Chapter 495: Do You Know Me?

Chapter 495: Do You Know Me?

Wu Chen’s words sounded like an outright threat.

Having to make a choice, having no way back—Su Ruiwen couldn’t even remember anyone in his life ever speaking to him in such a tone.

Yet he had the feeling Wu Chen wasn’t threatening him at all. He was simply stating a fact: there were certain things that, once Su Ruiwen learned about them, would force him to make a choice. There would be no turning back.

Silence filled the private room.

Since becoming Donghai’s richest man, Su Ruiwen had rarely experienced this kind of unease. He wanted to understand Wu Chen before making a decision, but now he’d reached an impasse.

The atmosphere wasn’t exactly oppressive.

Wu Chen wore his customary, utterly inscrutable smile.

But a heavy weight had settled over Su Ruiwen’s heart.

And the most anxious person in the room wasn’t Su Ruiwen. What he felt couldn’t really be called anxiety. The anxious one was Wu Yurong. She hadn’t expected Wu Chen to push Su Ruiwen into such a corner so directly.

If things truly got out of hand, she would stand with Wu Chen and show Su Ruiwen no mercy. But taking action against an old friend would cause her great pain.

She still hoped matters would turn out for the best—for both sides.

The silence lasted a full minute.

Several times Su Ruiwen’s hand moved toward his teacup, but he never picked it up.

Knock, knock!

A knock broke the silence, and a waiter entered. “Excuse me…” He had come to serve the wine.

Everyone in the private room behaved perfectly normally. But of the three seemingly composed people, Wu Chen alone was genuinely relaxed, his outward manner matching his inner state.

The waiter opened the wine and poured.

Two bottles were brought in to start. They drank from one, while the other was poured into a decanter and set aside.

After the waiter left and the door closed again, silence returned.

Su Ruiwen looked toward Wu Chen once more. His expression shifted ever so slightly, though he remained largely composed.

Wu Yurong felt as if her heart might leap out of her chest. She was afraid everything might suddenly collapse. The last time she’d felt this way… actually hadn’t been so long ago. It had been during her first meeting and conversation with Wu Chen.

She studied Su Ruiwen’s expression, then suddenly glanced at Wu Chen. She suddenly rested a hand on her wineglass and spoke in her sweet, gentle voice. “Why don’t we have a drink first? It’s not often the three of us get to have dinner together in private…”

Once again, the silence was broken.

Wu Yurong couldn’t bear it any longer. She couldn’t just watch matters head toward a potentially disastrous outcome.

As she spoke, she picked up her glass, stood, and raised it in invitation.

Wu Chen smiled and lifted his glass of red wine as well. Su Ruiwen could hardly refuse and embarrass Wu Yurong, so he raised his glass too.

All three stood.

They raised their glasses toward one another, and Wu Chen even clinked his against Wu Yurong’s. As for the wine… all three took only a small sip.

After setting down their glasses and sitting again, Wu Chen glanced at Wu Yurong. Something subtle touched the smile at the corners of his mouth.

She noticed it. A flash of unease passed through her eyes.

She knew Wu Chen was bound to understand exactly what she was thinking and why she had intervened. What she didn’t know was whether he would permit her to act this way. She had simply forced herself to take the risk.

She hoped she could stop Su Ruiwen from walking toward his own destruction.

“Brother Su, do you know the Qi brothers well?” Wu Yurong asked, looking at him and unconsciously brushing a hand through her hair.

“Not well. I’ve met them, that’s about all…” Su Ruiwen replied. “The last time was probably last year, at an entrepreneurs’ summit in the capital…”

“I’m not close to them either. Brother Lu should know them fairly well, though.” Wu Yurong smiled, her voice as gentle, sweet, and natural as ever.

“But as far as I know, the Qi brothers owe much of their success in recent years to their connections with the Xiang family. Qi Min does have some ability, I suppose…”

In Wu Yurong’s estimation, Qi Min only had “some” ability.

