Li Lulu had clearly seen the change in Li Tianpeng’s face, and putting that together with the faintly drawn-swords atmosphere she’d walked into, she guessed at once that something had happened between them. She forced a smile and said to Su Feifei, “Feifei, it looks like the two of you haven’t been introduced. This is the big brother I mentioned to you last time, Li Tian—”

“No introduction necessary. I already know.” Su Feifei’s tone went stiff, and she didn’t bother with courtesy. “This big brother of yours doesn’t seem nearly as rare and unmatched as you made him sound, and I don’t have much more to say. Have your brother pay the three hundred million he lost in full, immediately. We’re leaving.”

“Ah… ah!? Three… three hundred million? What did you say?” Li Lulu’s eyes and mouth flew open together. Her first assumption was that something had gone wrong with her ears.

Su Feifei repeated it. “Three hundred million! Your brother proposed a wager to my boyfriend himself. Then, being a man of such sterling character, he lost three hundred million and now wants to welch on it, and he’s threatening us into leaving. I’ve certainly seen for myself how outstanding this brother of yours is.”

“Three… three… three hundred million? Big brother, did you really lose… three hundred million!?” Li Lulu stammered, staring at Li Tianpeng in shock. At a figure that enormous, it was impressive she hadn’t fainted on the spot.

“Hmph!” Li Tianpeng snorted and said nothing more, still thrashing internally over how to get out of this. He bitterly regretted having moved on Su Feifei without first checking who she was.

That snort was as good as an admission. At a loss, Li Lulu turned to Su Feifei, instinctively wanting to plead, to shamelessly offer something along the lines of it was only a bit of fun, don’t take it seriously — but faced with the fire in Su Feifei’s eyes, she found she didn’t quite dare meet them. So she turned instead to the silent Ye Tianxie… and only now did she properly look at him.

It’s because of him that big brother lost three hundred million. Li Lulu seethed. Never try to reason with a woman. Li Tianpeng had plainly picked the fight and then lost it comprehensively, and she nonetheless concentrated the entire fault and all of her hatred squarely on Ye Tianxie. Su Feifei she couldn’t help fearing — but this man, who had not a trace of aristocratic bearing about him, she had nothing to fear from, boyfriend or not. Because when she’d met Su Feifei a fortnight ago there had been no boyfriend at all; whether the claim was even true was one question, and even if it was, it was a matter of a few days. From her own vantage and her own way of living, a boyfriend was a species of entertainment to be picked up and discarded according to mood. Judging Su Feifei’s heart by her own, Ye Tianxie was some pretty-boy Su Feifei had picked up temporarily — and which daughter of a great house didn’t play that game constantly, let alone the only daughter of the richest man in Asia? She didn’t for a moment believe Su Feifei would truly turn on her over him.

“Hey. What’s your name!” Li Lulu demanded of Ye Tianxie without a shred of courtesy. Facing him, her overbearing manner came out in full, laced with obvious anger and contempt. Accustomed to so-called high society, she had long since made a person’s dress and taste the standard by which she judged their birth and family. Ye Tianxie’s outfit — the sort she wouldn’t normally spare a glance — earned nothing but disdain. And besides, he looked to her like nothing more than a kept pretty-boy this young mistress had bought.

Ye Tianxie didn’t so much as move an eyeball. He sat there quietly, playing with his fingernails.

His total dismissal of her, and the fury of being ignored, boiled over at once, and Li Lulu shrieked, “I’m talking to you! Are you deaf!!”

A good man does not quarrel with a woman; a true gentleman does not stoop to a woman’s level.

But Ye Tianxie was certainly no good man, and he was no kind of gentleman.

The instant the words left her mouth, Ye Tianxie’s half-lowered head snapped around, and two eyes gone suddenly vicious drove straight into hers. Under that gaze, Li Lulu’s breath simply stopped. She felt as though two razor-edged knives had been laid against her throat, and a deep terror took root in her. Her whole body went cold, her lips went white, and she took an involuntary step backward.

A frigid aura released itself outward with Ye Tianxie’s body at its center, enveloping everyone in the room and draining the color from every face. The air turned cold — an actual, physical cold — and what they felt was a thing almost material, a thing called presence.

In that moment, every gaze turned on Ye Tianxie with varying degrees of alarm and trembling… This man who had suddenly begun radiating cold. By now even a fool would have understood from that chill that he was anything but ordinary.

