Chapter 147: They Can Be Replaced, Can’t They?

Chapter 147: They Can Be Replaced, Can’t They?

Li Maoren’s reaction was violent.

In truth he still did not believe Wu Chen. Wu Chen had told him a story, and whether the story was true remained to be verified. But with something of this magnitude, for the moment he had no choice but to treat it as though it might be.

And Wu Chen had made his intention perfectly plain. He said He Shiqin was a witness. He said she hated Ding Ruilong. He said he had contacted her.

Obviously, he was going after Ding Ruilong.

From where Li Maoren stood, he absolutely could not permit it.

The Li and Ding families had formed their alliance years ago and were already working together across many fields.

Li Ruobing’s refusal four years earlier had not meant the two families shelved all cooperation until she finally married Ding Ruilong. Wait years? Of course not.

The marriage of Li Ruobing to Ding Ruilong was one of the most important components of the alliance, one of the guarantees of long-term cooperation. It was not the whole of it.

Put plainly, it was a stronger bond of shared interests.

Seen in that light, the feelings between husband and wife scarcely entered the calculation.

Arranged marriages between great families were seldom happy. If the couple could remain harmonious and treat one another with respect, that was already considered a fine result. Li Maoren’s own marriage had been arranged—the bond joining the Li and Sun families.

He and his wife got on reasonably well, though he kept mistresses quietly.

And that counted among the better outcomes.

Plenty of great-family children married for an alliance, produced a child, and then went their separate ways. They could do as they liked, with whomever they liked. In public they still played the devoted pair, the very model of a marriage.

In private neither interfered with the other. Both took lovers and lived exactly as wildly as they pleased.

It was no great matter.

The quality of an alliance marriage had never determined how firmly two families were bound.

What determined that was the legal framework of jointly held marital property, and the fact that any children would carry the blood of both houses.

Which was why the Li family was set on forcing Li Ruobing to marry Ding Ruilong. They knew perfectly well how she resisted it. They knew that even if she did marry him, the two of them would never get along.

That was not the issue.

Feelings did not matter.

What mattered was that once Li Ruobing and Ding Ruilong were legally married, the two great families would transfer part of their family assets into the couple’s names, then throw their weight behind those assets together and build them up. The assets would belong to husband and wife—and to both families at once.

That was the firmest bond of shared interests there was.

And there were the children.

Once a child existed carrying the blood of both houses, and that child grew up to become one of the family’s decision-makers, the child would personally embody the two families’ common interest. Which meant, from the other direction, the child was a guarantee that the two families would not lightly break with each other.

Li Ruotai was the perfect illustration.

His paternal grandfather was the Li family’s Old Master. His maternal grandfather was the Sun family’s Old Master.

And not only him.

The same was true of Li Ruobing.

Which was why the Sun family had brought its weight to bear on the forced marriage, pressing Li Ruobing’s mother until the woman who had always shielded her daughter turned around and began pressing her too.

Because once Li Ruobing married into the Ding family and bore a child, the implications for the Ding, Li, and Sun families would be enormous. Interests and bloodlines alike, all threaded together.

“Why so agitated?” Wu Chen asked calmly, looking up at Li Maoren standing over him. He smiled. “You should understand by now what I intend to do.”

“You dare move against Ding Ruilong?” Li Maoren demanded, his face dark.

He did not think Wu Chen had the means to strike at Ding Ruilong directly. But if what Wu Chen had just described came to light, it could set several great families at war.

The Li and Ding families were already allied. If catastrophe took the Dings, the Lis could not stand clear of it. Other families might well come down into the field afterward to profit from the confusion.

“There’s no wall in the world the wind can’t get through. And with Ding Ruilong’s temperament, if someone angers him and bluffs him in private, he might even—admit it himself.”

Wu Chen remained perfectly composed, still smiling. “Even if I do nothing at all, this is a time bomb. It may go off on its own one day. Can you move against He Shiqin, Uncle? Would you dare tell the Ding family that you know?”

Li Maoren felt himself boxed in at once.

