Chapter 052: Becoming My Friend Is the Best Decision You’ll Ever Make!

Chapter 052: Becoming My Friend Is the Best Decision You’ll Ever Make!

Wu Chen’s original plan had always ended in some kind of trade with Lei Cheng.

The game had only ever been the opening move.

Lei Cheng had kept plenty of women, and put more than a few actresses on the map besides—but the one he genuinely doted on was still Tao Manying, the very first one he’d taken under his wing.

A few lines exchanged over private message during a game were never going to be enough, on their own, to make a man go through the trouble of calling his favorite star back from Thailand.

Wu Chen had given himself a deadline going in.

Two hours.

Settle everything within two hours of meeting Lei Cheng in person. The plan had been simple: trade information about his older brother for Tao Manying’s endorsement of Huancai.

He hadn’t expected to close it out in under an hour.

That was Li Ruobing’s assist at work. A perfect one.

The handful of lines he’d exchanged with her on the phone had completely reshaped how Lei Cheng saw him. Wu Chen had originally just been hired to find her a spokesperson—and ended up turning her own call into leverage, riding the momentum wherever it carried him.

Without that call, Wu Chen suspected he’d have needed another hour or more of conversation before Lei Cheng would have agreed to any kind of trade at all.

And the shift that call caused didn’t end there.

It had completely redrawn the shape of whatever relationship the two of them were about to have.

Tao Manying already held a cosmetics endorsement—an exclusive one, with a noncompete clause. She legally couldn’t take on another brand in the same category.

Doing so would be a breach of contract.

Which meant a penalty.

That earlier deal had been signed three years ago, before she’d hit it this big, so the fee had been modest—and the breach penalty sat at thirty million yuan.

And Lei Cheng had just said, plainly, over the phone, that he’d cover it himself.

Which meant calling Tao Manying back wasn’t some casual favor settled with a single phone call.

He was going to lose money over it. Tens of millions, just to help Wu Chen out—and after hanging up, he hadn’t so much as hinted at wanting anything back for it.

That wasn’t the behavior of an ordinary man. That wasn’t a small favor.

Why?

Because he’d already decided he wanted Wu Chen as a friend. Actively wanted it.

And quietly cultivating ties with powerful, wealthy men behind closed doors was something Lei Cheng had been doing for ten straight years. He liked people owing him. He understood the give and take of favors better than almost anyone.

Over that decade, he’d built himself a web of connections across Donghai, all out of sight. That line he’d tossed off earlier—there’s nothing in Donghai I can’t settle—hadn’t been bragging at all.

Keeping his distance from the family. Playing the fool. Building alliances in secret. Waiting for his moment. Planning a counterstrike, all along.

Ten years without a single day off from the disguise. It hadn’t been an easy life, and the depths of his patience were frankly terrifying.

Still, he didn’t befriend just anyone. Li Ruotai, for instance—not because Li Ruotai lacked power, but because the man was too loud, too visible.

Privately, though, he’d long kept good terms with Lu Guangnian.

Lu Guangnian collected friends the way some men collected watches. Among all of them, Lei Cheng might not have stood out as anything special—but he’d certainly left an impression.

Quietly cultivating people who might prove useful down the line—Lei Cheng had already decided Wu Chen belonged on that list.

He still had no idea what Wu Chen’s actual background was.

It had been Li Ruobing’s phone call that pushed him into the wrong conclusion.

And Wu Chen genuinely hadn’t seen any of this coming. They’d only just met, after all—their very first meeting in person. A trade of favors and a new connection would have been plenty.

Instead, Lei Cheng had taken the lead entirely on his own, pushing hard and fast to make Wu Chen his friend.

“Little brother, something wrong?” Lei Cheng asked, noticing Wu Chen had gone quiet, watching him.

“We really do have a strange kind of fate,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Damn right we do! Hahaha—come, let’s drink to it!” Lei Cheng laughed.

Tea in place of wine again, they drank another round.

“Boss Lei, there’s something—” Wu Chen set his cup down.

“Eh? Boss Lei? With all this fate between us, and me a few years older—would it really kill you to call me brother?” Lei Cheng waved a hand.

It wouldn’t kill him at all.

Not even close.

Lei Cheng wasn’t just a few years older than Wu Chen. He was a full twenty years older—only two years younger than Wu Chen’s own father.

