Chapter 543: What? You Don’t Approve of Your Daughter’s Boyfriend?

Chapter 543: What? You Don’t Approve of Your Daughter’s Boyfriend?

Tang Jingbin and An Huaiguo were the sole occupants of the opulent private dining room.

A massive round table of solid wood, fitted with a rotating center, occupied the center of the space. Tang Jingbin and An Huaiguo sat side by side along the inner curve. They had already ordered their meal, though they had instructed the kitchen to hold the dishes until summoned.

They hadn’t even opened the red wine, contenting themselves with puffing on fine cigars.

Until moments ago, the conversation had flowed with consummate ease. They hadn’t touched on weighty business, trading casual remarks about their recent affairs: Tang Jingbin’s management of his funds, his property developments, and the recent turbulence battering An Huaiguo’s Huaxing Entertainment.

Even when discussing those unsavory matters, An Huaiguo had maintained a buoyant demeanor, his composure unruffled. According to him, he had already reached out to the boss of Hezhong Media behind closed doors.

The tempest would pass, and everything would return to normal!

People claimed the internet had an indelible memory, yet those in the entertainment industry had long known it possessed the shortest memory of all! So what if a top-tier idol was ruined? Even without scandal, his popularity would have withered within a few years anyway. At the peak of their fame, such idols might eclipse any seasoned superstar, yet their descent was as swift as a falling meteor.

They were merely products of their era.

Celebrities fell from grace every single year; how many entertainment titans had ever been brought down by the missteps of a few individual artists? The larger the corporation, the more standardized its internal machinery became—they were star-making factories! They methodically discarded faded stars while churning out fresh idols, harvesting the pockets of generation after generation of fans.

Thus, An Huaiguo truly paid little mind to the skirmishes that had already erupted or the pawns that had been sacrificed along the way.

His sole priority was preventing the conflict from escalating.

That was where the true peril lay!

And that crisis was already on the verge of resolution; Hezhong Media had shown no appetite for continued war either. There was virtually nothing left to fret over!

Yet the moment An Huaiguo laid eyes on the trending topics on Weibo, his composure shattered completely.

“They’ll be arriving shortly,” Tang Jingbin said with a genial smile, glancing at the time.

“Ah… mm… excellent!”

An Huaiguo raised his head to reply, yet struggled to assemble a coherent sentence. He was visibly fighting to rein in his emotions, desperate to prevent Tang Jingbin from detecting anything amiss, yet… he was no actor.

People often claimed that titans of industry possessed supreme emotional restraint, capable of remaining unmoved even if a mountain crumbled before their eyes.

That was simply because ordinary people had never witnessed true crises.

What seemed catastrophic to a common man was often trivial to an oligarch.

An ordinary person might feel the sky was falling after losing a million yuan; to a titan, that was merely the tab for a single night at a KTV. Naturally, he wouldn’t spare it a second thought.

You might tremble in terror at offending some local boss.

Yet before a true titan, that same boss would grovel like a subservient grandson. Unable to pose the slightest threat, the titan could listen to your grievances without a flicker of concern!

Once an affair grew grave enough, however, no matter how powerful or seasoned a man might be, there came moments when his composure inevitably cracked.

An Huaiguo was a living testament to that truth.

His mask had slipped.

He understood his daughter’s heart all too well; she was his own flesh and blood, raised under his protective wing. He recognized her passion for music and her pursuit of fulfillment, and he had always chosen to indulge her, never reducing her to a pawn for strategic marriage alliances. At the same time, he knew she was well aware of the unshakeable baselines he would never permit her to cross!

They had been an exemplary pair of father and daughter!

Never in his wildest dreams had An Huaiguo imagined that his daughter would one day publicly challenge him before the entire country for the sake of an unhinged madman! It hadn’t merely wounded the heart of an aging father; it made him feel, for the very first time, that his daughter could be so preposterously blind!

You can be deceived! You are young and inexperienced, bound to encounter traps you cannot navigate!

Yet even after being swindled, you rush to defend him and help him count the spoils? Isn’t that carrying things too far?!

