Chapter 278: [278] Am I this famous now? _1

“No… nothing serious…”

Xu Hongyuan met Gao Shichang’s gaze, and the words that had been on the tip of his tongue lost the courage to come out, swallowed back down again.

“If it were nothing, you wouldn’t have come all this way in the middle of the night. Speak, what exactly is it?” Gao Shichang put down his teacup, looking at him with seriousness.

Taking a deep breath, Xu Hongyuan finally spoke up, “It’s about Tang Feng.”

“Tang Feng?” Gao Shichang was puzzled for a moment, obviously not recalling who this person was at first.

“Didn’t I try to kidnap Mao Anyi for you last time? It was this guy who messed it up,” Xu Hongyuan hurriedly explained.

“Oh, that guy? What’s up with him now?” Gao Shichang finally remembered who he was.

He had, by chance, seen Mao Anyi on TV and remarked offhand that she looked pretty good.

But Xu Hongyuan had misunderstood and tried to drug Mao Anyi, attempting to kidnap her as a tribute to him.

However, he heard that a young man had thwarted the plan.

Although he hadn’t taken the incident to heart, he remembered the young man.

Even though it was Xu Hongyuan who acted impulsively, after all, he was serving Gao Shichang, and Tang Feng, in a way, had indirectly slapped his face.

“I’ve been investigating the whereabouts of that bracelet recently, and now I’ve got reliable information that this guy has the bracelet,” Xu Hongyuan continued to report.

“The bracelet is in his hands? Did you get it?” Gao Shichang took an apple from the fruit plate on the coffee table and began to peel it with a fruit knife.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“This… it failed…”

Xu Hongyuan immediately recounted the incident where he sent men to ambush Tang Feng and how Tang Feng went to the bar to find him.

Naturally, the part where he knelt before Tang Feng was omitted.

That part was too embarrassing; he was too ashamed to speak of it.

“So you’re saying, during this period, you’ve accomplished almost nothing? And all your plans were ruined by a young man in his twenties, is that right?”

Gao Shichang didn’t even lift his head, focusing all his attention on the apple in his hands.

Xu Hongyuan looked ashamed as he lowered his head, “Yes.”

Suddenly, Gao Shichang laughed, “Good, failure is the mother of success. Here, have an apple.”

With that, he handed the peeled apple to Xu Hongyuan.

Xu Hongyuan didn’t dare to hesitate and quickly reached out to take it.

That’s when things took a sudden turn.

Just as he took the apple, Gao Shichang’s other hand, holding the fruit knife, suddenly plunged into the back of his hand.

“Hmm…”

Xu Hongyuan’s veins bulged immediately, and he bit down hard on his jaw to prevent himself from crying out.

Yet large beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

There was no change in Gao Shichang’s expression; he still had a smile as he leaned back into the sofa, “Don’t be polite, eat.”

In excruciating pain, Xu Hongyuan’s body trembled, but he still brought the apple to his mouth and took a bite.

The hand holding the apple still had the fruit knife embedded in it, and blood kept dripping onto the carpet.

“Does it taste good?” asked Gao Shichang with a smile.

“Good… it’s good,” Xu Hongyuan managed to force a smile.

Gao Shichang finally nodded in satisfaction and gestured to the couch beside him, “Sit.”

He then got up to find a first-aid kit and began to bandage Xu Hongyuan’s wound.

“Hongyuan, you are my right-hand man; while the knife stabbed your hand, the pain is in my heart,” he said.

“I want you to learn from this, to not be so hasty in your actions. Do you understand my good intentions?” Gao Shichang pulled out the fruit knife and threw it on the table, then proceeded to apply medicine and wrap a bandage around Xu Hongyuan’s hand before speaking earnestly.

“I understand; I’ve let Mr. Gao down. It won’t happen again,” what else could Xu Hongyuan say? Of course, he had to forgive him.

“It’s good that you understand. I was planning to entrust you with more responsibilities in the future. Now tell me, how can I trust you if you can’t even deal with a wet-behind-the-ears brat?”

“Yes, yes, when I get back, I’ll deeply reflect on it and next time I’ll definitely kill that brat in one fell swoop,” Xu Hongyuan hastily expressed his determination.

But Gao Shichang raised a hand to stop him, “No need for that, I’ll have someone else deal with this matter. You go back and focus on healing.”

Xu Hongyuan instantly panicked, Mr. Gao had completely lost faith in him if he was assigning someone else to handle the situation.

“Mr. Gao…”

“No need to say more, spend this time reflecting well, and aim to not make the same mistake next time. I will have other important uses for you later,” Gao Shichang yawned, clearly signaling that the audience was over.

Xu Hongyuan, unable to do anything else, got up and left, “Then I won’t disturb Mr. Gao’s rest anymore.”

After speaking, he left disheartened.

Gao Shichang picked up the blood-stained fruit knife from the coffee table, his eyes turning cold and sinister.

“Tang Feng?” he muttered the name, then casually flicked the fruit knife.

“Thwack!”

The fruit knife buried itself into the wooden coffee table, trembling at the tail end.

…

The next morning, an incessant ringing of his cellphone woke Tang Feng.

Groggy, he opened his eyes and took a while to come to his senses.

After bringing Mao Anyi home last night, nothing unspeakable had happened between them; the woman didn’t even invite him upstairs for a drink of water.

By the time he returned it was past one in the morning, and after reading some books on antiques for a while, he had gone to bed.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he finally picked up his phone and saw it was Ge Hui calling, so he immediately answered.

“Mr. Tang, something terrible has happened. There’s a counterfeit antique in our store, and it’s being live-streamed. There are a lot of people watching it now…”

No sooner had the call connected, Ge Hui blurted out anxiously.

The more Tang Feng heard, the more confused he became, and he quickly interrupted, “What exactly happened? Slow down and explain.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end, as if Ge Hui was organizing his thoughts, and then he continued, “A live-streaming blogger came to the store earlier, saying it was because of you, Mr. Tang. He wanted to buy a few antiques that you had appraised.”

“I’m so famous now?” Tang Feng was taken aback, astonished that people were buying antiques in his name.

However, what Ge Hui said next left him speechless.

“That’s not the point. The point is that the antique that the blogger bought is a fake!”