Chapter 9: Serpents and Revelations
Yang Kun's recounting oozed venomous humiliation—a titan felled by a mere sentinel. "That gutter-born pretender parading as Ling Meixue's paramour engineered this debacle!"
"The meddling hound resurfaces?" Young Master Jiang's voice crackled with venomous epiphany. "The same mongrel obstructing my territorial conquests?"
"None other! The cur flaunts spousal claims over our sovereign!" Yang Kun's sycophantic timbre barely veiled vindictive relish. "He desecrated your grand stratagem!"
Ceramic carnage echoed through the line. "Twice this vermin thwarts destiny," Jiang Feng's serpentine hiss promised sanguinary retribution. "His impertinence demands crimson absolution."
The severed connection ignited perverse euphoria in Yang Kun's battered psyche—crossing the Jiang scion heralded oblivion's warrant.
_____
Amidst Jiangzhou Central Hospital's sterile luminescence...
Elder Bai quivered before diagnostic scrolls proclaiming his granddaughter's miraculous renaissance. Metastatic lesions retreated like broken armies, defying oncological scripture.
"Alchemical heresy!" The chief oncologist's spectacles slipped repeatedly. "Stage IV carcinoma doesn't capitulate—not thus!"
Elder Pang caressed his argent beard, eyes kindling with revelation. "Your lineage basks in divine patronage. Might this miracle-smith lack conjugal chains? My progeny—"
"Eternally bound to our ancestral pact!" Elder Bai interposed with territorial ferocity.
From her clinical bier, Bai Shanshan's talons engraved lunar crescents into flesh. Memories of spurning her grandsire's initial betrothal to Gu Chen now poisoned like hemlock. Her cousin Bai Ruohan's enviable station as the healer's anointed consort stoked emberous envy.
_____
Eventide discovered Gu Chen shedding the day's theatrics, aqueous vapours already curling from the ablutionary sanctum.
In the salon below, Ling Meixue's arched brow met Lin Shiyu's conspiratorial susurrus. "What puckish machination now, sprite?"
The auburn-tressed provocateur conjured an unmarked phial with prestidigitator's flair. "Behold—the Rosetta Stone to marital cryptanalysis!"
The Alchemy of Retribution
Ling Meixue's jade-like fingers hovered above the obsidian vial. "What arcane poison do you peddle?"
"Ten-League Perfume!" Lin Shiyu proclaimed with an alchemist's pride.
"Elucidate."
"A cathartic elixir—its efficacy matches its olfactory bouquet! One dose, and porcelain thrones become battlegrounds for *li!"
"..."
The CEO's nostrils flared involuntarily. "Why harbour such gastrointestinal artillery?"
The auburn-haired saboteur gestured toward the steam-wreathed bath chamber. "Poetic justice! Imagine the barbarian prince reduced to begging sanctuary while we barricade water closets!"
"Personal grievance colours this scheme," Ling Meixue observed, moon-pale brow arching. "Do phantom suitors haunt your nights since his romantic pantomime?"
Lin Shiyu's cheeks bloomed peony-red. "He transmuted me into a man-repelling ward! This almshouse demands balance!"
Memories of Yang Kun's corporate downfall flickered behind Ling Meixue's gaze—the sentinel's recent valour clashing with this farcical vengeance.
"Picture his desperation!" Lin Shiyu entreated, miming frantic contortions. "The warrior-king dethroned by intestinal insurrection!"
A treasonous chuckle escaped Ling Meixue's coral lips before imperial composure reasserted itself. "We mustn't—"
"You *waver*!" Lin Shiyu accused, eyes widening. "Does Frost thaw for her mongrel consort?"
"Preposterous!"
"Then let deeds affirm!" The vial clinked against celadon china. "Anoint his feast with karmic seasoning!"
As Lin Shiyu breached the wax seal, Ling Meixue's hand intercepted—a single iridescent granule dusting the fillet mignon.
"Tepid justice!" The firebrand wrested control, inundating honey-glazed ribs with pearlescent powder. "Let purge become epic!"
"Mad alchemist!" Ling Meixue recoiled from the marinated cataclysm. "You'd fresco our manor with his humiliation?!"
Lin Shiyu's smile turned vulpine. "Grand falls make grander legends!"
The bath portal groaned open on cloud-born steam. Both conspirators petrified—nymphs caught mid-snare.
"Goddesses!" Gu Chen's timbre rolled through herb-scented air, damp locks cascading like midnight rivers. "Ambrosia's breath graces our hearth. Which celestial chef blesses us tonight?"
Their synchronized swallow resonated through the suddenly constricted kitchen—a silent prayer to porcelain deities.
The Elixir's Deception
Lin Shiyu's alchemical assault transformed the glazed ribs into a crystalline minefield. To veil her treachery, she drenched the dish in soy nectar, its amber sheen masking forbidden alchemy.
"The oaf's constitution rivals Atlas," she whispered fiercely to Ling Meixue. "Only full draughts guarantee poetic downfall!"
Steam parted to unveil Gu Chen's post-ablotory splendour—torso chiselled like Olympian marble, droplets cascading down defined obliques.
"Vexing revelation", Lin Shiyu swallowed thickly, gripping the quartz countertop. "The rogue's physique proves...unexpectedly praiseworthy."
"Admiration requires neither invitation nor censure," Gu Chen murmured, reaching past her for a Venetian goblet. The motion sculpted deltoid contours.
