Chapter 047: Coincidence? No. We’re Fated!

Chapter 047: Coincidence? No. We’re Fated!

Dragon-Subduing No Regrets genuinely could pull Tao Manying back from Thailand with a single call. He’d kept her for nearly ten years now. Everything she’d become was, in the end, his doing.

However much success she’d found, in front of her patron she was still, at the end of the day, a kept woman.

A man who could lift a woman that high, turn her into a household name, held just as much power to strip it all away in an instant.

That was simply how it worked.

Still—playing a game together wasn’t going to make him drag Tao Manying back on his own. This wasn’t a question of ability. It was a question of whether it was worth doing.

This was only the opening move.

“You know Tao Manying too?” Wu Chen typed.

“Know her? That’s putting it mildly.” Dragon-Subduing No Regrets didn’t elaborate. He wasn’t fool enough to announce outright that she was his kept woman, his own creation.

“I really have to go…” Wu Chen wrote again.

“Still leaving? What’s that supposed to mean? You just don’t believe me, is that it? Looking down on me?” Dragon-Subduing No Regrets sounded genuinely riled now.

“Friend, it’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just—we met over a private server, I happen to have something come up, and it just so happens you’ve got a famous actress on hand? What, do you run an agency or something?”

“I don’t run an agency. I’ve got connections, that’s all. Coincidence, coincidence—nobody even plays this game anymore. The fact we ran into each other, that’s fate. You get me, friend? Fate.”

To Wu Chen, this genuinely wasn’t a coincidence at all.

It had been Li Ruobing’s idea to go after Tao Manying, but the name itself had come from Wu Chen first. He’d brought it up so easily because, before he’d even called her, he’d already worked through which reigning A-lister he could reach fastest.

Tao Manying had been the first name that came to mind.

Because her patron had spent years living right here in Donghai.

From where Dragon-Subduing No Regrets stood, none of this felt like coincidence yet—but the longer he and Wu Chen talked, the more it would start to look that way, maybe even suspicious.

So Wu Chen said the word first.

Fate—that had been Dragon-Subduing No Regrets’ own word.

Wu Chen would show him exactly what fate looked like.

“Here’s what we’ll do—hold off on the fight. You come out. You’re in Donghai right now, aren’t you? Pick a spot, or I’ll come to you.”

“I’ll have someone reach the server owner, get Zone Three paused for now.”

“I’ll find you your spokesperson. Once it’s handled, I’ll have them restart the server, and we’ll finish this. Between us we’ve thrown twenty million into this thing. There has to be a result.”

“If I don’t get this sorted clean for you today, I’ll take your last name!”

Dragon-Subduing No Regrets ran hot-tempered and impulsive by nature—rich, and reckless with it.

Wu Chen understood him well enough. This had been the plan from the start: wait for the man to propose meeting up himself. If he hadn’t, Wu Chen would have needled him a little until he did.

“All right, then. Things are pretty urgent on my woman’s end. If you’ve genuinely got a way, friend, that’d be more than I could ask for,” Wu Chen wrote.

“537819336…” Dragon-Subduing No Regrets sent a phone number, then typed, “That’s my number. Brother, if it works for you, come to Qingyuan Teahouse in Central District. I’ll be waiting.”

“Sure. Mine’s…”

The conversation ended there.

Wu Chen looked up at the café. Eighty-some people were still waiting on him. He’d told them to log off but hadn’t told them to leave, so none of them knew if more instructions were coming.

Half of them didn’t even know his full name. Just that it was Wu.

But their boss’s boss, Wang Zhuangyuan, treated the man with open deference, and that alone was enough to keep them from slacking.

“Everyone can head out. Nothing more today. You all did good work—I’ll let Zhuangyuan know,” Wu Chen said, standing.

He sent them off for good. There’d be no reason to touch this game again. Once Dragon-Subduing No Regrets met him face to face, Wu Chen was fairly certain the man would drop any notion of settling scores in-game entirely.

At his words, the whole crowd—young men and the handful of middle-aged players alike, more than eighty in all—rose to their feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Wu!”

“We’ll head out, then.”

“See you, Mr. Wu.”

Wu Chen watched them shut down their machines and file out, then sat back down and checked the game. Dragon-Subduing Realm’s members were already logging off in waves.

The screen flickered.

Before Wu Chen could log out himself, he was disconnected outright.

Clearly, Dragon-Subduing No Regrets had already called the server owner and gotten Zone Three suspended, data preserved. He didn’t personally know the man running the private server, but as a whale who’d sunk over ten million into it, he was probably being treated like royalty. One phone call, and it was done.

Wu Chen shut down his machine and left.

About half an hour later.

Central District, Chunyuan Street.

The blue Lamborghini roared up, slowed, and came to a stop at the curb.

Wu Chen got out and stood a moment, looking up at the antique sign above the teahouse entrance.

Qingyuan Teahouse. This was the place.

Any business calling itself a teahouse counted, more or less, as an upscale venue for socializing. Qingyuan Teahouse was one of Donghai’s very best. A pot of tea started at 888 yuan, and the expensive ones ran into the tens of thousands.

They were more common in the south than the north.

Donghai sat in the northern reaches of the East China region, and locals rarely frequented teahouses. But when big bosses entertained clients from the south—clients who liked to talk business over tea—they’d bring them somewhere like this.

Wu Chen walked in.

The moment he stepped into the ground-floor lobby, a well-dressed young woman with seven-out-of-ten looks came forward with a practiced smile. She nodded to him first, then asked, “Sir, do you have a reservation?”

Her voice was soft.

The lobby had seating too, but it was mostly for guests waiting to be shown up.

For real business, there was always a private room.

“My friend’s already here. Dream Back to West Lake,” Wu Chen said, glancing around.

Dream Back to West Lake was the name of the room.

“Mr. Wu?”

“That’s right.”

“This way, please.”

On the drive over, Wu Chen had taken a brief call from Dragon-Subduing No Regrets, who’d volunteered the room name and asked for his surname.

The hostess led him up to the second floor.

The décor everywhere carried the same antique feel, and the whole floor had a hushed, private quality to it.

Two broad, thick-set bodyguards stood outside Dream Back to West Lake. As the hostess approached with Wu Chen, they turned, eyes sharp, sweeping over him.

“Mr. Wu, right this way.” The hostess reached the door, pushed it open, and gestured him in.

Since she’d brought him herself, the bodyguards made no move to stop him.

“Thank you,” Wu Chen said to her, and stepped inside.