Chapter 131: No Other Choice

Chapter 131: No Other Choice

Meng Junhao was on his knees again.

He was caught in a “dead end”—and it was not one Wu Chen had built.

He had done it to himself.

In truth he had always known this day would come. That was precisely why he had been quietly shifting his assets, desperate to get out. Wu Chen’s choosing today to come and see him was simply moving with the current: the right man at the right moment.

Wu Chen could not be certain exactly when Ding Ruilong would strike, but he could infer that it would not be long. A matter of days, most likely.

Ding Ruilong was not an incompetent man. But that obsessive streak of his—once he was truly enraged, there was nothing he would not do.

In that respect he was the exact opposite of Meng Junhao.

Meng Junhao weighed gain and loss too carefully. He feared death and forever calculated consequences. Which meant he would never truly lose control.

“Mr. Wu! Save me! Save me!” Meng Junhao cried from the floor, unable to stop himself from clutching at the hem of Wu Chen’s trousers.

“What makes you think I can save you?” Wu Chen asked, glancing down at him with a faint smile.

“You! You certainly can. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come to find me. That’s right—that’s it! You came to find me, so you must have a way. You do, don’t you?”

As he spoke, Meng Junhao talked himself into the logic. He did, after all, have a brain in his head.

“Sit.”

Wu Chen tipped his chin at the chair.

Meng Junhao’s face was uneasy in the extreme. He rose and took the seat, but seemed unable to keep still in it. He was too badly rattled.

He had a performative personality.

So even now, nothing he showed on the surface was wholly real. It hardly mattered. It was enough that Wu Chen knew which parts were.

Meng Junhao was in fact an extremely difficult man to control. He was fickle and capricious.

But from another angle, he was an extremely easy man to control—so long as you had hold of his psychological weakness.

Wu Chen needed people who could work for him. Not men like Wang Zhuangyuan; Wang Zhuangyuan was Li Ruotai’s. Wu Chen needed someone who, in the fullest sense, worked for Wu Chen.

Meng Junhao would be the first.

“I’d guess Ding Ruilong—or one of his trusted men—will contact you soon. It might be Jiang Chuan. Or Wang Zhuanghe.” Wu Chen spoke with a smile. “If you want to stay alive, then whatever they tell you to do, do it. Understood?”

Meng Junhao was struck dumb.

He could not follow the logic at all. As ruthless as Ding Ruilong was, if he handed down an assignment, it would surely be aimed at putting Wu Chen in the ground.

And Wu Chen himself was telling him to do whatever Ding Ruilong ordered?

What if Ding Ruilong told him to abduct the man outright?

“M-Mr. Wu…” Meng Junhao ventured, picking his words, deeply uneasy. “Then should I—warn you in advance? Stage something, maybe…”

“No, no, no. There’s no need.” Wu Chen’s smile stayed light. “Not for the moment. Do your own job. And you don’t need to tell Li Ruotai what’s happening either. That’s the only way you live…”

Now Meng Junhao truly did not understand.

Then why had Wu Chen come to him at all?

Wu Chen plainly knew something might happen to him within days—and he did not intend to interfere with any of it? Not do a single thing? Just wait to die?

“Ding Ruilong’s people in Donghai—there’s you. Feng Yang. Then Huang Xiuping, Xu Jun, Cao Feng… small fry. No threat to me. I can’t even be bothered to go looking for them. You, though…” Wu Chen smiled again. “The reason I came to see you is that you’re a little more interesting than the rest.”

Meng Junhao stared, shaken.

Of the names Wu Chen had just rattled off, he knew some were Ding Ruilong’s men. But others—even he had not known about them.

It was as if Wu Chen knew everything.

“Then… what exactly is it you want me to—do, Mr. Wu?” Meng Junhao asked again, far more careful now.

“I need you to deliver something to Ding Ruilong for me.” Wu Chen kept smiling. “But not now. That’s for later. For the time being, I don’t need you to do anything for me.”

