At this the blood did fly, and a scream came with it.
Nor did Zhao Chen stand on ceremony with the other two, but bestowed one upon each of them outright.
It happened that Zhao Chen's mood had been very bad of late.
He wanted someone upon whom to work it off himself.
And here were men delivered to his very door.
And just then a dozen and more bodyguards came surging up about them.
By the look of them, they belonged to these young masters.
"Handsome, do you want help?" said the beauty in the chair, smiling, swirling the glass in her hand.
Zhao Chen glanced at her.
Then turned to the dozen-odd bodyguards and crooked a finger at them.
……
"Won't you drink a little with me? They were all wanting a drink with me just now." The beauty's fine eyes were on Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen stared at the woman before him, then looked at the drugged glass, which she had at some point drunk off.
"You know your drink was drugged?"
The beauty smiled faintly and said nothing.
Though he did not know why drinking wine with a drug in it should do this woman no harm at all,
that was not what Zhao Chen cared about.
He seemed to see that this woman was in fact the viper lying hid, and these few young rakes the little hamsters she had been playing with.
"Forgive the intrusion," Zhao Chen said, and rose and left outright.
The beauty watched the man's back as he went, in some surprise.
Never yet had there been a man who could leave so freely under a charm of hers that she had not troubled to hold in.
No.
That one there was no getting at counted for one.
And the thought of that one there was no getting at soured her mood a few degrees further.
However she tempted him, nothing served.
Though she offered herself to his very pillow, he would not so much as blink.
Today her mood had been bad; she had come out to drink a little, and so had not held her own constitution in check.
And along had come a few young rakes of families that might be called second-rate; she had meant to toy with them a while, and had never thought another would get in ahead of her.
Though to watch another do it was in truth a fine enough feeling of its own.
Just then a woman in a waitress's dress came over, carrying wine.
She passed the bodyguards sprawled every way upon the ground without a glance.
"My lady, how shall this be dealt with?" the waitress asked, standing at the beauty's side.
The beauty ran her eye over those on the ground and said coldly: "The families behind these few are not clean to begin with. Since they have run upon the gun muzzle themselves, clear them all away."
"Yes!"
The waitress answered.
"And look into that man's identity for me," said the beauty, calling to mind the man out of the common way.
In uniform, but with his rank concealed.
Appearing here at such a time, and by the air about him besides, he should be one invited to this banquet.
Yet she did not seem to know him well.
The waitress paused, then murmured a word or two at the beauty's ear.
A look of some astonishment showed on the beauty's face. "Zhao Chen? So it was he. That temper does indeed suit a man who could hold his own superior to terms upon a battlefield, and raise the benefits for the dead."
With that, the beauty rose.
"Sweep this place clean. I should be getting back myself."
"Yes."
The beauty went.
And the waitress's face turned cold as well, as she looked at these people upon the ground.
These men would never know to their dying day whom it was they had provoked.
For that was a dark power the Star Alliance Leader had trained up with his own hands, to clear away for that man such things as are not to be seen.
Soon, once the beauty had gone.
That open-air bar upon the sand was restored to what it had been in a very short while, and those people vanished without a trace.
Nor did anyone ever see them again.
……
Zhao Chen rubbed at his temples.
What he had just done had been very abrupt.
Thinking it over now, Zhao Chen himself held it altogether unsuitable.
He ought not to carry himself so high.
Even wishing to save that beauty, there had been no end of ways.
But in the moment, much of what he felt had been magnified,
such as the violence that had been in his heart of late.
Indeed, when he struck, a wish to kill had risen in him several times over.
In the common way of things, such a thing would never in the world happen to Zhao Chen.
Which left but one possibility, and that lay with the woman.
That woman had drunk wine with a drug in it, and suffered nothing at all,
which showed that the woman was no ordinary person.
And there was besides the feeling that woman gave him.
Most likely she was one who possessed some special power.
While Zhao Chen was off his guard she had drawn up what was in his heart, and what followed had followed.
"I must be calmer. Too showy, and one will hardly escape drawing trouble." Zhao Chen sighed.
If this beating should set some family against him, he could only hope they were no great house, or that for Song Qingshan's sake they would not move on him.
Otherwise he would most likely have to leave the forces.
Beep, beep, beep.
While Zhao Chen was thinking of these things, a reminder came up on his handheld terminal.
A message sent by Song Qingshan.
It reminded him of the banquet's hour.
At last he would see this Star Alliance Leader.
The one thing Zhao Chen looked forward to in attending this banquet was to see the Star Alliance Leader with his own eyes.
Zhao Chen sent Song Qingshan a word in answer.
Then went toward the banquet ground by the directions upon his guide card.
The nearer the banquet ground, the more people about him.
The officers were all in uniform, wearing every badge and honor they had.
Those of the great families, or officials and such, were in magnificent dress.
They all brought some of their household with them.
Nor was the thought of picking out a match for their own house absent from it.
Zhao Chen at this point lifted the concealment from his rank as well.
For here a colonel's rank of his was as ordinary as could be.
At a glance, of any ten officers some three were colonels.
And not one stood below field grade.
Zhao Chen walked quietly, drawing as little notice as he could.
The whole banquet ground was very large.
A ring-shaped building, with a vast banquet floor at the center of it, and a stage besides.
And around that, some five or six stories of ring-shaped galleries.
Zhao Chen glanced at the place set down for his own area.
It lay upon the third-floor gallery.
Zhao Chen looked down at the great floor below; those who might appear there were beyond doubt persons of illustrious standing.
While such as they, for the most part, were there to make up the numbers.
The Star Alliance Leader had not appeared as yet.
For a figure of that kind should by rights come out last of all.
Zhao Chen waited with the rest.
Suddenly every light in the banquet ground went dark, leaving only a few dim yellow ones.
And then a single beam of light fell upon a man walking slowly into the banquet ground.
As the man walked, he felt a strange gaze upon him.
He raised his head and looked toward a certain place on the third floor, and met that man's eyes exactly.
And in that moment it was as though something exploded in the minds of them both!