"Bulked musculature reeks of protein-powder artifice!" she retorted, carmine blooming across her décolletage. "True warriors forge functional vigour!"
The conspirators orchestrated their poisoned symposium with liturgical precision. Lin Shiyu positioned the alchemical ribs before Gu Chen's throne-like seat—a sacrificial lamb offered to a grinning wolf.
"Commence the feast!" she proclaimed, martyrdom gleaming in stolen glances at her beloved dish.
Gu Chen's chopsticks descended like falcon talons. "Your abstinence perplexes—last moon's phase saw you devour this ambrosia like a starved Cerberus."
"Gastronomic asceticism elevates mortals," Lin Shiyu averred, eyes resolutely avoiding the honeyed glaze.
His laughter resonated like temple gongs. "Self-deception becomes you. Should Aphrodite revoke your charms, at least Demeter's bounty might—"
"Heretic!" Her jade teacup met the saucer with porcelain finality. "My visage defies mortal critique!"
Through eight ceremonial chews per morsel, the conspirators awaited gastrointestinal apocalypse.
"Anomaly detected," Lin Shiyu hissed as Gu Chen consumed his fifteenth rib. "Where rages the purgatorial storm?"
Ling Meixue's lacquered nail traced chrysanthemum patterns. "Perchance your apothecary traded in placebos?"
Gu Chen cleansed his palate with osmanthus tea. "Confess your kitchen witchery, sprites. This banquet carries...peculiar resonance."
Lin Shiyu's composure shattered. "We seasoned your feast with Stygian Elixir! Prepare for intestinal reckoning!"
Gu Chen's mirth rattled the celadon service. "Your sorcerer peddled flour masquerading as catharsis! Three relics remain—dare you test their virtue?"
The conspirators exchanged glances of dawning horror. Lin Shiyu's chopsticks trembled above the platter—epicurean desire warring with visceral dread.
"Truth demands gustatory martyrdom," Gu Chen intoned, sliding the dish across moonlit mahogany. Twin pearls of ambrosia glistened on Lin Shiyu's quivering chopsticks as the alchemical hour struck.
The Alchemists' Folly
"Your mendacity falters!" Lin Shiyu brandished her chopsticks like accusatory wands. "These bones drip with purgative venom!"
"Delirious fabulist," Gu Chen riposted, relishing the lacquered glaze. "Your apothecary vends ersatz elixirs. Partake or perish—the crucible of truth awaits."
The conspirators locked gazes in gastronomic mutiny. Lin Shiyu pounced upon the platter. "To Tartarus with prudence! These nectarous relics shan't moulder uneaten!"
Ling Meixue's resolve dissolved beneath caramelized seduction. Twin sighs of gustatory rapture escaped as incisors breached gilded armour to plunder ambrosial marrow.
"Betrayal!" Lin Shiyu keened between rapturous mastication. "Why does divine chastisement tarry?!"
Gu Chen's smirk deepened as he observed their Bacchanalian feast. "The sandglass of alchemical reckoning drains..."
Five revolutions of the moon's eye later...
Gurgle.
Gurgle.
Lin Shiyu's chopsticks clattered like fallen scimitars. "The chthonic Furies awaken!"
Ling Meixue's jade mien blanched to funerary marble. "Treasonous tides besiege my citadel!"
Their synchronized flight toward cloacal sanctuaries unfolded as a tragicomedy—Lin Shiyu's graceless scramble to the nether privy counterpointed by Ling Meixue's regal yet harried ascent to celestial chambers.
Gu Chen's basso profundo pursued their retreat. "Shall I deploy meridian-restoring needles, my reluctant consort?"
"Perdition take you, alchemical nemesis!" Ling Meixue's imperious rebuke ricocheted through onyx corridors.
The manor thrummed with visceral symphonies of distress. Lin Shiyu emerged wraith-pale between paroxysmal retreats. "This...transgression...shall...echo...in...eternity..."
Her valedictory oath dissolved into renewed cataclysm. The oaken portal thundered shut—coda to this coprologic opus.
Gu Chen reclined amidst the culinary battlefield, swirling osmanthus infusion with vulpine serenity. "Modern alchemy unveils...illuminating paradoxes."
From antipodal sanctums, harmonized ululations wove contrapuntal dirges—a testament to hubristic gastronomy and karmic enteric wrath.
The Healer's Paradox
Dawn's first light unveiled the conspirators draped across velvet divans like withered lotus blossoms, their complexions pale as moonlit parchment.
"What ambrosial delicacies might tempt your esteemed palates?" Gu Chen enquired, his voice laced with lupine mischief.
Lin Shiyu lifted her alabaster face, a frost-blighted magnolia. "Were my sinews not reduced to quivering brine..." Her threat dissolved into urgency. "By Persephone's veil—the porcelain siren calls!"
Ling Meixue lay coiled upon brocade silks like an injured naga, jade nails clawing damask. "Your…charlatan's tricks…" she hissed through ivory teeth.
Gu Chen's palms hovered above her silk-clad abdomen. "Shall the meridian mender—"
"Uncouth knave!" Her protest fluttered weakly, exhaustion etching shadows beneath sapphire eyes.
His touch descended—solar warmth blooming beneath spiralling motions. "My craft disdains coercion," he murmured as tension thawed into springtime ease.