Hearing that, Meng Junhao only grew more uneasy.

Wu Chen could decide whether he lived or died with a single phone call—and he was asking him to do nothing at all.

It was… eerie.

He had assumed Wu Chen was leaning on him because he wanted some great task carried out. But there was nothing. The gap between what he had braced for and what he had gotten left him profoundly uncomfortable.

Meng Junhao was a man who thought about everything. And the more he thought, the less he dared put a foot out of line.

“Mr. Wu, so later on… you want me to deliver something to Ding Ruilong…” He tried again. He wanted more information. Only then could he work out how to respond.

“We’ll discuss it when the time comes.” Wu Chen smiled and told him nothing.

Meng Junhao felt worse still.

“But, Mr. Wu—” He racked his brains and pressed once more. “Mr. Wu, if you don’t need me to tip you off beforehand, then if something really does happen to you, wouldn’t I—”

He had remembered it again: if anything happened to Wu Chen, he was dead.

He absolutely could not allow anything to happen to Wu Chen. Li Ruotai would kill him, because Li Ruotai would not have received his warning.

At that moment, of everyone in Donghai, the man who least wanted anything to happen to Wu Chen might well have been Meng Junhao.

“I’ll handle Ah-Tai’s side.” Wu Chen smiled. “You should be able to see this much: if I wanted you dead, all I had to do was not come. Am I wrong?”

Meng Junhao thought about it and nodded, his face still full of unease.

Wu Chen was not wrong. He had come here, laid it all bare, and then asked nothing of him. It seemed almost pointless. If he truly wanted him dead, he needed only to have stayed away.

The more Meng Junhao thought about it, the more baffled he became.

Which was exactly what Wu Chen wanted. If Meng Junhao could not work him out, and Meng Junhao feared death, then Meng Junhao would not dare step out of line.

For a while afterward, Wu Chen simply chatted with him.

Wu Chen considered it small talk. Meng Junhao did not. He kept probing sideways, trying to learn more, trying to find out what Wu Chen actually meant to do. He got nothing out of him.

Worse—he came away more frightened than before.

Frightened of Wu Chen from the bottom of his heart.

Because it felt as though Wu Chen knew everything.

Wu Chen could even lay out, precisely, how two years earlier Meng Junhao had followed Ding Ruilong’s instructions and secretly arranged for men to sabotage the new factory belonging to Li Ruobing’s Huancai Fashion. That time he had not only succeeded, he had walked away clean. Not the faintest trace had ever been found.

And yet Wu Chen knew. He even said how many men Meng Junhao had put on the job, and gave their names.

Wu Chen also mentioned, in passing, the money Meng Junhao had paid out to win event contracts.

He truly spoke in the tone of a man making conversation.

But the more they talked, the more terrified Meng Junhao became.

He realized that facing Wu Chen was the real dead end.

Any single one of the things Wu Chen knew about him was enough to put him in prison—or kill him outright.

And yet he could not lift a finger against Wu Chen. Because if the smallest accident befell Wu Chen, Meng Junhao would die too. Li Ruotai would not sit through his explanations a second time.

It gave him the feeling that whether he went on living depended entirely on Wu Chen’s mood.

Beyond obeying Wu Chen, he had no other choice.

Ring, ring…

Wu Chen’s phone rang.

As he drew it out he turned his head toward the window—and frowned slightly. He had assumed Lu Guangnian had arrived, but he could see none of Lu Guangnian’s cars on the street below.

He looked at the screen.

The caller was indeed not Lu Guangnian. It was—

Mu Qianqian!

“Hello? Qianqian.” Wu Chen answered with a smile. “Miss me—”

He stopped mid-sentence, his expression stiffening. He could hear her crying.

“Wuu… Wu Chen… I… ah…”

Mu Qianqian was not merely crying. She was weeping wretchedly, so hard she could barely draw breath.

“What happened? Who’s upset you?” Wu Chen asked.

The smile had gone from his face.