Chapter 551: You’re So Cute

Chapter 551: You’re So Cute

This time, Li Ruobing felt neither shock, nor confusion, nor paralyzing bewilderment!

Because she had begun to suspect she was trapped in a dream!

Only a dream could offer a rational explanation for any of this! It even explained why An Menglan had suddenly posted such a post like that on Weibo today!

An Menglan’s sudden provocation had been inherently abnormal from the start. That woman cared about saving face far more than Li Ruobing did. Given her status as a generational superstar, being exposed as a homewrecking mistress meant that the loftier her pedestal, the more catastrophically she would shatter.

Li Ruobing was genuinely beginning to question her reality.

Perhaps Wu Chen had dealt her mind too many staggering shocks, seeping into her subconscious until she dreamed of him day and night, imagining him as someone who could do anything.

And deep down, she had never truly denied that An Menglan might pose a threat.

She worried that An Menglan might one day throw caution to the wind and challenge her head-on.

So… this was all a dream! It made absolute sense!

Wu Chen caught the cadence of her breathing through the receiver. It was the distinct rhythm Li Ruobing’s breath assumed only when her mind was spiraling down some bizarre, esoteric rabbit hole. The thousand-year loop had long since honed Wu Chen’s psychological acuity to a borderline inhuman threshold; his mental fortitude had surpassed mortal boundaries. He remembered every scenario he had ever navigated with Li Ruobing, down to the most microscopic nuance.

“You aren’t dreaming. Don’t slap yourself! It’ll hurt. Put your left hand down,” Wu Chen warned with a gentle chuckle.

Li Ruobing, whose left hand had just risen toward her cheek, froze instantly.

She truly had been about to strike herself!

Li Ruobing had always been this brutally direct. Rather than waste time agonizing over whether she was dreaming, delivering a sharp slap to her own face was the quickest way to find out: simple, fast, and remarkably efficient. During the thousand-year loop, Wu Chen had once driven her to slap herself to check whether she was dreaming. More often, however, she had done so to ascertain whether she was drunk or losing her faculties.

Smack!

“Hiss…”

Wu Chen still caught the sharp crack of flesh against flesh over the line. Li Ruobing had ignored his counsel, stubbornly delivering the blow anyway, followed by a sharp intake of breath as the sting flared.

This woman was perpetually obstinate to a fault!

“See? I told you it wasn’t a dream,” Wu Chen teased lightly. “Don’t tell me you’ve picked up habits from Qingying? For her, it’s a peculiar indulgence; what’s your excuse?”

Silence reclaimed the line once more.

From a psychological perspective, Li Ruobing’s reaction was a textbook defense mechanism attempting to escape reality. The sheer weight of reality had dealt her worldview too violent a concussion; every shred of education and logic she possessed screamed that a man as terrifyingly omniscient as Wu Chen simply could not exist!

The silence stretched for nearly thirty seconds.

This time, Wu Chen held his peace, waiting for her emotional equilibrium to restore itself.

“Can you genuinely divine fortunes?” Li Ruobing asked, her voice tight. “Then tell me: how many people in our company are celebrating their birthdays today?”

“Three. Your secretary, Xiaomei; Chen Donghe from R&D; and Xu Xinxin from Advertising… The latter two celebrate according to their official identification cards, while Xiaomei observes hers according to the lunar calendar… And no, I cannot divine fortunes,” Wu Chen answered in a single, unhurried breath.

“…”

Li Ruobing was struck utterly dumb once more.

You have the fucking gall to claim you can’t divine fortunes?!

You have an immediate answer for whatever I throw at you! Spouting it off without a second of hesitation! Is that something a human being should be capable of?!

As if reading her thoughts through the ether, Wu Chen added smoothly, “This truly isn’t fortune-telling. Divination inherently requires a computational process of deductions, doesn’t it? As you can see, I answer off the top of my head. That merely proves I possess an excellent memory and… formidable intelligence-gathering abilities!”

“You played me,” Li Ruobing muttered, her voice dropping into a chilling, shadowy register. “You really refuse to let me win even once. This time, for An Menglan’s sake, you’ve bested me yet again.”

“Are you jealous? Hey, come on! Truly?” Wu Chen teased.

“Yes! I am jealous! What of it?” Li Ruobing fired back defiantly. “I have no intention of breaking my word, but I cannot completely suppress my emotions! Are you reveling in this? Does throwing me into psychological disarray grant you such a magnificent sense of accomplishment?”