The CEO's obsidian lashes lowered like theatre drapes, breath steadying to tidal rhythm. Gu Chen witnessed the transformation—corporate sovereign reborn as a slumbering dryad.
"Forsake me not…" Her fingers clutched his sleeve in drowsy supplication.
Lin Shiyu's return shattered the tableau. "Defiler! Unhand her!"
Ling Meixue stirred, clarity piercing pain's fog. "His…unorthodox arts…hold merit…"
The crimson-tressed fury brandished trembling fists. "Approach with curative—"
"Your taekwondo pantomime amuses," Gu Chen interjected. "Shall we pit my meridian mastery against your nursery katas?"
"Retract!" Lin Shiyu demanded after a botched crescent kick.
"Mea maxima culpa," he conceded mockingly. "Your cranial void mirrors mammary grandeur."
The privy's thunderous slam punctuated her speechless rage—a percussive finale to this healing farce.
The Parasite's Ballad
Noonday sun gilded the corporate colosseum as Gu Chen slumbered at his sentinel post until whispers sliced through the lethargy.
"Chen-jie's perennial leech returns," murmured a guard, nodding toward the glass portals.
"Last week's silver vanished at the dice den," another tutted. "The lotus blossoms, yet roots fester in swamp."
Gu Chen's boots struck marble with martial cadence. Beyond the crystal façade, a human ruin swayed—stained shirt clinging to paunch, breath reeking of fermented despair.
"Evict that blight," Gu Chen commanded, prodding Wang Hu's ursine bulk.
The guard's chuckle rumbled. "Old Chen's our resident spectre. Disperse him, and he'll wail odes to paternal betrayal."
Recognition crystallized—yesterday's vision from HR, the ponytailed nymph whose cheeks had flushed roseate at his mixer proposition. *Chen Yue*, her badge proclaimed—a name now etched in corporate folklore.
As if conjured, she materialized—starched blouse quivering with caged lightning. Beyond soundproofed panes, her sire's drunken demands conducted through vibrating glass.
"Three thousand yuan dissolved like morning dew?" Chen Yue hissed, steering the reprobate behind potted areca palms. "My lifeblood drains to feed your dragon's thirst!"
The man brandished yellowed claws. "Unfilial shrew! The Lius' daughter clothes her father in Armani!"
Sniggers from passing suits crystallized her shame. Seven thousand monthly yuan—post-taxes, post-insurance—bled white by this familial vampire.
"Humiliate me anew," she breathed through tear-strangled fury, "and you'll sup on cinders."
The derelict collapsed like a marionette with severed strings. "No alms? Then I'll troubadour your empress! Advance your wages—nightingales await my golden throat!"
From his glass observatory, Gu Chen's knuckles rapped a war-drum tattoo. The hothouse orchid, he mused, choked by strangler figs. Time to play gardener.
The Debt of Blood
Bystanders recoiled as if witnessing sacrilege, their faces etched with moral revulsion. Even the granite-faced sentinels found refuge in studied indifference.
"You barter my vitality for brothel smoke and dice clatter!" Chen Yue's tears fell like fractured diamonds. "Is this paternal devotion's visage?"
Memories surfaced of gentler epochs—before her sixteenth summer's maternal void transformed this husk into a soul-devouring wraith. University dreams nearly abandoned, salvaged by academic charity—now crumbling before paternal gluttony.
"Cease this mummery!" The sot's spittle arced through sunlight. "The village slaughterer proffers a six-figure dowry. Wed him at dawn, and we sup on gold!"
"Matrimony as mercantile burlesque?" Chen Yue's voice quivered with existential desolation.
The patriarch's ochre-stained digit stabbed her clavicle. "Five thousand now, or I'll auction your maidenhead! Untouched jade—a collector's prize! Twenty thousand buys her nights!"
Chen Yue's alabaster complexion flushed mortified crimson. This blood-bound parasite had drained her coffers to hollow echoes, leaving her destitute beneath entry-level clerks.
"Your trough cracks dry!" she hissed through tear-strangled valour.
The patriarch's calloused palm descended like an executioner's axe—arrested mid-swing by Gu Chen's merciless grip.
"Chen-jie requires aerated grace," the sentinel lord crooned, thumb crushing vital meridians.
"Y-You spectral demon!" The sot mewled, invoking hell's bailiffs. "Deflowerer! Pay the bride-tax or—"
Crack!
Gu Chen's reverse strike reverberated through corporate plazas. "Let us audit your worth," he murmured, dragging the mewling wretch behind ornamental bamboo. "Shall we inventory bones? Viscera? Or perhaps residual honour—though that ledger reads crimson."
Through tremulous fingers, Chen Yue witnessed her tormentor swallowed by Gu Chen's shadow. In her breast, unfamiliar fire kindled—not hope's fragile flame, but vengeance' dark-star ignition.
The Calculus of Scars
Crack!
The percussive slap ignited constellations across the drunkard's vision.
"Sentinels! Where skulk these wage-bound ghosts?" He ululated, clutching his florid cheek.
Wang Hu's phalanx of enforcers advanced—scythe-muscled arms bared, a wolfpack's lethal grace. The patriarch's digit trembled toward Gu Chen. "Your bread hangs on my daughter's caprice! Grovel, curs!"
"Commence the pedagogy," Gu Chen decreed, his timbre arctic.
