Chapter 098: The Second Option

Chapter 098: The Second Option

Su Qingying had listened to nearly the whole exchange between Wu Chen and Li Ruobing in a daze.

Not that she’d understood none of it. When Wu Chen said things like kneel and not make things difficult for her, she didn’t know the story behind them, but she could follow the plain meaning.

Mostly she was lost because she had no idea what the two of them were arguing about.

What had been said at the start?

Something about Wu Chen making trouble, and Li Ruobing advising him, stopping him, telling him he was messing around.

“Qingying…” Wu Chen looked at her and spoke.

“Honey, just now the two of you were… and something about my mother… what were you actually talking about?” she asked.

“That isn’t important.” Wu Chen smiled, then gestured. “Qingying, sit across from me. I have a multiple-choice question for you.”

Her brows drew together slightly. She was very puzzled.

She walked around and sat down opposite him, the table between them.

Li Ruobing stood at the side of the table with her arms folded, expressionless and silent, watching.

“Go on, answer me first.” Wu Chen looked at her. “When you go back tomorrow morning, how do you plan to face your mother’s blame for running away from home without permission? She’ll still lecture you, won’t she?”

“I…” Su Qingying opened her mouth and stopped. Across that dreamlike, exquisite face came difficulty and nerves. It was subconscious. Her fear of her mother had soaked into her bones.

“I will. I’ll resist her. I’ll reason with her. What she did is wrong. I’m going to list every mistake she’s made over the years, one by one, all of them—” After being “talked through things” by Wu Chen, Su Qingying truly was far bolder than before. But that boldness reached only as far as producing the idea of daring to resist her mother.

An idea alone was worth nothing. She had no actual capacity to resist.

Once she was home, Madam Su would likely only have to scold her twice before she wilted.

Su Qingying’s greatest problem, in truth, was a lack of confidence. No confidence, no faith. Once that flare of spirit passed, it was over.

If she had confidence, if she could be a little shameless, a little unreasonable, could simply refuse to listen no matter what, then Madam Su might not actually be able to do much to her. She was, after all… the Su family’s only heir.

“Do you think you can reason with your mother at home?” Wu Chen asked.

Su Qingying stopped speaking at once.

What reason was there to discuss? The problem wasn’t unique to the Su family. Far too many families were like this. Forget reasoning with parents at home.

“There’s no way, is there?” he asked again.

She still said nothing. Her expression fell considerably.

Because she knew perfectly well herself. She could think about it, and she could act on it, but the final result… would most likely be failure.

“I have two options here, and they decide whether I make this call.” Wu Chen lifted his phone in illustration. On the screen the dial pad held the eleven-digit number, ready. All that remained was to place the call.

“First option. I don’t make this call. Nothing happens. You go back on time tomorrow, and then… you return to your old life. From now on we can only meet in secret. As your father’s health gets worse and worse, they’ll certainly arrange more blind dates and go on recruiting a live-in son-in-law. You’ll refuse, and they’ll go on pressing you.”

“If any man meets the requirements and is also willing to accept your family’s conditions and marry into the Su family, I’ll make him vanish from the face of the earth. But at home… you’ll always have to face that pressure. And this situation won’t end even after your father passes away. Because although your father’s health is poor, your mother is in very good health. Extremely healthy. At home she’ll still be the Empress Dowager. By the time you reach fifty, the age of knowing Heaven’s mandate, you may well still be living in the shadow of a mother in her seventies…”

His words changed her expression.

It felt as though the future would be so hard…

Li Ruobing listened and knew Wu Chen wasn’t trying to frighten Su Qingying. It really would be like that.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was the second option, the one he was about to lay out. What exactly did Wu Chen mean to do?

“Second option. I make this call…” Wu Chen paused there, his eyes fixed seriously on Su Qingying. “I’ll also contact other people. In the shortest possible time, I’ll have you take over the Su family’s power ahead of schedule and become president of Jinfu. I’ll make it so that you have the final say not only in the company but at home as well. I’ll make your mother bow her head to you, stop controlling you, even start to fear you a little. She’ll understand that she can no longer control the powerful woman you’ve become. She’ll have no choice but to accept it. As for your father… he ought to feel more at ease for it, and prouder of you still.”

When he finished, he leaned back, shook the phone once more, and said, “Choose, Qingying.”

Su Qingying was stunned.

So was Li Ruobing.

Because both of them felt that the second option he’d described sounded like something out of a fairy tale.

“Su Qingying, make your choice. Your fate is in your own hands.” He said it again, then smiled.

Su Qingying still hadn’t quite come back to herself. Her hand shifted slightly, and only then did she raise it, hesitating, making a little V for victory. What she actually meant was two.

“The, the second one. Is that all right?” She chose, and even asked him whether it was all right.

As if the second option were so difficult that choosing it amounted to cheating, breaking the rules, putting him in a hard spot.

“Of course it’s all right.” Wu Chen smiled. Then he pressed dial and lifted the phone to his ear.

Before Li Ruobing could say anything, the call was already going out.

She opened her mouth, and no sound came. Then, in two strides, she crossed to his side and sat down, tilting her head to listen in. It wasn’t even listening in, really. She was listening openly. Wu Chen ignored her. She could listen if she liked. If she managed to understand anything from it, that would be a miracle.

Perhaps because of Li Ruobing’s behavior, Su Qingying got up across from them too, came quickly around, sat straight down in his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, tucked herself in a little, and leaned toward the phone from the other side. She wanted to hear as well.

These two women, honestly…

“Why don’t I put it on speaker? Aren’t you both tired?” Wu Chen said.

Just then, after two rings, the call connected. The other end picked up. There was no time to switch to speaker, so he spoke straight into it.

“Hello? Who is this?” The other party spoke the instant he picked up. A deep male voice.

“Still having nightmares lately? Have you dreamed of Liang Yuan from Nanhe Warehouse?” Wu Chen said flatly.

The other end went abruptly silent. Even the sound of breathing was gone.

What followed were small, fragmented noises. It sounded like a man walking fast with the phone rubbing against his clothes—the sense of someone hiding the phone and hurrying off under cover.

A good dozen seconds passed. Then everything went quiet again.

Extremely quiet. Not even the faint background hum of a room with people in it. It could only be like that in an enclosed space, a man shut alone in an empty room with a phone.

“You—who are you?!” The man’s voice came back, deliberately lowered, with a thread of nerves in it.

“Bai Kaifeng asked me to pass along a message. I hear you’ve made quite a lot of money these past few years. Is that right?” Wu Chen said, flat as before.

“You—who the hell are you?!” The man was growing anxious.

Wu Chen lifted his left hand and glanced at his watch. Nearly five in the afternoon.

“One hour from now. Qingyuan Teahouse. High Mountains and Flowing Water.” He hung up.

The call was over. Between the two of them, six lines in all.