Chapter 19

 

The sudden commotion threw everything into chaos. Ming Xi and Ding Xiao were the first to react. Even though they were shaken, they rushed forward without hesitation.

The rest of the Longmao Parkway staff remained motionless.

No one had ever faced a situation like this before. The men dragging He Lingna around were aggressive and arrogant, showing not a trace of fear. In a case of adultery, the law couldn’t intervene — and socially, the “wronged wife” held all the moral ground and the momentum. That much was true.

But when the one being hit, humiliated, and stripped of dignity in public was your friend, your mentor — how could you just stand by and do nothing?

Ming Xi couldn’t, and neither could Ding Xiao.

Unlike Ming Xi, who only learned of the situation today, Ding Xiao had known much earlier:

He Lingna had a “boyfriend” she couldn’t talk about. Ding Xiao had warned her repeatedly, but He Lingna always played dumb — until Ding Xiao was so furious she nearly cut ties with her.

Because of that falling out, when Ming Xi joined their sales team later, He Lingna had deliberately tried to get close to her, hoping to rebuild some sort of friendship. Ding Xiao, half-angry and half-worried Ming Xi might be dragged down with her, had instead stepped in to pull Ming Xi to her side.

So Ming Xi’s quick friendship with the two women actually involved a complex and subtle entanglement.

Now, He Lingna, the center of the trio’s friendship, who had been radiant and poised just a few hours ago at work, was utterly unrecognizable.

Her hair was a mess, her face frozen in despair; she looked completely broken, terrified to the point of confusion, barely able to stand.

If she hadn’t been held by two burly men, He Lingna would have collapsed. She tried to raise her hands, but they fell back helplessly. Her body trembled as they yanked her around.

Ding Xiao, anxious, rushed to grab He Lingna back.

Smack! A sharp slap rang out.

Caught off guard, Ding Xiao clutched her burning cheek. A second later, rage twisted her face. “Fuck!”

She tried to fight back, but she couldn’t — the other side had come prepared, with numbers and brute strength.

Ming Xi was the youngest among them, with a delicate face and a soft voice.

She was momentarily bewildered, like a rabbit caught in a wolf’s den. Seeing even the tall, fierce Ding Xiao unable to take Lingna back, Ming Xi knew she couldn’t fight them head-on.

Since they lacked momentum and few came to help, she had to rely on external forces.

Ming Xi turned her head back and forth, scanning the hall. Pausing, she quickly ran to the podium. There was a wireless microphone sat on the platform. Without hesitation, she grabbed the microphone and slammed it down hard against the podium.

Once, twice, again and again.

A crackle… bang! bang! bang!

The microphone was connected to the speakers, but due to poor connection, a sharp, piercing and deafening electric noise followed, along with a heavy thud.

The room suddenly fell silent, the chatter hushed.

Every head turned toward her.

The troublemaker had a megaphone. Ming Xi had the microphone—connected to the sound system in the hall. Her voice would drown theirs out completely.

She took a deep breath. Her whole body trembled, her face drawn tight, but she forced herself to stay calm. She lifted the mic to her lips and shouted: “Is anyone here? Security! Manager! Someone—come here—!”

The girl’s breath was disordered, but her voice was strong and clear, even more so than the voice of the woman causing trouble before.

Finally, someone began to react — they needed staff, anyone, to stop this madness.

“What are you all sitting there for? You just gonna watch her get beaten to death?” Ming Xi stood on the platform, pointing at the troublemakers. Her lips quivered, but her words grew clearer and louder. “Who are they, huh? Are they the police? What gives them the right to humiliate a woman like this? What gives them the right to drag her around? What gives them the right to cause chaos here?”

Three “what gives them the right” — shouted until her throat nearly tore. Her voice cracked, but she kept going.

“‘What gives us the right?’ Because she’s a slut!” the woman shouted angrily through the megaphone, pointing at He Lingna. “Seducing someone else’s husband, spending a married man’s money, ruining someone else’s marriage— what else do you call that but a slut?”

“She’s a slut — but she didn’t break the law!” Ming Xi shot back.