The security cadre descended—calculated impacts upon fleshy haunches and adipose bastions, a choreography of controlled brutality. Within moments, the patriarch lay supine, his visage a nocturne of violets and ochres.
"Cessation". Gu Chen strewn crumpled joss paper across marble. "Your coffers shall henceforth demand sanguine tithes. Let us assay your hepatic endurance."
The wretch scrabbled for scattered lucre, imprecations devolving to mewls. "Viper's brood! I'll see you paupers!"
Wang Hu's subsonic rumble froze his retreat. "Tarry, and we'll inventory your molars."
Chen Yue tracked the fleeing silhouette, a titanic conflict etching her porcelain features. "His… convalescence?"
"Ephemeral wounds beget eternal lessons," Gu Chen intoned. "Mercy oils tyranny's gears. You've underwritten his putrefaction ad nauseam."
Her jade talons carved lunar crescents. "What anchor dares this maelstrom?"
He claimed her device, digits cascading across the interface. "Until some paladin proves worthy," he declared, etching his cypher into her digital grimoire, "this fortress stands garrisoned."
The device trilled—a lone wolf glyph now winking beside his appellation. Chen Yue's lips betrayed fugitive amusement. "Bastion or fresh persecutor?"
Gu Chen's chuckle carried permafrost's bite. "The lupine guard keeps faith. Let us chart your carrion crow's orbital resolve."
Twilight gilded corporate battlements as Chen Yue entombed her phone, its newfound mass both millstone and covenant. In the surveillance chamber's penumbra, Gu Chen surveilled flickering feeds—a hierophant forging order from entropy, one fractured psyche per intervention.
The Gilded Cage's Lure
Chen Yue lingered in the atrium's amber twilight, fingertips grazing her phone's newly inscribed contact. "My gratitude," she breathed, the words dissolving like gossamer.
Gu Chen's smile radiated solar ease. "Return to your corporate bastion, warrior queen. Should carrion crows besiege your roost—" His fingers curled into lupine talons.
Her laughter shimmered through crystalline remnants. "My sisterhood's fortress stands guarded. Even vultures quail before metropolitan sorceresses."
_____
In the security sanctum, Wang Hu's grin cleaved his ursine visage. "The lotus inclines toward her cultivator! Beckon once, and—"
Gu Chen's glacial stare petrified the jape mid-flight. "Sentinel wolves guard their fold's sanctity."
The retinue scattered like startled starlings, leaving Gu Chen to contemplate surveillance mosaics—and the encrypted cypher now smouldering in Chen Yue's device.
_____
Executive aerie.
Ling Meixue's jade stylus hovered above the trembling phone. Unknown cypher. Jiangzhou sigil.
"Goddess Ling," crooned the serpent's baritone. "Must our duet eternally circle that banal terrain?"
Her fountain pen froze mid-glyph. "Jiang Feng. How plebeian—nuisance through spectral caller ID?"
Crystal clinked—a calculated caesura. "Tonight's philanthropic masque lacks its glacial star. Come, let acolytes worship your boreal radiance."
Her reflection glowered in obsidian mahogany. "My chronicle bursts with consequential symphonies."
"Consequential?" His chuckle dripped venomous velvet. "Shall I dispatch chroniclers to document your...nocturnal concertos?"
Lunar beams honed her silhouette against crystalline panes. "Menaces now, Jiang-shào? How parochial."
"Merely...persuasive harmonies." The line expired with digital rigour mortis.
Ling Meixue's gaze descended to her ebony strongbox—and the mother-of-pearl derringer within. The gala's ivory summons pirouetted floorward, its gilt edges gleaming like a hemlock chalice's rim.
The Serpent's Gambit
The air thickened with unspoken threats in Jiangzhou's elite circles. Ling Meixue's lacquered nails tapped a staccato rhythm on her mahogany desk. "Tonight?" she finally conceded, the syllables laced with reluctant acquiescence.
"Seven o'clock sharp, Harmonia Palace," Jiang Feng's silken baritone oozed through the receiver. "We shall toast to… *mutual enlightenment."
_____
Within the gilded confines of Jiang Manor's study, pu'er tea's earthy aroma mingled with conspiracy. Jiang Feng reclined like a sated predator opposite his father—a patriarch whose gaze shimmered with generational scheming.
"She acquiesces," the younger Jiang sneered, swirling cognac in a cut-crystal tumbler. "Her fledgling dominion cannot weather our sector's encroaching frost."
The elder's jade paperweight struck rosewood with tectonic finality. "Subtlety, boy! The Tiger Marshal spurns our tribute—that terrain remains ensnared in Junli Group's claws."
Jiang Feng's laughter dripped with venomous saccharinity. "Let the uniformed brute posture as a paragon. We shall claim both territory and ice-bound sovereignty through… *alternative methodologies."
"Imbecile!" The patriarch's fist quivered. "That plebeian sentinel thwarts you thrice! The Tiger's hounds scent blood—"
"Antiquated fears!" Jiang Feng spat, obliterating a lychee beneath his crest-engraved signet. "Tonight's masquerade shall shatter Ling Meixue's glacial façade. As for her mongrel guardian…" Crimson nectar pooled on Carrara marble. "…I'll inter him in the paupers' ossuary he merits."
The elder's eyes traced ancestral portraits—centuries of Jiangs extinguishing rivals through nuptial snares and twilight accidents. "Proceed with the betrothal charade. Ensure she imbibes the *special vintage* I've curated."
