Chapter 183: Offensive! Extremely Offensive!

Chapter 183: Offensive! Extremely Offensive!

Wu Yurong was an extremely difficult woman to anger directly.

Of course, if someone cursed her to her face in the foulest terms, she would certainly grow angry.

But who would dare curse her to her face?

The man who had done so years ago was named Song Xiang.

The result was that Wu Yurong tore the Song family apart until nothing was left of it, and Song Xiang himself was driven to suicide.

Ordinarily, whatever happened, Wu Yurong could stay perfectly calm. Even with her greatest business rival standing before her issuing vicious threats, she could still smile and say, We’ll see.

It truly had been far too long since she had been in a state like this, unable to hold her temper down.

All because Wu Chen had carried her in his arms.

Who would dare?

Only Wu Chen.

“What did I do on purpose?” Wu Chen asked, smiling, playing the innocent.

“Picking me up!” Wu Yurong narrowed her eyes and held his gaze. “Mr. Wu, do you think there was any need to suddenly carry me like that? As a man, you should know that was hardly gentlemanly. It was extremely rude. Are you going to deny you did it deliberately?”

This was another side of Wu Yurong. She might always meet people with a smile, but she would never let herself be wronged.

If someone truly went at her to her face, she was perfectly capable of calling in her bodyguards.

“I did do it deliberately.” Wu Chen smiled and frowned faintly, as though he could not understand why she was angry. “But wasn’t that what you wanted?”

“What I wanted?”

Wu Yurong nearly choked on the breath.

This shameless face of his was something to behold.

Was he playing at being drunk?

“You didn’t?” Wu Chen countered, still smiling. “If you didn’t want it, why were you pretending to be drunk? You are drunk, certainly, but not to that degree, are you? Pretending you couldn’t stand? Wanting me to hold you up? Then kicking off your heels of your own accord? I won’t deny it. I picked you up deliberately. If you want to say I deliberately took advantage of you, or anything else, fine. I admit it. But let me ask you something, President Wu. Can you answer me? Were you doing it deliberately just now?”

Her expression shifted again and again as he spoke.

For a moment she genuinely could not answer.

Because he was right.

That last stumble had been deliberate.

He had already supported her once. She did not mind letting him do it again.

There were advantages to it.

Wu Yurong knew perfectly well that lying and denying it was pointless.

Wu Chen had seen through her.

“If you hadn’t deliberately made yourself look fragile, as though you couldn’t stand, I don’t think I would have picked you up either,” Wu Chen said, smiling again.

That was the truth.

It really was.

Wu Yurong had handed him the opportunity to be bold.

She truly had nothing to say.

She looked at him in silence for several seconds—then suddenly bloomed into that soft, lovely smile again, her voice turning sweet.

“Never mind, Mr. Wu… It seems there’s been a little misunderstanding between us. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s simply pretend nothing happened. It isn’t important, is it? We should get back to the Ding family…”

She turned the page herself.

But her words could not be trusted.

Never mind?

How could she possibly let it pass?

If the conversation ended here today and the two of them parted on these terms, Wu Yurong would certainly retaliate later.

In a matter like this it was useless to expect reason from her.

If she was unhappy, reason did not enter into it.

For a woman known as the Black Widow, Wu Yurong’s appetite for revenge ran far beyond what most people could imagine.

Wu Chen had already crossed her boundary.

But looked at from another angle, that boundary had now been punctured.

From this point on, only two relationships were possible between them.

One was enemies.

Even if the surface stayed perfect, Wu Yurong would still count Wu Chen an enemy.

The other was—

Lovers.

Establishing the latter was dozens of times harder than the former. A hundred times harder.

But since Wu Chen had dared to hold her, naturally he was confident.

