Su Feifei wiped her tears away without a trace and turned back with a face full of indifference. “Never mind, let’s not talk about that. Anyway, you’re so strong, however many of them come you’ll knock down. You’re not even scared of bullets! Sometimes I wonder if you’re an alien… Don’t forget, my father is paying you three hundred million to protect me. My safety comes before everything else. Understood?”

“Understood…” Ye Tianxie paused, and then his voice went quiet and gentle. “Wherever I am, no one will be able to hurt you. Those things — you can forget them.”

Su Feifei’s bright eyes trembled slightly, and a warm impulse gathered in her, an urge to throw herself against him and lean there. She dropped her head and said softly, “And if one day you fall in love, and get married, and have children… will you still protect me?”

She couldn’t help thinking of that room, elegant and full of soft violet… and of the look on Ye Tianxie’s face then, the one that had frightened her. And in that instant she felt a deep dimming inside her… and a faint ache in her heart she couldn’t account for.

Am I only leaning on him too heavily because I crave safety? Or have I actually fallen for him…? Is it the first — or have I, without noticing, truly come to feel something for him?

Faced with that question, all Ye Tianxie could do was stay silent.

Afraid of hearing the answer she was afraid of, Su Feifei hurried on. “Never mind, never mind, I said we weren’t talking about it… Tianxie, that man — is he going to… is he already dead?”

“Probably.” He said it with some uncertainty. With his old strength, that kick would have left the man half-dead… but even he hadn’t expected the force behind it to be that great. As things stood, if the man wasn’t dead already, he wasn’t far off.

“Then… then what do we do? If the police come… and this estate has cameras everywhere, someone must have seen it,” Su Feifei said, a little tense.

“Don’t worry. That assassin’s no fool. Every camera with a view of this spot was destroyed or jammed by some means long before he made his move. As for the corpse… someone will be along to clean it up shortly.” Ye Tianxie said it without a flicker of concern.

The words had barely left him when a wine-red maglev sports car came screaming up, moving with staggering speed, and pulled to a crisp stop right in front of them.

The door opened and a middle-aged man climbed out, drenched in sweat, and stood before Su Feifei respectfully. “Miss, your car has arrived.”

Su Feifei gave her beloved car — one of them — a light pat and nodded, then pointed at the assassin, alive or dead. “Uncle Seven, clean that up.”

The man had already spotted the body sprawled facedown a short way off when he arrived. He showed none of the shock or alarm an ordinary person would have. He simply nodded briskly, while stealing a glance out of the corner of his eye at Ye Tianxie’s perfectly calm face. He had already heard about this young man’s terrifying skill from Su Luo’s two elite bodyguards. Which was precisely why Su Luo was content to let his daughter live here.

“Get in, let’s go!”

Su Feifei waved grandly, opened the door, and dropped into the driver’s seat. Ye Tianxie hesitated, then sheepishly took the passenger side… He genuinely couldn’t drive.

The car started soundlessly and shot away. The middle-aged man watched them go, then turned toward the assassin, phone already in hand…

“Do you… do you always drive like this?” Ye Tianxie’s voice had developed something of a tremor. Even he found his first ride in Su Feifei’s car a white-knuckle experience.

Through the choked traffic and crowds of central Jinghua City, Su Feifei was — by Ye Tianxie’s estimate — doing at least 170.

Lunatic. This woman is a lunatic.

One hand on the wheel, Su Feifei threaded through the packed streams of cars and people with relaxed ease, like a cheetah plunging into a herd of cattle. In no time at all, no fewer than three drivers had their nerves short-circuit as she came howling past close enough to shave their paint, nearly rear-ending the cars in front of them.

“Mm-hm. Back when I drove myself, people were always tailing me, so I had to be fast. So I’m used to going just a liiittle bit quick. Heh heh heh heh.”

Ye Tianxie swallowed hard. Is this driving, or a suicide attempt?

“So. Where are we going?”

“We’re going… to a casino!!” Su Feifei thought about it for less than a second before her eyes lit up and it burst out of her.

“You like gambling?”

“Nope. I’ve just never been to one, so I’m curious.” Su Feifei said it, grinning. Unshackled, with a super-bodyguard at her side and the shadow of fear gone, she intended to spend today tearing through every place she’d ever wanted to go and never could. The casino was one of them — a place full of the worst kind of company, exactly the sort she’d never once dared enter. But now…

“This isn’t Macau. Where would you even find a casino?” Feeling the car swing left and right, Ye Tianxie kept a firm grip on the door handle. This woman’s driving… was terrifying.

