Chapter 8 Cinderella?

• Caught in the mood, Chu Xiaoxiao waved with her cup still in her hands, “There’s nothing wrong with being poor, but what’s pitiful is your inability to realize and accept yourself for who you are. If you’re poor, then live an honest life accordingly. You don’t know how sad you looked, clinging on to Fang Fang so desperately as if she was your charming prince that will one day give you a rich life like Cinderella’s.”
• Lin Fang kept motioning me with her eyes, telling me to say no more. I know, that she must be afraid of what these people would do to me.
• I looked around, eyes sweeping across the entire room, over all of their faces and memorizing every last one of them. Then at last, my eyes returned to Chu Xiaoxiao’s pretty face, and I felt an urge to spit on it.
• People of her kind were the most disgusting of them all. Though everything that came out of her mouth were “fair” and “kind”, but in her heart she held herself in higher regards than all others, treating all those less fortunate with money as if they should be bowing their heads in submission to Her Majesty. In her eyes, these people don’t even have the right to speak before her.
• These people mocked and jeered with complete disregard to how someone like me would have felt. They laughed so hard that some of them were even hugging their stomachs in pretend pain.
• “So, how it looks to me now is that, you guys won’t let me go unless I take this drink here?” I asked.
• Liu Hu laughed so hard that I could see tears forming at the edge of his eyes, “Ho, that glass of drink is expensive, more than you could ever afford. Just be honest with yourself and take it if you want it so badly. All these pretense of pride and principle really doesn’t suit someone as lowly as you.”
• Once again, Chu Xiaoxiao was a picture a holy saint, as if she was the Virgin Mary herself, “So long as you promise that you’ll leave Lin Fang alone from now on and quit your job, I’ll even give you all the drinks that you can see here today. You’re a security guard right? I can recommend you to another place, and they’ll give you at least 500 more each month.”
• “Five hundred, huh.” I laughed.
• “You aren’t satisfied with even five hundred? Zhang Chao, don’t push my limits.” Chu Xiaoxiao said, biting her lips.
• I laughed even louder, so loud that everyone quieted down to look at me. I nodded, “Five whole hundred, but of course. How could that not satisfy me? Your royal majesty did so graciously give me such an enticing offer. I wanted it so much that I’d beg you for it on my knees.”
• Chu Xiaoxiao began to sense that something wasn’t quite right with the choice of my words and the tone of my voice. She frowned and crossed her arms, and was about to continue lecturing me. I took the cup of drink from her hand.
• “A bottle of this costs a grand, if I remembered. This cup here really costs quite a bit right?”
• Chu Xiaoxiao flipped her eyes at me, “Just stop it, whatever acts you’re trying to pull. I’ll give you the whole bottle if you want. You can even take away all the alcohol that we have today if it suits your fancy.”
• I nodded. I raised the cup high, and then poured it all over Chu Xiaoxiao’s head.
• “Sorry, too expensive for someone as poor as me. My Lady Chu, your majesty, can enjoy it as much as you want yourself.” I flipped the cup upside down and placed it on top of her head, letting whatever that still remained in the cup drip down on her face. Then, I sat my butt back down onto my seat.
• What Chu Xiaoxiao wore tonight was very seductively skimpy indeed, so skimpy that there was probably less fabric on her from head to toe than the shirt that I wore. The alcohol dripped from her head, down to her face, and then to her chest. Wetness spread quickly over the thin fabric of her shirt, almost making it see through as it spread. Before long, two balls became in play on the court.
• All were shocked. No one expected that I would do something like this. Chu Xiaoxiao used to be one of the prime female figures when we were in school. Even now, people would beg and die for her to step on them with that shapely legs of hers, bowing to her every whims and wishes.
• And here, I, the lowly peasant Zhang Chao, made such a big fool out of her.
• I said, calmly, my face as matter of fact as the rising and falling of the sun, “I was going to leave it along anyway, that cup of drink, but since all of you were kind enough to threaten that I won’t be able to leave this place unless I took it, I guess I got curious. Oh, that reminds me, I don’t particularly want to go away either, not yet anyway. I have a bone to pick with a few of the people here.”