Because it was true. It was not a question of daring. He simply could not.

Ding Ruilong’s temperament truly was profoundly unsound. If Li Maoren moved on He Shiqin without warning, there was no telling how Ding Ruilong would read it. And if Li Maoren did give warning—if he told the Ding family, told Ding Ruilong, that he knew Ding Ruilong had killed Dong Yuantao all those years ago and therefore wanted certain considerations…

That would amount to the Li family holding an enormous piece of leverage over the Dings—leverage capable of threatening the whole house. How could the two sides ever divide interests normally again?

The relationship would become unequal. Both the cooperation and the marriage alliance would develop problems.

And the crux of all of it was a single fact—

The Dong family was rising, and rising hard.

Set beside houses like the Dings, the Lis, the Suns, the Weis, the Xies, the Dong family had less accumulated foundation.

Dong Yuantao’s grandfather had been a few years older than Old Master Ding, but the highest post he reached had been one rank below him. So even by the time Dong Yuantao’s grandfather died, the Dongs had not yet reached the level of the Ding, Li, Sun, and Wei families.

The man who had truly led the Dong family up was Dong Yuantao’s father, the family’s present number-one figure—Dong Yaoguang.

Dong Yaoguang was fifty-eight this year, with two sons and a daughter. Dong Yuantao had been the third child, the youngest son.

Fifty-eight was not young, but measured against the post Dong Yaoguang now held, he was hardly old. His rank already stood above Li Maoren’s, and he had come up by an entirely orthodox path of political advancement.

Judging by his present momentum, he stood every chance of taking another step in future…

Even at the very top his ranking would still be low in the order, and he would not have the strength to break the Ding family overnight. But that assumed Old Master Ding was still alive.

Old Master Ding was eighty already. How many years did he have? Once he died, a great many of his connections would scatter at once, and then—

This truly was a time bomb.

An immensely powerful one.

Once it went off, unless the Ding family cut Ding Ruilong loose, the whole house was in danger. And even if they did cut him loose, the bond of the Li–Ding alliance, the man the Li family was forcing Li Ruobing to marry, was Ding Ruilong himself.

The longer Li Maoren thought, the graver it grew.

If everything Wu Chen said were true, then did the Li family really need to wade into this mire for the sake of a marriage alliance with the Dings?

This was the fatal dirt Wu Chen held on Ding Ruilong.

And it was not the only dirt he held.

Ding Ruilong had no shortage of problems. Wu Chen simply had no wish to drag things out, no wish to spend long on him, so he had chosen the most direct and the most lethal.

“You can choose to warn the Ding family, Uncle. That’s fine.”

Seeing the color come and go in Li Maoren’s face, Wu Chen smiled again. “But I don’t think it’s a good choice. The Sun family is the Li family’s greatest ally. The Dings—you’ve only been working with them these last few years, and because Ruobing still hasn’t married him, you’ve been cautious about that cooperation. They can be replaced, can’t they?”

Li Maoren stared at him darkly and did not answer lightly.

He had already begun wondering who had sent Wu Chen expressly to break the Li–Ding marriage alliance apart.

“I rather think the Dong family would be a good choice,” Wu Chen went on, smiling. “Dong Yuantao’s cousin—Dong Yaoyang’s younger daughter, Dong Yaqiu—graduated from university a year ago. I think she’d suit Atai quite well.”

Li Maoren found the remark almost laughable. Wu Chen spoke as though everything could simply be arranged. Great-family marriages were never that simple. Even granting that all else fell into place, the Li and Dong families were not close. They lacked even the most elementary foundation of mutual trust. And they were to be joined by marriage?

“I hear Dong Yaoguang has a rival surnamed Qu. They compete with each other; each is a stone in the other’s path to promotion,” Wu Chen said lightly. “Would you like me to make you a gift of some dirt on Qu, so you can help Dong Yaoguang break his rival outright? I imagine he’d be grateful to the Li family. What do you think, Uncle?”

Li Maoren’s expression changed drastically.