Chapter 52: Chapter 49: Deluxe Spiritual Bro (Please Follow)
After a dozen hours of long-distance driving, the Subaru Impreza STI arrived in downtown East Sea at midnight.
Liang Chi, who had been driving all day, was now leaning against the passenger seat for a nap, while Chen Xiangbei sat in the driver’s seat, continuing in the direction of the Huasi Sports Racing Base.
Through the car window, Chen Xiangbei looked at the towering buildings and bright lights lining the road. Although time had turned back to more than ten years ago, East Sea was still as bustling and brilliant as ever.
Just as Chen Xiangbei got on the ramp and was about to enter the East Sea Central Ring, a loud engine noise came from behind the car.
And because the ramp was a one-way street, the cars behind couldn’t overtake, and they started honking furiously at Chen Xiangbei’s Subaru, turning the originally quiet midnight road into a sudden, noisy chaos.
But Chen Xiangbei couldn’t care less, he was driving at a normal speed and acted as if he didn’t hear them, thinking they could fly over him if they were really capable.
Liang Chi, who was napping in the passenger seat, was initially a bit tired from driving all day, and had finally managed to doze off a bit, only to be woken by the honking behind, so he looked in the rearview mirror with an annoyed expression.
He found that the honking cars behind Chen Xiangbei were two performance cars. From the signature "pointy ears," he could tell that one of them was a BMW M3 E92.
The other car was even easier to identify, as the snake emblem on the hood directly told its model: the highest-performance version of the American muscle car, the legendary Ford Mustang GT500!
Two performance cars showing up in the East Sea Central Ring at midnight, urging the car ahead angrily, it was clear they were getting ready for a street race.
This reminded Chen Xiangbei of what Qin Lianjie had said earlier. It seemed the time for the East Sea underground races was approaching, and many street racers were itching to run a few races early for fun.
"Damn it! Why modify it like this, exhausts blasting in the streets, such uncivilized behavior."
"Xiangbei, if the car behind likes to push, just hit the brakes to slow them down, and let them wait slowly on the ramp!"
Liang Chi, after all, was a racing engineer and had run a repair shop for nearly twenty years, so he was very familiar with street performance car modifications. He only needed to hear the sound to roughly know what modifications the other side had done.
If the car had a modified ignition timing system to "pop," Liang Chi might think they had a performance and speed pursuit.
But if the exhaust was modified just to sound louder, then that’s no different from the street racers of the future, except one car is expensive and the other is cheap, both just disturbances.
"Alright."
Chen Xiangbei responded, then stepped on the brakes to slow down.
Initially, he wasn’t interested in dealing with these street racers since he was on his way to the Huasi Sports Racing Base.
But since Liang Chi spoke, he had to respect the car owner’s and elder’s opinion.
The driver of the BMW M3 behind was a young guy in his early twenties, known in the circle as "Long Hair" for sporting the same hairstyle as Zheng Yijian. He was from the local SRT Team in East Sea.
Long Hair had arranged to meet up with Jinling Team’s driver Sun Tao, the Ford Mustang driver’s name, to have a couple of laps around the Central Ring Road as a warm-up for the upcoming East Sea underground race.
But unexpectedly, they encountered a Subaru blocking their way on the ramp. Honking didn’t make them move aside, and then the Subaru even braked, intentionally blocking the way.
And the Subaru was driving as strictly by the book as a driving test, staying dead center in the lane, so Long Hair could not overtake even by crossing the line!
This made Long Hair’s temperament explode at once. Where did this out-of-town car with a redneck behind the wheel come from, daring to act wild on his turf?
Next, Long Hair pressed the BMW M3’s horn down continuously and revved his engine, expressing an aggressive intention to speed up and tailgate.
Seeing this, Liang Chi unhurriedly lit a cigarette for himself before calmly saying, "Are young people driving with such big tempers these days? Feels like a hint of road rage."
Hearing Liang Chi, Chen Xiangbei smiled and said nothing.
The ramp was not particularly long, and soon Chen Xiangbei drove onto the Central Ring main road, where the rear BMW M3 finally had the space to overtake.
Long Hair floored it and quickly came alongside Chen Xiangbei, rolled down his window, and yelled angrily, "Redneck, do you even know how to drive? If not, why don’t you piss off and stop blocking the road!"
Faced with Long Hair’s passionate "greeting," Chen Xiangbei just turned his face to glance, then expressionlessly pressed the window back up.
Although the Subaru Impreza’s soundproofing wasn’t as good as Dong Yuanxi’s Mercedes S65 AMG, when the ambient noise was loud enough, you still couldn’t hear the other sound.
Indifference is harder to accept than hostility, and Chen Xiangbei’s attitude made Long Hair, already furious, even more enraged.
Right then, he floored it again, wanting to cut in front of Chen Xiangbei!
But when Long Hair managed to cut in front, and sharply turned the steering wheel to change lanes, he immediately realized that the Subaru Impreza wasn’t forced to stop. Instead, it mysteriously appeared on the other side of his BMW M3.
What’s going on?
In his anger, Long Hair felt somewhat surprised, but he didn’t think much of it, believing he hadn’t been aggressive enough, giving the redneck time to react.
So he sped up again to overtake and get in front of Chen Xiangbei. This time, Long Hair planned to leave no room, slamming the brakes hard to try to lure the Subaru Impreza to rear-end him.
However, the strange situation happened again: Long Hair’s hard braking did not cause the Subaru Impreza to rear-end him; instead, it mysteriously changed lanes and overtook his BMW M3.
Through the car window, Long Hair looked at Chen Xiangbei’s profile. The redneck hadn’t changed his expression from start to finish and didn’t even look at him once!
Long Hair couldn’t figure out what was going on, but Sun Tao, the Ford Mustang driver at the back, saw the whole process.
Sun Tao hadn’t intended to get involved in this "retaliation." Not that he was above it; he just thought that an experienced driver with Long Hair was enough to toy around with a common Subaru, so he needn’t step in.
The first time Long Hair changed lanes to pull across the car, Sun Tao noticed the Subaru Impreza quickly changed direction and sped up, and he felt something odd at the time but didn’t think much of it.
These days, some veteran drivers have equally proficient driving skills, capable of performing such quick maneuvering.
However, when Long Hair performed a sudden brake stop the second time, and the Subaru Impreza precisely changed lanes and evaded—it became clear to Sun Tao that they encountered a pro.
Because while once might be attributed to luck or coincidence, a repeat occurrence is certainly the result of skill!
Simultaneously, under the streetlights, Sun Tao’s eyes were fixed on the rear of the Subaru Impreza in front, feeling that the external modifications seemed somewhat different than he remembered.
Until he noticed a few missing letters leaving white marks, at that moment, Sun Tao finally understood why this Subaru Impreza had such a lightning-fast lane change and speed burst, leaving even Long Hair’s BMW M3 unable to react.
It turns out this was never just a regular Impreza at all, but a debadged Impreza WRX STI.
Having mixed in the car circle for many years, Sun Tao had often seen people remove "Huaren" from BMWs, or "Yanjing" from Mercedes.
But he had never seen someone buy the highest-performance version of an Impreza, only to remove the WRX STI model letters.
Sun Tao didn’t know if the driver ahead was an expert, but anyone who would do this is absolutely a genius!