Chapter 181: Tipsy

Chapter 181: Tipsy

Wu Yurong crossed to the liquor cabinet in her business dress: a loose white blouse with stylish pleating above, a fitted black suit skirt below, black heels. The overall effect was simple and dignified, elegant and composed.

She wore no stockings, because she had no need of them. Her legs were exceptionally well shaped and her skin luminously fair.

As clothing went, what Wu Yurong wore was entirely “ordinary.”

It was the standard uniform of an office woman. But as the saying went, it was never the clothes that were ugly—only the person wearing them. Put a beautiful woman in a burlap sack and she could still bring a nation to its knees.

Visually, Wu Yurong standing before the liquor cabinet could give the impression of a fashion model, strikingly tall and slender.

In fact she was one hundred sixty-eight centimeters. That was hardly short for a woman; it was tall enough to meet the height requirement for a flight attendant. And yet, set against the impression she gave when she stood, even that number somehow seemed wrong.

That was simply how remarkable she was.

She had a small frame, narrow shoulders, a swan’s neck, a small face, and proportions close to golden. Together they produced exactly that effect.

Careful grooming played its part as well.

“Mr. Wu, red wine… or champagne?” Wu Yurong asked as she opened the cabinet.

“Red wine, please. Thank you.” Wu Chen looked at her profile and answered with a smile.

She took out a bottle of red and opened it at the cabinet, then carried two stemmed glasses in one hand to the coffee table, set them down, and poured.

“Mr. Wu, please.” Her features were like a painting. She gave him a gentle smile and nudged one glass toward him, stopping it precisely where he could reach it with a simple extension of his hand.

Wu Chen picked it up and swirled his wrist lightly, watching the crystalline blood-red inside, then looked back at her and smiled.

Wu Yurong touched her glass to his, then went around and sat down opposite him, knees together and angled to one side. Holding the stem in her left hand, she turned her wrist, tilted slightly, raised her chin, and took an elegant sip.

The line of her throat was especially alluring.

Wu Chen smiled and drank as well.

She turned her wrist and set the glass down. From where Wu Chen sat he could see two red lipstick marks clearly on one side of the rim.

Once a woman was beautiful enough, every movement she made could radiate endless charm and produce remarkable results. It lowered the hostility of enemies, left strangers intoxicated by her manner, and made business partners more forgiving and more willing to concede.

Wu Yurong was exactly that kind of woman.

This was one of the methods with which she had never failed.

This was her routine. She was a woman who could make people go soft.

In truth her tolerance for alcohol was only average. That was why she never drank much—only a little each day. She liked the faintly tipsy feeling. She believed she was at her most charming in that state: relaxed, yet never enough to lose control.

And any man for whom she poured with her own hands was a man she intended to charm and manage. A slightly tipsy man lost himself more easily in her gentle voice and her sweet smile.

She had trained herself to perfection.

She understood men well, and she firmly believed that what a man could not have was always the most alluring. That was why so many had become her secret admirers, her worshippers, her pursuers, willingly turning themselves into devoted lapdogs without ever getting her.

Because Wu Yurong would never give.

She judged the line perfectly.

Wu Chen believed that a woman like Wu Yurong, born in ancient times, would unquestionably have been one of those peerless beauties remembered by history for bringing calamity on a kingdom and its people.

From the day she “turned dark,” she had been honing the craft for twenty years. Her methods for playing with men’s hearts had long since reached consummate mastery.

Unfortunately for her, Wu Chen knew her very well…

“Mr. Wu, Miss Li said on the phone just now that you spoke privately with Li Maoren. Could you be a little more candid and tell me what the two of you discussed?” Wu Yurong asked, her voice soft and sweet.

She wanted Wu Chen to tell the truth.

The whole truth, with nothing held back.

“Certain matters concerning Ding Ruilong.” Wu Chen smiled.

“Ding Ruilong?” She looked puzzled, her brows drawing faintly together before the soft smile returned. “As far as I know, the Li and Ding families once considered a marriage alliance, and it was only set aside because Miss Li Ruobing resisted so fiercely. But over the past few years the two families have cooperated in a great many fields… So, Mr. Wu, you simply told them a few things about Ding Ruilong, and the Li family is willing to turn on him? To move against the Ding family? Wouldn’t the Li family suffer enormous losses?”

That was the conclusion Wu Yurong had drawn from Li Ruobing’s words.

It was also a probe.

She defined the situation outright as Wu Chen joining forces with the Li family. If he did not deny it, he would have to supply a reasonable explanation. And a lie about something this large was difficult to sustain. There would be cracks.

“I truly find it hard to understand.” She paused, then smiled again. “I wonder whether Mr. Wu would be willing to explain it to me?”

She asked very directly. It was one of her conversational techniques.

She created the sense that a man could not bear to refuse her—and that if he did refuse, the conversation might not be able to continue.

What she did not know was that some things Wu Chen had already decided to tell her before he came.

And of the things he did not intend to tell her, she would not learn a single word.

Wu Chen smiled and was silent a moment. Then he lifted his glass and gestured toward her with it.

Wu Yurong raised hers in answer.

They each drank again.

“That’s true. Going from allies to enemies would indeed cost the Li family a great deal.” Wu Chen set down his glass and smiled at her. “But if, having lost the Ding family as an ally, the Li family gained an ally of greater potential instead—and avoided being dragged down by the Ding family’s troubles—then I think that would be a good thing for the Li family.”

Wu Yurong blinked at him.

Her interest had been caught.

Not only because the struggles of great families were worth understanding, but more importantly because this concerned her. If some enormous disaster truly brought the Ding family down, Wu Yurong would be caught in it.

“I wonder whether Mr. Wu would be willing to go into more detail?” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled at him, settling into the posture of an attentive listener.

“Ding Ruilong killed someone he should never have killed,” Wu Chen said.

He seemed to sink into memory. After a brief silence he lifted his glass again, gestured toward her, and drank.

When they had drunk, Wu Chen began telling her about Ding Ruilong’s murder of Dong Yuantao years ago.

He told it in an extremely roundabout fashion, never coming straight to the point. He even asked whether she knew Dong Yaoguang, whether she knew Dong Yuantao, and then spent long stretches explaining who He Shiqin was.

Wu Yurong found nothing strange in this.

Ever since she had met him, this was how Wu Chen talked.

She assumed it was simply his habit.

And so Wu Chen took the better part of half an hour to lay out the matter between Ding Ruilong and Dong Yuantao completely and make Wu Yurong understand exactly what was at stake.

It was a time bomb.

The moment Dong Yaoguang learned the truth, the Ding family would be pushed straight to the edge of the cliff.

And in that half hour of talk, without either of them quite noticing—

They finished the entire bottle of red wine.

Wu Chen seemed accustomed to discussing business over drinks and was fairly forward about raising his glass. Wu Yurong could not be discourteous, and she was drawn into the “story” he was telling, so throughout the conversation, however much he drank, she drank as much.

As time passed she noticed that he was speaking faster and faster, and in ever greater detail.

She took that for the wine.

So she was willing to keep drinking with him.

They were in her office. Even if they drank too much, nothing would happen.

She felt Wu Chen had already entered a rhythm she could control.

As the saying went, wine loosened the tongue…

“Would you like another drink, Mr. Wu?” Seeing him still holding an empty glass, Wu Yurong asked even as she rose and walked toward the liquor cabinet in her heels.

A faint flush had come into her cheeks by now.

The tipsiness was showing in her face.

She reached the cabinet and opened it again, her back to Wu Chen.

At that moment, Wu Chen stood.

Without a sound, he walked up behind her.