Chapter 250: Is It Really This Messy?

Chapter 250: Is It Really This Messy?

Wu Yurong truly did not care who else was present. She did not even know who the other girl who had come in with Wu Chen and Li Ruobing was, and still she dared kiss him in front of everyone.

In fact she had already concluded that the women coming to tonight’s dinner were most likely all Wu Chen’s. Which was precisely why she did not care in the slightest.

Who cared about them?

Wu Yurong really was sweet with him. After a few seconds she let go, gave him another tender smile, and only then glanced at Li Ruobing. A single glance, nothing more.

She had not challenged Li Ruobing with her eyes. As for her actions—that was for Li Ruobing to interpret however she chose.

And what could Li Ruobing possibly think?

Insane.

Li Ruobing had genuinely admired Wu Yurong once. That admiration was gone now. She did not even want much to do with her anymore.

Standing off to the side, Zhuang Xiaodie watched the scene without much feeling. All she took from it was that this stunning woman in front of her—who looked perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight, who was even more beautiful than she was and whose presence was extraordinary—was another of Wu Chen’s lovers.

That was all.

She did not know who Wu Yurong was, so there was nothing else for her to think.

Su Qingying and Mu Qianqian, however, were still utterly stunned, unable to recover.

Mu Qianqian’s expression was the more exaggerated of the two, her eyes wide and round.

But the greater shock, in truth, was Su Qingying’s.

She understood far better than Mu Qianqian exactly what sort of woman Wu Yurong was. So what she felt now was that the most unbelievable thing imaginable had just happened.

No one—no matter their standing, no matter how formidable—had ever won Wu Yurong over. Wu Chen had.

The atmosphere in the private room was extremely strange.

Zhuang Xiaodie watched the spectacle. Su Qingying and Mu Qianqian were dazed. Li Ruobing’s face was expressionless.

“Come on, sit down. Don’t all stand there. Sit, sit…”

Wu Chen remained perfectly calm. Smiling, he gestured for everyone to sit, then took two steps toward Mu Qianqian, drew out the chair beside her, and sat down.

Li Ruobing, whose arm was still through his, followed and sat on his other side. Wu Yurong did not fight her for the seat next to him. She would not go that far, nor be so discourteous.

Zhuang Xiaodie sat down on Li Ruobing’s other side.

Wu Yurong returned to her original place.

So the order around the table came out as Su Qingying, Mu Qianqian, Wu Chen, Li Ruobing, Zhuang Xiaodie, Wu Yurong—and to Wu Yurong’s left, Su Qingying again.

Six of them, seated in a circle.

Wu Chen had shaped that arrangement deliberately. The chief reason he sat beside Mu Qianqian was that he obviously had to sit next to Li Ruobing, which made the seat on his other side particularly significant.

Whichever of Su Qingying or Wu Yurong did not get that seat would feel something was off.

And none of them knew Zhuang Xiaodie. Wu Chen certainly did not want her drawing hostility from the other women on her very first day here.

So Mu Qianqian was the best choice.

Neither Li Ruobing nor Wu Yurong regarded her as any sort of threat. Su Qingying even less so.

Once everyone was seated, Li Ruobing took a tissue from her bag at once. She reached over, pinched Wu Chen’s chin, turned his face slightly, and wiped his mouth with the tissue in her other hand. There was Wu Yurong’s lipstick on his lips.

Wu Yurong watched her do it without a flicker of change in her face.

While wiping his mouth, Li Ruobing glanced past him at Mu Qianqian. She knew the girl was Mu Sihai’s daughter, but she had not known before tonight that Mu Qianqian had that kind of relationship with Wu Chen. She had only just found out.

Mu Qianqian, for her part, knew Li Ruobing was Wu Chen’s official girlfriend.

Su Qingying had told her.

One point is worth mentioning. Su Qingying already knew that Li Ruobing and Wu Chen had formally become a real couple. At noon on the very day Wu Chen left Donghai, Li Ruobing had arranged lunch with her, and over the meal had told her plainly that she and Wu Chen were genuinely together now. They were no longer pretending.

The two women had talked it through properly.

