Chapter 271: The Art of Language

Chapter 271: The Art of Language

Hu Xilin and Qian Ruiling were both second-generation rich kids.

More than twenty years earlier—

Hu Xilin’s father, Hu Daguo, had been a township entrepreneur in Da’an Town, Yulin County, on Donghai’s outskirts, with four factories of various sizes to his name.

Qian Ruiling’s father, Qian Dejun, had been a township entrepreneur in Qingyuan Town, Yulin County, with three factories to his.

Each family was worth tens of millions of yuan.

Hu Daguo and Qian Dejun had met through business in the early 1990s. They saw each other often, and their relations grew steadily closer.

At the end of the last century—

Hu Xilin was twenty-four.

Qian Ruiling was twenty-one.

Their parents arranged an introduction, and the two married. Though the match was arranged, they took to each other as well, and the wedding went smoothly.

When they married, the two families made an agreement. Each side would contribute one factory and five million yuan in cash.

Hu Daguo contributed his Zhenyang Hardware Factory.

Qian Dejun contributed his Wangfa Manufacturing Factory.

After the wedding both factories passed to the couple, who later merged them and registered Xirui Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

The two characters of “Xirui” came from the middle characters of Hu Xilin’s and Qian Ruiling’s names.

That was the origin of Xirui Electronics.

After the new century began, both Hu Daguo and Qian Dejun gradually fell behind the times. Outdated business thinking and a lack of appetite for risk kept either family’s enterprises from growing much further.

Their children, though—Hu Xilin and Qian Ruiling—made something of theirs.

Xirui Electronics went through financing, mergers and acquisitions, aggressive expansion…

And to this day, although Xirui Electronics had always held firm against going public, it carried a valuation of more than five billion yuan.

Hu Xilin’s net worth of over three billion yuan consisted almost entirely of Xirui Electronics shares.

The shares and other assets stood in his name mainly for ease of running the business, but in fact all of it was marital property—the real estate and the rest included.

So in the ordinary course of things, a divorce would mean splitting the marital property evenly.

But because of the prenuptial agreement, if Qian Ruiling were caught—

in truth she would not walk away with literally nothing.

If the matter blew up and the two turned on each other completely, there would certainly be a lawsuit.

And because the prenuptial agreement existed, when the court ruled it would certainly award Hu Xilin the greater part of the assets.

Whatever Qian Ruiling had contributed to the company over the years, she would come away with only a small portion.

Lei Cheng followed one implication after another, and the further he followed them the better he understood why Wu Chen had no qualms about putting the video straight in front of Hu Xilin.

Wasn’t he afraid of making Hu Xilin suspicious? However furious the man was about his wife’s affair, he would certainly wonder about Wu Chen.

How did you come to have this?

Why were you investigating my wife?

Wu Chen genuinely was not afraid.

Because the benefit this video could bring Hu Xilin would outweigh everything else.

It carried the feel of a gift.

Even granting an ulterior motive—even granting that Wu Chen wanted something done, or left undone, whether that meant holding his tongue or playing blind—

If I hand you a gift this large and ask a small favor in return, is that too much?

Not in the slightest.

Too much? It was nothing at all.

The more Lei Cheng thought, the more it impressed him.

Wu Chen was formidable.

The whole thing had taken on something almost uncanny in his mind. Wu Chen had merely recorded a video, and yet the influence it could exert—the consequences and the changes it could set in motion—was astonishing.

More astonishing still—

Wu Chen had to know a great many things first.

He had to know about the prenuptial agreement.

He had to know Qian Ruiling was having an affair.

He had to know where and when Qian Ruiling was meeting Zhu Haobo today.

And Ding Ruilong contacting Lei Cheng, then Lei You; Lei You contacting Lei Cheng and Hu Xilin; Hu Xilin calling Lei Cheng—

all of it had happened in the course of this single day.

Every connected development had come out today.

Lei Cheng had called Wu Chen at noon. Five or six hours had passed since.

And already… this?

He had simply gone out, shot the video, and brought it over?

Lei Cheng could almost feel the cold crawling over his skin. Wu Chen gave him a feeling that no sentence or two could capture.