Can’t you see what kind of lunatic Wu Chen is?!

“Boss An, is something the matter…?” Tang Jingbin inquired with apparent concern, noticing the sudden souring of An Huaiguo’s expression and mood.

An Huaiguo’s instinct was to brush it off as nothing.

He had no desire to air his household laundry before an outsider, particularly when it touched upon his daughter’s reputation.

Yet on second thought, how could he possibly conceal an affair like this? Tang Jingbin would see it on his phone sooner or later.

Furthermore, they had already touched upon the recent exchange of damaging exposures between Huaxing Entertainment and Hezhong Media.

Wu Chen was the architect of that mess. Though An Huaiguo was loath to utter the young man’s name, the latest development directly involved his daughter, An Menglan. Refusing to say a single word would look like a glaring, deliberate evasion.

They were actively exploring a strategic partnership.

At such a delicate juncture, how could mutual trust take root if he refused to acknowledge headlines that had set the entire nation abuzz?

“Sigh! That daughter of mine!”

Shifting tack, An Huaiguo released a heavy sigh, wearing an expression of profound exasperation. “Children grow up; they aren’t so easy to rein in anymore.”

“Ha!”

Tang Jingbin let out a brief chuckle.

“That day comes for all of us. When the young boys and girls in our family were in their twenties, some kept their heads down, but others caused so much trouble I wanted to skin them alive! Flashing their pedigree and throwing money around, riding roughshod over ordinary people… Back then, there were plenty of messes I didn’t even dare mention to the old master. He spent his entire life in uniform, and discipline matters more to him than anything.”

“Had the old master found out, I was genuinely terrified he might have had one of his grandsons shot on the spot,” Tang Jingbin continued with a chuckle. “Things are better now, though. As they gain a few years, they acquire sense and learn to behave…”

For a moment, An Huaiguo was at a loss for how to respond.

The elite mainland clans operated quite differently from Xiangjiang’s financial dynasties. Both commanded vast fortunes and immense influence, yet in certain domains… these mainland dynasties possessed a far more terrifying bite.

Besides, the crisis unfolding in An Huaiguo’s household was fundamentally different from what Tang Jingbin was describing.

Tang Jingbin felt a flicker of curiosity himself.

He was aware of the dynamic between Wu Chen and An Menglan. The reason his thoughts hadn’t immediately traveled in that direction was that An Huaiguo’s shift in mood had been triggered by a sudden sequence of events: taking a call, checking his phone, and immediately darkening with fury.

Tang Jingbin had mistakenly assumed some reckless youth from the An family had triggered a catastrophic scandal—perhaps mowing someone down in a street-racing incident. An Huaiguo receiving a frantic alert, followed by messages or photographs from the scene, would have neatly explained the grim expression.

Was that not the case?

What other sudden disaster could have struck?

Pondering this, Tang Jingbin retrieved his phone and noticed the breaking-news notifications he had previously ignored while the phone was vibrating.

His brows twitched upward.

Seeing this, An Huaiguo knew Tang Jingbin was about to find out regardless, and chose to address it head-on.

“It’s on Weibo. My daughter has taken a fancy to a man recently. Sigh!” An Huaiguo concluded with another heavy exhalation.

“Your daughter Menglan must be twenty-six or twenty-seven by now, correct?”

Glancing briefly at Weibo, Tang Jingbin closed the app, set his phone aside, and turned back to take a leisurely draw from his cigar, smiling as he exhaled the smoke. “Isn’t it entirely natural for a woman her age to pursue romance? Besides, I’ve heard she’s never been in a relationship before. At her stage of life, dating is only proper. If she still showed no interest in romance… that would be the real cause for concern! Hahaha.”

“Theoretically, yes… and yet…”

An Huaiguo simply could not bring himself to articulate just how abysmal his daughter’s taste in men had proven to be.

“What?” Tang Jingbin’s expression turned subtly layered, his smile settling into the familiar guise of a smiling tiger. “You don’t approve of your daughter’s boyfriend?”