Chapter 321: It’s Burning!

Chapter 321: It’s Burning!

The dozen-odd bodyguards and assistants stood frozen.

It had all happened too fast.

Not Tang Wu’s death. The moment the truth was confirmed, they had known
Tang Wu was finished. What came without warning was the handgun blowing
apart. No one could have anticipated it.

“Boss!”

“Boss, are you all right?”

Several bodyguards rushed forward. Two of Ding Ruilong’s trusted men
reached him and tried to help him up.

But Ding Ruilong had already slumped against the side of the sofa,
clutching his right hand with his left. The right hand was drenched in
blood. Every finger was still there, though the flesh was mangled.

A handgun failure lacked the force of a rifle’s, but it could still maim
the shooter and easily leave permanent damage. If a man was unlucky
enough to catch a fragment in the eye, the consequences ran worse still.

“Boss! Your hand—get the car ready, we’re going to the hospital!” One of
his trusted men shouted at the others while hauling Ding Ruilong to his
feet.

Two bodyguards ran straight out to go down and start the car.

“Fuck!” Ding Ruilong swore again through the pain.

All ten fingers are joined to the heart, as the saying went. It
genuinely hurt.

Ding Ruilong had never known pain like it. Given who he was, no one had
ever dared injure him before.

The living room fell into some disorder.

One of his trusted bodyguards stripped off his own suit jacket, wrapped
it around Ding Ruilong’s hand, knotted it, and cinched it tight at the
wrist as a crude way to slow the bleeding.

Covering the wound also kept it out of sight when they walked out.

“You few stay and deal with the scene. You, outside—block the area,
don’t let anyone in. Everyone else, with me. Move.”

Some men helped Ding Ruilong toward the door.

Others gave orders and made arrangements.

They were professionals. Every one of them knew his job.

An injury like this could not be managed with simple first aid. He
needed a hospital, stitches, proper bandaging, and the sooner the
better.

Supported by two bodyguards, Ding Ruilong left the suite and headed for
the elevators. By then guests along the corridor had already opened
their doors and stood peering out.

They had heard the shots.

The four-star hotel was well soundproofed. Even the street-facing
windows used triple-pane glass, enough to block most of the noise from
the road. But Ding Ruilong had fired without a suppressor.

Even inside the enclosed living room of a suite, gunfire carried.

The thing was, unless someone had experience with guns, they could not
immediately tell what the sound was. It sounded more like something had
exploded.

After all, most people in the world had never heard a real gunshot. The
sound effects used for gunfire in movies and television were different
from the real thing.

Nearly half the doors along the corridor had opened, one after another.
Guests craned their heads out to look, men and women, some still in
pajamas.

“What was that noise?”

“What happened to that guy?”

Amid the murmuring, several guests stepped out and tried to approach
Suite 616, only for the bodyguards to stop them.

The tall, broad men in black suits looked intimidating enough that no
one wanted to invite trouble. They all retreated.

Several bodyguards remained in the living room of Suite 616, dealing
with the body.

That part was somewhat troublesome.

Ding Ruilong had been drinking. The moment the interrogation produced
its answer he had simply opened fire, without even a suppressor. That
would not only bring hotel staff around asking questions; it could also
bring the police.

Still, the problem was not hard to solve.

Every bodyguard there knew that although Li Ruotai and their boss were
on terrible terms, the Li family was determined to make Ding Ruilong
their son-in-law. So the Li family would smooth it over. However Li
Ruotai felt about it, he would have to obey his family.

…

At the same time.

The top-floor suite at Crown Entertainment, Donghai.

It was almost nine-thirty in the evening.

Wu Chen, Li Ruobing, Sun Yongzhang, Tang Jingbin, Li Ruotai and the
others were still drinking tea to sober up and talking.

The conversation wandered everywhere. Everyone had drunk a fair amount,
so no one guarded his words.

And yet the atmosphere remained faintly strange.

Sun Yongzhang had gone back to calling Wu Chen “Little Wu” every other
sentence. Compared with the way he had behaved while Ding Ruilong was in
the room, he seemed a different man entirely. Every so often he and Wu
Chen even traded a glance. Anyone could tell there was something between
them.

And when they had first returned to the suite, Wu Chen had told Li
Ruobing that Ding Ruilong would be going to the hospital tonight.
Everyone had heard it.

