Chapter 439: Tang Jingbin’s Alarm

Chapter 439: Tang Jingbin’s Alarm

Shengjing Grand Restaurant, third floor.

The private room called “A Taste of the Human World.”

The corridor outside was done in an antique Chinese style, yet luxury showed in every detail. At every junction and corner, a male and a female server stood facing each other, ready to take orders or attend to guests in the private rooms.

Bodyguards were scattered along the corridor as well.

Downstairs, Wu Chen had simply told the front desk the reservation was under the name Wu. After a quick identity check, a hostess led him and Zhuang Xiaodie upstairs.

They had barely reached the third floor when Wu Chen spotted Tang Xinbao and Guo Qiqi down the corridor.

“Master! Over here, over here!” Tang Xinbao waved excitedly.

Wu Chen smiled and raised a hand in reply.

He walked over.

They met up.

Tang Xinbao and Guo Qiqi had been on their way downstairs to greet him.

Tang Jingbin had said Wu Chen should be arriving soon and sent the two of them down to meet him.

They hadn’t expected to run into him coming up after only a few steps from the room.

“Master, my Second Uncle’s waiting for you…”

After a few casual words, the four of them went into the private room together.

The room was enormous. Its huge round table could seat more than twenty, and the décor was, naturally, lavish.

Tang Jingbin, in a long traditional gown, stood by the window on the phone. At the sound of the door, he glanced back, smiled and nodded to Wu Chen, then pointed at his phone.

Wu Chen nodded back and said nothing.

“Get me a proposal for the Baihui project as soon as you can. Mm…” Tang Jingbin turned back to his call.

Tang Xinbao invited Wu Chen to sit and suggested they order first, instinctively lowering his voice so as not to disturb his uncle.

Tang Jingbin wrapped up the call soon after.

“Hahahaha! Little Wu, you’re looking well today…” He laughed heartily as he came back to the table.

Wu Chen even rose to shake his hand.

Pleasantries!

Small talk!

Nothing but small talk!

But this kind of empty chatter had always been necessary.

Even the closest friends, even family, never talked only business.

And Wu Chen and Tang Jingbin weren’t especially close to begin with.

In Tang Jingbin’s eyes, Wu Chen was a key figure in everything to do with the Li family and the Liu family.

He was also a singular presence with tremendous weight in the Li family. Tang Jingbin had already confirmed much of what Wu Chen had told him before.

Tang Jingbin took him very seriously.

Which, if anything, made him more courteous!

Not less.

He had already begun treating Wu Chen as an equal.

Tang Jingbin was the third most powerful figure in the Tang family, after the Old Master and his elder brother.

He was in a different league entirely from a junior like Tang Xinbao.

As for Wu Chen…

In terms of public standing, the gap between them was as wide as heaven and earth.

But Li Maoren’s attitude toward Wu Chen had convinced Tang Jingbin that, even setting aside whatever Wu Chen himself could do, the power he could mobilize through the Li family alone was no less than Tang Jingbin’s own!

Pleasantries.

Ordering and chatting.

For the first half hour and more after Wu Chen arrived, right up until the wine was opened and the dishes came out, neither of them said anything of substance.

They talked about this and that.

They even talked about Tang Xinbao becoming Wu Chen’s disciple.

Tang Jingbin was quite supportive. In front of Wu Chen, he told his nephew to learn properly from him. Not just his fighting skills, but how to conduct himself and handle affairs.

Then he gave Tang Xinbao a mild scolding and told him to cut back on the street racing.

It wasn’t safe.

Before long it was around 8:10 p.m.

“Little Wu, you and that Qi Min… is there some bad blood between you?” Tang Jingbin finally asked, setting down his glass.

At noon, Wu Chen hadn’t said a word on the phone about what he meant to do to the Qi family.

He had only said he wanted to give Tang Jingbin a major gift.

That he was handing Shuangqi Real Estate to him.

That afternoon, Tang Jingbin had even had people check whether Qi Min had any connection to Wu Chen.

They’d found nothing.

The “bad blood” was Tang Jingbin’s own inference.

“I’ve never met Qi Min.” Wu Chen looked at him with a smile. “But at noon today, I met his son. And his younger brother, Qi—”

“At noon?” Tang Jingbin paused.

He had called Wu Chen at noon.

That was when Wu Chen had said, point-blank, that he was giving him a major gift.

And now Wu Chen was saying he’d met Qi Min’s son and younger brother at noon.

Qi Chenghong and Qi Jun?

That afternoon, while his people were digging, Tang Jingbin had received word that Qi Min’s son Qi Chenghong had been hospitalized.

Supposedly he’d gone to a restaurant for lunch, slipped, hit his head, and been badly hurt.

That was obviously no coincidence!

“I heard his son Qi Chenghong ended up in the hospital at noon…” Tang Jingbin said carefully, watching Wu Chen and speaking slowly. “Did that have anything to do with you, Little Wu? Did you…”

“He tried to hit Xiaodie. I kicked him,” Wu Chen said plainly, smiling.

