Chapter 075: What Are You Looking at Me For? Hit the Ball!

Chapter 075: What Are You Looking at Me For? Hit the Ball!

Su Qingying was panicking. Wu Chen looked like a man who only wanted to teach her golf, but no man had ever touched her that suddenly before. And her panic had another source: the bodyguards were close by, and they would tell her family. If her family learned she’d had contact like this with a strange man, it would be terrible.

In truth it might not have been all that terrible. But Su Qingying believed it would be.

“Didn’t you want me to keep your secret? You don’t trust me, and you find it hard to trust me. So right now I’m making you trust me. Why are you objecting?” Wu Chen murmured beside her ear. The logic looped around on itself.

“W-what do you mean? Let go of me first, then talk.” She was still struggling a little, though it seemed as if she didn’t quite dare put real force into it.

Her upbringing made it impossible for her to do anything that would make her lose face in public. Even with no one nearby, she minded her manners by reflex.

Grappling with someone was, of course, appallingly rude.

“Tell me,” Wu Chen whispered, smiling. “If Li Ruobing found out I was teaching you golf like this, what would happen to me?”

Su Qingying went still at once and stopped struggling.

With her education and her mind, she needed no second hint.

She knew exactly what kind of woman Li Ruobing was—forceful, with an extreme appetite for control.

If Li Ruobing learned that her boyfriend had held another woman like this and called it a golf lesson, it would be a miracle if she believed a word of it.

And then… Li Ruobing might tear Wu Chen apart alive.

So the one who should be afraid right now was not Su Qingying. It was Wu Chen. She shouldn’t be struggling at all. She should cooperate, and grip this piece of leverage over him with both hands.

That way each side held something over the other, and both were “fatal” in their own way. Which meant both sides would keep quiet.

Having worked all of it out in an instant, Su Qingying stopped moving. She made no further gesture of resistance.

Far off, her two bodyguards had seen the man she’d come to meet suddenly take hold of her from behind while she appeared to resist, and they had already started walking fast toward the pair.

But then she cooperated. Not only did she stop resisting, she was whispering with him.

That stopped them in their tracks.

Their faces turned very strange, but they retreated all the same.

Who was this man?

Why did he look so intimate with the eldest young lady?

Was the eldest young lady seeing someone in secret?

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll call Li Ruobing right now and report you?” Su Qingying said, cutting a look sideways at him. That exquisite, otherworldly face looked composed, but her eyes gave her away.

She was not composed.

Her inner strength was nowhere near Li Ruobing’s. Not remotely.

“I’m afraid,” Wu Chen said, smiling. Afraid, his ass. Only yesterday he had bet Li Ruobing he’d take Su Qingying down. But afraid was what he had to say. He went on, “And I know you’re afraid too. Afraid I’ll tell people about your matter. This way… doesn’t that make us even?”

As he spoke he kept both arms around her and, through her hands, worked the club back and forth twice, sighting the ball.

“You say nothing. I say nothing. For both of us, that’s the best outcome. Now—you’re not worried I’ll leak your secret anymore, are you?”

With that, Wu Chen carried her body into the motion, snapped the club up, and swung down.

Contact.

Thwack!

The ball tore into the air, carved an exaggerated arc, flew far out, landed on the crest of a distant grassy slope, and rolled down the far side.

Su Qingying looked in the direction it had gone.

At least 350 meters.

That stroke was already at professional level—and he had made it holding her, in a stance that couldn’t have been comfortable.

“That’s how you hit a ball. Your way—pure venting, no thought for technique, nothing but brute strength—might feel good the first few times. But once you’ve played enough, you’ll find you can’t get more distance out of it. You might even lose distance. Then you’ll be miserable, and the pressure won’t come off nearly as well…”

Wu Chen rambled on, and by the time he was done the dispenser had set up another ball.

He held her and swung again.

Thwack!

That one flew farther than the last, though how much farther was hard to say. They could only guess from the bright distance markers down both sides of the range.

The world record for the longest golf drive currently stood at 530 yards—484 meters.

Professionals in normal play generally stayed inside 400 yards, around 365 meters.

Wu Chen had the technique, but his body wasn’t there yet, so chasing the world record was out of the question. Reaching professional distance, though, was effortless. He could do it every swing.

“So this counts as handing me leverage over you on purpose?” Su Qingying asked. Her mood was hard to name.

She had almost no experience of men. She didn’t even have male friends her own age, because she had never dared let anyone get close.

And now, though she had met Wu Chen in person only minutes ago, the boldness with which he had taken hold of her, the attentiveness with which he had moved to dissolve her panic, and the strangeness of the method itself had all left a deep mark on her.

“Something like that. You were so uneasy about me that I had to take the initiative,” Wu Chen said. Handing someone leverage was hardly a first for him.

The thousand-year loop had taught him that giving someone leverage was among the simplest, most effective, most direct ways to buy another person’s trust and put them at ease.

Because people were selfish.

However good the relationship, however deep the feeling, the moment something went wrong, people could turn on each other in an instant.

Leverage was different. Leverage made people count the cost. It made them afraid to hurt you even when they wanted to. It was a way of controlling people.

While he talked, Wu Chen kept teaching her, stroke after stroke.

By holding her and driving the balls out.

“Don’t just swing fast to blow off steam. What you want is that one point of release at the end. Distance is your release. If the process is violent but doesn’t get you the result you want, is that going to satisfy you? When you swing, you need rhythm. Like this…”

As he spoke he guided her arms up with the club again.

Contact.

That ball flew at least three hundred meters as well.

Wu Chen let go of her and watched it come down on the far grass and roll on farther still. A satisfied smile crossed his face. He turned his head and said, “Go on, you try. There’s nothing seriously wrong with your swing. Just a few small things to fix.”

Su Qingying gave him a sidelong look.

How had this turned into an actual golf lesson?

Wu Chen had steered every exchange between them from the start.

“What are you looking at me for? Hit the ball.” Wu Chen frowned, and just like that a certain severity came into him, exactly like a golf coach. The words had barely left his mouth before he moved again.

Smack!

His palm came down hard across her rear.

“Don’t stick it out. Tuck it in. How did your last coach teach you?”