But Wu Chen had not explained the details, and Li Ruobing had not
pressed.

No one else had asked at all.

Tang Jingbin did not know the inside story. There were things Li Ruotai
and Sun Yongzhang could not conveniently ask Wu Chen with him present,
and Tang Jingbin himself had even less reason to raise a matter that had
nothing to do with him.

Besides.

Wu Chen had said Ding Ruilong would go to the hospital tonight. He had
never said why. Perhaps he would drink too much and need his stomach
pumped and an IV. Perhaps something in the food would be off and he
would go in with diarrhea. Perhaps it would be something else
altogether.

Anything was possible.

No one dared imagine anything serious. A minor reason for a hospital
visit was not worth dwelling on, and as the hours passed Sun Yongzhang
gradually put it out of his mind.

“…Hahaha, Brother Sun, next time you have occasion to visit Modu, you
must let me know. I’ll host you properly. One thing is one thing—what
happened to our Xiaobao doesn’t touch the friendship between our two
families…” Tang Jingbin laughed, trading the usual courtesies.

“Of course, of course. If I’m ever in Modu I’ll certainly look you up,
Brother Tang. Oh, and—tomorrow. Bring your nephew along tomorrow. Both
families can sit down together and talk it through. Don’t worry, Brother
Tang. Since A-Tai was in the wrong, we’ll give the Tang family a
satisfactory explanation.” Sun Yongzhang smiled back.

On the other side of the coffee table Li Ruobing had gone sleepy, the
drink working in her. She leaned against Wu Chen, nodding off again and
again.

At the far end of the living room Li Ruotai stood on the balcony. He had
pushed the window open a crack and was smoking.

Wu Chen sat with one arm around Li Ruobing’s shoulders, leaning back
into the sofa, watching Sun Yongzhang and Tang Jingbin talk. Now and
then, though, he checked his watch.

Soon.

Without anyone noticing.

Another ten-odd minutes slipped by.

Around nine forty-five.

Wooooo—

An alarm suddenly blared, ringing out through the whole of Crown
Entertainment.

Loud. Piercing.

The fire alarm, tripped by the building’s smoke sensors. A wisp of smoke
would not set it off. The building-wide alarm sounded only when a large
volume of smoke was detected.

Every face in the living room changed.

Li Ruobing sat bolt upright. The sound snapped her fully awake.

The group exchanged glances, then almost as one turned to Li Ruotai. He
was the owner here. Naturally only he would know what was happening.

A false alarm?

A kitchen fire?

Something else?

But Li Ruotai looked just as bewildered, as though he had no idea.

“What’s going on?”

“Go look!”

“Hurry!”

Shouts came from beyond the door, and the pounding of running feet.
Then, very quickly, someone yelled, “Fire! There’s a fire downstairs!”

Creak!

The suite door was flung open. A bodyguard stood outside and shouted in,
“There’s a fire downstairs! It’s burning!”

Everyone plainly froze for an instant, startled, but no one wasted
words. They all rose and headed out.

“Quick! Get out first, downstairs! Take the stairs! Follow me!” Li
Ruotai shouted.

You did not use an elevator in a fire. The wiring could burn, the car
could stop, and you could end up trapped. Common sense.

Escorted by the bodyguards, they hurried down. Some stairwell doors
between floors were locked, but Li Ruotai’s men had keys.

The entire building was evacuating.

Club employees ran through every floor, directing guests downstairs.

Because the fire had been found early and had not yet spread far, the
evacuation went smoothly. There was no panic.

As Li Ruotai went down with the others he was also on the phone, badly
agitated, swearing furiously.

“Put the fucking fire out! Get up there, but watch yourselves, damn it!
If you can’t hold it, get out immediately!”

“Damn it! Has anyone called it in? Where did it start?”

“Which room? Room 1029?”

“Is anyone trapped in there? Get them out first! No—no one? Then how the
hell does an empty room catch fire? What the fuck do I pay you people
for? How did you inspect the place?”

Li Ruotai was losing his composure badly. The club was his life’s work.
A fire could destroy all of it. Of course he should be losing his
composure.

And everyone descending around him understood the situation.

The tenth floor was on fire.

It had started in a guest room with no one staying in it.

Room 1029.