Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

"I hadn't even got a grip on them yet—why did you let go?" Liu Cha looked at Yang Xiaobo with an expression of utter innocence.

"You—you—" Yang Xiaobo was about to explode with rage. It was clearly this bastard whose hands were itching, who had snatched the bottles from him and then deliberately dropped them, and now he had the nerve to make snide remarks.

"What are you doing? Why did you throw the liquor on the ground?" Shen Hua had seen it clearly too—Liu Cha had grabbed the bottles first and only then dropped them. It was plainly deliberate.

"I didn't do anything." Liu Cha said indifferently, his words dripping with mockery and thuggish swagger: "It's just a couple of lousy bottles of liquor. How many do you want? My dad's car has plenty—I'll bring you some in a bit."

Yang Xiaobo's face was livid with fury. His fists were clenched tight, and his eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Liu Cha.

"What are you staring at? Not convinced? What, you think you can hit me?" Liu Cha gave Yang Xiaobo a contemptuous glance.

The words had barely left his mouth when Yang Xiaobo threw a punch, landing it squarely on Liu Cha's eye socket and instantly turning him into a nationally protected species.

Yang Ce and Chen Shutang had not yet left when they witnessed the whole scene unfold before their eyes.

"Yang Ce, I never would have guessed—your little brother looks so gentle and refined, so how come he fights just like you?" Chen Shutang laughed and shot Yang Puqi a glare. Still, she did not think Yang Xiaobo had hit the wrong man; in a situation like this, Liu Cha certainly deserved it.

"I'm going down to take a look. You wait in the car for me." Fearing Yang Xiaobo might come off the worse, Yang Ce instructed Chen Shutang.

"Be careful, don't get yourself hurt." Chen Shutang knew that telling Yang Ce not to fight at this point would be self-deception; better to simply urge him to be careful.

"Motherfucker—you little punk, you dare hit me?" Having taken a punch, Liu Cha flew into a rage and, all claws and fangs, made to teach Yang Xiaobo a lesson. Liu Cha had never been any good to begin with—at school he ran with the crowd of brawling hoodlums—and now that Liu Chan had risen to power, Liu Cha had grown even more insufferably cocky.

He had dined with several of Songjiang's top bosses; who would dare cross him now? So Liu Cha quickly became the schoolyard bully. No one had dared challenge his authority for a long time, and today someone had actually blackened his eye with a single punch—how could he not go berserk?

"Who are you cursing?"

It would have been better if Liu Cha had not started cursing, for the moment he did, Yang Ce's eyes blazed with fury. He seized Liu Cha by the hair and dealt him a resounding slap. As the song lyric goes: hit when you want to hit, and hit hard and loud.

This bastard had cursed Yang Xiaobo's second uncle—and Yang Xiaobo's second uncle was none other than Yang Juehuan's father. How could Yang Ce not be furious?

A BMW X5 was parked by the roadside. Shen Zhiguo and Liu Chan had not noticed earlier that Yang Xiaobo and Shen Hua had gotten out of it, so they had paid it no mind, assuming it belonged to someone else.

And then, all of a sudden, a tall, strapping young man stepped out of the car and slapped Liu Cha across the face, leaving him utterly dazed. Not knowing what this man was about, Liu Cha said instinctively, "I didn't curse you."

"Yes, you cursed him," Yang Puqi said, pointing at Yang Xiaobo. "He's one of the Yangs. You cursed his second uncle, and that means you cursed my dad."

"What?" Before Liu Cha could even make sense of the relationship Yang Ce had described, he took another slap from Yang Puqi, which left him thoroughly rattled and reeling.

"Who are you?" Liu Chan might be arrogant, but when he saw the BMW X5 Yang Ce had driven, he knew Yang Juehuan's background had to be no simple matter. So before laying a hand on Yang Ce, he needed to sound out who he was.

"And who the hell are you? My brother came to meet his future father-in-law—who the fuck do you think you are?" Yang Ce glanced at Liu Chan and said with contempt.

Being cursed at as if he were some nobody left Liu Chan deeply displeased. Forcing down his anger, he said, "Your brother? I'm afraid you've got it wrong. It's our family and the Shens who are in-laws."

Looking at the helpless expression on Shen Zhiguo's face, Yang Ce had more or less pieced the whole thing together: Liu Cha had most likely taken a fancy to Shen Hua and sent his father to Shen Zhiguo to lay claim to the match, and this Liu Chan fellow was probably someone Shen Zhiguo could not afford to offend.

But just because Shen Zhiguo could not afford to offend him did not mean Yang Ce could not. Yang Ce had never been afraid of anyone. However big a shot you might be, if you tried to put on airs in front of me, I'd kill you just the same.

"Take your idiot son and get the hell out of here, or you'll suffer the consequences." Yang Yongjin let go of Liu Cha with an air of impatience and spoke to Liu Chan.

Liu Chan did not know Yang Juehuan's background, and seeing how arrogant Yang Ce was, he dared not act rashly. Still, in Songjiang, Liu Chan considered himself a man of considerable influence—even if Yang Ce were the son of some big boss, he could still deal with him.

But given the lessons of the bosses who had come to ruin in recent days, Liu Chan had grown cautious in his dealings. Without betraying anything in his expression, he shifted slightly to one side and said to Liu Cha, "Go and see what his license plate number is."

From a car's license plate one could roughly gauge the power behind the person in front of you. If it was a low-numbered plate or a military plate, then the owner likely had formidable backing in political circles—someone Liu Chan would not lightly provoke.

After looking at the plate, Liu Cha came back and said quietly to his father, "The plate reads Song B88888. Damn, how the hell did he get a number like that?"

Song B88888 — Liu Chan was momentarily stunned, thinking to himself, wasn't this plate hanging on an Audi A8? It looked like the plate of the Sun family of Donghai's company in Songjiang, but clearly the car model was wrong. Could it be a fake plate?

At that thought, Liu Chan breathed a sigh of relief. People who drove with fake plates — if you said they had influence, they did have quite a bit of influence, but not particularly great influence. Generally, fake-plate cars were those that couldn't get proper registration, but if someone had the right backing, it wasn't absolutely impossible to get a plate.

However, the strange thing was that the plate Song B88888 — anyone in the know should be clear — belonged to the Sun family of Donghai. The Sun family's plates were not so easy for you to counterfeit. If caught, not only would the car be gone, but the person might be gone too.

So Liu Chan found it somewhat odd. Could the person before him have some connection to the Sun family? Song B88888... this kid just said his surname was Yang... wait, no.

Liu Chan was startled, breaking out in a cold sweat. A few days ago, when he'd attended a dinner with several big shots alongside Boss Guo, at the table, the Songjiang boss Bao Lin seemed to have mentioned that he'd gotten a plate — Song B88B88 — to put on his friend's BMW. And Guo Jianchao had laughed and told Liu Chan that the friend was named Yang Ce, and that in the future, when he went to Heaven's Fairyland, if Guo himself wasn't there, Liu Chan absolutely had to take good care of him. After returning, Guo had even hinted to Liu Chan that although Brother Bao said Yang Ce was his friend, in reality, Brother Bao was quite afraid of Yang Ce.

At the time, Liu Chan had thought, so there really existed such a formidable figure, and was shocked in his heart. After hearing Guo Jianchao's words, he'd quickly committed it to memory. Now, it suddenly came rushing back to him.