In the end they reached an understanding. Each would keep to her own side and not interfere with the other.

Li Ruobing’s position was simple: so long as Su Qingying did not affect her relationship with Wu Chen, Su Qingying could do as she pleased. Su Qingying had no objection. Her own relationship with him could not be made public in any case, and she still needed Li Ruobing to provide cover for it.

The room was quiet.

No one dared speak.

The atmosphere was still wrong.

Zhuang Xiaodie was skilled at reading a room, so naturally she did not risk a word.

Having wiped his mouth clean, Li Ruobing swept her gaze around the table. Counting herself, five women. Was this all of them? Did Wu Chen have others?

She did not know. She could not tell.

“Qianqian, what’s the matter with you? Why are you making that face?”

Wu Chen looked at her and asked with a smile.

Mu Qianqian still had not recovered. Her mind was still mush. She sat there dazed and did not answer him.

“Have you gone stupid?”

Wu Chen laughed and teased her, reaching over to pinch her cheek at the same time.

He made no attempt at all to hide anything.

Watching it, Su Qingying understood everything in a single instant. She understood exactly what kind of gathering this was.

“Hubby… you and Ms. Wu… the two of you as well…?”

Su Qingying kept her feelings in hand and even managed a smile as she looked at him, gesturing toward Wu Yurong.

“Mm-hm.”

Wu Chen turned to her and nodded, smiling.

Su Qingying had called him hubby. She had worked it out. So she stopped pretending.

And with that one word the atmosphere in the room shifted again—loosened, all at once. They were all Wu Chen’s women. Everything was out in the open. What the hell was there left to be tense about?

Zhuang Xiaodie’s thoughts turned a little strange. Was a powerful young master’s private life really this messy?

“Let’s order,” Wu Chen said, glancing around.

A server was called in. Li Ruobing and Wu Yurong looked over the two menus first, then passed them around. Once the server had gone, they all began chatting while they waited for the food.

“Qingying, how has the company been lately? No trouble from the board?”

“None. You already took care of everything for me, hubby. They wouldn’t dare.”

Su Qingying smiled at him.

“Darling, you never told Qingying about us?” Wu Yurong asked.

“No.”

Wu Chen looked at her with a smile.

“I called you all here today so you could take the chance to get to know one another again… and spare us unnecessary trouble later.”

“I truly never imagined Ms. Wu would also—”

Su Qingying looked toward Wu Yurong.

“What could I do? Our Mr. Wu is simply too special.”

Wu Yurong said it with a soft, sweet laugh.

And just like that, they began to talk.

Su Qingying, though, became the center of the conversation. Li Ruobing had no wish to engage with Wu Yurong, and the two of them simply did not speak to each other. So as the atmosphere gradually thawed, Su Qingying found herself talking both to Li Ruobing and to Wu Yurong.

A little over ten minutes later.

Li Ruobing was talking with Su Qingying.

Mu Qianqian had leaned in close to Wu Chen’s ear and was whispering to him.

“So you’re studying acting, Miss Zhuang? Then you’ll want to be an actress after you graduate?”

Wu Yurong, meanwhile, was chatting with Zhuang Xiaodie. She was seated beside her, so it was easy enough.

She had already asked her name and learned she was still at university.

Zhuang Xiaodie was Wu Chen’s woman too, yet she seemed to know no one here and had not once spoken up on her own. It almost looked as though she had been left out in the cold. Wu Chen had noticed. And Wu Yurong, socially adept as she was and thoroughly practiced at handling people, noticed too. So she attended to that small thing and started a conversation with her.

Ring-ring-ring…

A phone rang.

Wu Yurong’s.

Everyone stopped talking.

“Excuse me.”

She apologized first, then took the phone from her bag, glanced at the screen, answered, and lifted it to her ear.

“Xuanxuan, what is it?”

Her daughter, Song Xuan.

“Mom, are you eating at Mingzhenlou? I saw your car downstairs.”

“Yes…”

Wu Yurong answered by reflex. Then her face changed.

“You’re downstairs?”

And as she asked it, she glanced at Wu Chen.