Chapter 066: The Legend of Donghai’s Number-One Beauty

Chapter 066: The Legend of Donghai’s Number-One Beauty

Another bet.

The word alone made Li Ruobing’s eyelid jump. She’d only just lost to him once—lost badly, for not believing in what he could do. At this very moment, only a few minutes had passed since she’d honored that wager and knelt down to apologize.

They’d only been trading barbs, and now here he was, actually proposing another one.

By now, Li Ruobing was genuinely convinced of Wu Chen’s ability and his reach.

But this—this had nothing to do with connections at all.

She’d only just learned the Su family had someone investigating Wu Chen, which meant one thing for certain: the Su family didn’t know him.

Even if they did know him, it wasn’t a close acquaintance. Otherwise they’d never have mobilized this much power just to dig into his background—enough that even Li Ruotai, whose information network was among the densest in Donghai, had caught wind of it.

Forget whether they knew each other at all. Even granting that they did—even granting the wildest assumption, that Wu Chen and Su Qingying had grown up together, childhood friends the whole way through—Li Ruobing still would have called this nonsense.

This time it wasn’t a matter of trusting Wu Chen or not. It was that she trusted Su Qingying. She trusted the Su family.

In this city, Su Qingying was a name everyone knew. The title of Donghai’s number-one beauty hadn’t been handed to her for nothing.

Li Ruobing, the Li family, even Li Ruotai—none of them had much to do with the Su family of Jinfu. Partly because Jinfu was in the gold and jewelry trade, and partly because the Su family was so small it could barely be called a clan at all. Between that and the difference in industries, the two sides had never had much occasion to cross paths.

It wasn’t that they were total strangers. There simply weren’t many ties of interest or connection binding them together.

But Li Ruobing knew Su Qingying’s story well. She’d heard it told so many times over the years it practically rang in her ears.

Su Qingying’s father, Su Ruiwen, Donghai’s richest man, had started out dirt poor.

At seventeen or eighteen he’d already gone out into the world to make his own way, drifting from place to place, trying his hand at business after business—most of them failures—until he’d built up a wealth of hard-won experience. In the end, he got his start with a tiny jade shop.

Su Ruiwen seemed born for business—tenacious to the bone, the kind of man who came back stronger the harder life knocked him down. In Jinfu Company’s early years, he’d even personally led a group to the jade mines in Myanmar.

The region had been lawless back then. Going there at all meant risking his life, but he’d done it anyway, all to secure first-hand, high-quality stock at the lowest possible price.

Maybe because he’d been too consumed with business, Su Ruiwen married late.

By the time his daughter was born, he was already a man of real wealth in the region, and Jinfu Company had grown into the largest chain jewelry business in East China.

Su Qingying had been born, then, already wearing a halo—the center of gravity for what felt like a thousand doting hearts.

His wife, Su Qingying’s mother, was the child of a high-ranking cadre, raised in an intellectual family. At the time she married Su Ruiwen, she’d been a university lecturer.

Under the influence of her family’s wealth and her mother’s education, Su Qingying had stood apart from ordinary children since she was small.

Obedient, sensible, an excellent student, impeccably polite—the Su family’s discipline was strict, and it showed. Su Qingying had carried herself like someone exceptionally well-bred from the time she was tiny.

She was that kind of girl—top of her class since elementary school, first place on every exam, shut indoors studying through every summer vacation instead of playing outside with other children. Outstanding enough to draw envy from everyone around her. And in the process, she lost her childhood entirely.

The story went that even as a small child, guided by her family, she’d already mapped out a clear plan for her future.

In middle school she’d already helped design a few jewelry pieces for the family business—pieces that sold well enough to become something people liked to talk about.

While studying abroad, she’d gone so far as to found her own luxury brand in the United States, and even personally endorsed the brand and walked the runway for it.

Luxury goods and jewelry were natural cousins, after all—an expensive diamond bracelet was a luxury item in its own right.

Founding that brand abroad had been something like a trial run—a way of testing her own abilities in preparation for one day taking over the family business.

From the moment she was born, enormous expectations had rested on her. She was, after all, the only child of Su Ruiwen and his wife.

