48 Hours a Day

Zhang Heng drove the van in pursuit of the tracker’s signal.

Bai Qing was holding onto the car handle and finally asked a question that she wanted to ask for a long time, “When did you get your driver’s license?”

“Oh, I don’t have one,” said Zhang Heng. “But it’s okay, as long as I don’t get caught by the police,” he added after a pause.

“…”

Zhang Heng shortened the 40-minute journey to only about 20 minutes. He was, however, slowed down by a few traffic officers standing at several intersections along the way. About fifteen minutes ago, the tracker had stopped moving. Worried that Zhang Heng might track them down again, they should have headed to a different parking lot to swap cars.

After a while, the tracker hidden in the candy box started to move again and about ten minutes later, it stopped.

When she realized that the tracker had stopped moving, Bai Qing became really nervous. “Have we been found out?!”

Zhang Heng looked at the map and found that the tracker had stopped beeping at a small factory. Originally a state-owned cannery, the land was sold to a small-time businessman after it went bust, and the owner turned it into a glass factory. Since then, it had been operating for more than ten years. Business was neither good nor bad, but since the continual increase in labor costs, production lines once reliant on manual labor were slowly being replaced by machinery. It was simply getting increasingly difficult for a small factory like this to survive in this era.

Zhang Heng parked the van at the next street, a relatively deserted spot of the city.

Now, they were only less than two hundred meters from the tracker’s last location.

Zhang Heng thought about it for a moment. “Stay here and wait for me.”

“Hmm?”

He didn’t explain much, merely pulling down the rear compartment’s partition and snuck out of the car.

Bai Qing was still in the front passenger seat, doing nothing as instructed by Zhang Heng. After waiting quietly for some time, she discovered that the phone’s tracker had started moving again. Feeling like she should let Zhang Heng know, she hurriedly opened the partition.

It turned out that Zhang Heng was undressing. He had taken off everything from his body except for his underwear. Bai Qing’s face flushed, and she quickly looked away, not even getting to tell him what she wanted.

Zhang Heng didn’t seem bothered by it as he put on a set of new clothes.

Now he was transformed into a young countryside man who had come to the city searching for a job.

“You can look at me again,” Zhang Heng said to Bai Qing while stuffing the makeup tools and changed clothes into another bag.

Since the time Zhang Heng did Bai Qing’s makeup, she knew that his skills were somewhat extraordinary. She was, however, still a little surprised when she turned to look at him. He had changed so much that he had completely transformed into another person. Not only were his clothes different, but his appearance and temperament had also undergone an earth-shattering change.

This was the effect of an Lv2 makeup skill. Zhang Heng’s current technique and Holmes’s were almost the same. The art of makeup was the sort of skill that constantly improved over time, and more modern tools were also available right now. In other words, Zhang Heng could make his makeup even more realistic.

“Even if I act, I’ll have to wait until night. In the day, I will explore the factory first,” Zhang Heng said.

“Okay.”

Bai Qing nodded as she watched Zhang Heng get out of the van. Initially, she thought he would be gone for a long time, not expecting him to return after only a quarter of an hour.

“How did it go?”

Bai Qing could not wait but ask. Anxious and unhinged, this had everything to do with her mother’s whereabouts and whether her father’s innocence could be proven. In the beginning, she doubted what Zhang Heng told her, but after witnessing the subsequent events, she had become more and more convinced that there were indeed things in this world that science and technology could never explain.

“This looks like the right place. I pretended to be an applicant, but I was stopped at the door. The security guard told me that the factory isn’t hiring even after telling him that all I needed was food and a place to stay and that I was willing to give up two months’ wages. Normally, the factory would use me for two months before firing me, but the guard didn’t even report it to the person in charge. And then I asked the workers in several factories next door. They talked to each other quite often, but they had never seen anyone coming out from that factory.”

Zhang Heng paused for a moment.

“I couldn’t see the factory’s parking lot from where I stood, but judge from some old photos I found on the internet, the lot’s gate originally faced the factory’s gates. Now, the place is sealed off, and the gate is opened on the other side. This doesn’t make sense at all. The workers would have to walk a lot further to get to work. Besides, there is an unusual number of security cameras around the factory as well.”

“Can we sneak in at night?”

“It could be quite difficult,” Zhang Heng said. “On the way back, I ran into a man delivering something, and he said that even he could not get into the factory. He would be instructed to leave the parcel at the gate every time.”

“This factory is so strange. Wouldn’t the workers present their doubt?”

Zhang Heng did not answer her. Since this factory might very well be the aliens’ nest, it was very likely that they had replaced all its workers with themselves. According to nearby workers, one hundred people were working in this factory. This was not a small number.

Even if they did not possess any abilities, the crowd alone was enough to defeat Zhang Heng.

And the problem now was that there was not much time left for the two to prepare to face those aliens. The tracker in the sugar box helped them find this place. However, it was also a time bomb. Sooner or later, the alien would surely find out about them and realized that they were near them.

The current situation was unfavorable for both of them.

Zhang Heng could feel that the difficulty of this quest was greater than an ordinary one. Although it was rare for a quest to be set in the modern world, the unknown nature of the opponent and perilous environment made Zhang Heng feel as if he was playing chess blindfolded. He could only watch his steps carefully since he did not know how his actions would eventually impact the whole event.

And in terms of the degree of understanding of those things for human society, modern civilization rules had greatly slowed Zhang Heng’s progress. He felt more freedom in the old western world, and if he did not count the extra 24 hours he had, he was close to approaching this quest’s deadline. And he still had not killed a single alien. He also had no idea what was going on with other agents. Maybe it would be better for him to join a team instead of doing it solo.