Chapter 422: A Bad Encounter
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Fortunately, he was lucky this time. This motorcycle was complete. Its engine and all other parts were intact. It looked like it had been well maintained, and the tires were brand new.
Li Du took out a small notebook and recorded the information on the motorcycle. He proceeded to the next unit.
As there were too many units, and a lot of information to remember, if he completely depended on his memory, he would most likely jumble up the information. So he brought a small notebook along this time for taking notes.
It was a no-brainer that his fellow treasure hunters who followed him would not want to return home empty-handed. The notebook would help him convey the information to them.
There were a total of seven units on auction from units one to fifty. The most worthwhile seemed to be the one which had the beast-like motorcycle. The rest of the units would not make much money.
This was a common phenomenon in the industry. America had a lot of storage units and a lot of them were on auction all over the states, but those that could enable one to make a fortune were few and far between. Most people would check their unit carefully before giving it back to the company. They would take away items of value, leaving behind garbage.
He began to scan the units from storage unit 101. He scanned through the units one by one, and found nothing that he wanted to bid for.
There were 24 units up for auction from storage unit 101 onwards. However, most of these units were practically trash units, with some of them being the common household units, and there was nothing valuable in them.
Li Du spent one whole morning checking out the units. When he was done, it was already noon. He was exhausted from all those scans but felt he hadn't gotten much out of them.
That made him rather depressed, but he could still accept the fact. This was often the case in the storage and auction industry. Finding valuable items in an auction might be due to God's blessing.
Evidently, Lady Luck wasn't on their side this time. There were so many units on auction but yet so few of them could give attractive returns, with exception to the unit with the motorcycle.
Li Du proceeded to leave and was nearing the entrance when suddenly groups of men appeared from both sides of the aisle, blocking his way out.
He eyeballed the men quickly. There were about 15 of them, a mixture of young to middle-aged men. All of them glared at him unkindly. He glared back.
A skinny white man sneered down his nose at Li Du. "Hey Chinaman, what are you doing in our storage company?"
Li Du was sure that he had never met these people before and had no idea what they were up to. He replied cautiously, "Oh, nothing. I'm just looking around."
"Looking around?" the skinny man laughed in disbelief. "What's there to see with all these locked storage units? Tell us the truth: what's your motive?"
Li Du stretched out both arms and said, "What kind of motive could I have? I have no other motive. I'm just interested in this company and came in for a look."
The skinny man crossed both arms over his chest and glanced to his men. "This fella's trying to act tough? Looks like we need to show him some colors before he tells us the truth."
Some of the younger men seemed ready to thrash him at any moment. Li Du squinted his eyes, with his body facing sideways. He was ready to brawl as well.
At this time, a middle-aged white man walked to the front. He stopped the skinny man and said, "Bro, there's no rush for violence, we can have a good talk with him."
Then he turned to Li Du. "Dude, what are you doing here? Tell us the truth. You're a treasure hunter and you're here to check out the units, right? Tell us what you've seen, alright?"
Li Du carefully looked at the group and a thought came to his mind. "So who are you people? What right do you have to stop me from leaving?"
The skinny man pulled a long face at Li Du's reply and clenched his teeth. "Chinaman, you sure have some guts. You snuck in here and still refuse to tell us anything. I swear you're going to be in deep sh*t. I'm sending you to the police station!"
The rest of the men followed suit and started yelling:
"F*cking b*st*rd, just send him to prison. He must be here to steal!"
"He snuck into our storage company. We should catch him, let's catch him!"
"Surround him, who's calling the police? Let this son of a b*tch go to prison!"
Li Du did not want to stir up trouble, but the present situation seemed dire. He had no idea what was happening and why these people were trying to start something with him.
These people kept on saying that Li Du had snuck into their company. They seemed like the security guards or employees of the storage company, and they probably thought he had trespassed.
But his gut feeling for some reason told him this wasn't the case. Furthermore, these people didn't have the local accent.
Just like different places in China had their own accents and dialects, different places in America had their own unique local accents too; but the difference was not as distinct as in China's different dialect groups.
Li Du had stayed in America for a year now. He was not very good at judging the differences in accent. At most he could differentiate between a northerner and a southerner and several other distinctive accents of certain places.
Coincidentally, these people's accent belonged to the few places that had a rather distinctive accent: California.
Americans had once summed up the accents of all the states and regions. The places with the most distinguishable accents were New York, Texas, Maine, Mississippi, and lastly, California.
Californians liked to lengthen the tone of single syllable words. They would unconsciously drag the pronunciation when they spoke.
Earlier on someone had called him "dude," but his pronunciation was "duuudde." Another had scolded him: "son of a b*tch," and that person pronounced it as "sooon of a b*****chhhh."
This was how Californians talked. The Arizonans certainly did not talk like that, especially in Page where it was also near the state of Utah and Colorado. Li Du was sure the local people's accent was not like that.
Therefore, Li Du felt that these people couldn't be the employees of the storage company, but were treasure hunters from California that had come to start something with him.
Besides the accent, Li could also tell by their appearances and traits that this group was actually a bunch of treasure hunters.
He released the little bug to look into their pockets and saw their driver's licenses. That confirmed his speculation. The driver's licenses contained their addresses and they all started with the letters "CA," that was the abbreviation for California.
After ascertaining this information, Li Du calmed down.
He took out his mobile phone and said in a straight face, "So all of you want me to go to jail? Fine then, I'll call the police myself to get them to come and arrest me."
The group of people instantly stopped their yelling. The skinny man was startled. "Chinaman, you're sure bold. You're not afraid to go to jail?"
Li Du shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not bold, I just that I know of a great lawyer that I believe as long I pay him well, he won't let me go to jail. Otherwise, how will he earn the money?"
The skinny man gritted his teeth again and said, "Very well, get ready to go to jail then."
Li Du acted as if he were about to punch the numbers into his phone and said, "Okay, I'm calling the police now."
Seeing that, one of the men got worried and cried, "Stop! Don't call the police!"