This time, Wu Chen paused deliberately, as though giving the matter serious contemplation, before softly breaking the silence.

“You’re so cute,” he chuckled.

“You fucking…”

Li Ruobing’s composure fractured almost completely.

She had fully intended to pick a vicious fight with Wu Chen. The stakes she had forfeited in this wager pushed dangerously close to her absolute limit. And so, for the first time in her life, Li Ruobing had unleashed what she regarded as a woman’s “ultimate weapon” against him! It was the only desperate maneuver she could devise to wriggle out of having to kiss An Menglan!

And yet, in return, she had been hit with the sweetest words of endearment she had ever received in her entire life!

The words themselves were unremarkable. Had any other man dared utter them, Li Ruobing would have assumed he had lost his mind.

Yet spoken from Wu Chen’s lips, they stirred an extraordinarily delicate flutter in her chest.

An aloof, aggressively dominant woman inherently yearned to be conquered by an even more formidable masculine will; in her eyes, other men were pathetic, fragile creatures. Had one of them dared describe her as “cute,” Li Ruobing would have been revolted enough to vomit!

Yet Wu Chen…

When the words came from him, they allowed Li Ruobing to feel, if only for a fleeting moment, like a normal woman. While cuddling, coddling, and being swept off her feet did not suit her temperament, an occasional, unguarded touch like this could still penetrate the marrow of her bones!

“You still haven’t answered my question. Everything I said was spot on, wasn’t it?” Wu Chen chuckled once more.

“You win,” Li Ruobing snapped, her voice trembling with barely contained fury. “Just wait until I reach Modu tomorrow! You and I are going to have a very long, very thorough talk! My dearest Mr. Wu!”

“You’re embarrassed,” Wu Chen pointed out, seeing straight through her defenses.

“I’m not! Stop… stop making wild guesses about me!”

“You are embarrassed! Wow! Li Ruobing actually gets shy!”

“You fucking… Shut up! Go keep that shameless superstar of yours company! I’m hanging up!”

Li Ruobing was teetering on the brink of total collapse. There were times when Wu Chen would drag her most closely guarded vulnerabilities into the daylight. Had they been standing face-to-face, she could have simply sealed his lips with a fierce kiss to silence him; but over the phone, with Wu Chen teasing her relentlessly, she had no way to stop him. She simply couldn’t take it!

“All right, I’ll let you go. See you tomorrow,” Wu Chen smiled.

“Mm!” Li Ruobing answered through her nose, preparing to sever the call.

“Little Wu…”

Abruptly, a voice intimately familiar to Li Ruobing filtered through the background audio on Wu Chen’s end. Though it sounded distant, hollow, and thick with drunken slurring, her ears caught it in an instant.

It was her father, Li Maoren!

“Wait! You’re with my father? My dad went to Modu?” Li Ruobing demanded sharply.

“Ah, yes,” Wu Chen replied casually. “We’re in the middle of dinner. I stepped out to make this call and need to head back inside. We’ll speak tomorrow.”

“You two… Fine!” Li Ruobing burned to pry further, yet reined herself in. In her dynamic with Wu Chen, she had long since cultivated the discretion of a woman who stepped aside to let her man tend to serious affairs, ravenous though her curiosity was!

Beep, beep, beep…

The line went dead.

What on earth is he orchestrating? He isn’t with An Menglan? He’s with my father? Who else is present?

Lost in thought, Li Ruobing drifted back to her executive chair and sat down. The reflexive chill masking her face slowly softened, the corners of her lips curling into an involuntary smile.

He was right in the middle of a high-stakes dinner, yet he still managed to slip away at the exact second to call me? He knew I was on the verge of calling him, so he beat me to the punch at the very last moment… Was he deliberately preserving my pride?

Li Ruobing crossed her forearms over the mahogany desk, leaned forward and buried her head in her arms.

She did not want a soul to bear witness…

Even though she sat entirely alone in her vast office, she still felt the instinctive urge to hide her current state—and that faintly sweet, helpless smile gracing her lips.

In truth, Li Ruobing’s metric for true authority was simple: so long as you were formidable enough, you had the license to do whatever you pleased!

And given how terrifyingly strong she was herself, any man capable of meeting her exacting standards was bound to be deficient in emotional pampering. Li Ruobing had made peace with that reality!

Yet Wu Chen…

An hour later.

Li Ruobing dialed her father’s private line.

She had to know precisely what Wu Chen had set in motion.