Chapter 051: The Car Accident Ten Years Ago

Chapter 051: The Car Accident Ten Years Ago

Wu Chen played along with Lei Cheng’s little display, and when he caught the name on the screen, he let a flicker of genuine surprise show.

“Hello, Godfather…” The call connected, and Wu Chen caught the faint, sugary voice on the other end before Lei Cheng lifted the phone to his own ear.

“Hey there, baby, miss me?… Mm… hahahaha… mm… all right, all right, quit complaining. You’ve barely been famous five minutes—if the director wants you to play it a certain way, just play it that way. He’s a friend of mine, he’s got your interests at heart too…”

Wu Chen raised his teacup and drank, listening quietly to Lei Cheng’s half of the call. He couldn’t hear what Tao Manying was actually saying, but the tone made it obvious enough—she was pouting at him, working the charm.

If anyone else had been in the room—one of her fans, say—

If that person had known who this greasy, unkempt, middle-aged man was talking to, and heard the words coming out of his mouth, they might have collapsed on the spot and clawed their own eyes out.

The more excitable ones might have jumped off a building. Devoted fans were capable of anything.

Because the mismatch was that absurd.

Tao Manying was a genuine beauty—by Wu Chen’s own exacting standards, a solid nine. Fair skin, striking face, endless legs, presence and polish to match. She could play a noblewoman one moment and a wide-eyed girl the next.

She was, by any measure, exactly what ninety-nine point nine percent of men pictured when they imagined the perfect woman.

And the patron who’d kept her for ten straight years—the very Lei Cheng sitting across from Wu Chen right now—was every bit as ordinary, greasy, and sleazy as he looked.

It wasn’t even really about looks. Lei Cheng’s features weren’t bad, and the weight wasn’t the real issue either. It was everything else—the bearing, the presence, all of it.

The two of them stood at opposite ends of the earth.

Put them side by side, and “beauty and the beast” wouldn’t come close to covering it. It would look more like a beauty standing next to a steaming pile of garbage.

Not an exaggeration. Not even slightly.

At first glance, Lei Cheng gave off less presence than an average man on the street.

But—

A first impression was just that. An impression.

And impressions could be built on purpose.

Wu Chen knew Lei Cheng was doing this deliberately.

Setting money aside entirely, Wu Chen actually believed the imbalance ran the other way. It wasn’t Lei Cheng who fell short of Tao Manying. It was Tao Manying who fell short of Lei Cheng.

Without him, she might have vanished into the crowd years ago—or worse, become some wealthy man’s private plaything, forbidden from ever stepping into public life, let alone rising this high.

Wu Chen had seen photographs of Lei Cheng from a decade back. Across the thousand-year loop, he’d come across them more than once. Back then, Lei Cheng had been tall, lean, thirty-two and in his prime—handsome, composed, carrying himself with real presence.

It was the car accident, ten years ago, the one that had nearly killed him, that had remade him into this.

Or rather—he’d chosen the disguise himself. He’d started eating and drinking without restraint, keeping women, throwing money around, funding actresses’ careers, letting his manners go crude and rough.

Every bit of it had been armor. A way to keep himself from being killed.

Ten years, and the whole stretch could be boiled down to a single word.

Endurance.

He’d been enduring the entire time, waiting for one chance to land a killing blow and flip the board entirely.

Even knowing, somewhere underneath it all, that the chance might never come.

Because the man who wanted him dead wasn’t a stranger. It was his own elder brother—Lei Zhenghui’s eldest son, Lei You.

Lei Cheng was the losing side of a brutal family war.

That accident ten years ago had been Lei You’s doing. Three people in the car had died; one had been left…