“Young Master Zuo… I don’t understand… That man is—” Second Young Master Li asked, trembling. Young Master Zuo’s authority was a terrifying thing, and nobody doubted it. Even as the Li family’s second son, he had to stand meek and obedient in the man’s presence. This was someone his father, and his father’s father, could not afford to provoke.

“Heh.” The fat man laughed coldly. “Think I’m insulting your Li family by saying it? Wrong… Who he is, you don’t need to know. But I can tell you with full responsibility that your brother hasn’t offended a man — he’s offended a living King of Hell who treats human lives as nothing. If you want your brother to keep breathing, you’ll do what I said this instant! Otherwise… otherwise he won’t even need to lift a finger. I could wipe the Li family off the map of Huaxia inside three days!”

That last sentence left everyone at the table horrified, faces filled with shock, staring at one another.

Wipe the Li family off the map of Huaxia… For Young Master Zuo to say a thing like that about this man…

Cold sweat soaked through Second Young Master Li’s shirt. He nodded frantically. “I… I understand, Young Master Zuo, please, calm yourself. I’ll — I’ll call my brother right — no. I’ll call my father.”

He picked up his phone, fingers shaking as he found his father’s number… Because if he called Li Tianpeng directly, he doubted his brother would listen to him at all, so he had to explain it to their father first… Wipe the Li family off the map of Huaxia. For the whole family, those were the words of a nightmare.

…

…

The black muzzle of the gun did nothing to Ye Tianxie’s color; if anything, the smile on his face grew stranger. Nor did it make Su Feifei tense or afraid… Her mind went back to that night, when he had stopped a bullet with his own head and walked away unharmed. That was the moment she’d come to think of him as something superhuman, and to long for his protection.

“If I advised you to put the gun down, would you do it?” Ye Tianxie raised an eyebrow, and there was something profoundly dangerous underneath the smile. Guns are, admittedly, terrifying things to ordinary people, because they can take a life in an instant. But when you play with something that dangerous, you had best pick the right target. Some people do not enjoy having a gun pointed at them.

The appearance of the pistol was, to the trembling Li Lulu, like clutching a protective talisman. Clutching her cheek, she stepped out from behind Li Tianpeng and screamed in a voice near hysteria, “Big brother, make him kneel and beg like a dog! Did you hear me? Kneel! Or I’ll have my brother blow your head off!!”

Ye Tianxie’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze slid over to the woman. That look shook her so badly she shuddered and stumbled back a step — and just then, a phone began ringing urgently on Li Tianpeng.

When he’d first ordered the attack on Ye Tianxie, he had sent for reinforcements. By his reckoning they should be arriving about now. Keeping the pistol trained on Ye Tianxie with one hand, he answered with the other.

A middle-aged man’s roar came through the instant the line connected. Within a few seconds, Li Tianpeng’s face began to change… and change again, and again. Gradually, the muscles of his face began to twitch and spasm, until his whole body was shaking as though convulsing.

The phone dropped limply from his hand. Then the pistol slid from his grip too, hitting the floor with a clatter. Li Lulu cried out and scrambled to snatch it up — only to see Li Tianpeng walk forward two paces like a puppet, his face the gray of dead ash, and then, under a room full of disbelieving eyes, drop to his knees in front of Ye Tianxie and Su Feifei with a heavy thud.

It wasn’t only Li Lulu and the Li Group’s people. Even Su Feifei was struck dumb by the sheer scale of the reversal. A flicker of surprise crossed Ye Tianxie’s face too, though it vanished at once. He glanced at the cameras positioned around the room, thinking.

Li Tianpeng’s lips worked, and through boundless shock, humiliation, and refusal, he forced out a blurred string of words. “…I, Li Tianpeng, was blind… Please… forgive me…” And then, before a room full of widening eyes, he gritted his teeth and slammed his forehead into the floor.

The pistol Li Lulu had just picked up fell from her hands again. She stared at Li Tianpeng, blank, at a total loss — looking, more than anything, as though the fright had emptied her out.

“This… he—” Su Feifei’s eyes questioned him, astonished and bewildered. Ye Tianxie shook his head with a smile and walked forward, his gaze passing over the two of them. As he drew level with Li Tianpeng, he hooked a foot under the silver pistol, flicked it up into his hand, and pointed it down at him.

“I told you. I have never once taken back something I’ve said. So however meek and obedient you make yourself now, the ending is the same.”

Bang!

Bang!

