Chapter 99: Arrogant and Dominating

“Fu Yanyan, you mad dog. Truly deranged, in the most infuriating way. I, Xu Yaochuan, can die, but my younger brother cannot.”

Taking advantage of the opening, Xu Yaochuan drove his palm straight up against the knife at his throat. Blood slipped down his hand in thin streams. The man’s features twisted faintly, yet when the blood dripped to his shoulder blade, it only made his already sharp, lean frame seem all the more roguish. One of his phoenix eyes was half-hidden by broken strands of hair, and whenever he looked at someone, there was always that casual, cutting mockery.

“Do you have a choice, Young Master Xu? You’re nothing but a turtle caught in a jar.”

Fu Yanyan seized a fistful of the man’s hair and rose to his feet, the refined, antique grace that had once clung to him vanishing without a trace. In the struggle, Xu Yaochuan tore open the collar of his robe. Fu Yanyan used his left hand to yank downward along the rip, and in an instant the garment came away in a rush, flung behind him.

In his right hand, he still held the bloodstained knife. Every muscle in his body seemed to tremble with excitement as he hurled the man onto the tea table.

The tattoo across the man’s back was now laid bare in full. The nine dragons inked there were flecked with a few drops of blood from the blade, as though they had begun to stir and fly with the movement of the man beneath him and the rise and fall of his muscles.

Xu Yaochuan had not even managed to react before a dense, needle-like agony burst through his palm, drilling straight to the bone.

Sweating profusely, he turned his head and saw Fu Yanyan, in a fit of madness, pinning the knife clean through his hand and into the table.

Blood etched itself directly into the wood.

Xu Yaochuan trembled from the pain.

“Seeing you care so much about your brother makes me very happy. If I can see you torn apart with grief, I’ll be even happier. So you can die last, but your brother has to die in front of you. I’ll keep my word. Not one of you is getting away.”

Xu Yaochuan heard those words in his ear and wanted nothing more than to kill Fu Yanyan on the spot, but his hand had been nailed so firmly to the table that he could not move it.

“Damn it, the one regret I’ll carry for the rest of my life is not having frozen you to death back at the Zhong family’s place all those years ago, you little bastard! You’re worse than an animal!”

He growled low, every muscle in his body trembling with him, his eyes bloodshot, yet that familiar, swaggering smile still curved his mouth.

Holding his breath and staring steadily, he used his only free hand, his left, to seize the knife hilt and wrench it outward with all his strength.

“Agh...” Xu Yaochuan gave only a brief, involuntary grunt of pain.

As blood began to spurt from his right hand, he tossed the bloodied knife onto the disordered tea table and then called for someone to come in with medicine and bandages.

The doctor who entered and saw the scene would probably have called the police on the spot if he had not been used to following this unhinged young master for years.

Fortunately, compared with the injuries Xu Yaochuan usually suffered when his father beat him until he could not move, today’s wound was still barely manageable. The doctor was applying medicine while watching him grit his teeth so hard it seemed he might shatter them.

Fu Yanyan let out a mocking laugh and snatched the first-aid kit away, squeezing the doctor aside.

Then he took a towel and shoved it into Xu Yaochuan’s mouth.

“I’m going to kill you...”

Before he could finish, Fu Yanyan did not even bother with anesthetic. He simply swabbed the wound with alcohol, making Xu Yaochuan hurt so badly that his vision nearly went white.

He was doing it on purpose.

He deliberately chose the most painful treatment possible, nearly driving Xu Yaochuan to the brink of unconsciousness.

Then the doctor, dazed beyond belief, was kicked by the man sitting on the floor.

“What the hell are you standing there for? Don’t you have any medical ethics?”

Looking at the hand mangled with blood and flesh, the doctor thought to himself that this man really could endure pain. Even now, he still had not passed out.

“President Fu... there’s no need to trouble yourself. Let me take care of it.”

Fu Yanyan noticed that his own wrist had been smeared with blood, and, with a sort of obsessive irritation, he found the sight unbearable. He took up a stack of paper and methodically wiped the blood from his hand, over and over again. He kept wiping until the trash bin was fuller with used paper than the wound dressing supplies, so full it looked ready to overflow.

At last, tired of the whole business, he let the assistant help him into a dark jade-green top cut in the style of a Tang robe, its hems hanging down in soft, willow-like strands.

“Give him a tetanus shot. My people are on their way to blow up the restaurant anyway. Better to keep him from fainting, or later we’ll still have to check whether the coordinates are right.”

For all his proud, overbearing nature, Xu Yaochuan could not swallow this insult.

With one kick, he sent the tea table flying.

The teaware crashed across the floor, and the scalding tea splashed out with it, burning the leg of the woman kneeling there and weeping.

She recoiled from the pain, only to feel the chill of the blade against her back, and hurriedly crawled back into place.

Fu Yanyan laughed instead of getting angry. His face was bright and clear as snow in spring, and within that coldness there shone a frost so sharp it was almost impossible to understand.

“Later, watch carefully how I beat your little beast of a brother to death.”

“I’m not afraid. If you’ve got the guts, then go ahead and beat my brother to death. Let’s see whether I go mad! We’re both ghosts already, so there’s no need to tell ghost stories.”

After the assistant brought in the police and the boss of the explosives company, they were ushered directly inside.

The police were equally stunned by the scene. After composing themselves, they sat down stiffly beside the sofa and asked with some hesitation, “President Fu, these bloody matters are easier to handle in Aomeng, but I heard the regulations in your country are rather strict.”

“You’re joking. It’s all the same. Easy enough to handle.”

His tone was light, almost careless.

“So President Fu is looking for a girl named Lin Hongshu, is that right? Perfectly coincidental, our people have already found her near the restaurant. She is unconscious now and has been sent to the hospital. When we found her, there were no suspects in sight. She was in an abandoned building set for construction. If we had not discovered her in time, she would probably have been sealed inside with concrete.”

As soon as the bureau chief finished speaking, the boss of the explosives company stepped forward.

“Chief, I’ll have someone blow it up right away.”

The chief looked around, visibly flustered, and hurriedly offered the man across from him a cigarette, serving him carefully while the other lit it.

“No, no, that won’t do. That would be deliberate destruction of property. And if the blast goes wrong and someone dies, the consequences would be enormous.”

“So that is why I specifically brought in a professional team to handle it. As for deliberate destruction of property... I trust Young Master Xu is only acting out of desperation to save his brother.”

Xu Yaochuan held a cigarette between his teeth. The tattoo on his finger was streaked with blood, and because no one had had time to clean it, the blood had already begun to dry and cling there. Even the way he smoked was wild and untamed, like he might have been about to inhale the filter and then smoke it backward. Yet through the drifting ribbon of smoke, he still nodded at the chief.

“Blow it up. I’ve got money to spare. Just make sure they stay safe. If anything goes wrong, the idea came from President Fu anyway, and President Fu can take full responsibility.”

“If we’re not blowing it up, then perhaps Young Master Xu should go down himself and scout the situation?”

“No way. Didn’t you see the surveillance footage? What if the hidden door beside it doesn’t open and he drops straight down? He’d be turned to pulp. That fool of a brother of mine probably wouldn’t even find the exit. He really never gives me a moment’s peace.”

Fu Yanyan studied the restaurant blueprint with unusual seriousness. A cold smile played at the corners of his mouth, and he rarely sounded so amused.

“No, it’s better to go down after all. Then no one has to be responsible. I wonder whose restaurant this is. After something like this, it ought to have been hauled off and shot already.”