Chapter 071: Wu Chen, Terrifying as an Abyss!

Chapter 071: Wu Chen, Terrifying as an Abyss!

Phone in hand, Zhan Xiumei whipped her head around. All she saw was Li Ruobing’s back, which naturally told her nothing. It was only after crossing several steps and spotting the phone still ringing on the table that she recognized Li Ruobing.

She’d been far too angry a moment ago. How could she have noticed anyone else?

“Miss Li—what are you doing here?” Zhan Xiumei was clearly surprised, and a smile appeared on her face. She swept a glance over Wu Chen too, whether by design or not.

The ringing phone sat directly in front of him.

Moments earlier her face had been dark and thunderous, her fury so heavy she could barely breathe evenly. Yet in the instant she turned to Li Ruobing, she produced a smile that was warm and utterly natural—the surprised smile of someone running into an old acquaintance on the street.

As though she hadn’t just beaten her cheating husband bloody.

The nerve of this heavyset middle-aged businesswoman was simply extraordinary.

“Madam Zhan. It’s been a long time.” Li Ruobing rose just as naturally, smiling as she shook Zhan Xiumei’s hand.

Wu Chen picked up the ringing phone, cut the call, and stood as well.

“And this must be Miss Li’s boyfriend—Mr. Wu, isn’t it?” Zhan Xiumei glanced at him at once and put the question to Li Ruobing with a smile. She knew Li Ruobing had a boyfriend, and knew his surname was Wu. Ever since that “conflict” with Lu Guangnian, word had traveled everywhere.

Li Ruobing nodded.

“Hello, Madam Zhan. A pleasure.” Wu Chen smiled and shook her hand.

“Mr. Wu is a fine-looking man indeed. Miss Li has excellent judgment—and excellent fortune.” Zhan Xiumei launched straight into praising him, and even gave Li Ruobing a small pursed-lip smile.

For all her unique position in Donghai, for all that scarcely anyone in the city’s business world would dare deny her face, for all that nearly every magnate counted as her friend—whether it was her, or Lu Guangnian, or Mu Sihai, all of them kept a certain caution in their hearts where Li Ruobing was concerned.

Li Ruobing had once come bearing gifts to call on Zhan Jianyi. She’d been courteous, polite, entirely correct in every particular.

But that had been for Old Master Zhan Jianyi. Not for Zhan Xiumei.

Zhan Xiumei was not the child who had inherited her father’s business, either. Among the Zhan children, her position didn’t rank first.

Which meant that even Zhan Xiumei, facing Li Ruobing—eldest granddaughter of the Li family’s main branch, and Li Ruotai’s own elder sister—had to think about building the relationship well and not giving offense lightly.

In social instinct and skill with people, Zhan Xiumei bore a certain resemblance to Lu Guangnian.

“Are Miss Li and Mr. Wu here on a date?” After a few pleasantries, Zhan Xiumei brought the subject back around. “Then just now… was it Mr. Wu who sent me that text?”

It didn’t occur to her to wonder how Wu Chen had her number. Li Ruobing had it, so of course he might too.

It was just… she hadn’t taken her husband out to meet anyone in years. She couldn’t afford that kind of humiliation.

And she knew Li Ruobing almost certainly didn’t know the man by sight.

Which made this a little strange.

There was something else, too. Zhan Xiumei felt distinctly uncomfortable. Family shame, as the saying went, should not be aired in public. And now Li Ruobing had involved herself. Being notified was well-meant, certainly—but with Li Ruobing tangled up in it, the story would travel that much further, becoming just another piece of gossip.

“I sent it,” Wu Chen said with a nod.

“I’m terribly sorry you had to witness such a farce.” Zhan Xiumei’s smile was slightly stiff.

Witnessed by Li Ruobing and Wu Chen was the least of it. Before long every wealthy, well-placed person in Donghai would know.

There’d likely be talk behind her back all over again—that she couldn’t even keep watch over a man who’d married into her own family, and this time the Li family’s eldest granddaughter had seen it happen, and hadn’t that made a spectacle of her, and so on.

“Actually, although I happened to have seen your husband before, this is your family’s private business, Madam Zhan. At first I had no intention of sending you anything at all.” Wu Chen spoke again, one corner of his mouth twitching into a smile. “But… your husband said some very ugly things. He started insulting us over a trivial matter.”

Zhan Xiumei’s expression changed. “The two of you—you had words earlier?”

“Not exactly. It was a small thing. He came in with that woman, kept talking very loudly, said things about divorcing once the property was split, about having promised to marry the girl. Ruobing didn’t know him. I’d happened to see him before, so I mentioned it to her…”

“I’m aware, Madam Zhan, that you and Ruobing are on decent private terms, and that the Li and Zhan families go back a long way.” With that line, Wu Chen was flattering the Zhan family. Which was, of course, not the point.

