Chapter 805 — The Yu Family Pays a Visit

"Little lady, quite the spitfire — but I like it!" Zhao Qibing's eyes found Yu Xiaoke again, the threatening gaze he had worn before giving way to something licentious. "The offer I made earlier still stands. Think it over — you know where to find me."

"As if I'd ever come looking for you!" Yu Xiaoke glared at Zhao Qibing, at a loss to understand why the old director should fear a cripple in a wheelchair.

"Hmph — I do hope you won't come to regret this, hahahaha!" Zhao Qibing let out a cold laugh. He might already be drooling over Yu Xiaoke's looks, but he was in no hurry; his legs had yet to heal, and bedding women was inconvenient besides. There would be time enough once he was whole again.

"Xiaoke!" The old director feared Xiaoke would say something further and enrage Zhao Qibing. She could see plainly that the man had no martial skill to speak of and was a good-for-nothing through and through — but the mountain of power he stood for was suffocating!

Yu Xiaoke opened her mouth, feeling a little wronged, and thought to herself: "Isn't all he can do brag? 'My father's at the early stage of Earth rank, my grandfather at the peak of the late stage, the whole family's full of experts' — and what are you, a cripple? Heaven knows which kind soul broke your legs!"

"Let's go!" Zhao Qibing shot the old director a dismissive look, then waved to Li Cihua.

Li Cihua pushed Zhao Qibing aboard the RV, while Zhong Fabai and the pack of thugs piled into the minivan; the four vehicles roared away from the orphanage.

The thugs had served no purpose whatsoever. Before a Yellow rank expert, their menace was nothing but passing clouds. Zhao Qibing had meant to use these men to intimidate the people at the orphanage, but seeing that the old director was a Yellow rank expert, he changed his tactics.

"Young Master Bing, you've put the boss's identity out in the open — that won't cause any trouble, will it?" Once inside the car, Li Cihua asked Zhao Qibing with a note of worry.

"Trouble? What trouble could there be? What did I say? I said nothing at all." Zhao Qibing shook his head. "Everything I mentioned is a fact. My surname is Zhao; my father is an expert at the early stage of Earth rank; my grandfather at the peak of the late stage. But I never said I was a man of the Hidden Zhao family — she guessed that herself."

"That's true — in that case, the boss shouldn't have anything to say about it either." Li Cihua thought it over and saw the logic: Zhao Qibing had never once claimed to be of the Zhao family, nor had he named his father or grandfather. He had only hinted at it obliquely; everything else was the orphanage director's own guesswork.

"Sometimes you have to borrow force to strike with force," Zhao Qibing said. "Give them a few days to think it over, and then take some men along to scare them a little. I don't believe they won't fall in line."

"Oh? Still take men? What good would they do?" Li Cihua was taken aback.

"Take the Medicine King — of course they'd do good!" Zhao Qibing said. "The technique the Medicine King practices isn't much for offense, but he's a Purple rank expert all the same. I don't believe he can't cow that old hag!"

Only now did Li Cihua remember that there was still a Purple rank expert under their own roof — no wonder Young Master Bing swaggered about so fearlessly. Even without asking the boss for help, he could settle the orphanage with ease. Li Cihua nodded: "Understood."

The four cars drove back, one after another, to the Awesome Cloud Bar. It was only a little past four in the afternoon and the bar had not yet officially opened for business, yet a black Buick minivan with Yanjing plates sat parked at its entrance.

Li Cihua frowned. The minivan was parked right across the bar's entrance; that stretch belonged to the bar's private lot, and anyone who was not a patron was generally not allowed to leave a car there.

Li Cihua pushed Young Master Bing out of the car, and as he did, the minivan's door opened as well, and a young man stepped out.

At the sight of the young man, Li Cihua could not help starting slightly. He knew him — Yu Haitian, an executive of the Yu family's trading concern, a man of the Yanjing Yu family.

Yu Haitian, for his part, had just spotted Zhao Qibing sitting in the wheelchair and could not help but start slightly himself. How had Zhao Qibing become a cripple?

"Young Master Bing, what happened to you?" Yu Haitian came over, mildly surprised. Though he was of the Yu family, he knew Young Master Bing's standing, and so treated him with considerable respect.

"Well, well — if it isn't Brother Tian!" Young Master Bing knew Yu Haitian's identity as well: a son of the Hidden Yu family's secular branch. And he himself was the Zhao family's illegitimate son — the two of them were, broadly speaking, of equal rank, with neither able to lord it over the other.

A woman of the Yu family had married into the Zhao family — none other than the principal wife of Zhao Qibing's father, Zhao Guangyin. But a marriage of that sort was nothing more than an alliance of interests; as it happened, relations between the Yu and Zhao families were far from cordial these days.

For the Zhao family envied the Yu family's business in the secular world and had been itching to carve out a kingdom of their own there, yet the pact of years barred them from acting. As for why the Yu family had come to its present state, that was entirely the work of an accident of circumstance.

The Hidden Yu family's branch had, in fact, been founded by a son of the secular Yu family who had been cast out; in truth it had nothing left to do with the secular Yu family. But as the Hidden Yu family grew great, the secular Yu family naturally attached itself to them once more, content to become that branch's tool for making money.

A branch had become the main line, and the main line had become a branch. It sounded faintly absurd, but that was the plain fact — and it was not a thing that could be repeated; other families might try to copy it, and fail.

And so the Yu family now stood at the head of the four great and five lesser families of the secular world, while those hidden families that wished to meddle in secular affairs dared not move lightly, bound as they were by the pact.

The Yu family's position had its historical reasons, and the family publicly declared that this secular branch had nothing to do with them. Whether that was true, everyone knew perfectly well — it was simply that the thing had already become established fact, and nobody could do anything about it.

In the past two years the Zhao family, too, had wanted to raise up a puppet to work with the Yu family, but the idea was rejected, because creating a new secular family ran against the Yu family's present interests. Relations between the Zhao and Yu families had thus grown rather tense.

On the surface, though, the two families still got along. So when Yu Haitian came to Songshan City, the first person he called on was naturally the Zhao family's illegitimate son, Zhao Qibing. Unlike Yu Kun, who had crept in under cover, he had come openly and of his own right, and so he had to play the part to the full.

"Don't mention it — it makes my blood boil just to think about it. Some madman came out of nowhere in Songshan City, and I've had the rottenest luck!" The moment Zhao Qibing spoke of his legs, he gnashed his teeth in fury.

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