Terrifying.

“Brother, you…” Lei Cheng had been thinking a long time before he spoke, and then he stopped again.

The more he thought, the less he knew what to ask.

Where was he even supposed to begin?

There was too much tangled information bound up in this.

“Brother Lei.” Wu Chen spoke, smiling.

He offered no complicated explanation. There was no need.

Instead he said, “About what you’re doing to your elder brother right now—I think Hu Xilin can be told.”

“Hm?” Lei Cheng went blank.

His first instinct was that he had misheard.

How could they tell Hu Xilin about this?

If word leaked, there would be trouble.

The real problem at present was not Lei You. It was Lei Cheng’s biased father—Lei Zhenghui.

Which was why, once Lei Cheng moved, he had to drive Lei You all the way into a corner.

Only then would his father be forced to make another choice.

He had only two sons.

If Lei You was no longer viable, Lei Zhenghui would have nowhere to turn but Lei Cheng.

Nothing could leak beforehand.

Otherwise Lei Zhenghui’s first thought would be how to help Lei You smooth the trouble over, not how to turn to Lei Cheng.

“He can know.” Wu Chen smiled at him. “Hu Xilin can become an asset to you. He’s worked with Hongfa for more than ten years… He can be the first outside force to come over to your side. As a supplier, if he’ll only deal with you—what do you think happens then? And what do you think your old man makes of it?”

Lei Cheng stared at him.

He no longer followed Wu Chen’s thinking.

How could—

what made Hu Xilin worth that much trust?

And what would make Hu Xilin come over?

This was no small favor.

This was asking him to choose a side.

“Zhu Haobo is Lei You’s trusted man, and now he’s sleeping with Hu Xilin’s wife…” Wu Chen went on.

“I know, but if this blows up Lei You will certainly deal with Zhu Haobo. He can’t refuse Hu Xilin face and offend him for Zhu Haobo’s sake. It wouldn’t be worth it…” Lei Cheng cut in.

“That’s only the first part,” Wu Chen said. “Second, Hu Xilin is cheating as well.”

Lei Cheng went silent.

He looked at Wu Chen, took a moment, and then understood.

“Threaten Hu Xilin?” His eyes widened, and his voice dropped as he asked it.

If evidence of Hu Xilin’s own affairs were handed to Qian Ruiling, then which of them walked away with nothing became an open question.

It would come down to who could produce proof.

And Wu Chen knew both of them were cheating.

“No, no, no. Not a threat.” Wu Chen smiled at him. “Brother Lei, you have to understand… the art of language.”

“The same thing, said in different ways, gives a different feeling and produces a different result. Meeting someone, befriending someone, getting a man to take an action of his own accord—how you say it, how you frame it, matters.”

Lei Cheng watched him and listened, and the cold touched him again.

Because he thought of himself and Wu Chen.

How the two of them had met, and how their relationship had changed after that one conversation. Even now Lei Cheng found it hard to believe.

He had known perfectly well what Wu Chen wanted, and he had gone along with it willingly all the same.

He had even reached the point of wanting to swear brotherhood with him.

It really was frightening.

“Brother Lei…” Wu Chen began laying out a few things for him.

Lei Cheng needed to know, once Hu Xilin arrived, what could be said, what could not, and how to say what needed saying.

On the surface, Wu Chen was helping Lei Cheng, drawing him further in as a connection.

That much was true.

But it was not all.

Wu Chen would also turn Hu Xilin into one of his own connections and sources of support.

Not long afterward—

Downstairs, the front door opened.

A tall, thin, slightly balding middle-aged man in a gray suit came in at a hurried stride.

“Boss Hu, you’re here.” Tao Manying, who had been talking with Zhuang Xiaodie, stood to greet him.

Hu Xilin.

“Miss Tao, you’re here too. Where’s Old Lei?” Hu Xilin asked, entirely familiar.

“Upstairs, in the study. He’s waiting for you,” Tao Manying said with a smile.

“Good, good. Don’t mind me, Miss Tao.”

Still in a rush, Hu Xilin crossed the living room and hurried up the stairs.