Chapter 170: Can Wu Chen Know the Future?

Chapter 170: Can Wu Chen Know the Future?

“Ruobing… cough, cough!” Ding Ruilong’s voice came through, cold and tightly held down. He coughed twice, and when he spoke again his tone had softened considerably. “Ruobing, I think I owe you an explanation. I heard what happened today. I didn’t arrange it. Jiang Chuan acted on his own. He misread what I meant…”

As Li Ruobing listened, a cold sneer spread slowly across her face.

Ding Ruilong was always like this.

Whether today’s attempt had succeeded or failed, he would never admit he had given the order himself. He would always claim one of his men had misunderstood him, or had arranged it on his own to curry favor.

After each of Li Ruobing’s three previous fake boyfriends, Ding Ruilong had said exactly the same thing.

It was a lie nobody would believe.

Nobody believed it, and Ding Ruilong said it every single time.

Li Ruobing could follow the reasoning behind it.

For one thing, he was simply that shameless. He pushed the responsibility away from himself. If the matter blew up later, it would not touch him; someone close to him would be offered up to settle it.

And there was the other reason.

Ding Ruilong’s emotions were insane. His thinking was meticulous.

He would never give anyone the chance to record him and hold evidence over him. So when he spoke to Li Ruobing—or to anyone who was neither family nor absolutely loyal—he would never admit to a single dirty deed.

By Ding Ruilong’s account, nothing bad had ever been done on his orders.

“Really? Not your arrangement?” Li Ruobing said. “That’s what I thought. How could a few pieces of trash like that be men sent by Young Master Ding? They don’t remotely befit Young Master Ding’s exalted and all-powerful station. Sending men into Donghai to die? I’m sure Young Master Ding would never make an arrangement that stupid, that brain-dead.”

Every other phrase was Young Master Ding, and every word of it dripped with contempt.

Ding Ruilong’s breathing grew much heavier at once.

He could tell something was different about her today.

Before, she had simply cursed him to his face. This time she was not cursing him. She had switched to ridicule.

Very wrong indeed.

When she finished, Li Ruobing gave Wu Chen a look.

He broke into a grin.

Li Ruobing and that vindictive streak of hers.

She was particularly interesting today.

“Who is it? Ding Ruilong?” Wu Chen asked out loud, playing along.

“Yes, honey. That fucking idiot.” Li Ruobing moved the phone farther away.

She set it facedown on the desk, but the speaker was still on. The microphone would pick up every word with perfect clarity.

“Don’t swear. Have some class,” Wu Chen said.

“What class? He sent killers to murder you and you’re telling me to have class?”

“Those pieces of trash? Killers? I was the one who gave him the opportunity. Otherwise, do you really think he’d have had one?”

“That’s true, but—”

“Talking back!”

Smack!

Wu Chen scolded her and slapped her on the thigh.

“Ow! Honey, that hurt. Look—it’s all red.” Her voice went soft at once, with a coaxing lilt in it.

“Know what you did wrong?” Wu Chen asked.

“I know, I know. Honey, I was wrong. I won’t swear. Don’t be angry, honey. Mwah~”

And she kissed him on the cheek.

“Good girl.” Wu Chen smiled and stroked her hair.

“Mmm~~” She made a disgruntled little sound through her nose, then muttered, “You’ve messed up my hair.”

After that she picked the phone up off the desk again. Her voice returned instantly to ice, edged now with mockery.

“Young Master Ding, still on the line? What’s the matter, an asthma attack? You’re breathing awfully hard. If you’re ill, hurry and get treated. It would be a shame to delay and drop dead all of a sudden.”

Ding Ruilong really was breathing very hard.

He had heard all of it.

He could even picture her—the woman he thought about day and night, the most beautiful and singular woman he knew—being obedient in front of another man.

She could pout and coax.

She had been slapped and had not even gotten angry. She had apologized and asked to be forgiven.

Was this still the cold, domineering, forceful Li Ruobing?

His breathing truly did sound like an asthma attack.