“Huh?” Tang Jingbin genuinely froze and turned to look at Zhuang Xiaodie.

Truth be told, he had never given her much thought!

He was perfectly polite to her on the surface, of course.

He’d even told Tang Xinbao and Guo Qiqi it would be good to get on well with her.

But when all was said and done, she was just Wu Chen’s young lover.

Forget Zhuang Xiaodie.

Even Li Ruobing only warranted slightly more of his attention.

They were all juniors!

“W-what happened?” Tang Jingbin asked, his gaze moving between them.

“Qi Chenghong’s an idle playboy. He and Xiaodie were classmates, so they’ve known each other for years. They just happened to run into each other at the restaurant…” Wu Chen briefly explained.

There really wasn’t much to say about how it started.

It was very simple.

A brainless, filthy-rich second-generation heir bullied a pretty former classmate he’d once failed to win.

After she threw wine on him, he even tried to hit her.

“After that… Xiaodie and I finished lunch and left. Qi Jun sent people to tail us. I led them out to the outskirts and dealt with them. Three men.”

Everyone listened as Wu Chen finished his brief account.

“Qi Chenghong’s still the same piece of trash he always was. Too bad the fall didn’t kill him,” Tang Xinbao said first, furious.

He and Qi Chenghong had gone to the same high school, though they’d been in different years and weren’t close.

Naturally, Qi Chenghong had never dared cross Tang Xinbao.

But Tang Xinbao had heard plenty about him.

“Back in high school, several girls had abortions because of him. And that girl in Class Three, what was her name… the one who jumped off a building and killed herself… Brother Bao, you remember, right?” Guo Qiqi chimed in, turning to Tang Xinbao.

Tang Jingbin glanced at his nephew and the girl who would soon be his niece-in-law, then looked back at Wu Chen, his gaze sweeping over Zhuang Xiaodie.

He was very close to being unable to make sense of it.

This genuinely wasn’t a big deal.

In his view, Wu Chen should have had countless ways to handle it.

Yet Wu Chen had gone to the extreme and gotten three of the other side’s men killed outright.

“Little Wu, so what exactly are you planning to…” Tang Jingbin began again.

Wu Chen picked up the envelope he’d brought, set it on the table’s lazy Susan, and gave it a spin.

It came to a stop in front of Tang Jingbin.

“Have a look, Mr. Tang,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

Tang Jingbin glanced at him, picked up the envelope, opened it, and drew out a thick stack of pages.

More than thirty in all.

Each page listed times, places, people, connected parties, witnesses, phone numbers, and so on.

That was the general format.

Very concise.

Page one.

March 6, 2014. Acting on Qi Min’s instructions, bodyguard Liu Haisheng was ordered to deal with Sun Dashi, a reporter for Modu Real Estate Daily.

At 1:30 a.m. on March 7, Liu Haisheng murdered Sun Dashi and staged the killing as a hit-and-run.

Person with knowledge of the crime: Liu Haisheng’s mistress, Bai Xiaohui. Phone number…

Afterward, Qi Min paid Liu Haisheng a RMB500,000 bonus, transferred directly into Bai Xiaohui’s account. Account number…

Page two.

September 15, 2012. After discovering that his mistress Chu Jie was cheating on him, Qi Jun murdered her. Together with his driver, Yang Feng, he transported the body to Fengbei District, Modu…

Burial site.

Persons with knowledge of the crime.

Phone numbers.

Accounts.

Tang Jingbin turned the pages one after another.

There wasn’t much on each, so he could read quickly.

But every page, every sentence even, was absolutely crucial!

His expression kept shifting.

The further he read, the more alarmed he grew.

Those thirty-odd pages didn’t just cover the crimes Qi Min, Qi Jun, and Qi Chenghong had committed out of personal grudges and selfish appetites.

There were also a great many financial and business crimes, along with matters the Xiang family had once tasked Qi Min with handling.

The further he went, the wider the implications spread!

Compared with the contract killing on page one, what came later was what was truly terrifying!

Because it could drag in major figures in Modu, people wielding real power at every level, and even two core members of the Xiang family’s second generation.

Strictly speaking, these criminal files were incomplete.

Far too many details were missing.

But because they contained the key information, anyone who got hold of them and started investigating could go straight to the witnesses and the evidence, then use those leads to squeeze out the full story!

By the time he’d read twenty-some pages, Tang Jingbin could no longer keep the shock off his face.

He knew perfectly well that if this material came to light and was used by the right people, it would be enough to turn Modu upside down!

On the surface, it was only dirt on the Qi brothers.

But it implicated powerful people, and each of those people had their own networks, their own influence, even their own factions behind them.

Pull one hair, and the whole body moves!

“Little Wu, what exactly are you trying to do?” Tang Jingbin asked before he’d even finished, looking up at Wu Chen with wide eyes.

Even a man of his standing felt real alarm at what was in those pages!