Chapter 496: Something That Could Send Me to Prison Now?

Chapter 496: Something That Could Send Me to Prison Now?

Su Ruiwen only displayed the scar for a moment before resting his arm naturally on the table. He looked Wu Chen in the eye. He didn’t believe Wu Chen could possibly know where it had come from.

The supernatural was merely an explanation people forced upon things they couldn’t understand.

In truth, any normal person found it difficult to believe from the bottom of their heart that supernatural phenomena existed.

Su Ruiwen didn’t believe in them.

And in the entire world, only three people knew that he had this scar on his arm, counting Su Ruiwen himself.

One of the other two was his wife, Mrs. Su.

The other was the brother who had stood with him through life and death: Tang Deyang, senior executive vice president of Jinfu Group, president of its business division, and the group’s fourth-largest individual shareholder.

Neither of those two would ever betray Su Ruiwen.

Only three people knew the scar existed. Su Ruiwen never wore short sleeves. Not even Su Qingying knew her father had such a scar.

As for the scar’s exact origins, only one other person besides Su Ruiwen actually knew: Tang Deyang. Even Mrs. Su didn’t know precisely how he had gotten it. The scar had already been there when she married him.

Su Ruiwen had only told her he’d been injured years ago, without explaining further.

“That scar… is quite old,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Do you know exactly how I got it, Mr. Wu?” Su Ruiwen asked again, making his question more precise.

“It looks as though something cut you…” Wu Yurong remarked casually. Her eyes moved back and forth between Wu Chen and Su Ruiwen, and she was uneasy herself.

Wu Yurong was certain there was something almost supernatural about Wu Chen, but she couldn’t judge just how far it went.

She wasn’t Li Ruobing. She didn’t know Wu Chen nearly as deeply.

She understood that Su Ruiwen was testing Wu Chen’s abilities and that his answer would have an enormous effect on Su Ruiwen’s final decision.

“Thirty years ago, Boss Su was just in his early twenties and had already built up a modest business,” Wu Chen began with a smile.

The moment he said “thirty years ago,” Su Ruiwen’s expression changed slightly. The timing was exactly right.

“Back then… you and Tang Deyang traveled to northern Myanmar together to buy rough jadeite directly from the mines…”

“That afternoon—to be exact, the afternoon of October 8, 1990—you and your companions got into a verbal dispute with another group of buyers from China, from Yun Province.”

“After that dispute, Boss Su, you cut open a stone at the jadeite mine and found imperial green jadeite on the spot…”

“That same night, you decided to leave immediately. On the road, you were pursued and attacked. The security escorts you’d hired locally were either killed or fled. You lost the goods. You and Tang Deyang ran for your lives. Between you, you had three guns, and you fired every last bullet. The other side ran out too… In the end, it came down to knives.”

“Boss Su, you personally killed the last two men who caught up with you. You were wounded too, and not only on the arm. You were injured around the waist as well, though that wasn’t nearly as serious as the arm wound. A knife merely slashed across it…”

“Afterward, you and Tang Deyang hid from place to place in northern Myanmar for a month before finally escaping back to China. The wound on your arm was stitched up at an unlicensed clinic in Myanmar. The work was terrible. By the time you came home, it had more or less healed… No tendons or bones were damaged. It was only a flesh wound, though the cut was quite deep.”

Wu Chen told the entire tale at an unhurried pace. It sounded like a remarkable adventure, full of danger and excitement.

But it wasn’t a story. Every bit of it had truly happened.

As Su Ruiwen had built his fortune, he’d experienced such mortal danger more than once. Myanmar in the 1980s and 1990s had been a place of extraordinary chaos, divided among warlords.

Warlords who dealt in jadeite had no reason to prey on their own customers. Their mines were right there; all they had to do was keep digging. There was no need to ruin their reputation through such dealings.

But rule by competing warlords meant appalling public security. Murder, robbery, and killing for valuables occurred almost every day.

Su Ruiwen looked refined and scholarly now, but that bearing had developed only after he’d made his fortune, over the intervening years. When he was young, he’d been genuinely fierce. He’d traveled to Myanmar personally to secure the best stones at the lowest prices… In those days, it was practically a matter of risking his life.

Su Ruiwen stared at Wu Chen.

Wu Chen’s account sounded broad in outline, but it was actually extraordinarily detailed. He’d revealed many crucial particulars.

It made no scientific sense.

“As for exactly how Boss Su got the scar on his arm, Tang Deyang should be the only person who knows. He saw Boss Su get stabbed with his own eyes… Even Mrs. Su probably doesn’t know the precise circumstances.” Wu Chen met Su Ruiwen’s eyes, smiling as he added in a suggestive tone, “Am I right, Boss Su?”

“How did you know?” Su Ruiwen demanded, staring at him.

By asking that, he had effectively admitted that everything Wu Chen had said was correct.

“I investigated,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“How?”

“It’s complicated.”

Su Ruiwen understood. Wu Chen didn’t want to explain how he’d learned all this.

The private room fell silent.

Su Ruiwen couldn’t calm himself. This was the first time he’d witnessed that almost supernatural side of Wu Chen with his own eyes. He’d heard plenty about it before, but none of it had concerned Su Ruiwen himself, so he’d been free to speculate.

Now it concerned him personally, and speculation was impossible.

There was no chance Tang Deyang had told anyone about the incident. None whatsoever.

Wu Yurong’s gaze moved between the two men. Nothing about Wu Chen’s performance surprised her in the slightest. This was the Wu Chen she knew: the mysterious Mr. Wu. The person who surprised her was Su Ruiwen, the central figure of that “story.”

Rumors that Su Ruiwen had killed people had circulated in Donghai in earlier years, but no one had ever confirmed them.

Today, they’d been confirmed.

Wu Yurong’s heart was in her throat. She hoped her old friend Su Ruiwen would stop there. She hoped he’d now come to regard Wu Chen as someone who couldn’t be defeated. If so, everything would move toward a good outcome.

What she feared was that Su Ruiwen wouldn’t be intimidated at all, but would instead regard Wu Chen as a threat because he knew too much…

Silence lingered for quite some time.

“What else do you know, Mr. Wu?” Su Ruiwen finally asked.

“A great deal,” Wu Chen answered with a smile.

“Then do you know whether I’ve ever killed anyone in China?” Su Ruiwen asked, holding his gaze. The question was exceptionally direct.

“You have,” Wu Chen said with a smile. “That jade merchant from Yun Province—the man who hired people to rob you of your goods. His name was Zhu Duanshan. In January 1991, after you and Tang Deyang spent two months back in Donghai recovering, you went to Myanmar again. You passed through Yun Province… and, Boss Su, you went after Zhu Duanshan with a double-barreled shotgun and killed him with a single shot.”

Su Ruiwen was silent.

But this silence didn’t last long—only six or seven seconds. Then he spoke again, putting one final question to Wu Chen.

“Mr. Wu, do you know anything that could send me to prison now?”

What had happened in Myanmar, and Zhu Duanshan’s death, weren’t enough to put Su Ruiwen in prison. Too much time had passed. The incidents abroad presented no problem to begin with, and the one in China… that was thirty years ago. There wouldn’t be any evidence left.

Even if both incidents became public knowledge now, the most they would do was damage Su Ruiwen’s reputation. There would be no other consequences.

So what Su Ruiwen wanted to know was… did Wu Chen know something that could put the man he was today behind bars?