But Wu Chen knew the man well enough by now. However good the performance, he could already sense exactly how urgently Lei Cheng wanted this bond locked in.

“All right, Brother Lei,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Good! Brother Wu, go on, what were you saying?” The name came off Lei Cheng’s tongue with a natural ease.

“Call it a warning, really.” The smile dropped from Wu Chen’s face, replaced by something serious. “Brother Lei, when I first walked in and saw you, I already figured that with your reach in the entertainment world, getting me a first-tier spokesperson would only take one phone call.”

“But having your own woman—a genuine A-list star—step in to endorse my woman’s company directly? That’s not something I expected.”

Lei Cheng wasn’t quite following.

“What’s wrong with that? Not good enough for you? Even I never thought Manying would get this big. Still not enough?” he asked.

“It’s not that it isn’t enough. It’s—” Wu Chen paused, then went on, serious. “You’re about to get pulled straight into the middle of everything between me, Ruobing, Ding Ruilong, the Ding family, and the Li family. You’ll be putting yourself directly in Ding Ruilong’s crosshairs. His whole family’s, too.”

“He won’t be foolish enough to try the same trick twice, and Tao Manying’s too famous now—if anything happened to her, the backlash would be impossible to contain. So she’ll be fine.”

“But you, Brother Lei—Ding Ruilong is genuinely unhinged. There’s no telling what he might try.”

Wu Chen laid it all out, start to finish. Less a reminder now than a warning.

He’d turned this over more than once. It needed to be said plainly, and it needed to be said now.

Because if he didn’t say it, Lei Cheng would end up dragged into the mess between the Li and Ding families without warning—a man who’d only meant to do a favor, suddenly buried in trouble. And that wouldn’t just cost Wu Chen a friendship. It might earn him an enemy instead.

Saying it upfront changed everything.

Lei Cheng rested a hand against his teacup, eyes narrowing.

He understood exactly what Wu Chen meant.

“The choice is yours, Brother Lei. Honestly, I’d rather you stayed out of this entirely—it was never your fight to begin with. So… you could call Tao Manying back right now, tell her not to bother coming home. We’ll find someone else…”

Wu Chen finished and looked at him steadily.

He was giving Lei Cheng a way out—and, at the same time, testing exactly how far his sincerity actually went.

Bang!

Lei Cheng slammed his teacup down on the table and barked, “The hell! Brother Wu, you think I’m scared of that piece of trash Ding Ruilong? Screw that! It’s Tao Manying, full stop! Tomorrow morning, first thing, she’s reporting to Huancai! The contract gets signed, she’s the face of this thing, and if Ding Ruilong wants to start something with me, I’ll tear him apart myself!”

Fury. Recklessness. A man driven purely by temper, consequences be damned.

Lei Cheng’s performance was flawless. Ten years of practice would do that.

He’d made his decision—for Wu Chen, and by extension for Li Ruobing, maybe even Li Ruotai, he’d throw himself straight at Ding Ruilong.

Only he’d chosen his own particular way of showing it.

Play the impulsive fool on the surface. Calculate everything underneath.

“Easy, Brother Lei, easy. Sit, sit. I never meant to doubt you—look how worked up you’ve gotten. Fine, since you’re not worried about Ding Ruilong, I won’t waste breath talking you out of it.”

Wu Chen calmed him back into his seat, then fixed him with a deep, steady look and smiled. “Brother Lei. I promise you—being my friend will turn out to be the best decision you’ve ever made. We really do have too much fate between us.”

Something about that struck Lei Cheng as off. The phrasing, the tone, the look in his eyes—it all seemed to be pointing at something else entirely.

“Brother, this fate you keep talking about… what exactly—” Lei Cheng wasn’t sure anymore. He’d brought the word up first, sure, but Wu Chen had circled back to it far too many times for it to be nothing.

Wu Chen didn’t answer. He picked up his phone and typed quickly with one hand.

“Check your messages,” he said, hitting send.

Lei Cheng grabbed his own phone. A text from Wu Chen sat waiting—just a string of numbers.

“Find whoever owns this number. Grab him. He’ll tell you everything—the whole truth about your accident, ten years ago.” Wu Chen smiled.

Lei Cheng shot up out of his chair.