And she was entitled to say so.

The Wu family’s assets weren’t all that much greater than the Qi family’s, but there was a world of difference between building a fortune through one’s own abilities and getting rich by attaching oneself to a powerful family.

Someone like Qi Min had become too deeply entangled with the Xiang family. If the Xiangs wanted to crush him, they could do it immediately. If he’d initially risen by acting as their dog, then being their dog was now the only choice he had left. He couldn’t resist even if he wanted to.

Wu Yurong and the Wu family had no such problem.

Neither did Su Ruiwen and the Su family.

In truth, exceptionally successful entrepreneurs like Wu Yurong and Su Ruiwen had little respect for men like the Qi brothers, especially given the brothers’ dreadful reputations.

“But… I’ve also heard things about Qi Min…” Wu Yurong began recounting stories she’d heard about the Qi brothers and Shuangqi Real Estate.

News of the brothers’ arrest had only spread that day. They really were a subject that could sustain a lengthy conversation.

And Wu Yurong had heard no shortage of rumors about them.

Even though Shuangqi Real Estate had never developed property in Donghai and its owners rarely visited the city, she knew plenty. At the level of billionaires worth tens of billions of yuan, connections and social circles extended across the entire country.

At banquets and over drinks, the things billionaires chatted about weren’t really that different from what ordinary people discussed. They gossiped, too. That was simply human nature. The difference was that their gossip concerned people in their own social class.

Some secrets about the superrich even reached ordinary people, let alone Wu Yurong, who belonged to that world herself.

Smiling, she spoke slowly and softly.

She had a proper, leisurely conversation with Su Ruiwen about the Qi brothers. She mentioned which member of the Xiang family Qi Min was closest to, discussed his ruthlessness, and even brought up an incident years earlier when Qi Min had nearly gotten into serious trouble.

A journalist had died in a car accident.

Qi Min had acted too aggressively. Although the job had been carried out flawlessly, with no evidence pointing to him, one of his business rivals had nearly managed to stir up public outrage. Qi Min couldn’t have withstood an investigation. It was the Xiang family that had stepped in and settled the matter.

To ordinary people, the affair had briefly caused a ripple online before disappearing, attracting little attention.

But people in those circles knew how close Qi Min had come to disaster. The party trying to bring him down had been a giant northern real estate group from which Shuangqi Real Estate had once snatched a parcel of land in Modu…

According to rumor, the Xiang family had called in some very powerful connections to make the other side back off.

Powerful families had always gone to great lengths to protect their loyal dogs. It wasn’t merely a question of saving face; it was also a way to preserve the loyalty of their network of dependents.

Wu Yurong took complete control of the conversation at the table.

She never explicitly judged whether the things Qi Min had done were right or wrong. Yet everything she recounted seemed to suggest that Qi Min deserved to die.

It was almost as if she were supplying a “legitimate reason” for Wu Chen to destroy the Qi family over such a “small matter.” He was ridding the world of evil.

There was a hint of that in her words.

Su Ruiwen could hear it.

He sensed that this was the point of Wu Yurong’s decision to bring up the Qi brothers. Yet it wasn’t important at all. Everyone knew what kind of man Qi Min was; naturally, Wu Yurong knew too. She was talking about things they already knew… and yet she kept talking.

That wasn’t the point.

The real issue… seemed to be right within reach.

But Wu Yurong kept steering the conversation away, refusing to let it drift in that direction.

Before they knew it, the dishes began arriving.

They ate a little, drank a little. The real purpose was still conversation.

If they truly wanted to talk at length about Shuangqi Real Estate, they could go on for a day and a night without exhausting the subject. Any one of the major rumored incidents would provide enough material for a long discussion.

Gradually, Su Ruiwen understood.

Because of what Wu Yurong had said before Wu Chen arrived, he’d assumed she would firmly take Wu Chen’s side at dinner and argue on his behalf.