Jiang Feng rose, Brioni lapels catching the chandelier's glare. "By dawn's light, Junli's jewel shall plead for our collar. As for that peasant watchman?" His Patek Philippe glinted like a predator's eye. "…Let him discover the fate of strays in our hunting preserve."
_____
Twilight haemorrhaged across Jiangzhou's skyline as Ling Meixue appraised her reflection—a cryogenic sovereign sheathed in Vera Wang armour. Tremulous fingers brushed the mother-of-pearl derringer nestled in her clutch. Deep in the metropolis' electric viscera, Gu Chen scanned surveillance grids, oblivious to the asps coiling about his glacial blossom.
The Serpent's Coil
Jiang Feng's hubris hung like toxic mist in the Jiang ancestral study. The patriarch's admonitions dissolved into impotent exhalations as the scion swaggered toward his Ferrari, lips pursed in vulgar melody.
The vermilion hypercar cradled an unanticipated basilisk—an auric-tressed enchantress whose smile gleamed like whetted steel. "Collaboration, Jiang-shào?" she crooned, carmine talons caressing the dash's carbon weave. "The *inducements*…inebriating."
Jiang Feng's smirk petrified as consciousness fled—a serpent's kiss beneath his auricle. He regained awareness, crucified on satin altar linens, limbs splayed in humiliating oblation.
"Familiar?" The gilded sorceress reclined against the brocaded headboard, exhaling nicotine halos toward surveillance blind spots. Her device glowed with Gu Chen's surveillance portrait.
"That plebeian watchman?" Jiang Feng writhed against the shibari constraints. "I require no aid to—"
"Hush." An enamelled talon stilled his bravado. "Our consortium proffers…*sanitised* resolutions. The cryogenic sovereign for your seraglio, the disputed fief for your vaults. Our stipulation…" Her stiletto grazed his carotid. "…is sporadic…*hospitality*."
_____
Corporate catacombs.
Gu Chen's roguish smirk outshone the Cayenne's xenon gaze. "Shall I accompany you as a paramour or a Praxis-trained shield, *bǎo bèi?"
Ling Meixue's jade optics narrowed. "Manifest as an umbral sentinel. Masticate any overreaching digits."
The V8's snarl harmonized with Wang Hu's receding dirge: "Camaraderie cowers before feminine wiles!"
_____
Harmonia Palace's porphyry vestibule devoured their ingress. Gu Chen's rented dinner jacket clung with deceptive haut monde insouciance, his bearing transitioning from reptilian sprawl to apex predator's vigilance as Jiang Feng materialized—sartorial perfection masking vitrine fragility.
"Ling-zǒng!" Arms outstretched in grotesque pantomime. "How *philanthropic* to parade your… *diversion*."
Gu Chen's palm anchored at Ling Meixue's lumbosacral nexus—neural cartography optimizing incapacitation vectors. "Charity commences," came the sotto voce murmur, "when I forbear fracturing your digital extensor tendons."
Crystal flutes vibrated in harmonic alarm. The gilded serpent materialized, her cobalt stare dissecting Gu Chen's tracheal prominence. "Shall we libate to…*convergences*?"
Ling Meixue's derringer weighed 255 grams. The ballroom's Baccarat constellations threw 9,000 lethal prismatic daggers. Chronometric gears meshed toward inexorable reckoning.
The Gilded Gauntlet
Harmonia Palace's driveway glittered beneath crystal sconces, a galaxy of luxury automobiles reducing Ling Meixue's Cayenne to provincial mediocrity. Gu Chen guided the Porsche toward the lone kerbside vacancy like a predator claiming territorial spoils.
A Maserati's horn ruptured the automotive symphony. "That antique Porsche dares usurp my berth?" Yang Kun's bluster curdled into pallid recognition. "Y-You!"
"Fortune's wheel turns, *lǎo péngyǒu*," Gu Chen drawled, leaning through the window. "Shall I reserve you orthopaedic accommodations?"
The embezzler veered toward the saturated garage, deaf to Gu Chen's mimed warnings about occupancy limits.
_____
Grand Ballroom.
Gu Chen adjusted his Tom Ford lapels with studied nonchalance. "Does this avian containment suit satisfy *madam's* sartorial decrees?"
"Maintain decorous silence," Ling Meixue commanded, surveying the diamond-dusted horde. "Channel your inner caryatid—mute and immovable."
Their ingress ignited sotto voce combustion—social alchemists transmuting Gu Chen's pedigree through coupe flutes.
"The permafrost sovereign's thaw? Preposterous!"
"Observe Jiang Feng's flared nostrils—a Lipizzaner in distress. Delicious."
"Wager fifty the plebeian desecrates his hired finery with aioli."
Gu Chen pillaged the buffet with privateer abandon. "These Hokkaido scallops lack briny transcendence," he lamented through a mouthful of Ossetra. "Shall I demonstrate culinary alchemy?"
Ling Meixue's Louboutin impaled his metatarsal. "*Restrain yourself.*"
_____
The gilded throng cleaved like biblical tides as Jiang Feng advanced, his Kiton loafers percussing marble in martial cadence. His retinue included a platinum siren whose viperine gaze dissected Gu Chen's jugular topography.
"Ling-zǒng! How… *quixotic* to find you consorting with strays." Jiang Feng's veneers gleamed like polished tombstones. "Does your mongrel require behavioural euthanasia?"
