Chapter 328: I’ll Fucking Shoot You!

Chapter 328: I’ll Fucking Shoot You!

Ding Ruilong shot upright against the headboard and snarled into the
phone through clenched teeth.

“Li! Ruo! Tai! What the fuck do you mean?!”

He had known Li Ruotai would mock him, and since he had chosen to take
the call he had naturally prepared his answers.

He already knew about the fire at Crown Entertainment. Sun Yongzhang had
told him the day before.

That gave him something to mock Li Ruotai with in return.

But he had never imagined Li Ruotai would open by cursing him in a rage.

“What do I mean? You know damn well what I mean! Stop fucking
pretending!” Li Ruotai roared. “You had my club burned down. You think I
can’t find out? If you don’t explain yourself to me today, I’ll fucking
kill you!”

Ding Ruilong froze again, then snapped, “What the fuck are you talking
about? What does your investigation have to do with me?”

“Still pretending? Still fucking pretending? Fuck your mother, Ding
Ruilong!” Li Ruotai’s fury kept climbing, close to out of control.

Ding Ruilong was completely baffled.

He could tell Li Ruotai was serious now.

And he finally understood why Li Ruotai had called in such a rage and
started cursing immediately.

Li Ruotai believed Ding Ruilong had set the fire at Crown Entertainment.

“Li Ruotai, stop fucking slandering me! I’m telling you, that fire had
nothing to do with me! Don’t you know I’m in the hospital? Don’t try to
frame me!”

“Frame you? So what, I burned my own club down and pinned it on you? Are
you out of your fucking mind, or am I?”

“Did I say that? You’re insisting I did something that has nothing to do
with me!” Ding Ruilong was furious too, but he did not dare accuse Li
Ruotai of burning his own club to frame him.

However he turned it over, Ding Ruilong would never suspect Li Ruotai of
setting the fire himself.

Crown Entertainment represented years of Li Ruotai’s work in Donghai. He
would have to be insane to burn it down merely to frame someone.

Impossible.

One point was worth noting.

The Ding family knew nothing about the crisis Li Ruotai was currently
facing.

By rights they should have known, because the Li family would need
connections to smooth over the trouble that followed.

But—

When Li Maoren came to Donghai in person over Li Ruotai’s trouble, he
and Wu Chen had reached an agreement: they were going after the Ding
family.

Under those circumstances, after Li Maoren returned home he naturally
said nothing to the Ding family about Li Ruotai’s problem.

That was why the Ding family knew nothing of Li Ruotai’s predicament.

Ding Ruilong therefore had not the slightest basis for making the
connection.

He might suspect anyone; he would never suspect Li Ruotai himself.

Off to the side, Sun Yongzhang had already risen to his feet.

He had heard Ding Ruilong say Li Ruotai’s name and knew Ding was
quarreling with his nephew.

“Ruilong, you two…” Sun Yongzhang took two steps toward the bed, his
expression shifting again and again.

Ding Ruilong had said “the fire had nothing to do with me,” so Sun
Yongzhang could work out what they were arguing about.

He was stunned.

So was Tang Jingbin.

What?

Ding Ruilong had set the fire at Crown Entertainment?

How could that be possible?

“Ruilong… give me the phone. Give it to me.” Sun Yongzhang held out a
hand.

Ding Ruilong glanced at him and passed it over.

He was furious, but in truth he had little interest in arguing with Li
Ruotai. The accusation was far too crude a thing to dump on him.

“A-Tai… what’s going on? What does the fire have to do with Ruilong?”
Sun Yongzhang asked, walking a few steps away toward the window.

“Third Uncle, I…” Li Ruotai was so agitated he could barely get the
words out as he explained.

The fire at Crown Entertainment had been put out late the previous
night.

Because it had been found quickly and the fire department had arrived
promptly, the whole building had not burned.

The ninth, tenth, and eleventh floors had burned, and the eighth had
suffered partial fire damage.

Even so, the most valuable part of Crown Entertainment was precisely
those top three floors.

By comparison, the actual cost of putting up the building had been only
a small fraction of the total investment.

The first truly valuable thing was the land.

The second was the interior.

There was effectively no ceiling on what could be spent on interior
work. If a man bought a painting at auction for several hundred million
yuan and hung it on a wall, that painting became part of the interior.

