Chapter Twenty-One: Romance

“Nini, you’d better go home,” Lin Yang said earnestly as he sat on the sofa. “With my current abilities, there’s no way I can watch out for both sides.” When he finished, he took a few hard drags of his cigarette, exhaling thickly until the living room was soon shrouded in smoke.

That brazen attempt on his life this afternoon kept playing over in his mind like a curse. Now he truly understood Jiang Tao’s vengeful nature. Lin Yang was certain the man would strike again, and of course, he worried for Leng Nini’s safety.

But when a woman sets her mind to something, words alone are rarely enough to change it—especially a woman as bullheaded as Leng Nini. Her small lips, pursed tight enough to hang three soy sauce bottles, and her unwavering, determined gaze, revealed a woman who would cling to her convictions to the end—an exasperating little troublemaker if there ever was one.

No sooner had Lin Yang finished speaking than her small head began to shake like a rattle, her flushed cheeks full of grievance, and tears already brimming in her eyes, ready to spill forth at the slightest refusal—threatening a flood of misery.

“You must go back,” Lin Yang commanded coldly, his voice stern, brows knitted with deadly seriousness.

Leng Nini immediately launched into her performance as the wounded wife, sobbing and choking back tears, determined to drown Lin Yang with her grief if need be.

The classic trio of tears, tantrums, and threats—this age-old act of female persuasion never failed. Few men could withstand such a barrage, and Lin Yang was clearly not one of the cold-hearted ones. The moment his heart softened and he opened his mouth, all the harsh words and painstaking persuasion of before were for naught.

“Alright then! But if there’s ever any danger, you have to listen to me. You can’t just do whatever you want,” he warned her seriously.

“No problem!” Now that she’d won, Leng Nini’s tears vanished as quickly as they’d come. She threw her arms around Lin Yang’s, nuzzling up to him without a care in the world, completely oblivious to his awkward embarrassment as her softness pressed against him.

After some haggling, they finally reached a verbal agreement. With a mixture of coaxing and trickery, Lin Yang managed to usher her back to her room, finally breathing a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure that, if he’d indulged in that sweet contact a moment longer, he’d have been able to control himself from pushing the little minx down and giving in to the most primal of human desires.

But his expression soon hardened again. He was no troublemaker by nature. “If people don’t provoke me, I won’t provoke them. But if they do, I’ll return it a hundredfold”—that was Lin Yang’s code. Still, for now, the only path forward was to become stronger, so he resolved to accelerate his training in the “Thirteen Blades of Heavenly Spirit.”

As always, he sat cross-legged on the floor and began his half-hour of meditation. True energy circulated through his meridians, and before he knew it, the time had passed. When Lin Yang opened his eyes, a faint smile appeared on his face. Two months of uninterrupted practice and he could finally sense the barrier to the fourth blade.

Noticing the filth covering his body, he got up and went to the bathroom to clean himself.

What Lin Yang didn’t know was that news of his spectacular victory in the medical competition had spread through every street and alley in Jinhai City like wildfire, in just a single afternoon.

Nor did he know that Jiang Tao, vindictive as ever, had mobilized all his resources in Jinhai City, hell-bent on tracking down the man who’d beaten him up and stolen his fiancée.

***

Music and dancing roared, lights glittered, and desire filled the air. Boldly dressed girls twisted their waists in the dance floor’s chaos, while men with smoky makeup and wicked looks prowled everywhere. This was a world of excess and abandon—the night club.

In the fast-paced city, the wild single men and women had all developed the same addiction: “nightlife.”

Here, good-looking men and women flocked together, free for the viewing or the picking up. Here, you could indulge in one-night stands without a care. It was a paradise of desire for the city’s countless singles.

Even in the cacophony of the night club, there were private rooms offering a certain quiet. Compared to the lustful atmosphere of the main hall and dance floor, the tension in VIP Room 8 was almost suffocating.

***

Leaning back on the sofa with one leg crossed over the other, a bandage on his cheek, smoke curling from his lips, Jiang Tao’s face was dark and his eyes sharp as blades. He fixed his gaze on the yellow-haired, buzz-cut underling kneeling before him, spittle flying as he roared like a lion, “Leopard, didn’t you say you’d seen this guy? So why haven’t you found him yet? Damn it, are you a pig?”

The underling, his face swollen and bruised, looked up anxiously at the photo in his hand, glaring at the handsome man in the picture before swearing fervently, “Brother Tao, I swear on my mother’s grave, it was this guy two days ago—he knocked out three of my teeth and beat me half to death!”

In the photo, Lin Yang sat sideways on a black sedan, blowing cigarette smoke. On the left edge of the picture, just visible, was Leng Nini’s stunning face—a candid shot, clearly.

Whoever had taken the photo must have had some issues, though—how could you only get half the face of such a beauty? It was enough to drive Leopard mad—he wanted to chop the photographer to pieces.

He fumed inwardly, “Damn, didn’t you kno