Gu Chen abandoned his truffle-laden crostini. "The sole feral requiring domestication—" metacarpals cracked like glacial calving "—resides before me, *xiǎo bái liǎn."
The blonde's laughter cascaded like breaking chandeliers. "Such an incendiary spirit! Enlighten us, mercenary—does wrath amplify your… *tactical efficacy*?"
Chronos suspended his pendulum. Somewhere, a clockwork swan song commenced.
The Sovereigns' Masquerade
The Jiang clan's centuries-spanning hegemony draped the gala in gilt-edged oppression—their mountainous debts mere marginalia beneath diamond-studded facades. Ling Meixue's mandible hardened as Jiang Feng advanced, his Tom Ford tuxedo clinging like panther's fur to lupine elegance.
"The glacial empress blesses our modest congregation!" Jiang Feng's obeisance dripped venom-dipped civility. "Your luminance eclipses even the Black Orlov's accursed glitter."
Ling Meixue's smile maintained polarized precision. "Philanthropy requires presence, not luminosity."
His barbed digits ensnared her hand—prelude to counterfeit Continental courtesy. "How lamentable our territorial squabbles veil profounder… *symbioses."
Jiang Feng's lips descended toward her metacarpals, recoiling from five-spice residue.
"Regrets, *shǎo yé*," Gu Chen crooned, withdrawing condiment-besmirched digits. "Omitted ablutions after handling…*artisanal charcuterie*."
The atmosphere underwent vitrification. Jiang Feng's dental laminates flashed like unsheathed tantō blades. "You presume—"
"Ten thousand mea culpas!" Gu Chen's rictus broadened. "Shall I procure hygienic ministrations for your… *fastidious proclivities*?"
Jiang Feng's praetorian guard coalesced—human ramparts containing pyroclastic fury. "The genealogical edifice, young scion!" hissed an onyx-suited sentinel. "Ten generations' honour crumbles not before histrionic squalor!"
Ling Meixue observed the lethal pas de deux—Gu Chen's calculated insolence versus Jiang Feng's dynastic pantomime. The Jiangs' empire balanced on diptych foundations: almsgiving theatre and corporate patricide. To dismantle them risked fracturing the metropolis' economic spine—a calculus that stayed even the White Tiger's claws.
"Your…adjunct…" Jiang Feng resurrected equanimity through Herculean effort. "…lacks blueblood refinement. Enlighten me, Miss Ling—does squalid spectacle amuse your rarefied tastes?"
Gu Chen liberated a Wagyu tartare from its Limoges platter. "Ah, but squalor excavates truths your echelon entombs. Consider your family's Liberian shell corporations—or that charming bordello masquerading as 'Orphan's Haven'…"
Cristal flutes petrified at lip's edge. The auric temptress from prior nocturnes materialized, her mirth laced with strychnine. "How invigorating! A cur with incisors."
Ling Meixue's derringer pressed glacial against her hosiery's somatic armoury. Somewhere, a horological pendulum breached witching hour—the Jiangs' choreographed pavane teetering toward a cataclysmic crescendo.
The Commoner's Defiance
The ballroom's crystalline air curdled with voyeuristic delight. Jiang Feng's courtly overtures lay trampled beneath Ling Meixue's glacial declaration.
"My lawful consort," she proclaimed, alabaster fingers cinching Gu Chen's arm like a living fetter.
Three syllables fractured the social cosmos. Jiang Feng's smile petrified mid-veneer—a Carrara mask fissuring to expose bestial incredulity.
"Consort?!" His lacquered nails blanched around a Baccarat flute. "Might we interrogate his… *station*?"
Sibilant murmurs slithered through truffle-suffused ether.
"Fiscal annum yields? Genealogical pedigree? Portfolio dominion?" Jiang Feng's inquisition oozed faux solicitude.
Ling Meixue's protective demurral dissolved beneath Gu Chen's insouciant revelation: "Steward of corporate equanimity—four thousand lunar yuan. Sufficient for udon noodles and *conjugal felicity*".
The chandelier's refracted luminescence shattered into ten thousand stunned vacuums.
Then—
Ribaldry erupted like cluster munitions.
"Vigilant *serf?!"
"The Permafrost Sovereign couples with a sentinel?!"
"By Hades' pomegranates—outshone by a plebeian!"
Jiang Feng's equanimity resurrected through dynastic muscle memory. "How… *rustic*." His gaze flensed Gu Chen's hired finery. "Does your nuptial contract stipulate hygienic codicils?"
Gu Chen liberated a Périgord-laden blini from its argent ziggurat. "Ah, but sanitation proves pivotal when…" His rictus honed to a scalpel's edge. "…*exterminating vermin*."
The auric temptress materialized, her mirth a stiletto eviscerating residual jollity. "Magnificent theatrics! The churl defies Olympus."
Ling Meixue's derringer pulsed against her hosiery's silken straitjacket. Gu Chen's calloused digits enveloped hers—thermic vitality permeating kid-leather gauntlets.
"Behold," he murmured as Jiang Feng's praetorians encircled. "The peony flourishes not in conservatory sterility but in midden's fecund decay."
Beyond gilded architraves, ancestral Jiang effigies wept spectral lacrimae. The dynasty's choreographed minuet faltered—its cadence disrupted by a lone wolf's feral counterpoint.
