Chapter 390 — No Going Home Until We're Drunk

Wei Zhao nodded and got into the car. Once An Jianwen had climbed in after him, the car eased into motion; plainly An Jianwen had already booked the hotel and was merely waiting for Wei Zhao to say yes.

The venue this time was once again the Starlight Grand Hotel — it seemed An Jianwen meant to rise again from the very spot where he had fallen.

The private room was the same one as before, though there were more people in it now. Besides Su Taizao, there was the effeminate man from last time, and at his side a fat fellow who looked like a laughing Buddha. The moment An Jianwen stepped in, all three rose to their feet, plainly taking their lead from him.

"Mr. Lin, you've come!" Su Taizao strode over warmly and took Wei Zhao's hand, yet a flicker of venom passed through his eyes. The beating he and An Jianwen had taken earlier was not something he could swallow so easily.

"Heh, Brother Su, what happened to your forehead? Huh? A moment ago I noticed Brother An had a bandage on his head too... Don't tell me the two of you were playing at head-butting each other?" Having spent so long with Shen Yushu, Wei Zhao had picked up a little of her way of talking, and the words were scarcely out of his mouth before he felt a touch embarrassed himself. What an imagination he had... He could just picture the two of them, backs bent, straining with all their might, charging headlong into each other...

Su Taizao broke into a sweat at that, and his displeasure only deepened. Who was the idiot who butted heads with anyone? Only a man with water on the brain! Why the bandage sat on his head — did Wei Zhao really not know?

But tonight's business was to coax Wei Zhao into drinking, not to fall out with him, so Su Taizao forced his anger down and laughed. "Bumped into a door, that's all, heh... Come, come, enough of that. Mr. Lin, please take a seat — let me introduce you to two brothers of mine!"

Wei Zhao nodded and sat down. Then Su Taizao introduced the effeminate man and the laughing-Buddha fat man: the effeminate one was called Yang Ganglou, the fat one Su Taiwei. Yang Ganglou's family dealt in foreign trade, while Su Taiwei was Su Taizao's younger cousin.

"It's a great pleasure to meet Mr. Lin today!" Su Taiwei said. "I hear you're even Brother Jianwen's savior. I'm a bit older than you, so if you'll permit an old man the liberty, I'll call you Brother Lin. Brother Lin, how about we drink till we drop tonight — no going home until we're drunk?"

"Sure." Wei Zhao nodded.

"Ah?" Su Taiwei was stunned. According to the plan he and Su Taizao had laid out with An Jianwen, Wei Zhao was not supposed to fall for it so easily — drink till they dropped? After all, who in his right mind would get blind drunk with his enemies?

So Su Taiwei had prepared a whole pile of arguments to talk Wei Zhao around, with An Jianwen and Yang Ganglou offering counsel on the side. This Yang Ganglou was the strategist of the younger generation of the Su family — a sharp mind and a belly full of wickedness; tonight's scheme had been his idea.

The men conferred a while and decided to trip Wei Zhao up at the drinking table. Best of all would be to land him in the hospital; if not the hospital, then once he was drunk they would arrange some entertainment and film it.

All the same, this was the stuff of schemes and snares rather than an open quarrel, so even if Gu Mengyao got wind of it, she would have nothing to say. Of that, An Jianwen was quite confident.

But Wei Zhao's reaction caught them all off guard. The instant Su Taiwei finished speaking, Wei Zhao agreed without the slightest hesitation, leaving them all a little dumbfounded.

Su Taiwei felt as though a fish bone had lodged in his throat. The speech he had prepared was now useless, and he was left thoroughly stifled. He had meant to wait for Wei Zhao to refuse, then deliver a long lecture, reasoning with him and appealing to his feelings — and now none of it was needed.

Watching their aghast expressions, Wei Zhao only smiled. "Haha, you all know I'm the young lady's attendant. At home I never get to drink, so I've rather been craving it..."

At those words, understanding dawned on everyone. So that was it. And come to think of it, it made sense: Wei Zhao was the attendant Gu Pengzhan had hired for Gu Mengyao with his own money. You could hardly drink yourself stupid every day — what would that look like?

So now that such a chance had finally come his way, of course Wei Zhao would not let it pass! Hearing him say so, everyone relaxed at once. They had thought Wei Zhao might be playing some trick, but it seemed he truly meant to drink till he dropped.

"Ganglou, go fetch a few crates of beer to quench our thirst first, then bring out the hard stuff," An Jianwen ordered Yang Ganglou.

Mixing beer with liquor gets you drunk easily and ruins your stomach besides; drink too much and you could end up with a bleeding ulcer or a perforated stomach. An Jianwen, one had to admit, was a nasty piece of work — a few crates of beer to quench a thirst!

But An Jianwen's aim was to drink Wei Zhao to death. If not to death, then at least into drunkenness, after which they would stage a little show for the cameras. Wei Zhao might look as though he could hold his liquor, but An Jianwen was not the least bit worried: he, Su Taizao, and Yang Ganglou needed no introduction — all veterans of the drinking battlefield. Among the Four Young Masters of Songshan back then, who hadn't had an astonishing capacity?

Yang Ganglou, the strategist, was more so than any of them. Even with no one urging him on, he drank nonstop at home; before every plot to do someone in, he had to pour down a bottle of high-proof liquor. Was a drunkard like that to be measured by ordinary standards?

And of course, if the three of them still could not drink Wei Zhao under the table, they had one final trump card: Su Taiwei. That boy was the freak of the Su family, a walking liquor vat. Not only could he drink, he was a master of every deadly drinking method — red wine with Sprite, whiskey with iced tea, beer with cola, or taking red, white, and beer in turn, and so on and so forth... every one of them a trick to drink a man to death without paying for the funeral.

Such methods would finish most people off on the spot, but Su Taiwei had been soaked in a liquor vat since childhood — his father ran the Su family's brewing business — so he was himself a creature of the vat.

With Su Taiwei as his life-saving ace, what did An Jianwen have to fear?

Presently, under Yang Ganglou's direction, several waiters filed in and set crates of beer printed with foreign labels down on the floor.

One glance, and a flicker of anger crossed Wei Zhao's heart. These people were too vicious — the beer they'd brought was the strongest there was? If not for his own experience in such things, anyone else would have been bound straight for the hospital tonight.

An Jianwen had said to fetch a few crates of beer to quench their thirst, but the beer Yang Ganglou had the waiters carry in was "Tactical Nuclear Weapon Penguin," a brew of extraordinarily high alcohol content.

"Tactical Nuclear Weapon Penguin" contained six times the alcohol of ordinary beer. To Wei Zhao it was nothing, of course, but for an ordinary person it was more than enough to get dead drunk.

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