Over her years in Donghai, Li Ruobing had heard more legends about Su Qingying than she could count. The most famous of all was the incident two years back, when Su Ruiwen had come within a hair of publicly announcing a search for her husband.

Su Qingying and Li Ruobing were the same age—both twenty-seven this year—though Su Qingying’s birthday fell earlier, which technically made her the elder of the two.

Su Ruiwen himself was fifty-six this year. Not terribly old, really—under normal circumstances, another ten or twenty years would have been no problem at all.

But his health had never been good. Years of running himself into the ground for Jinfu Group, endless social obligations on top of it—two years back he’d gone through major surgery. Nothing had come of it since, but everyone understood that his health was exactly why he was so anxious to see his daughter take the reins.

He was afraid that if something suddenly happened to him before she’d fully taken control of the company, chaos would follow.

Two years ago, when Su Qingying was twenty-five—not long after Su Ruiwen had safely come through that surgery and left the hospital—the Su family began arranging blind dates for her.

That’s right. Su Qingying, of all people, needed blind dates.

Her family had kept her on far too tight a leash for anything else. She’d never dated, didn’t even know how. Men her own age had no way of getting near her. Even while she studied abroad, her mother had people watching her, terrified she’d be corrupted by whatever influences were out there.

Under those conditions, there’d never been any real possibility of a man in her life.

They’d once guarded against romance like their lives depended on it. But once Su Qingying turned twenty-five, that same family grew anxious.

Twenty-five wasn’t young. Plenty of girls were already being pushed toward marriage by then. Even Li Ruobing—if she hadn’t fought it, she’d have married Ding Ruilong at twenty-three.

Of course, the Su family’s sudden urgency had everything to do with Su Ruiwen’s health.

The blind dates didn’t go smoothly.

Not because Su Qingying herself fell short—quite the opposite. Her qualifications were too good, and the other conditions the Su family attached were too harsh.

First, the man had to be someone Su Qingying herself could accept—reject him, and there’d be trouble down the road. On this one point, at least, the family respected her say.

Second, anyone whose family assets fell under a billion yuan didn’t even get to meet her. A billion was the floor.

Third, not too young, not too old, in good health. Ordinary looks were fine, but he couldn’t be too ugly.

Fourth, he had to be a young talent in his own right—not just a formidable family behind him, but formidable himself, someone capable of actually helping run the company alongside her.

And finally—the most important condition, and the one nobody could swallow—he had to marry into the Su family. Whoever married Su Qingying would marry in. Their children would carry the Su name.

Taken on its own, that condition alone wouldn’t have been impossible to satisfy—Su Qingying had the looks and the family name to make it worthwhile. But stacked on top of everything else, it became almost unthinkable.

A man with no ability had no business marrying into anyone’s family. And a man with real ability—why would he ever agree to it?

And even supposing such a man existed—capable, and willing—his own family would never permit it. It would turn them into a joke in their own circle.

This had nothing to do with money. It was a matter of face. The kind of thing people would talk about for the rest of his life, jabbing a finger into his spine behind his back forever.

And yet those were exactly the Su family’s requirements: ability, background, good health, decent looks—and a willingness to marry in.

Of all those conditions, only the marrying-in clause had come from Su Ruiwen. Every other one had been set by Su Qingying’s mother. And no one could talk her out of any of them.

The whole affair nearly turned into a farce.

At first, plenty of people who didn’t know the conditions came close to trampling down the Su family’s threshold trying to get in. Once word of the real terms spread, though, no one came at all. Ordinary men couldn’t meet the bar, and the extraordinary ones—not one of them would touch it. Their own families were just as wealthy and powerful; they’d have to be out of their minds to become a live-in son-in-law.

That was when word got out that Su Ruiwen was openly seeking a husband for her—a live-in son-in-law, specifically. But only a few days after that rumor spread, Su Ruiwen publicly denied the whole thing. And then it all died down.

Right up to this day, Su Qingying remained single, without a single rumor or scandal to her name.

“I’ll bet!” Li Ruobing said, having turned every possibility over in her head more than once.