“Heh heh. This young lady, with nineteen years of rich life experience, informs you that you will not find a single place in all of Huaxia without a casino. Some of them are just open about it and some prefer nobody know.” That said, she kept one hand on the wheel and picked up her phone with the other — a maneuver that raised Ye Tianxie’s terror by another order of magnitude.

“Hello… Lulu, that casino your family runs, the one you mentioned last time — where is it… Mm-hm! I want to come play… Ha, got it, we’ll be right over.”

She put the phone down and cut the wheel, very nearly flinging Ye Tianxie under his own seat.

“Lulu — a friend of yours?” Ye Tianxie asked, gripping the handle, forcing himself to stay composed.

“Sort of. Met her at a cocktail party, we got along well enough. She’s the young mistress of the Li Group. The biggest underground casino in Jinghua City belongs to her family. Last time, she said she wanted to introduce me to her handsome, loaded older brother.” Su Feifei said it with great animation.

Ye Tianxie: “…”

The western outskirts of Jinghua City.

This was a large and rather famous entertainment district — racing clubs, shooting clubs, golf clubs, equestrian clubs, swimming clubs, restaurants of every description, KTV lounges, saunas, and so on and so forth, all of it. This sprawling zone was a well-known paradise for the rich, and a place only the rich could afford to play in.

Luxury cars gathered here at all hours, and every day you could watch magnates and even senior officials come and go, with their mistresses (or their nth mistress) at their elbows, along with a steady supply of third-tier, second-tier, and even first-tier celebrities. None of the clubs here were open to the public — they ran strict membership systems, and even the lowest-grade membership card cost upward of a hundred thousand. Without one, you didn’t get in.

The single exception was the casino.

The Li Group’s Li Casino was located directly beneath this entertainment district — the largest underground casino in Jinghua City, occupying several thousand square meters. Two full rows of guards stood at its entrance, eyes fixed straight ahead, and when Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei walked in, not one of them so much as glanced their way.

Descending the stairs, before they even reached the main floor, a chaos of shouts, cries, cheers, and roars reached them, along with the sound of gaming machinery turning. Su Feifei instinctively drew closer to Ye Tianxie, then bit her lip surreptitiously, suddenly hooked her arm around his, and said with a perfectly straight face while her heart hammered like a startled deer, “Come on, hurry up… Let’s go see what a casino looks like.”

Warmth and softness pressed intermittently against his arm. Before Ye Tianxie could react at all, Su Feifei had already hauled him inside at a trot.

Honestly, it was Ye Tianxie’s first time in a casino too. Only when the main floor came into view did he see what a real one actually looked like.

The acrid stink of tobacco hit him first. Countless tables were laid out across the room, each one ringed with immaculately dressed men and women of every description, threaded through with sharply turned-out attendants and dealers working their various sleights of hand. And of course, guards positioned throughout.

“Wow!! So this is a casino… It’s even more exciting than I imagined. Let’s go play!” Su Feifei dragged him along by the arm, running deeper in, her face flushed with excitement. Most women are creatures who love a bit of noise and life, and her circumstances had strangled that right out of her. Today, at last, she was letting herself go without a second thought.

A girl of that figure, that face, that presence drew a swarm of admiring stares the moment she appeared — and among them, inevitably, plenty carrying other intentions. But with Ye Tianxie at her side, not one person came over to try their luck. This was Li Group turf, and nobody was arrogant enough to run wild here. As for what happened after they left…

“What do you want to play?” Ye Tianxie asked the visibly thrilled girl beside him.

“How do you play this one?” Su Feifei stopped in front of a slot machine, full of curiosity and anticipation.

“…No idea. But before we play, I think we’re supposed to exchange for chips first.” Ye Tianxie pointed at the service counter by the entrance. He’d never been in a casino, but that rule… surely everyone knew that one.

So Su Feifei hauled him off toward the counter. She herself probably hadn’t noticed, but since stepping outside, her reliance on him had become total — even exchanging chips wasn’t something she’d do alone or send him to do, but something they had to do together… Instinctively, she didn’t want to be a single step away from him.

They exchanged two thousand for chips and returned to the slot machine, where the pair of them fiddled with the thing for a good long while under the dealer’s peculiar gaze before working out roughly how to play. Then the reels began to spin under Su Feifei’s ardent gaze…

Ten minutes later, every chip she’d bought was gone.

(End of Chapter 127)