The Serf's Riposte
The ballroom's atmosphere curdled into a broth of malicious glee. Gu Chen's revelation hung like homespun burlap amidst Brioni-clad perfection. Jiang Feng's mirth cascaded through onyx columns, each chuckle a shard of poisoned crystal.
"A *custodian*?" His Santoni oxfords tapped a scornful morse code. "Does your marital compact include conjugal subsidies for *sanitary services?"
Gu Chen's smirk remained unbroken, a stiletto sheathed in damask. "My consort's coffers sustain life's essentials—*unlike* your vaults, which cannot procure her sidelong glance."
The air congealed with electrified malice.
"Know your station, *churl*." Jiang Feng's whisper dripped nightshade honey. "The midden's reek befouls Harmonia's porphyry."
Unflinching, Gu Chen commandeered a coupe from a liveried tray. "Ah, but the midden fertilizes truths your gilt spires suffocate. Confess, *shǎo yé*—does your tailor reinforce these lapels with insecurity's starch?"
The gilded temptress coalesced, her laughter a scalpel dissecting pretence. "Splendid! The dunghill c*ck crows at the golden pheasant."
Ling Meixue's carmine nails engraved crescents in Gu Chen's forearm—a silent adjuration. He brushed his lips across her knuckles, grazing the derringer's glacial outline beneath lace.
"Let the sport commence," Jiang Feng proclaimed, arms spread in patrician parody. "We shall assay whether *plebeian pride* survives auctioneering's crucible."
As the throng flowed toward brocade-draped chambers, venomous whispers trailed:
"The effrontery! A watchman tilting at peerage!"
"Jiang-shào shall liquidate him with fiscal artillery."
"Mark how the serf laps champagne from his palm—primitively enthralling."
Gu Chen drained his coupe, surveying the gilded herd through lead-crystal prisms. "They conflate rusticity with impotence," he murmured. "Shall we tutor them in *modest* calculus?"
Ling Meixue's glacial veneer fissured a micrometre. "Your pedagogic methods unnerve me."
"Precisely." His grin whetted to a falchion's edge. "Let us inaugurate tonight's symposium—*Political Economy 301: Proletarian Checkmate*."
The auctioneer's gavel struck its ivory block. Deep within Harmonia's gilded bowels, ancestral Jiang portraits trembled in their gesso frames.
The Gavel's Gambit
The Harmonia Ballroom's vaulted ceiling arched like a gilded aviary, its chandeliers fracturing light across murmuring patricians. Ling Meixue's glacial composure remained unyielding as she and Gu Chen retreated to shadowed periphery seats—strategic withdrawal from the velvet-clad carrion birds orbiting the auction stage.
Jiang Feng's profile swivelled two rows forward, his smirk a rapier forged through dynastic privilege. "Witness", his posture proclaimed, "the wolf's prelude to ovine slaughter."
The auctioneer's gavel struck its alabaster block. Relics emerged as ritual sacrifices: Song celadon lotus bowls, Ming silk scrolls whispering with scholar-poets' ink, and a Tang nephrite sceptre channelling celestial mandates—each fetching eight-digit bids swollen by performative altruism. Capitalist sophistry perfected: lucre laundered through charity's prism, renown burnished by calibrated munificence.
Then—
A synchronic inhalation.
The ultimate artefact unveiled itself: the Petite Mer-Cœur, its azure planes refracting imperial hubris across centuries. Whispers metastasised:
"Cousin to Titanic's drowned jewel! Five carved for Eugénie's diadem…"
"Forty carats of glacial fire—Napoléon III's folly incarnate!"
The auctioneer's baritone swelled: "Milords and miladies, tonight's philanthropic apotheosis! Opening entreaty: thirty million!"
The chamber combusted.
"Thirty-five!"
"Thirty-six!"
"Forty!"
Gu Chen's derisive exhalation misted his coupe glass. "Hypothecating villas for crystallized carbon… *charming*."
Ling Meixue's derringer shifted against her thigh—a horologist's pendulum tallying Jiang Feng's stratagems. The scion waited, a panther husbanding energy for the coup de grâce.
When bids coagulated at forty-two million, he elevated his jade paddle—a guillotine's fatal arc.
"**Sixty million.**"
The chandeliers dimmed, eclipsed by ancestral audacity.
Silence vitrified the atmosphere. No challenger stirred—none dared contest when Jiang's steel-framed edicts were in generational dominion. The gavel hovered, poised to consecrate his apotheosis.
From umbral recesses, Gu Chen's voice lacerated the tension:
"Sixty *million and one."
Jiang Feng's cervical tendons blanched. The bid—a solitary yuan exceeding his offer—constituted no fiscal challenge but a stiletto drawn across the Jiang lineage's escutcheon.
Ling Meixue's nails incised lunates into her palms. "You summon obliteration," she exhaled.
Gu Chen's smile mirrored the gem's most frigid facet. "Let him savour *true hazard's* bouquet."
The auctioneer's mallet quivered. In the Jiang ancestral sanctum, portraits of warlords and coal barons wept amber varnish tears. The dynasty's gilded pavane faltered—its cadence hijacked by a wolf in purloined finery.
The Leviathan's Gambit
The auctioneer's gavel descended like a funereal tocsin. "Awarded to Jiang-shào for sixty million!"
Jiang Feng received the Petite Mer-Cœur, its azure flames deriding the chandeliers' prismatic lament. The gem's facets embroidered hypnotic arabesques across Ling Meixue's alabaster countenance—a siren's melody few mortals dared resist.