Two shots, two screams, and every heart in the room lurched twice with them. Blood welled up from Li Tianpeng’s right hand and right foot at once, and he thrashed and moaned on the floor in agony…

The muzzle swung, coming to rest on the bloodless Li Lulu, and a demon’s smile spread across Ye Tianxie’s face. Overwhelmed by terror, Li Lulu collapsed to the ground, squirming backward while she begged, shaking. “No… don’t kill me… Feifei, save me—”

“Tianxie, she… she only insulted you, don’t—” Su Feifei caught his hand, tense.

He moved her hand aside, the muzzle still on Li Lulu, and said darkly, “A moment ago, you said you’d have your brother blow my head off… Heh. Your brother said he’d break my arms and legs, so I broke his arm and his leg. You said you’d blow my head off. What do you suppose I should do?” And as he spoke, the finger on the trigger slowly tightened.

“No… don’t… don’t—”

Bang!

The shot rang out. Li Lulu’s eyes rolled back, her head dropped heavily to the floor, and she went silent.

“Tianxie!” Su Feifei shuddered violently, her voice audibly shaking. Li Lulu’s character was a product of her upbringing; she had no manners to speak of, but she was only overbearing. This… this shouldn’t have happened…

“Foolish woman. Look properly.” Ye Tianxie blew across the smoking muzzle and gave the fainted woman an exasperated look… The bullet hadn’t hit her head at all. It had grazed past her ear and buried itself in the floor beside it. He’d only ever intended to frighten the life out of her. The effect had been excellent… At the very least, this woman would be restraining herself considerably from now on. Hm. She hadn’t been frightened into actual insanity, had she?

Seeing no blood, and then spotting the bullet hole in the floor by Li Lulu’s ear, Su Feifei let out a long, long breath. She pressed close against him and murmured, “Tianxie, they’re still… Can we leave now, please?”

Ye Tianxie nodded, smiling, and tossed the pistol away behind him. It clattered to the floor and slid a long way before stopping against a man’s toe. The man shook from head to foot and did not dare bend to pick it up, his eyes on Ye Tianxie, hoping only that he would leave as fast as humanly possible.

One phone call, and the Li Group’s first heir had knelt and knocked his head on the floor for this man… Even an idiot could guess what had been said on that call, and how terrifying this man’s backing must be. If he could force the eldest son of the Li family onto his knees to beg, was he anyone these small fry could afford to touch?

“Cash out these chips. Four hundred million to my card, two hundred million to hers… Quickly. We’re not especially keen to stay here.” Ye Tianxie walked Su Feifei over to the ashen-faced casino manager and pointed at the chips scattered across the floor.

“Yes… yes… right away.” The manager nodded and bowed, and as he turned to run for the counter, he discovered his clothes were soaked through with cold sweat.

…

…

Out of the casino, Ye Tianxie took a deep breath of air that was noticeably fresher and wore an expression of real enjoyment.

“You’ve made a hundred million without lifting a finger and watched a bit of gambling and a bit of fighting. Feeling happy?” Ye Tianxie shifted his arm, attempting to extract it from Su Feifei’s grip. After several covert failures, he gave up and let her keep it. It felt unnatural, instinctively… though perhaps, underneath, he didn’t mind at all.

“You won that two hundred million. Why give me half? A hundred million! Most people won’t earn that in a lifetime. Who knew someone as stingy as you could be so generous.” Su Feifei laughed.

“Because without you, I’d never have gambled with him, and there’d have been no income at all. If I didn’t split it with you, I couldn’t live with my own conscience.” Ye Tianxie shrugged. The world really was a beautiful place. If only he ran into a few more idiots like Li Tianpeng handing him money every day, he wouldn’t have needed to take a bodyguarding job at all.

“You have a conscience? Hmph. Can’t say I’d noticed.” Su Feifei stuck out her red lips — and then, quite by accident, remembered kissing him in the heat of the moment. She licked her lips furtively, recalling the strange sensation, and a lovely flush crept quietly up her cheeks.

Ye Tianxie glanced at her and sighed softly. “You’ve been wanting to say it, haven’t you? That I was too ruthless. Too merciless.”

How could he not know? To ordinary eyes, what he’d done in that casino was the work of a cruel demon. Every man who attacked him had a hand or a foot broken. Li Tianpeng knelt and begged, and he went through with it anyway… He’d even done what he did to a woman whose crime was insulting him once. He could well imagine the impression all of it had left on Su Feifei.

(End of Chapter 135)