Chapter 194: Why Are There So Many Unexpected Situations?

Chapter 194: Why Are There So Many Unexpected Situations?

Wu Chen was mildly surprised.

One thing he was absolutely sure of: however that conversation had gone, Wu Yurong and Li Ruobing would never descend into shouting. At worst their words would come barbed, loaded with things left unsaid. Coming to blows was flatly impossible.

Both were respectable women. Both cared about face.

More to the point, Wu Chen had already put Li Ruobing’s mind at ease before he left. Whatever happened, she should have been the steadier of the two.

So why did she sound as though Wu Yurong had frightened her?

That should not have happened.

With a personality as forceful as hers, even if someone genuinely made her angry, Li Ruobing would never come running to him to tattle. Besides, a woman like Wu Yurong should never have let the relationship sour in the first place.

Both held special positions. Each had reason to be careful of the other, and both would naturally hold themselves in check.

“What happened?” Wu Chen thought for a moment as he drove, then asked with a smile.

“She—” Still furious, Li Ruobing told him.

She could have kept a thing like this to herself, but she felt he needed to know. The two of them had established that this was a real relationship.

When Wu Chen heard that Li Ruobing had demanded Wu Yurong kneel and apologize, his eyebrows rose.

Not out of surprise.

He simply found it interesting.

Strictly speaking, it did not entirely match Li Ruobing’s character. However domineering she was, it depended on whom she was dealing with; her manner naturally shifted from person to person. The reason she had demanded the kneeling was that what she really wanted was an unmistakable, unambiguous statement of position.

She wanted Wu Yurong to bow her head outright, to understand that she was the secondary woman.

It would save trouble later.

She had probably not intended to humiliate her. As for the kneeling — Wu Chen suddenly recalled how Li Ruobing had once lost a bet to him and knelt to apologize.

With that precedent in place, it could not quite be called a knot in her heart, but the incident had certainly planted the idea and shaped her thinking. Which was why she had turned it on Wu Yurong.

Soon Li Ruobing reached the crucial part.

Listening, Wu Chen laughed. He understood her mood at once.

Wu Yurong had struck the mark by accident.

Li Ruobing really was a little frightened — not only because she had nearly “gone down the wrong path” back in her student days, but because Su Qingying had given her a scare a few days earlier.

“Wu Chen, I’m seriously begging you. From now on, when you find women, make sure they’re normal!” Li Ruobing said at last. Having got it out, much of her anger had gone with it. “Su Qingying is already a bit off, and now this one today. I don’t even know whether they were like that to begin with or turned that way after meeting you.”

“Don’t pin that on me.” There was laughter in Wu Chen’s voice. He paused, then added, “The same rice feeds a hundred kinds of people. Everyone’s different. Don’t tell me you can’t grasp that much.”

“Hmph.” Li Ruobing gave a cold snort, then her tone eased. “Fine. It’s done. Let’s leave it there.”

She had only wanted to vent to him. She had no intention of making things difficult for anyone further.

There was nothing to be done about Wu Chen’s choices, and Wu Yurong had apologized.

As long as she kept hold of Wu Chen, the rest was small. Ever since he had said “I love you,” a great many other things had stopped weighing on her.

“You’re driving?” she asked.

“Yeah. Almost home.”

“Drive slower. Get home and rest early.”

“Worried about me?” Wu Chen laughed, teasing.

“What else would I be?” she shot back, admitting it outright. Things had come this far. She saw nothing wrong with caring about her own man.

“All right then, my dear Miss Li.” Wu Chen laughed.

They spoke a little longer and hung up.

Driving on, Wu Chen turned it over again and found himself smiling without meaning to. He had to admit there was real substance in the way Wu Yurong had handled it. Nor had it been pure luck. She was, in the end, a formidable woman. Even against Li Ruobing she would not come off the worse.

But only this once.

If Wu Yurong was smart, Wu Chen thought, she would not go looking to provoke Li Ruobing again.

Her greatest disadvantage against Li Ruobing was not her age.

It was that she thought too much.

Li Ruobing, on the other hand, could hold her hard line all the way to the end, past the point of caring about consequences at all.

Ten minutes later.

Wu Chen drove into Zunrong Donghai Huafu.

He parked in the underground garage.

Then went up.

He genuinely meant to sleep. Soon after getting in he lay down and set an alarm, and before long he was under.

Time passed.

Only a little more than two hours of it.

Just past noon.

Ring, ring…

The phone jolted him awake.

Wu Chen opened his eyes, reached for it on the cabinet, glanced at the screen, and put it to his ear.

“What is it?”

Li Ruotai.

“Brother-in-law, do you know a Meng Junhao?”

“Mr. Wu! Mr. Wu, it’s me! Mr. Wu, save me! You were the one who told me to keep quiet! It was you— Save me—” Another man’s frantic shouting came through behind him.

Meng Junhao. The “double agent.”

Li Ruotai had clearly caught him.

The day before, Wu Chen had walked into enormous danger — first the vehicle, then the men. He had phoned Li Ruotai ahead of time to handle the vehicle and dealt with the attackers himself. Wu Chen had never felt under pressure; it had all been within his grasp.

Li Ruotai did not see it that way.

Meng Junhao had failed to pass word along.

For that alone, he deserved to die.

“Don’t touch him. We’ll talk this afternoon. I’m sleeping.” Wu Chen offered nothing further.

But Li Ruotai caught the meaning. There was a good chance Meng Junhao was telling the truth. His brother-in-law really had reached the man first.

“Understood, Brother-in-law. Rest well,” Li Ruotai said.

His respect for Wu Chen had grown enormous by now, and no longer only on account of his sister, or the abilities he had already watched Wu Chen display.

Wu Chen was the man who had held a private talk with his father and successfully brought him around.

After hanging up, Wu Chen rolled over and went back to sleep.

Time slid by in silence.

Before he knew it, two in the afternoon.

His alarm was set for two thirty.

Ring, ring…

The phone again.

Wu Chen surfaced instantly, brows drawing together slightly. He picked it up, glanced at it, and answered.

“What now?”

Li Ruotai again.

He should not have been disturbing Wu Chen. He knew Wu Chen was resting. The first call had at least been understandable. This one was harder to account for.

Where were all these emergencies coming from?

“Bro— Brother-in-law! It’s bad, Brother-in-law!” Something was off in his voice from the first syllable, as though a genuine catastrophe had occurred.

Yet even a catastrophe should not have sounded like that. The emotion in it was strange, almost as if some instinct in him were bracing for something.

“Hm? What’s bad?” Wu Chen asked.