Only now did he realize she was trying to stop him, Su Ruiwen, from saying the wrong thing.

The real point remained whatever had enabled Wu Chen to persuade Second Master Tang to act. Wu Yurong had talked at length about Shuangqi Real Estate while carefully avoiding the one thing Su Ruiwen most wanted to know.

She didn’t want him to raise that subject again.

That meant…

Could it really be that terrifying?

The more Su Ruiwen considered it, the more a chill crept over him.

He didn’t know whether “those matters” were frightening in themselves, but Wu Yurong’s reaction told him something: once he heard them, there truly would be no turning back. If he chose wrong, would it be the end of him?

Even Wu Yurong believed that?

It made him more cautious than ever about how to deal with Wu Chen.

They chatted for more than half an hour. Throughout, Wu Chen seemed to maintain the same attitude: “If you want to know, I’ll tell you. I’ve already warned you. It’s all the same to me whether I say anything or not.” He didn’t mind Wu Yurong directing the conversation.

Wu Yurong, however, controlled the pace of the conversation with extraordinary care.

Su Ruiwen couldn’t imagine what she had experienced or witnessed after meeting Wu Chen to make her behave this way.

The only thing he could be certain of now was that, in Wu Yurong’s eyes, Wu Chen’s word was absolute. Wu Chen genuinely frightened her.

So was she trying to turn this dinner into nothing more than a casual chat?

“…Actually, I think Qi Min was bound to get into trouble sooner or later. Even if he hadn’t been arrested now, it would have happened eventually… Brother Su, do you remember the name of that young actress? The one who died after falling from a building… It was all over the internet at the time…” Wu Yurong, having had some wine, was in excellent form.

“I remember. Her name was Chu Xiaoxiao. She appeared in some television drama… That was the year before last, wasn’t it? That incident wasn’t Qi Min, though. I heard it was his younger brother, Qi Jun. He went too far and drove the girl to her death…” Su Ruiwen replied. He wasn’t particularly old, only in his early fifties, and his memory was still sharp. Besides, this had happened only a few years ago.

“Yes, Chu Xiaoxiao. The drama was called… It was a historical drama. I even watched a couple of episodes with my daughter…” Wu Yurong said. A rare trace of scorn entered her smile.

She was a woman herself, after all, and tended to be more emotional when discussing matters like this.

“What a complete bastard. Who knows whether she was driven to jump herself or was actually thrown off? It’s insane… The Xiang family covered that up too. Qi Min really is their good little dog, to make them protect him like that…” Wu Yurong said.

“When money comes too easily, it’s easy to lose your mind,” Su Ruiwen observed.

“That wasn’t Qi Jun,” Wu Chen interjected.

He’d occasionally contributed a sentence or two to the earlier conversation, but for the most part had listened.

“Hm?” Wu Yurong turned toward him, startled.

“Not Qi Jun?” Su Ruiwen looked at him as well.

“It was Xiang Feipeng and a few of his good-for-nothing friends. They went wild at a hotel that night. Chu Xiaoxiao was filming in Modu at the time and happened to be staying there. They had a mutual acquaintance who lured her over, and they forced her to jump from the building.”

“After she fell, her body was discovered very quickly, and someone posted photographs online. They couldn’t keep it quiet. In the end… Qi Min had people spread word blaming his younger brother, Qi Jun. All the rumors pointed at Qi Jun. He took the heat for the Xiang family, but Qi Jun hadn’t been there that day either, so an investigation couldn’t pin anything on him. Then the Xiang family used its influence to suppress the public outcry, and the whole thing faded away…”

Wu Chen gave a brief account of what had happened. There was no need to go into the details of how it had been arranged. Redirecting rumors and finding a scapegoat were tactics anyone could understand.

“Xiang Feipeng… Didn’t he go abroad?” Wu Yurong asked after a moment’s thought.

