Chapter 429: Yeah, I Kicked Him. But You Have No Proof

Chapter 429: Yeah, I Kicked Him. But You Have No Proof

Wu Chen didn’t lift a finger.

He simply sat there, head turned, watching Qi Chenghong come at them. No one saw him move. Yet just as Qi Chenghong reached the table and raised his hand to strike Zhuang Xiaodie, his body suddenly shot out from under him, as though he’d stepped in oil, and he lost control completely.

Bang!

He pitched forward, and his head slammed into the side of the marble-topped table with a tremendous crack.

“Aaah!!”

A scream followed.

His whole body snapped backward, and his howl of pain turned every head in the restaurant.

“Ahh! Fuck!” Qi Chenghong crumpled to the floor, clutching his head, teeth gritted against the pain. He even rolled back and forth twice.

The diners who had already been watching the window table because of the earlier commotion felt every hair on their bodies stand on end. It made them deeply uncomfortable, almost physically ill.

It looked horrifying.

People tend to dread accidents. Something falling from a great height; a sharp point suddenly in front of your eye, a hair’s breadth from blinding you; slipping in the bathroom and hitting your head. Just imagining such things could leave a person shaken.

And often the fear wasn’t of the accident itself, but of how senseless the consequences would be.

A perfectly healthy person could lose an eye, or die, just like that, for no reason at all.

How could anyone accept that?

What had just happened to Qi Chenghong magnified that fear.

He had slipped and driven his head straight into the hard edge of the table, his full body weight behind it, and taken the whole impact with his skull.

Just watching made people’s scalps crawl and their bodies ache.

A blow like that, landed badly enough, could kill a man outright.

Qi Chenghong hadn’t died on the spot. But his head had burst open.

He was bleeding.

He rolled a few more times, both hands clamped to his head, blood welling steadily between his fingers. It was a bad gash. The table’s edge was a clean right angle, and his head had come down on it at a slant from above, striking squarely along that single narrow line.

Qi Jun was stunned.

When his nephew had flown into a rage and swung at Zhuang Xiaodie, Qi Jun had actually meant to pull him back.

Zhuang Xiaodie was connected to Mao Rusong, after all. Mao Rusong had gone out of his way to ask that she be looked after.

A few sharp words between young people were nothing.

Actually hitting her was something else. His nephew had slandered her first; even the wine in his face was his own fault. Hitting her on top of that would only put him further in the wrong.

Qi Jun wasn’t afraid of Mao Rusong. But offending Fourth Master Mao over some young girl simply wasn’t worth it.

He hadn’t managed to stop his nephew in time.

And his nephew hadn’t managed to hit Zhuang Xiaodie.

Instead he’d slipped all on his own and split his head open. It had been so sudden, and there was something downright eerie about it.

“Chenghong, Chenghong… what happened… Chenghong… Chenghong…” Qi Jun was panicking too. He had never seen an accident like this with his own eyes, and there was so much blood it was ghastly.

He crouched to check the wound.

Barely ten seconds had passed, and already Qi Chenghong’s face, collar, and clothes were soaked with blood.

“…Fuck… fuck… fuck… who the fuck kicked me… fuck…” Qi Chenghong couldn’t get up at all. Clutching his head through the pain and the dizziness, he swore on reflex through gritted teeth, and in the middle of it let slip the crucial detail.

Kicked me?

Someone had kicked him?

It hit Qi Jun all at once. He shot to his feet and glared furiously around him.

In his haste, it took him a moment to register what he was seeing. The restaurant was laid out with plenty of space between tables. No one at any of the nearby tables could possibly have kicked Qi Chenghong. No one except…

Wu Chen and Zhuang Xiaodie’s table.

And it couldn’t have been Zhuang Xiaodie.

She was frozen with fright. When Qi Chenghong swung at her, she had leapt up and backed toward the window, and now, with blood everywhere, she was completely numb.

Qi Jun had seen all of that, because he’d been about to pull his nephew back.

So…

He swept a dark, furious look around the room. Halfway around, his eyes stopped dead.

On Wu Chen’s face.