Li Ruobing, who had never regarded him as anything but human garbage, could be that soft and sweet with another man…

Ding Ruilong felt as though his skull were about to split.

“Not talking? Then I’m hanging up,” Li Ruobing said.

“Wu Chen is there with you?” Ding Ruilong asked at once.

His breathing suddenly went almost inaudible again.

He was controlling it.

“Mm.” A cold hum.

“Can you put him on?” Ding Ruilong asked.

He plainly had no idea she had the speaker on.

“Is there any need?” She sneered. “You think human garbage like you is fit to speak to my husband?”

She gave Wu Chen another look and shifted in his lap.

He understood.

“Get up. Stand while you talk. My leg’s going numb,” Wu Chen said, patting her arm.

“Tired of me already? You never complained before when I sat on your lap.” She moved the phone away and gave him a sidelong glance.

Ding Ruilong heard it.

Now he knew.

She had been sitting in Wu Chen’s lap for the entire call.

No wonder their voices had sounded so close together.

Crack!

A short, sharp burst came through the speaker.

Then silence.

Li Ruobing brought the phone back quickly and looked at the screen, and a smile of profound satisfaction spread over her face.

The call had dropped. The signal had simply vanished.

Ding Ruilong had lost control.

He had exploded with rage and smashed his phone.

“Do you think there’s any chance we could just make him die of anger?” She turned to Wu Chen, beaming.

A woman’s thirst for revenge.

“Wouldn’t dying of anger be letting him off easy?” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“True…” She actually agreed with that.

She looked into his eyes, and something flickered in her gaze. “What you said just now—that you gave him the opportunity, that otherwise he wouldn’t have had one. Was that true?”

She had remembered.

“Do you want it to be true?” Wu Chen asked instead.

“Mm…” She nodded.

Of course she wanted it to be true.

Because if it was, then the so-called sudden accident had never been an accident to Wu Chen at all.

And if there were no accidents, a man like Wu Chen could never truly come to harm.

“Then it’s true.” Wu Chen smiled.

She smiled too. She put down her phone and looped both arms around his neck.

A kiss.

It was a long while before they parted.

“Get up. My leg really is about to go numb,” Wu Chen said, half joking.

She stood, but turned back to ask, “Which feels better? Holding me, or holding Su Qingying?”

She was relaxed enough now to ask a question that womanly.

“The same,” Wu Chen answered without hesitation. “You weigh about the same.”

“What a perfunctory answer.” She smiled and curled one corner of her mouth, but she did not keep pressing him.

“All right. Time to go downstairs.” Wu Chen stood, and the two started out.

Then he said, “Oh—right. I’ll be meeting Wu Yurong this afternoon. She’ll call you. Play along. That’s no problem, is it?”

Li Ruobing stopped dead and turned to him with a frown.

“Meeting Wu Yurong?”

“Mm-hm.” He nodded.

“Aren’t you meeting Song Xuan?”

“I am.” He smiled.

“Then how are you meeting Wu Yurong? Have you already arranged it with her?”

“No.” Wu Chen smiled. “But she will certainly come looking for me this afternoon. She’ll be the one asking to meet.”

Li Ruobing frowned. She did not follow.

She had spoken with Song Xuan. Everything had been cleared up afterward, and she now understood how Wu Chen had set the girl up.

But that was only the beginning of it.

How had this suddenly reached all the way to Wu Yurong?

Could Wu Chen know things that had not happened yet?

“Don’t bother. You won’t work it out.” Wu Chen smiled again.

She looked at him.

She truly could not.

But another question occurred to her.

“Wu Chen, answer one question honestly.”

“What?”

“Do you think Wu Yurong is prettier than me?”

“Do you mean as she is now, or when she was young?” Wu Chen’s smile turned slightly odd.

Li Ruobing’s expression paused, then she said, “There’s not much difference, is there? She hardly ages. She’s only more mature now. I mean… back then. When she was at her most beautiful.”

“You mean when she was still Donghai’s number-one beauty?”

“Yes!”

“Back then… she was a ten.”