Crown Entertainment had no paintings worth hundreds of millions, but its
top three floors had been finished to the highest level of luxury. The
interior work alone had cost three hundred million yuan.

Forget all three floors. Li Ruotai’s own suite on the eleventh floor,
counting its furnishings, its antique vases, a piano worth several
million yuan and everything else, had cost tens of millions.

And those were only the losses that could be tallied on paper.

There were also the losses that could not.

Once Crown Entertainment suspended business for rectification, the
resulting damage would be worth far more than a few hundred million
yuan.

Li Ruotai had not slept at all the previous night.

After the fire was out he oversaw the cleanup.

He inventoried the losses.

By morning he was also involved in investigating the cause.

Police came to the scene and carried out a professional examination.

They had already identified the point of ignition. From the burn
patterns it appeared to have started at the uninterruptible power supply
outlet in the corner by the window of the bedroom in Suite 1029.

The probable cause was an electrical short.

A small flame had caught the curtains and grown into a major fire. The
interior materials were flammable, which let the flames spread.

As for what had caused the short, that was far harder to determine.

A rat might have chewed through a wire. Wiring or the outlet might have
been damaged accidentally by an earlier guest. Or someone might have
tampered with the outlet in advance.

There were too many possibilities.

They could infer possible causes. They could not establish one.

Since Suite 1029 had no guest staying in it, the investigators had also
pulled the surveillance footage from before the fire.

One thing was worth mentioning.

Crown Entertainment had two surveillance systems, one covert and one
overt.

The control room for the covert system was on the top floor. Because
they had been preparing to burn the club and could not let anyone
discover that system, Li Ruotai had ordered it dismantled in advance.

Only the “overt” system remained.

That was the club’s ordinary surveillance network, including the cameras
in the corridors. Its control room was on the first floor.

The first floor had not burned, so all the tenth-floor corridor footage
from before the fire could still be retrieved.

They checked it.

At first they found nothing unusual in the period immediately before the
fire. No one had gone in or out of Room 1029. No guest was staying
there, and since the suite was already clean, housekeeping naturally had
no reason to enter.

So they went further back.

And then Li Ruotai saw it.

According to the tenth-floor corridor footage, at around four forty-five
the previous afternoon and again at around six eighteen that evening,
one of Ding Ruilong’s bodyguards had furtively slipped into Room 1029,
twice.

Both times he stayed inside for several minutes.

That was plainly abnormal.

They checked more footage.

Other cameras had recorded the same bodyguard wandering the ninth-floor
corridor and speaking to a young housekeeper.

“…Who else could it be? All I did was piss him off! All I did was say a
few things in support of Brother-in-law! Did he really have to send
someone to burn my club down over that?” Li Ruotai told Sun Yongzhang
everything: the scale of the losses, and what the investigation had
uncovered.

By the end he was nearly hysterical.

Sun Yongzhang was completely stunned.

He knew about Li Ruotai’s problem.

But he had not known Li Ruotai planned to burn the club.

That idea had come from Wu Chen, and only a very small number of people
knew.

Sun Yongzhang turned and looked at Ding Ruilong.

For a moment, phone in hand, he could find nothing to say.

“Third Uncle, Ding Ruilong is still at the hospital, right?” Li Ruotai
asked.

“Mm… yes,” Sun Yongzhang replied.

“I’m coming over right now.”

Beep, beep, beep…

Li Ruotai hung up.

Sun Yongzhang lowered the phone, walked back, and returned it to Ding
Ruilong.

“Uncle Sun?” Ding Ruilong noticed something wrong in his expression.

“A-Tai is coming over now. You two can talk when he gets here. There may
be some misunderstanding.” Sun Yongzhang returned to the sofa and sat
down.

His expression stayed wrong, but he said nothing more.

More than half an hour later.

A burst of commotion erupted outside the ward, along with shouted
orders.

“All of you, stay the fuck still! Got a death wish?”

“On your knees!”

Li Ruotai had arrived.

And he had brought dozens of men.

Ding Ruilong’s bodyguards in the corridor were caught completely off
guard and subdued.

Bang!

Li Ruotai kicked the ward door open.

“Ding Ruilong, I’ll fucking shoot you!”

He pulled out a gun the instant he stepped inside.