Chapter 449: Oh! Boss Li

Chapter 449: Oh! Boss Li

“Very expensive” didn’t begin to cover that Yellow Crane Tower.

“Mm… extremely expensive,” Wu Chen said quietly, with a slight nod.

“How… expensive?” Li Ruobing asked, her eyes drifting to the bag of cigarettes on the coffee table.

Li Ruobing knew wine, but only red wine. Baijiu was beyond her, and cigarettes even more so. A large share of the gifts she had brought to the Wu home had come from her younger brother Li Ruotai’s villa.

Li Ruotai was a natural socializer with friends of every stripe. He received gifts constantly, and gave them just as often.

At his villa in the West District, an entire room was piled high with gifts other people had given him.

Li Ruobing knew all about it.

So the day before yesterday, after getting off the phone with her brother, she had driven over to pick some things out. As she saw it, taking gifts from his place had one advantage: she wouldn’t have to wonder whether they were suitable. Anything in his villa was bound to be.

They had all been given to Li Ruotai as gifts in the first place.

She had chosen two bottles of red wine at five thousand yuan apiece.

She didn’t know baijiu, but she naturally recognized Moutai, and took two bottles of an unremarkable vintage, only a few thousand yuan each.

All of it was expensive, but not outrageously so. Enough not to seem rude, not enough to frighten anyone.

As for cigarettes, she had deliberately avoided everything imported while choosing at the villa, including the cigars in their especially lavish packaging.

Because she knew some of those could be frighteningly expensive!

Instead, she had gone to the climate-controlled cabinet, found the domestic cigarettes, and grabbed a few at random.

She had felt safe grabbing at random because, although she knew nothing about cigarettes, she had seen news reports saying domestic cigarettes had long been subject to price caps. The most expensive carton wasn’t allowed to exceed a thousand yuan.

So naturally, anything would do.

Clearly, her understanding of cigarettes was mistaken.

Wu Chen didn’t smoke either, but he knew far, far more about them than she did.

How expensive?

That Yellow Crane Tower was currently the most expensive cigarette in the country. Not one of the most expensive. The most!

Wu Chen turned slightly toward her and held up three fingers.

“Three thousand a carton?” Li Ruobing raised an eyebrow.

“Thirty thousand,” Wu Chen said softly.

Yellow Crane Tower “Big Gold Brick”!

A top-tier domestic luxury cigarette launched nine years ago by the Hudong Provincial Tobacco Company, it had been released as a limited special edition commemorating the hundredth anniversary of a certain historic transformation. Very few cartons remained in existence.

When “Big Gold Brick” first went on sale, it was only one of the most expensive cigarettes, not the single most expensive.

But as the years passed, its price kept climbing.

Over the past two years, its market price had reached thirty thousand yuan a carton, and even then it was the kind of thing that had a price but no supply. Money alone could hardly buy it. It was simply too rare!

Thirty thousand was the floor, and you had to be extraordinarily lucky to get it at that price. Without connections, access, or luck, you might not find one even at forty or fifty thousand.

Most people who bought cigarettes like these gave them as gifts rather than smoking them.

Some kept them as collectibles, leaving the carton unopened and storing it year-round in a climate-controlled cabinet.

“You just grabbed them at random?” Wu Chen asked softly.

“Yeah…” Li Ruobing’s face went a little blank.

Of course she understood that thirty thousand yuan a carton was extremely expensive!

Thirty thousand yuan meant little to her. She couldn’t even count how many thirty-thousand-yuan bottles of wine she’d drunk.

But cigarettes weren’t like wine.

Truly expensive wine was only opened on special occasions or holidays. When Li Ruobing had a glass at home, it was usually from a bottle worth a few thousand yuan. She went a little pricier when dining out.

In other words, expensive wine wasn’t something consumed every day!

Cigarettes, though… Li Ruobing knew Wu Dahai was a longtime smoker who went through two packs a day.

She also knew that even her brother normally smoked cigarettes at around a hundred yuan a pack. He had smoked the same brand and variety, two packs a day, for years.

Thirty thousand yuan for a carton of cigarettes really was frightening!

“How many cartons did you take?” Wu Chen glanced at the bag on the coffee table again and asked quietly.

“…Five,” Li Ruobing said.

Thirty thousand a carton. Five cartons came to a hundred and fifty thousand yuan.

If Li Ruobing had simply stuffed a hundred and fifty thousand in cash into a red envelope and handed it to his parents, Wu Chen thought, they would have found her extravagant and certainly refused the money, but they wouldn’t have been too badly shaken.

Spending a hundred and fifty thousand on five cartons of cigarettes as a gift, though, was terrifying!

Wu Chen took her hand, squeezed her palm, and smiled at her sidelong. “You grab at random and come up with five cartons of the most expensive kind. With hands like that… you really ought to buy a lottery ticket today.”

He was still in the mood to tease her.

“What do we do?” Li Ruobing asked quietly. The cigarettes were already here. She could hardly take them back.

And even if his parents didn’t know what they cost now, they would find out eventually. Looking up how valuable someone’s gift was came naturally to anyone, especially with the internet so convenient these days.

That would clearly put enormous pressure on his parents.

“What else can we do? Lay our cards on the table,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Lay our cards on the table?” Li Ruobing was startled.