She was small, but her voice rose higher, her presence growing stronger as she stepped forward. Her face had gone pale, but her tone was cold and steady. “If what you’re saying is true, then she made a mistake. But who are you to decide how much punishment she deserves? You’re a woman too — humiliating another woman like this, what’s there to be so righteous about? If your husband cheated, go hit him! What’s the point of hitting her? You’re turning this into a circus — don’t you feel ashamed? Because I’m ashamed for you!”

Ming Xi fired off the words in one breath, pausing only once.

Her outbursts snapped the spell. People began to move — more came forward to help. At least the male colleagues from Longmao Parkway all stepped in, and soon they managed to pull He Lingna free.

He Lingna collapsed into Ding Xiao’s arms, shaking uncontrollably. Whatever had come before, at this moment she was clearly filled with regret.

And Ming Xi suddenly understood—

At last, the confusion of the night clicked into place in Ming Xi’s mind — why Sister Lingna didn’t want to go to the company’s year-end banquet. There was only one reason. The man she’d had an affair with was here tonight!

Meanwhile, Manager Li of Longmao finally stumbled back from the restroom, still tugging at his belt as he came. As the event coordinator, he’d been drinking a lot, and this was already his second trip to the bathroom. But midway through, just as he was “relieving” himself, he suddenly heard bang, bang, bang echoing from the banquet hall.

Are they fireworks! Or gunshots?

Startled, Manager Li hurried back — only to hear Ming Xi’s voice over the loudspeaker calling for him: “Manager! Where’s the manager?”

“I’m here, I’m here…” Manager Li struggled to push through the crowd. As the head manager of Longmao Parkway, he naturally couldn’t let his employees be bullied by outsiders like this, so he bravely stood in front. Li Jian even pulled out his phone, shouting at the mob, “Keep it up! You want to make a scene till the New Year? You bunch of lawless lunatics! Fine then — if you don’t stop, I’ll call the police right now!”

Ming Xi hurried back to Ding Xiao’s side. Ding Xiao was crouched down, clutching He Lingna tightly in her arms, but she still turned to look at Ming Xi — eyes full of deep admiration and awe.

She had thought Ming Xi was a timid little lamb, trapped in a den of wolves.
But no — she was a tiger!

Ming Xi no longer cared what others thought of her. Even with all of Longmao’ people standing up now, the other party’s imposing presence was still overwhelming. He Lingna didn’t dare to say a single word in her own defense, not even raising her head.

The only thing left was to find him — the cheating man!

Ming Xi squatted down and asked in a voice that all three of them could hear, “Sister Lingna, that man’s here today, isn’t he? You knew he’d be here — that’s why you didn’t want to come, right?”

Her question made Ding Xiao freeze for half a second before realization struck. She turned to He Lingna, her expression hard, heartbroken, demanding the truth.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, He Lingna nodded.

Ding Xiao gritted her teeth!

She’d assumed He Lingna wasn’t attending the year-end party because she was hanging out with that bastard of a boss, but she’d never imagined it was to avoid suspicion!

Unable to care about anything else, having also learned Ming Xi’s shameless tactics, Ding Xiao snatched the microphone from Ming Xi’s hand and shouted, “Who the hell is that cheating bastard! Which one of you is it — stand the hell up!”

There were plenty of people still standing around — most of them just there for the spectacle — but one man, in particular, felt an intense, pounding headache.

After hearing Ding Xiao’s words, several of the men standing in the room quickly sat down. Those who stayed standing either hadn’t caught on — or were too stubborn to move.

Liang Jiancheng remained standing. As the host for tonight, he simply wanted this whole mess to be over. He regretted ever agreeing to let the Jinjiang Hotel manager talk him into sharing the banquet hall with Longmao Parkway…

This was supposed to be his company’s very first year-end celebration — and somehow it had turned into a live-action scandal.

In short, Liang Jiancheng’s mood and experience had been profoundly enriched today. From Jiang Meiqian’s earlier meltdown in the office to this disaster at the banquet, he felt as though his tidy, perfectly ordered life had been punctured by a sudden knife-thrust — chaos swirling inside, a strange blend of disarray and awe.

So it turned out…

Gu Shuangyang wasn’t the only strong woman in the world.

Any woman with courage could be formidable.

The one with the megaphone was.

And so was the one with the microphone.