"None but your cryogenic splendour merits this reliquary," Jiang Feng proclaimed, proffering the necklace as a coronet. "Let it herald our entwined… *fate*."
Ling Meixue's digits spasmed—a tremor of mortal frailty—before retreating to anchor themselves in Gu Chen's sleeve. "My betrothed's proximity renders ornaments redundant."
The chamber's collective gasp crystallized. Sixty million yuan dismissed as "redundant"—the Snow Queen's censure glaciated even Jiang Feng's curated suavity.
Gu Chen's mirth fractured the frost. "Baubles for constellation-drunk ingénues, Jiang-shào. My consort merits *authentic* rarities."
Derisive jeers detonated:
"The insolvent lectures on authenticity!"
"Six millennia of his stipend couldn't procure this 'bauble'!"
"Reveal these fabled rarities, charlatan!"
Jiang Feng's smile putrefied. "Edify us, *custodian*. What artefact transcends regal legacies?"
Gu Chen's hand vanished into his smoking jacket's recesses. When it re-emerged, the chandeliers dimmed in obeisance.
The object cradled in his palm devoured luminosity rather than refracting it—an ebon rhombic dodecahedron, its twelve planes incised with Phoenician sigils glowing stygian crimson.
"Leviathan's Lachryma", he murmured. "Spawned when Atlantis succumbed, tempered in Krakatoa's crucible. Its final exhibition financed Bonaparte's Waterloo arsenal."
The gilded temptress' coupe exploded against Carrara. "Preposterous! That's a Sanctum Sanctorum relic!"
Ling Meixue's derringer slipped neglected to terrazzo. "You…sheltered this…in your *lapel?"
Jiang Feng's ancestral equanimity finally fissured. "Cut glass! Carnival theatrics!"
Gu Chen angled the artefact. The sigils' rubicund luminescence intensified, projecting astral cartography across the coffered dome—celestial charts antedating cuneiform.
"Verification required?" He crooned. "Shall we rouse its… *latent capacities*?"
The gem's nucleus pulsated with arrhythmic vitality.
Deep beneath Vatican City, sacristy sirens commenced their ululation.
"..."
The Ocean's Heart
Ling Meixue discreetly tugged the hem of Gu Chen's sleeve, her voice hushed yet urgent. "Must you indulge in theatrics at every turn? Have you no regard for dignity? The entire assembly bears witness to this spectacle!"
*Will this man ever discern the weight of propriety?
Jiang Feng cast a glacial glance toward the retinue of broad-shouldered attendants behind him. "Expel this charlatan," he commanded icily. "I tolerate no pretenders in my presence."
"At once, Young Master Jiang!"
Six formidable men advanced with purposeful strides, their intent unmistakable—to unceremoniously remove Gu Chen from the premises.
"Stay your hands!"
Gu Chen lifted his gaze, a roguish smile playing upon his lips as he met Jiang Feng's glare. "What certainty fuels your conviction that I dissemble?"
"Produce an artefact surpassing my Little Ocean's Heart in splendour," Jiang Feng retorted with withering contempt, gesturing toward the opulent three-tiered confection nearby, "and I shall not only press yonder cake upon my countenance but address you as 'Lord Gu'!"
"Intriguing terms," Gu Chen mused, his shoulders lifting in casual amusement. "A wager worthy of the stakes."
Jiang Feng's eyes blazed with barely contained fury. "Should your claim prove false, the House of Jiang shall exact retribution. You shall traverse the length of this hall upon your belly—beneath my parted legs!"
"Accepted," Gu Chen affirmed without hesitation.
Ling Meixue observed him, her bewilderment palpable. *What machinations stir behind those impervious eyes?
"Let us behold this fabled treasure, Master Gu," Jiang Feng sneered. "The world knows no jewel surpassing the Little Ocean's Heart—this I would witness!"
Gu Chen's hand disappeared into the inner sanctum of his tailored jacket as he addressed the gathering. "The cognoscenti among you recall the chronicle: how Tanzanite, that rarest of gems, was cleaved asunder by merchant hands into six fragments, offered in tribute to Louis Quatorze. Five became the Lesser Ocean's Hearts gracing the royal diadem, while the sixth—"
"Cease your prattling!" Jiang Feng interjected venomously. "We've no appetite for nursery tales!"
Gu Chen's smile deepened, razor-edged. "...while the sixth, magnum opus of the lapidary's art, crowned the sovereign's sceptre—until purloined by cunning hands and reborn as pendant splendour."
Snap.
The velvet coffer sprang open, releasing a coruscating azure luminescence that danced with the chandeliers' refracted glow.
Jiang Feng paled. "This... this cannot—!"
Scion of Jiangzhou's preeminent jewellers, his expertise proved both a blessing and a curse—the gem in Gu Chen's palm outshone his own treasure as a supernova dwarfs a candle flame.
"Five Lesser Ocean's Hearts exist," Gu Chen proclaimed, elevating the pendant where its cerulean fire mesmerised the assembly. "Baubles for crowns. But *this*—the True Ocean's Heart—stands peerless. Only such perfection merits adornment of my consort's grace."
Jiang Feng recoiled as though struck. "Preposterous! The Titanic's depths claimed the Ocean's Heart a century past! What sorcery brings it to your hand?!"
To be continuous…