• Chu Xiaoxiao’s whole body trembled from anger, her little fists tightened and loosened repetitively, then she yelled, “Get him!”
• At her command, all the guys in the room came at me. Chen Yuzhou also signaled Liu Hu with his eyes, and they nodded. The four of them readied the steel pipes in their hands, then brought them swing down in the direction of my head.
• Chen Yuzhou yelled, “Hit him, hit him hard! Break his legs, I’ll make sure that none of you have any consequences to bear!”
• I sat there, unmoving, waited until the first one came up to me, then I suddenly reached for that man’s collar and pulled. That man suddenly lost his balance and fell to the ground, and took the steel pipe that he dropped. With it, I swung it forcibly in the horizontal direction, right at the knees of a few of them that were behind him. Before they could scream in pain, I shoved the man backward, letting him crash into the crowd that came at me.
• All the while sitting down squarely on my butt. These people weren’t able to touch even a hair on my head.
• Chen Yuzhou knew that I was strong, but what he didn’t know was that I was also quite capable in a fight. Possibly remembering what happened at our last encounter, Chen Yuzhou faltered a little and took a step back.
• I looked at him, brows raised, “This is all you got?”
• As if I would be so kind as to give him an excuse to back down. He stiffened visibly, then yelled, “Screw it. All of you, do it! Hold nothing back!”
• “Wait.” I stood up, and rolled my neck.
• Chen Yuzhou looked confused, and Liu Hu growled, “You little filthy dog, it’s too late to beg now!”
• I tossed my phone over to Lin Fang, and smiled, “Hey, watch it for me now. I want to play with them for a bit, and I don’t want to accidentally scratch my phone.”
• This display enraged them so much that they were probably not far from wanting to strangle me with their bare hands. The pipes came at me hard and fast, as I dodged them left and right at the last minute, feeling them scraping against my skin.
• “Heh, kill him! And someone, take out your phone and record down all of this. This is what happens when anyone dared to cross us.” Liu Hu said to the onlooking crowd, gloating. Looking at how closely I dodged, with the pipes less than an inch from me as I did, Liu Hu assumed that I only got lucky with the dodges.
• I didn’t say anything, and dodged a few more times. By now, I had more or less figured out their habits and how fast their movements were.
• Liu Hu came at me again, and I slowed down a little on purpose, pretending to be unable to keep up with him. He smiled viciously, bringing down the steel pipe in his hand even harder onto me. Just as it was about to hit me, I sidestepped and the pipe missed me completely and crashed onto the floor, and I gripped Liu Hu’s wrist with my hand. Before he realized what had happened, I kicked him hard in the chest, sending him flying backwards.
• Before Liu Hu could yell out in pain, I lowered my upper body slightly and pulled at the fist that appeared in the place of where my shoulder had been. A back throw later, that man gasped in pain as I brought his frame down solid onto the table in front of me.
• I acted fast and decisively. The combat training I received when I served in the forces were an entirely different world than the usual fights between little thugs in the back alleys. At the beginning when I kept dodging without fighting back, I didn’t do it for show, but instead I was evaluating and gauging how much I could let loose on them. After all, it’d be a little troublesome if I accidentally hit them a little to hard and killed them.
• A short minute later, the room was in a state of complete chaos, with some guys moaning and lying unmoving on the floor, and girls screaming in fear.
• I walked over, and picked Chen Yuzhou up by his shirt. He stammered, his lips turning white as blood left his face, “What... what are you going to do to me?”
• I replied, “Didn’t you say just then, that I should go see a shrink because my head isn’t right? Well, how about if you let me run a few analysis for you, whether or not you’re thinking straight when you assumed that you could get out of this unharmed.”
• “You, you wouldn’t dare! I’m the son of the head of the Juen Group, I’m your company’s client! I... if you dare hurt me, I’ll... I’ll tell Lu Tao to fire you!”
• I was soundly disappointed, “Look, we’re all adults now, and you still can’t make better threats than little schoolboys? Don’t you even feel a little bit ashamed, as a man?”