"You actually dare to hit me!" Feng Xiaowei, clutching his swollen face, only now came to his senses. This was no T3 Blizzard; this was no place where this Zhao Chen before him could throw his weight around.
Zhao Chen said nothing, and stepped up to deliver yet another slap. "You tell me — do I dare or not?"
At this Feng Xiaowei was left utterly speechless; this fellow truly did not play by any script.
"Viscount Zhao, though my younger brother is a touch witless, he is, after all, a person of our Hurricane Conglomerate; I hope you'll grant me a little face in this." At this point a figure appeared, wearing the smile of a courteous, refined young gentleman. The Feng family's eldest young lord, Feng Dawei.
"He ought to count himself lucky that he's here right now. Were he still on that planet back then, I'd have arranged for him to have an intimate contact with the swarm, then and there," Zhao Chen said with a cold laugh.
"You—" Feng Xiaowei was furious to the extreme. But a single look from his elder brother stared him straight back down.
Feng Dawei went on looking at Zhao Chen with a smile, and then drew out a card and handed it to Zhao Chen. "Viscount Zhao, there may have been some manner of misunderstanding between our two sides before. This brother of mine is indeed an unlearned good-for-nothing who disturbed the Viscount and the Viscount's sister; I offer my apology here. Our Hurricane Conglomerate is about to sign the Empire procurement order; and then, perhaps, our Hurricane Conglomerate could open up no small measure of cooperation with you. Our Hurricane Conglomerate has industry, has technology, has channels — and in your hands are those several ship technologies we find of interest. Should you be willing, we could cooperate. This is my calling card."
Upon the card was projected Feng Dawei's holographic image, and a whole string of titles besides. Such as: Vice President of the Hurricane Conglomerate; a top graduate of the ship-engineering profession from the Heaven's Glory Academy; and so on.
Set against Feng Xiaowei, this Feng Dawei had a good deal more depth of calculation to him. Zhao Chen had slapped his brother's face right in front of him, and he could still, so composed, chat with Zhao Chen wearing that smile.
"Then let me first congratulate you on carrying off this procurement order; when the time comes, remember to invite me to the celebration banquet." Zhao Chen cast off the fierce, murderous manner he'd worn a moment ago toward Feng Xiaowei, and chatted with Feng Dawei with a smile.
"Certainly, certainly." Seeing this attitude of Zhao Chen's, Feng Dawei supposed Zhao Chen had been won over.
Afterward Feng Dawei led his younger brother away.
"Bro, that kid just slapped my face in front of all those people! And you won't do anything about it?" Feng Xiaowei said, unwilling to swallow it.
"Slapped your face, and so what? Didn't you deserve it? What sort of occasion is this, and you're here drawing in bees and luring in butterflies! The things you do in private I won't manage — but do at least look at where we are just now!" Feng Dawei said coldly.
Feng Xiaowei muttered, "But… but his slapping my face is as good as slapping the Hurricane Conglomerate, as good as slapping your face, big bro…"
"If that Zhao Chen can cooperate with us, and hand over those ship technologies — then never mind his slapping your face now; even if he slapped your face 365 days a year, I'd allow it," Feng Dawei said without the least ceremony.
Feng Xiaowei was left deflated; he knew this was a thing his big brother truly would do. His elder brother not only possessed a command of ship engineering, but was also, like their father, a man who'd stop at nothing for the sake of commercial profit.
"To live in this world, one has to learn to endure. Once you've come into absolute strength — then go and take your revenge on those who once provoked you." Feng Dawei looked at this worthless younger brother of his. Were it not that he knew this one had been carried and borne by their own mother, he'd genuinely have suspected he was their father's illegitimate son from outside the family. He was on an entirely different plane of intelligence from his own.
"This Feng Dawei is a character," Chu Xuan said, standing at Zhao Chen's side.
"But this great character will soon be sniveling into his sleeve," Zhao Chen said with a light laugh. He looked at the calling card in his hand, forged of a special crystal-stone — proof against water and fire, that not even a bullet could pierce; his palm suddenly bore down with force and crushed it straight into a ball, then tossed it into the mechanical trash bin beside him.
