuclear bomb, the road conditions worsened, and the minivan began to bounce.

Carefully avoiding the large potholes created by heavy trucks, Ye Qing remembered that a section of the road would soon be severely sunken, requiring a detour through the adjacent farmland.

This was why Ye Qing was willing to wait a bit longer in the traffic jam. He didn't know much about crops, and if it were wheat, it would be fine, but if it were corn or watermelons, the car would destroy the crops.

Soon, a deep pothole appeared in front of the minivan. Fortunately, the fields on both sides were planted with wheat, and there were many tire tracks on the wheat fields. Ye Qing followed the tracks left by previous drivers.

"Sorry, sir, I have no choice but to borrow your wheat field. I heard that wheat can still grow even if it's trampled."

Before he finished speaking, the left front tire of the minivan burst with a sound like an explosion.

Ye Qing was burning with anger and quickly got out of the car to check.

When he saw what had happened, his eyes nearly popped out. The left front tire of the minivan had run over a piece of metal with sharp steel nails.

Familiar with mechanics, Ye Qing realized that this was not a part of any agricultural machinery but had been deliberately made with steel nails to puncture tires.

With the green wheat covering the field, even with his sharp vision, Ye Qing couldn't have seen it.

Checking further ahead, Ye Qing was almost frightened to death. The wheat fields on both sides of the pothole were full of these things. He found more than ten of them just by a quick search.

What kind of grudge could this be? Just driving over a wheat field, and you go to such lengths...

After removing the tire-puncturing device, Ye Qing hurriedly got back into the car and tried to back up. However, the left front wheel was stuck in the soft wheat field and wouldn't budge. The rear drive wheels kept slipping, scattering wheat everywhere.

The soft wheat field made it impossible to change the tire. Ye Qing took a jack and a spare tire, but the jack sank into the soft mud as soon as it was raised.

This must have been planted by a scoundrel. Ye Qing was almost driven to the brink of anger.

The minivan was loaded with tools like wrenches, levels, sockets, calipers, and voltage testers, none of which could be used to support the jack.

The wheat field was bare, with no tree roots or wooden boards.

In a hurry, Ye Qing remembered the broken wooden boats in the large pits by the roadside and ran back with a hammer and a crowbar.

These large pits, which looked like they had been created by nuclear bombs, were the result of the kiln digging for soil to make bricks. After the kiln was abandoned, the locals probably used these water-filled pits for fish farming, leaving many broken wooden boats inside.

Panting, Ye Qing ran to the nearest large pit and went down the slope.

At the bottom, Ye Qing was taken aback. The pit was filled with broken hollow bricks, almost forming a small mountain. The steep cliff beside it made it impossible for Ye Qing to climb, so he had to climb the broken hollow bricks.

The edges of the broken hollow bricks were very sharp. Ye Qing carefully climbed up, took a deep breath, and jumped down from the two-meter-high brick pile.

The ground below was soft mud, and Ye Qing was unharmed, but as he fell, he watched helplessly as his phone flew out of his pocket and splashed into the water.

Landing, Ye Qing lunged forward, trying to save the phone given to him with a phone bill.

It was bottomless...

Ye Qing extended his entire arm into the water, but he could only watch as the phone slowly sank. This was a deep pit left by the kiln, and even ten Ye Qings stacked together might not be enough to fill it.

At this depth, even Phelps would be at a loss.

The phone wasn't expensive, but the contacts stored in the cloud could be synchronized to a new phone, and the rest of the data and countless photos were irreplaceable.

"God, what have I done wrong!" Ye Qing clutched his head and squatted on the ground in pain.

A blue light suddenly appeared, cutting off Ye Qing's complaints. Then, the dark green water in the pit seemed to be electrified with ten thousand volts, and countless blue arcs burst from the bottom.

"Boom~ Boom~ Boom~ Boom~"

The ground shook, and mud fell from the cliff, splashing water everywhere.

The blue arcs illuminated the bottom of the pit and Ye Qing's horrified face.

Bathed in the light of the arcs, Ye Qing quickly saw that the intense arcs were coming from the phone that had just fallen into the water.

It was absolutely impossible. The phone's battery capacity was at most 2000 mAh, which was only 0.11 kWh. This amount of power could hardly electrocute a fish, let alone create a scene like an apocalyptic thunderstorm.

But this impossible event was happening right in front of him. Ye Qing felt that his scientific values, built over twenty years, were completely shattered. If his thoughts were not clear, he would have suspected that he had gone mad and was hallucinating.

Even more insane, the phone was not only emitting intense arcs but also slowly rising to the surface. Ye Qing screamed and climbed back up the brick pile. If the phone could cause such a commotion underwater, what would happen when it came up? Would he survive?

The intense arcs would surely pierce him like a skewer.

However, Ye Qing underestimated the speed at which the phone was rising. Before he could climb halfway, the phone shot out of the water.

Ye Qing didn't have time to turn around and shouted, "I'm done for!"

One second~ Two seconds~ Three seconds~

The expected lightning strike did not come. Ye Qing, drenched in cold sweat, turned back and almost fell off the brick pile. The phone...

It was...

Actually floating behind his head.

The phone had returned to its original state, and the ten-thousand-volt arcs had almost made Ye Qing doubt his eyes.

Ye Qing wouldn't abandon his phone unless absolutely necessary, so he found a brick and gently touched the floating phone.

There was no reaction. Ye Qing slowly bent his fingers and lightly touched the phone with the back of his hand.

If he were electrocuted, his finger muscles would spasm and pull away from the phone. This was a common technique used by experienced electricians, and Ye Qing, who had worked with machines for years, did it instinctively.

When Ye Qing's finger lightly touched the phone, there was no expected electric shock, no static, only cold.

He grabbed the phone, his heart racing with curiosity about why it was emitting electricity.

He pressed the power button, and to his surprise, the screen lit up.

However, the traditional Android home screen was gone, replaced by the words "System Upgrading..." and all the back and return buttons were non-functional.

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