Chapter 557: The First Time She Broke Her Promise

Chapter 557: The First Time She Broke Her Promise

“Mm…”

An Menglan’s eyes flew wide open. Li Ruobing had kissed her on the forehead!

Li Ruobing wasn’t much taller than she was. They were both fairly tall, but An Menglan was barefoot while Li Ruobing wore high heels, so they ended up at just the right height relative to each other.

An Menglan was already feeling dizzy. A kiss on the forehead… That wasn’t really a customary greeting. A kiss on the cheek was, though that was more the Western understanding of things. In most cultures, a kiss on the forehead was usually something an elder did to someone younger, like a parent kissing a child.

Couples did it sometimes, too.

And Li Ruobing had just…

Wu Chen had told Li Ruobing to “make up with her right now.” Was this really how Li Ruobing chose to make up? Wasn’t it a little too outrageous? An Menglan simply couldn’t understand it! It wasn’t as if she’d never been kissed on the forehead before. Other women had kissed her that way, too. It was perfectly normal—between close girlfriends fooling around, for instance, or when one comforted the other because she was upset.

But what kind of relationship did Li Ruobing and she have?

They were “love rivals”!

To go from love rivals to this in one step—wasn’t that an absurdly huge leap?!

There were ten thousand ways to make peace! Why had Li Ruobing chosen this one? Was she really that obedient to Wu Chen? To that extent?! How could this possibly be okay?!

An Menglan had no idea.

This time, Li Ruobing hadn’t followed Wu Chen’s instructions.

What Wu Chen had actually asked of her was even more outrageous. He had later added that she could kiss An Menglan on the forehead if she couldn’t accept the original request, but Li Ruobing had thought there was no way he could guess what she would do, so she hadn’t changed her mind. And yet now… she had changed it after all. To a certain extent, that counted as breaking her promise.

It was the first time Li Ruobing had broken a promise since she’d known Wu Chen.

Wu Chen, however, showed no sign of displeasure. He watched the harmonious, affectionate scene with a smile. In truth, having put Li Ruobing through all kinds of extreme tests, he knew where her limits lay.

Of course, some of those tests couldn’t be conducted within the thousand-year loop.

When every day reset and there was never enough time for a lasting change in someone’s state of mind to take hold, the eventual outcome would inevitably be somewhat different.

Even so, Wu Chen could make a reliable assessment. He could draw a reasonable conclusion from everything he knew about her.

Testing someone…

It was like testing how much force it took to shatter a pane of glass. Once you began testing it, the glass was bound to break eventually. The same principle applied here!

Wu Chen had kept challenging the limits of what Li Ruobing could tolerate, so sooner or later she was bound to “break her promise.” And that was exactly what he wanted: for Li Ruobing to break a promise once. Because with someone like her—someone who cared desperately about face, was intensely self-willed, and followed a clear personal code—once she broke her word, she would find a way to compensate for it in some other fashion.

She would make it up to the other person until they were satisfied!

She could hardly stand the thought of being someone who “couldn’t afford to lose.”

Li Ruobing left a red mark on An Menglan’s forehead, then raised her head and took a step back, giving An Menglan a smile. Her eyes, however, remained cold. That smile paired with such a chilly gaze was intensely oppressive.

“Good girl. We’ve made up!” Li Ruobing said, reaching up to stroke An Menglan’s hair.

Given the circumstances and their relationship, the gesture carried an almost ceremonial significance.

“Y-yes… yes.” An Menglan nodded once, paused, then nodded several more times. She was still frightened inside, yet, inexplicably, she also felt a little more at ease. She really was afraid of Li Ruobing now, but she was beginning to believe that Li Ruobing wouldn’t dare hurt her. As long as she didn’t provoke her and behaved herself… then, no matter how much Li Ruobing disliked her presence, she wouldn’t actually do anything to her.

Because of Wu Chen! Li Ruobing seemed to have been tamed by him.

“Menglan, come here,” Wu Chen said, beckoning her over.

An Menglan edged away from the corner. As she walked, she thought things over. When she reached the bed, she summoned her courage and climbed onto it, moving beside Wu Chen. She spread the duvet over them both, then cautiously glanced at Li Ruobing.

Li Ruobing wasn’t looking at her at all.

She was looking only at Wu Chen, exchanging a glance with him.

That reassured An Menglan considerably. It seemed that she really had understood the situation correctly: Li Ruobing had practically become too indifferent to bother with her. And Wu Chen had asked her to come over, so surely that couldn’t be considered an act of provocation…

…The relationship between Li Ruobing and Wu Chen really was strange. But this was the reality of it.

“You two get some more rest.” Li Ruobing picked up the gun, magazine, and bullets from the floor and reassembled them as she spoke. “I’ll go to the room next door. We can talk after we’ve all had enough sleep.”

A presidential suite usually had three rooms.

Before leaving the bedroom, Li Ruobing even raised a hand to stifle a small yawn, looking as if she’d finished a task and was now terribly sleepy. In fact, she hadn’t rested properly. All told, she’d slept only three or four hours.

Click.

Li Ruobing closed the bedroom door from the outside.

At that moment, the tension that had lingered in An Menglan’s body finally drained away completely. She leaned a little closer into Wu Chen’s arms and tugged the duvet up.

“Still scared?” Wu Chen asked with a smile, turning his head toward her.

“Not anymore,” An Menglan whispered, shaking her head. She snuggled farther into his arms and rested against his chest. Wu Chen made her feel tremendously safe.

“Then let’s get some sleep first. We’ll talk about everything else after we wake up.” Wu Chen smiled and kissed her hair. Then he shifted down from a seated position and lay back.

An Menglan shifted, too.

Wu Chen turned to look at her. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed genuinely at ease. He couldn’t help smiling.

Actually…

Wu Chen hadn’t been especially biased in Li Ruobing’s favor over this matter. An Menglan had been badly frightened, certainly, but he considered this a solution in which both sides won. Li Ruobing was clearly satisfied—satisfied enough to play along with him. As for An Menglan… Wu Chen wanted to get the pain over with quickly rather than let it drag on.

…

An Menglan had posted that Weibo message.

That alone had made it inevitable that she would start fearing Li Ruobing’s revenge, and that fear could last a long time.

Li Ruobing doing absolutely nothing to her would be even more frightening, because the threat would never go away! No matter how much Wu Chen reassured her, An Menglan would never believe that Li Ruobing would let her off lightly.

And Wu Chen could never bring Li Ruobing over and make her personally promise An Menglan that she would do no harm.

That was impossible!

Wu Chen would not make Li Ruobing feel humiliated. He would never make her bow her head to anyone but him—especially when An Menglan was the one at fault in the first place!

So…

The best thing was to make everything happen quickly. Let An Menglan be frightened; once the thing she feared most happened and was over just as quickly, her threshold for dealing with Li Ruobing would rise to an extremely high level. Especially after seeing that Wu Chen could actually “give Li Ruobing orders,” she would find a safe way to get along with Li Ruobing herself.

That wouldn’t diminish the sense of intimidation Li Ruobing inspired in her.

But it would give her a sense of security, too.

As for how Li Ruobing treated Wu Chen, that was between the two of them. In An Menglan’s mind, Li Ruobing was simply different with Wu Chen. With everyone else… she was still the same Li Ruobing.

Sleep!

“She can’t stand losing, and she’s never broken her word in all those thousand-year loops. How will she make it up to me?” Various possibilities crossed Wu Chen’s mind. With eager anticipation, he wrapped his arms around An Menglan and drifted off to sleep again.

A little over three hours later…

Ring, ring…

Wu Chen was woken by his phone.