“President Wu, in fact I think…” Wu Chen said, working the cork, calm and composed and smiling. “You don’t need to use those methods of yours with men on me. I admit you’re a very beautiful woman, the kind who can intoxicate men. One smile from you can practically steal a man’s soul. But… I know you very well. I know you better than you know yourself. So I think we only need to talk plainly. After all, I didn’t come here to make an enemy of you.”

Wu Yurong had already collected herself and buried every thought deep.

She listened, and looked at him with an expression of profound surprise and confusion, her smile turning strange for an instant.

“Mr. Wu, forgive me for putting it unpleasantly, but I think you may be a little too confident. You’re a man Li Ruobing chose, so I believe you must have exceptional qualities. But you dare say… you know me very well? Better than I know myself?”

“Mm-hm.” Wu Chen nodded.

“Let’s hear it, then.” Her smile deepened. “What exactly do you know about me?”

“Song Xiang didn’t really commit suicide, did he?” Wu Chen smiled. “He jumped from the building of his own will, yes. But if you hadn’t deliberately sent several creditors chasing him up to the roof, he might never have jumped at all. You knew his character very well. Cornered like that, he couldn’t withstand that kind of provocation.”

Her expression changed slightly.

“You’re forty-two this year. You may look like a woman in her twenties, and over the years you’ve been very close with a great many men, tycoons worth tens of billions among them. But as far as I know, you’re still a virgin, aren’t you?” Wu Chen said, smiling.

The Chinese phrase he used for a virgin maiden was particularly interesting applied to a woman with a biological daughter.

Her expression changed again.

What he had just said was deeply offensive.

“That ‘toy’ in the bottom drawer of the nightstand on the right side of the bed in your South District villa… fun, is it?” Wu Chen asked, smiling again.

Wu Yurong shot to her feet.

Even the rhythm of her breathing changed.

What he had said went far past offensive.

It sounded like something out of the mouth of a perverted peeper.

And he had said it so plainly.

“You’re a woman. It’s understandable. Especially a woman your age, President Wu. You have more energy in that respect than some girl in her twenties. Hormones decide that. There’s nothing shameful in it.”

As he spoke, he finished opening the bottle.

He stood, walked to the other end of the coffee table, and stopped in front of her to pour wine into her glass.

Still smiling broadly, he went on, “Haven’t you thought before that if you could live your life over again, you certainly wouldn’t wear yourself out like this? That you’d find a young, strong man for a husband…”

Everything about Wu Yurong was wrong now.

Because she really had thought that.

But she had never told anyone.

Whatever she had told Wu Chen during his thousand-year loop, naturally she did not remember.

Having poured, Wu Chen walked back and continued, “Just like that song you wrote: ‘The dust after reckless revelry is more dazzling than love withered into decay; the darkness after a meteor’s blaze is more intoxicating than the night after the sunset fades.’ Beautifully written. I like it very much…”

Wu Yurong was dumbfounded.

She had all but forgotten those lyrics herself.

Twelve years ago, on the night of her thirtieth birthday, slightly drunk, she had improvised a song and uploaded an a cappella recording online.

The song was called “Dust After the Revelry.”

Not one other person in the world knew she had ever posted it.

Wu Yurong had studied music at university. She had proper formal training; she could write and she could sing. But fate had taken her down another road, and after that her attachment to music slowly faded. She listened to a great deal, but she rarely sang anymore, and wrote less still.

By now she could not even remember the account she had used to upload “Dust After the Revelry.”

She had simply registered something at random and posted it on impulse.

There had been no other intention in it.

Turning thirty had felt worth marking, that was all.

An impromptu a cappella song that had raised no ripple whatsoever.

Wu Yurong was not even sure it could still be found online.

How could Wu Chen possibly know?

Wu Chen poured himself more wine and sat down.

He picked up his glass, swirled it gently, and smiled at her.

Wu Yurong stared straight at him.

Then she snatched up her own glass, tipped her head back, and drained it in one swallow.

She set the stem down hard on the coffee table and asked him a question a great many people had asked before.

“Who are you?!”