She’d heard of Xiang Feipeng. He was a notorious wastrel of the Xiang family’s third generation. In fact, powerful elite families rarely raised true wastrels. Ding Ruilong, for instance, wasn’t one. Ding Ruilong had psychological problems, but that didn’t mean he lacked ability.

Xiang Feipeng, however, was a wastrel in the truest sense. The only son of the Xiang family’s fourth son, he’d been poorly raised and had no abilities worth mentioning. He’d been causing trouble since his teens. Anyone familiar with powerful family circles would have heard of him.

In earlier years, he’d been responsible for many of the Xiang family’s public embarrassments. Only in the past two years had things quieted down. Word was he’d gone abroad, and there had been no more news of him.

“He did go abroad.” Wu Chen glanced at Wu Yurong. “Because of this incident. Half a month after Chu Xiaoxiao fell to her death, he left the country. They said he was going overseas to pursue further studies, but the truth was that the Xiang family had given up on him. He kept making the same mistakes without learning anything, so they sent him away. They established a trust for him overseas, enough to live on, and forbade him from returning home…”

“So that’s what happened…” Wu Yurong listened in surprise. After a moment, she smiled. “The Qi brothers really are loyal dogs. I wasn’t wrong about that…”

“How does Mr. Wu know all this?” Su Ruiwen suddenly asked.

“I investigated it,” Wu Chen replied, turning toward him with a smile.

“Investigated…” Su Ruiwen repeated the word to himself.

It reminded him once again that Wu Chen seemed to know a great many things—things that, to Su Ruiwen, it was simply incomprehensible for him to know.

The matters involving Xu Zhenyuan were one example.

The Chu Xiaoxiao incident was another.

The incident had caused a tremendous stir online, but even within elite circles there hadn’t been the slightest rumor implicating Xiang Feipeng. Nothing had connected it to the Xiang family. Everyone said Qi Jun was responsible. And Qi Jun’s outrageous, excessive indulgences were common knowledge, so people who heard the rumors believed them.

Under those circumstances, how could anyone have thought to investigate Xiang Feipeng, much less uncover the truth in such detail?

Or had Wu Chen been investigating Xiang Feipeng and discovered the incident along the way?

But why would he investigate Xiang Feipeng?

Among the Xiang family’s third generation, Xiang Feipeng had no real standing. He was a marginal figure, famous only because he was so good at getting into trouble…

Moreover, Wu Yurong had brought up the incident only because the conversation happened to lead there. Her reaction to Wu Chen’s account made it clear she had never discussed it with him before.

Yet Wu Chen had immediately supplied the “truth.”

It gave Su Ruiwen an extraordinarily strange feeling. He was beginning to think that Wu Chen might know far, far too much—about everything, in every sphere of life. Only that could explain how he could casually produce such information in the middle of an entirely unplanned conversation.

If that were true, it was practically supernatural.

And Wu Chen was only twenty-two.

“Mr. Wu seems to know the Xiang family very well?” Su Ruiwen asked after considering it.

“Reasonably well,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Then…” Su Ruiwen began, but stopped.

He’d been about to ask something about the Xiang family. Instead, he decided to skip that question. He had thought of a far more precise “test”—and one that mattered far more to him personally.

“Then, Mr. Wu, do you know me?” Su Ruiwen asked, looking straight into his eyes.

“Fairly well, I’d say.” Wu Chen met his gaze and smiled.

“I…” Su Ruiwen began, then paused again. He set his left arm upright on the table. With his right hand, he undid the button on his left suit cuff, then the button on his shirt cuff, and rolled the sleeve back…

A change came over Wu Yurong’s eyes.

It wasn’t the sight of Su Ruiwen rolling up his sleeve that surprised her. It was the centipede-like scar she saw on his left forearm, at least ten centimeters long.

She’d known Su Ruiwen for so many years, yet she’d never known he had a scar like that on his arm.

“Mr. Wu, do you know how I got this scar?” Su Ruiwen asked, fixing Wu Chen with an intent gaze.