And Wu Chen’s reaction…

He had none.

One hand resting on the stem of his wineglass, he was smiling, watching Qi Chenghong bleed with evident interest. That was not how a normal person reacted to a sudden accident like this.

Many of the other diners were on their feet, craning their necks and murmuring to one another. A few elegantly dressed women had their hands over their mouths, plainly shaken.

Those were normal reactions.

“It was you?! You kicked him!” Qi Jun took a sharp step forward and roared at him.

“Boss Qi, everything takes evidence.” Wu Chen glanced at him, still smiling. “Did you see me kick him? Did any of these ladies and gentlemen? Without evidence, you shouldn’t go throwing accusations around. Careful, or I’ll sue you for defamation.”

Wu Chen genuinely hadn’t kicked him.

He had only slipped out a foot and tripped him.

A trip alone wouldn’t send a man completely out of control. But some of the wine Zhuang Xiaodie had thrown had splashed onto the floor. All Qi Chenghong had to do was stumble, and his feet would go right out from under him.

A kick would leave a mark. At the very least, a bruise wherever it landed.

That would be evidence that Qi Chenghong had been kicked.

A trip left no mark, and so no evidence at all.

Of course, Qi Chenghong himself could still feel that something had caught his leg.

“Sue me for defamation?” Qi Jun was actually taken aback.

It struck him as absurd. In Modu, someone was going to sue him, Qi Jun, for defamation? How ignorant of the way things worked did a person have to be to say something that thoughtless?

“That’s right. For defamation.” Wu Chen raised an eyebrow at him. “No evidence, no accusations. Modu is a city that respects the law. Or don’t you respect the law, Boss Qi?”

To Qi Jun, it sounded childish.

And yet—

He had no answer to it. Wu Chen had shut him up completely.

This was an upscale Western restaurant. Its diners were all wealthy or powerful, people with standing. Even the young couples were surely second- or third-generation money.

Rich people cared about face. Very few would make a scene in a place like this, let alone declare in public that they didn’t care about the law.

Qi Jun’s expression flickered. He strongly suspected the young man in front of him, but he couldn’t be sure. If it really had been him, how could Qi Jun have failed to see it?

But if it wasn’t him, surely thin air hadn’t kicked his nephew.

“Oh, right. A small reminder, Boss Qi.” Wu Chen smiled at him again. “This restaurant has security cameras. You can pull the footage and see who kicked him.”

That genuinely jogged Qi Jun’s memory.

What Wu Chen said next made him explode.

“Though I should warn you.” Wu Chen looked at him with a faint smile. “Xiaodie and I happen to be sitting in a blind spot. So you may… not find anything at all.”

He smiled as he finished, lifted his glass, and took a small sip. His eyes were laughing, and the look he gave Qi Jun was… subtle.

Those words. That tone. That look.

There was a message beneath them.

It was practically a confession.

What Wu Chen had just said amounted to: Yeah, I did it. But you have no proof.

Everyone in the restaurant understood exactly what he meant.

But even if every word of it had been recorded, it still wouldn’t count as evidence.

Qi Jun blew up.

“Fuck! You—” He lunged, one hand grabbing for Wu Chen’s collar, the other drawn back in a fist.

“Your nephew’s about to die,” Wu Chen said with a smile, not moving an inch.

Qi Jun stopped short before he touched him and whipped around to look at Qi Chenghong, still clutching his head on the floor, unable to rise. He was dazed. Almost certainly concussed.

The amount of blood was frightening.

“Boss Qi,” Wu Chen said again, in that same faintly amused tone. “We’re civilized people. This is a public place, and everyone’s watching. Hitting me wouldn’t look very good, would it?”

Qi Jun turned back and glared at him viciously.

But he couldn’t help glancing around, too. It was the lunch rush, and the restaurant was packed. Plenty of diners were standing, and a few nosy young people had their phones out, filming.

“Take my advice,” Wu Chen said with a smile. “If you don’t get your nephew to a hospital soon, he’ll die. I’m not trying to scare you. He could bleed to death.”

With that, he lifted his glass and took another small sip.

Qi Jun was beside himself with rage.