“Once Ruobing knew he was your husband, she had no wish to involve herself in your family’s affairs, Madam Zhan. A public setting, an ugly scene—that wouldn’t do you any good either. But what those two were saying at that point was genuinely hard to listen to. So… Ruobing turned around and asked them to lower their voices and stop disturbing the other diners.”

“When they saw they’d angered the whole terrace, they didn’t argue. They apologized.”

“By rights that should have been the end of it. But the two of them stayed at that table behind us, muttering back and forth—saying Ruobing and I were the sort who sell houses and sleep with clients, calling me a coward, that kind of thing. Ruobing very nearly went over and struck them. I talked her out of it.”

“He is your husband, after all, Madam Zhan. If Ruobing had hit him, then afterward, between the two of you… wouldn’t that have poisoned things? Everything was perfectly fine as it was. You’re friends on good terms. It wouldn’t have been worth falling out over something like this. So I sent you that text.”

When Wu Chen finished—voice neither raised nor lowered, even throughout—Zhan Xiumei’s and Li Ruobing’s expressions changed in the same instant.

The way Zhan Xiumei looked at Wu Chen turned a hundred times warmer on the spot.

An outsider might not have grasped immediately what was remarkable about what he’d said. But Zhan Xiumei, as the party concerned, understood at once exactly how much trouble that single text had shielded her from.

She knew precisely what kind of person Li Ruobing was.

For a woman of that standing to be called the sort who sells houses and sleeps with clients—her anger would have been entirely natural. And if that anger had truly slipped its leash, then her husband being crippled or maimed today by Li Ruobing’s bodyguards would have been the mild outcome.

And behind Li Ruobing stood a younger brother fiercely protective of her: Li Ruotai, the man who in six years had come to Donghai and all but turned himself from guest into host, carving out the name Young Master Li of Donghai.

The eldest grandson of the Li family’s main line. Harder still to cross.

So at that point, with her husband genuinely crippled—

What was Zhan Xiumei supposed to do?

Wang Weijun might be a live-in son-in-law with no standing whatsoever, but the old saying still held: before you beat a dog, you have to look at its owner.

If Li Ruobing crippled her husband, did she step in or not?

Strike back? Or apologize?

Let it pass? Or worse, apologize? Where would that leave her face? Where would it leave the Zhan family’s face? Letting it go, or apologizing, could well have marked the beginning of the Zhan family’s standing in Donghai collapsing outright.

To fear trouble to that degree—Old Master Zhan’s prestige wouldn’t stretch far enough to cover it.

But if she did step in, how? Retaliate? Demand answers? Go to war with Li Ruobing?

The Li family. They truly, truly were not to be crossed.

So once things reached that point, Zhan Xiumei would have been in enormous trouble.

Whatever she did would be wrong. Backing down wouldn’t work; standing firm wouldn’t work. She’d have been trapped from every direction.

Wu Chen had spoken casually, in the tone of a man simply laying out the situation, even throwing in remarks about not wanting to spoil the friendship between the two women. But Zhan Xiumei understood with total clarity how much he had shielded her from.

One text message, and a major crisis had dissolved.

“So that’s how it was. Oh, dear—what a nuisance I’ve caused you. Mr. Wu was the thoughtful one here. Miss Li, I’m sorry you were put through that. Truly, I’m so sorry…” Having worked it all through, Zhan Xiumei hurried into her apologies. She even took Wu Chen’s hand briefly as she spoke, then apologized to Li Ruobing again before adding, “Would you wait here just a moment?”

With that she strode quickly toward the car at the roadside.

Her husband had already been loaded back into it. Now she had to bring him out again.

The moment she’d gone, Li Ruobing turned a cold, shadowed gaze on Wu Chen, saying nothing, her expression difficult to read.

She knew he’d just lied. He’d never told her in advance that the man was Zhan Xiumei’s husband.

She also knew that, given Zhan Xiumei’s temperament, the woman might well not have felt grateful to her over this—might even have been left privately uncomfortable. Helping her catch her husband out had also widened the story’s reach. There was a whiff of meddling about it.

And with the plainest possible words, Wu Chen had solved that for her. He’d even shifted the origin point of the whole conflict—from “the other party was talking too loudly” into “Li Ruobing knew who they were and found it grating to hear them speak ill of Zhan Xiumei.”

Now Zhan Xiumei wouldn’t merely feel no discomfort toward her. She’d be warmer with her than before.

As for how Zhan Xiumei felt about Wu Chen—the woman was already grateful, no doubt about it.

She owed him an enormous favor.

How had it come to this?

He had, to all appearances, done nothing especially remarkable. And yet he’d done it. And he’d made use of every single person present, Li Ruobing included.

Li Ruobing felt just how terrifying Wu Chen was.

It was a skill at handling people that made the hair on her arms rise—terrifying, like an abyss.