…

Knowing things couldn’t continue like this, Ding Xiao patted He Lingna’s face sharply and demanded, her tone cold and urgent: “He Lingna, if you still want to live with a shred of dignity, you’d better point that man out right now!”

With Ding Xiao’s words, everyone, regardless of their motives, turned their gazes in He Lingna’s direction.

It felt like the climax of a Hong Kong drama: the truth scene, the big reveal. The crowd’s reactions varied, but one thing they all shared was gossip-hungry anticipation. Especially the two big sisters in Ming Xi’s previous office, who had kept quiet earlier, now stepped up — suddenly eager to “restore justice.”

“Oh my, how can you people be like this! It’s the New Year! Have you no shame?” one woman exclaimed.

The other woman moved right to the front, taking on the air of a senior colleague laying down the law. “Lingna, just name the man! Don’t be afraid! Point out that scumbag who played with your feelings!”

The women, true to their role, turned the criticism to the man in just a few words!

Exactly!

Finally, everyone realized that the real culprit was clearly the man!

All of a sudden, the crowd’s focus shifted. Everyone’s curiosity burned to know which man it was, and disgust filled their hearts for him. After all that chaos just now, he still hadn’t come forward—coward!

At this point, the audience’s collective outrage could have drowned that scumbag in their own spit. Everyone just wanted to see who he was. The Longmao’s employees had become a united front of righteous indignation—now it was only a matter of finding the bad guy.

The troublemakers hadn’t expected things to turn against them so quickly. Their plan had simply been to humiliate He Lingna in front of her colleagues, make her lose her job, and force her to go back home in shame. The woman, in particular, didn’t seem to particularly want to implicate her husband—panicked, she tried to regain control of the situation.

Several sales people of Longmao Parkway had learned their lesson. Not only they snatched the other party’s megaphone but also hiding the microphone.

Several more formed a human wall to block the troublemakers—just to make sure nothing would stop He Lingna from identifying the scumbag.

Tonight, if He Lingna didn’t name him, every man present would find it impossible to clear their name. Their shared interest made them braver and more united than ever—

Everyone except Liang Jiancheng.

If he stepped out to take control now, he would instantly become everyone’s common enemy—both the men and the bystanders alike.

—

Finally, Ding Xiao helped He Lingna step forward, one step at a time, moving down the aisle toward the very front—to the first table, the main table of the foreign trade company.

Then, under everyone’s gaze, in full view of the crowd, He Lingna weakly yet firmly raised her hand.

She pointed at that table.

Liang Jiancheng’s table.

Ming Xi followed He Lingna’s direction and naturally looked at that table, and at the same time, at Liang Jiancheng.

Liang Jiancheng: …

For a moment, every man at that table became the target of the entire room’s wrath.

And not just… Liang Jiancheng.

There were nine men at the table in total.

But among them, one man stood out most—handsome, poised, and clearly the boss. Naturally, every gaze fell on Liang Jiancheng.

Including Ming Xi.

There were still some subtle and complicated emotions in her heart. Could it be really him? Was he married all along? Could he truly be such a hypocrite, so rotten beneath that polished exterior—a man with a wife who still cheated, a scoundrel who deceived Sister Lingna’s feelings?

Liang Jiancheng’s head throbbed. He didn’t even dare look up at the crowd. He just felt that the eyes of someone he knew across from him made him feel very helpless…

He was young and spirited, fond of adventure, and had experienced some small storms in his twenty-something years of life.

Yet not even falling off a cliff in the past had felt as perilous as this.

Cough.

It wasn’t that everyone meant to single out the handsome one…

But really—being handsome and rich did make it more believable that he’d have the means to cheat.

The man before them was simply too good-looking; even in their anger, people’s gazes shifted with guilty fascination. Forget it, forget it, being that handsome just makes up for it…

Oh—and why had everyone decided it was Liang Jiancheng?

Because out of the nine men at that table, he was the only one still standing.

They didn’t know when Mr. Liang stood up, but when everyone saw him standing like this, it really looked like—

“He” finally stood up!

What did it feel like to be the focus of an entire room’s scrutiny? Every one of his male subordinates at that table bowed their heads low, not daring to look at their boss even once. How embarrassing! Boss, please sit down quickly!

Previous     TOC     Next