Li Tianpeng rose and, with one arm, pulled the trembling Li Lulu behind him, his face uncertain. Su Feifei, standing nearest and the first to feel the shift in his mood, tightened her grip on his arm and whispered, “Tianxie… don’t… don’t be angry yet. That’s just how she always talks…”

And in that moment she confirmed something else: this really was a petty man. All the other woman had done was shout “are you deaf” at him, and he was already this incensed… He truly could not stand to come off worse in anything.

“Don’t worry. I really hate men who hit women.” Ye Tianxie stared at Li Lulu, sheltered behind her brother, and said it with a cold smile. At those words, the tension in Li Tianpeng and Li Lulu both eased a fraction. Li Tianpeng was no fool — anyone who could project an aura like that was a master, and no ordinary one.

Su Feifei hadn’t even had time to praise him for it when the body beside her blurred. Ye Tianxie left her side like a ghost, appearing in front of Li Tianpeng — and then came the crack of a slap, accompanied by a woman’s shriek like a pig being butchered.

The blow spun Li Lulu a full 360 degrees on the spot before she toppled sideways to the floor, her right cheek a mass of red, two teeth knocked clean out of her mouth. She clutched at the rapidly swelling side of her face, her eyes unfocused — plainly slapped straight into a stupor.

Su Feifei stared, hands over her mouth, at a complete loss.

Ye Tianxie raised his right hand, blew lightly across his palm, and said coldly, “Next time, before you go out into the world, you’d do well to learn how to speak.”

He shook out his hand, walked back to his seat, and sat down as though nothing had happened.

“You… didn’t you say you hate men who hit women?” Su Feifei asked, standing beside him, faintly.

“I did. I never said I don’t hit women, though.” Ye Tianxie rolled his eyes, the picture of innocence.

“Then you… you’re not going to hit me like that someday, are you?” Su Feifei pinched at the hem of her top, biting her lip, looking thoroughly pitiful.

Ye Tianxie glanced at her, amused. “I’m your personal bodyguard. For three hundred million, I wouldn’t dare hit you… Honestly, I’ve never hit a woman before. This one just genuinely turned my stomach, so I slipped—” And then he smiled, mysteriously, and lowered his voice. “Also, after your name came out, I watched Li Tianpeng dithering there with no idea what to do. So I reluctantly made the decision for him.”

“AAAH!!” Li Lulu, coming back to herself, shrieked like a lunatic. One hand clamped to her face, the other jabbing at Ye Tianxie, she screamed, “He hit me… he actually hit me!! I’ll kill you!! BIG BROTHER!!”

Li Tianpeng’s expression convulsed. He roared and stabbed a finger at Ye Tianxie. “Break his arms and legs.” But he retained just enough sense to add: “Don’t hurt Miss Su!”

The several dozen stunned people snapped out of it as though from a dream. The women scrambled backward in disarray; the men surged forward — some bare-handed, some hauling up stools and chairs, some producing blades they’d had hidden on them — and rushed Ye Tianxie. The young mistress, slapped in public… this could not stand!

Ye Tianxie’s mouth twisted. He reached out, hooked an arm around Su Feifei’s waist, and looked down into eyes that were plainly brimming with excitement. “Miss Su. Finding this thrilling?”

“Mm!” Su Feifei nodded hard, feeling the heat of the arm around her waist and the intoxicating safety it carried. This was the first time… the first time he had ever held her like this of his own accord. When she’d called him her boyfriend earlier, it hadn’t been for fun. It was a longing she’d been carrying privately, and every time it slipped out, it sent her heart racing. And it was then that she finally knew for certain: she had genuinely fallen for him.

Is there going to be a fight? she called out inwardly, pressing closer to him. She had lived through danger too many times, and she longed to be protected… longed for this man at her side to shield her with his body and beat down every enemy around them.

Fierce wind came at them from the front, the back, and the right at once. Ye Tianxie turned slightly, Su Feifei still in his arm, and kicked a chair away with his foot. There was a series of sharp cracks: the chair slammed into the arm of the man in front, then continued on undiminished, flattening four men in a row, and every one it struck produced the crisp snap of breaking bone — a sound to chill the blood.

A heavy fist landed square on Ye Tianxie’s back. A scornful smile touched his mouth; there was no pain from the impact at all. The man who had struck him, meanwhile, was clutching his own hand and howling like a slaughtered pig… It was the sensation of throwing a punch with every ounce of accumulated strength and slamming it into a block of impossibly hard stone. He could already feel that the bones of his hand had been fractured by the shock.

(End of Chapter 133)