"Do you all mean to look around here a while more? I'm about ready to head back." Zhao Chen looked at Chu Xuan, Zhao Wan'er, and the others.
"No more looking around, it's dull." Zhao Wan'er, her good mood spoiled by Feng Xiaowei, was naturally unwilling to idle about here. Seeing that Zhao Wan'er didn't care to stroll about here, Su Lan and Xue Xiaoxiao naturally expressed a wish to leave as well.
"Senior Zhao Chen," Xue Xiaoxiao suddenly said to Zhao Chen in a cutesy, cloying little voice, her eyes all silky charm.
"And what notion have you got now?" Zhao Chen could see Xue Xiaoxiao was scheming at something.
Xue Xiaoxiao pouted. "I want to see that big cannon of yours!"
Zhao Chen was momentarily at a loss; why did those words sound so awkward.
"It's the bow cannon mounted on your T3 Blizzard — and those four main guns!" Xue Xiaoxiao said, her two eyes lighting up.
Couldn't you have said the whole of it?
Zhao Chen assented to Xue Xiaoxiao's notion and had Zhao Wan'er take them to have a look at the T3 Blizzard. In any case, from mere looking, one could tell nothing of the workings. If a few glances were enough to steal the technology away, then it'd be a bit too easy, surely?
"What's our itinerary for the coming days?" Zhao Chen asked Chu Xuan beside him.
Chu Xuan raised a hand and called up an itinerary panel, mainly centered on the procurement fair.
"You can take a look at which projects interest you; then we can go see more of them," Chu Xuan said.
Zhao Chen swept his eyes over it and ticked off several of the items, and finally discussed with Chu Xuan that they'd leave before October the tenth; the procurement projects after that he wouldn't attend.
Chu Xuan glanced over the several procurement projects Zhao Chen was interested in; one of them was the October-the-fifth T2 interstellar destroyer procurement session. She thought nothing strange of it, for this was the single most eye-catching of all the individual procurements. It was said the on-site seating had already been packed clean full. But for one of Chu Xuan's Chu-family standing, the organizers had, of course, arranged a private box well in advance.
Just now, Zhao Chen began to look forward, a little, to the coming of the fifth. He wondered just how splendid the expressions of those three Hurricane Conglomerate father-and-sons would be, when they learned their plan had miscarried.
……
T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser · outside the hull.
"Wowww… so big! So thick!" Xue Xiaoxiao stood on a dedicated floating prop, gazing at the T3 Blizzard's four 2,500mm-bore medium railgun main guns, and cautiously stroked a gun barrel. She even stood at the very front of a muzzle, peering into that deep gun bore, and brought her face up close to give it a sniff.
"Senior Su Lan, you seem to have something weighing on your mind?" Zhao Wan'er looked at Su Lan beside her, who'd been saying very little.
Su Lan brushed back a lock of her lovely hair and said with a smile, "Something on my mind? Have I?"
Zhao Wan'er took it upon herself to grasp her senior's hand. "Senior, you always looked after me so at the academy. If you've truly run into some trouble, you must be sure to tell me — I'll find a way to help you… And even if I… even if I can't be of use, at the very worst I'll go and beg my big brother! My big brother is really something now… he… he… in short, he's very formidable now!"
Zhao Wan'er wanted to say that her big brother could build star gates now, that he had a T3 interstellar stealth bomber, that he was even about to build a T3 carrier starship. That this very T3 Blizzard was to be expanded to dozens of hulls. But these were all secrets of the Owl Dragon System, and in the end Zhao Wan'er kept them from passing her lips.
Su Lan looked at this junior of hers and stroked Zhao Wan'er's head. "Mm, I know. If I have anything the matter, I'll be sure to tell you."
Though she said so with her mouth, in her heart Su Lan was steeped in melancholy beyond measure. The matter she faced was no simple thing. The pressure she had to bear came from an empire, no less! Even were Zhao Wan'er's brother more formidable still, could he possibly stand against a whole empire?
Never mind — she'd not go troubling them. Let this be the last time she saw them, then. Let her savor these last hours of freedom.
Su Lan couldn't help but recall the scene, earlier, when the hive-race had besieged the planet — the picture of Zhao Chen standing planted before her.