“Some of them,” Wu Chen added.

Only then did she settle down. He had genuinely frightened her for a moment. She’d thought he meant to tell his family everything.

If his parents ever found out their son had once been hunted because of her, wouldn’t her prospects as their daughter-in-law be finished?

“Ahem! Bro, we’re in the living room. Behave yourselves…” Wu Jiao finally couldn’t take it anymore and coughed a reminder.

As far as Wu Jiao could see, Wu Chen and Li Ruobing had been acting lovey-dovey the whole time, their faces nearly touching as they whispered, and Wu Chen was even holding Li Ruobing’s hand.

There was nothing wrong with a couple acting like that.

But at home, right in front of Dad? That was a bit much.

Wu Chen shot his sister a look that said, You talk too much. Still, he sat up straight, then leaned back again and sprawled across his own sofa like the lord of the manor.

Li Ruobing had nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Uncle, Wu Chen tells me the family runs a small restaurant?” she said, picking up a topic with easy composure and a smile.

“Ah, yes. A noodle shop. More than twenty years now…” Wu Dahai said cheerfully, still holding that overly formal posture.

“How’s business?”

“Good. We clear about two hundred thousand a year.”

“That’s not bad at all.”

“Sure isn’t… Oh, Bingbing, Jiaojiao came home a few days ago and said you run a company?”

“Yes, Uncle. A cosmetics company.”

“Big business.”

“It does all right.”

Just casual chatter.

Li Ruobing stayed perfectly natural throughout and gradually relaxed completely. Wu Dahai, however, never managed to relax. He was almost deferential toward Li Ruobing.

Wu Chen hardly said a word, sprawled on the sofa watching television.

A little over ten minutes later.

Li Ruobing and Wu Dahai had more or less exhausted the usual topics. Wu Dahai hadn’t dared ask how big her company actually was.

Asking about that too much, he felt, would make it look as though his family was after her money.

“I’ll go see how the kitchen’s doing,” Li Ruobing told Wu Chen, and stood.

She went into the kitchen.

Wu Dahai watched her disappear through the doorway, then turned to his son. “Xiaochen.”

“Hm?” Wu Chen sat up at once and smiled. “What is it, Dad?”

“You…” Wu Dahai seemed about to say something, glanced at the kitchen doorway, and waved it off. “We’ll talk after dinner.”

Naturally, he wanted to ask his son privately what exactly was going on with Li Ruobing. Whether it was solid. Whether it could last.

But now wasn’t the time.

He would have to find a chance later, when no one was around, for father and son to talk alone.

Knock, knock, knock!

Someone was at the door.

Wu Chen glanced toward it.

“Maybe it’s Xiaoxue.” Wu Jiao had already stepped into her slippers and was shuffling to the door at a quick trot.

“Old Wu! Hahaha! Heard your son’s bringing his girlfriend home today. She here yet?” A man’s hearty laugh came through first.

It was indeed Chen Xue.

With her was a tall man in his forties whose features resembled hers.

Her father, Chen Jinye.

Wu Dahai and Chen Jinye had grown up together. After middle school, they had enlisted together and served two years, then come home and each started a small business.

The Wu family’s noodle shop had never grown into anything big. It was still much the same today.

Chen Jinye, on the other hand, was a born hustler. He had lost a lot of money in the early years and leaned on Wu Dahai to get by. When his business finally took off, it had been on money Wu Dahai lent him.

So although Chen Jinye was now worth tens of millions, the bond between the two families had never faded.

Chen Jinye and Chen Xue changed into slippers at the door and came into the living room.

“Uncle Chen,” Wu Chen greeted him with a smile.

“When’d you get back, Xiaochen?” Chen Jinye asked with a grin as Wu Dahai waved him to a seat.

“Just now,” Wu Chen said.

Once seated, Chen Jinye took in the coffee table covered with gifts and understood at once. He grinned. “Xiaochen brought his girlfriend home? Where is she? How come I don’t see her?”

“In the kitchen, talking with his mother,” Wu Dahai said cheerfully.

“So? How is she?” Chen Jinye turned to him at once.

“Very nice.” Wu Dahai kept smiling, not quite sure how else to describe her.

Just then.

“Oh, we have guests?” Li Ruobing came out of the kitchen. She had gone in meaning to lend a hand, but Wu Chen’s mother, Zhang Xiujuan, wouldn’t let her, and she hadn’t pushed.

“Bingbing, come here, let me introduce you…” Wu Dahai stood and beckoned.

Before he could get the words out, Chen Jinye shot to his feet.

“Boss Li?!” He was stunned. He had no idea why he’d be running into Li Ruobing here.

“Hm?” Li Ruobing looked at him, puzzled. “And you are…”

“Oh! Boss Li! It really is you! Oh my, what are you doing here? I’m from Shengye Chemical…” Chen Jinye hurried over.

“Shengye Chemical…” Li Ruobing murmured. The name rang a faint bell. Seeing him approach, she held out her hand.

“Oh, Boss Li, a busy person like you is bound to forget people like me. Don’t you remember? The year before last, when your company opened its second factory… the bidding conference. You came in person…”

Chen Jinye shook her hand, excited and a little ingratiating, his posture deeply deferential.