Page 85 of He Is My Bride

“Aww, is cousin Wu not giving you attention? Sit down Wang Hao, your entitlement is making me cringe.”

People turned and saw that Li Ying had returned. He was standing wide like a boss—he was trying to keep his footing while the floor keptrocking—with his hand at his hip and the other one armed with the knuckle duster purse, sucking on a breath mint.

“Please, Miss Li—” Hanrong was cut off by Xiuxiu:

“Who areyouto talk here?! If someone here is an outsider, isn’t it you!” Unlike Wang Hao, she’d managed to secure herself allies, and the two girls in her company joined in:

“Yeah, who are you to come here, you chickenv, stealing men and talking like anything concerns you?”

“M-hm, chicken!”

The men looked awkward, and none stood up for Li Ying. For all they had seen, Li Ying had been acting flirty all night, maybe these girls were right to accuse the foreigner of promiscuity. And what stakes did the men have in the squabbles of some women? Only Hanrong thought to defend him, but he saw Li Ying stood unfazed and spoke out for himself just fine:

“Oh, did I even manage to steal your imaginary boyfriend?” Li Ying taunted back.

The other girl gasped and looked at her friends, outraged. “You got some nerve…”

“If I did, well…” Li Ying tossed his hair. “I wasn’t even trying, so what does that tell about you and me?”

“You…! Cheap mongrel bitch!” The girl lost her cool entirely.

“Cheap?” Li Ying, however, just kept smiling wider when he saw he was getting on top. “How much do you pay rent for that bag?” He tilted his head, grinning from ear to ear. He could go on all night like this.

“Be quiet, you cheap chick, you’re causing a scene!” Xiuxiu tried to double back when she found her attack dogs were ineffective and no one else was supporting her, but Li Ying wasn’t going to let her go so easily now that he was having fun:

“I’mnot the one who started crying like a baby over not getting enough attention from the Wus or whatever. Tang Xiuxiu, don’t you think you could do better, considering how much you’ve invested?”

Xiuxiu’s voice was trembling with rage, though she tried her best to keep it calm, “You mean like Wu Hanjun, hm? What did you do to even get a Wu to look at you, chicken?”

Li Ying froze the smile on his lips. Should he back off? To him this was just a game, but to everybody else it was lower-class women fighting for courting rights, and as long as he engaged in this squabble, he would seem no better than these professional gold diggers. A lady of class would rise above it, right? Li Ying didn’t care what people thought of him, but he did care what they thought of Hanjun, and as much as he loved a good bitch fight, he was aware his behavior reflected poorly on Hanjun right now.

Wang Hao laughed. “Goes to show what kind of a man Wu Hanjun truly is! What a naïve tool, letting himself be fooled by such a woman!”

Now Li Ying’s smile died. “Shut the fuck up, Wang Hao!”

“Youshut up, you cheap, mixed-breed chicke—”

A fist met the side of Wang Hao’s face before he could finish. Wu Hanjun had risen fist first from the couch with no warning.

“Whoa!” people exclaimed, and the girls moved away from the table,s clutching their drinks and their purses.

Hanjun grabbed Wang Hao’s collar before the shorter man could keel over from the force of his punch, and pulled his face close to stare him down. Hanjun’s darkened eyes were absolutely deranged. It was obvious he was very pissed and very, very drunk.

“Wu Hanjun, please don’t fight!” his friends called, but Hanjun lifted Wang Hao off his feet while the other man was whimpering, his face quickly swelling up and turning from red to purple.

“Hanjun!” Li Ying tried to run to him, but Xiuxiu didn’t let him pass; she grabbed his hair.

“Don’t you know to stay out of it!” Xiuxiu shrieked.

Li Ying felt her sharp nails dig into his scalp, his voice almost failing as he yelped in pain. “Let go, or I will give you a new rhinoplasty right now!”

Tang Xiuxiu didn’t like that. She sought to throw him down, but Li Ying managed to keep his footing, turning around and grabbing her wrist just in time before her nails came to claw at his face. Xiuxiu was stopped there, finding this chick’s arms surprisingly strong and herself powerless to move hers as long as Li Ying held them.

“I have a principle that I won’t hit girls,” Li Ying said in his most charming feminine voice, “but for you, I will make an exception if you don’t back off now.”

“Grab her arms!”

Xiuxiu’s friends moved in on command and seized Li Ying’s arms one each and still had to struggle to bring them back, twisting his wrists to make him lose his grip on Xiuxiu’s.