Who's going to be the female lead's simp? Aren't the supporting female characters mor

Ye Lingqing stared at that figure from behind, and her heart skipped a beat for no apparent reason.

Is this man truly insane, or is he genuinely fearless?

"Interesting." Ye Lingqing turned off the engine, took out the car keys, and curled her red lips into a bewitching smile. "I'm going to participate in this play too."

The three got off the bus.

Just as the waiter at the door was about to step forward to stop her, Ye Lingqing took off her sunglasses and gave her a cold glance: "Get out of my way."

The waiter recognized the notorious female tyrant of Beijing and, terrified, quickly stepped back, shouting into the walkie-talkie, "Manager! Quick! The eldest daughter of the Ye family is here! And she's with... with two unfamiliar faces!"

Bai Jingyou walked in front, with Jiang Mengyao holding his left arm and Ye Lingqing walking on his right.

The combination of this man and two women had an eerily strong presence.

Pushing open the heavy, carved doors of the Bauhinia Pavilion, a wave of warmth mingled with the scent of expensive cigars wafted out. The dignitaries who had been conversing quietly in the hall immediately stopped what they were doing and focused their attention on the doorway.

On the second floor, Shen Qianzhong was holding a wine glass, chatting and laughing with a portly middle-aged man. Hearing the noise at the door, he glanced down casually.

That one glance made him jerk in his wine glass, spilling the dark red liquid onto his expensive handmade suit.

Bai Jingyou stood in the center of the hall, looked up, and gazed at Shen Qianzhong on the second floor through the dazzling crystal chandelier.

He raised his hand, making an extremely provocative gun gesture, and pointed it at Shen Qianzhong.

"Bang."

Bai Jingyou's lips moved slightly.

The entire room fell silent.

Shen Qianzhong's face visibly darkened. He put down his wine glass, took out a handkerchief, and slowly wiped the wine stains from his cuffs, his eyes so sinister they looked like he wanted to devour someone.

"Bai Jingyou." Shen Qianzhong looked down at him, his voice not loud, but it echoed in the quiet hall, "You have a road to heaven but choose not to take it, you have no way to hell but choose to throw yourself into it. This is the Zijing Pavilion, not your Haicheng Port."

As he finished speaking, more than a dozen burly men emerged from the shadows around the hall, forming a subtle encirclement.

Jiang Mengyao's hands tightened slightly, her nails almost digging into Bai Jingyou's flesh.

Bai Jingyou smiled.

He pulled out a copy of the customs declaration form that he hadn't actually submitted in Haicheng, but now it had a more important purpose.

"Mr. Shen, please don't be so angry." Bai Jingyou waved the papers in his hand. "I'm here to deliver some documents to you. This is the original purchase contract for that batch of special graphite, and it's signed with your name, Shen Qianzhong. I'm thinking, if this appears on tomorrow's morning news, or is directly sent to the relevant department's complaint mailbox..."

He paused deliberately, his gaze sweeping over the pot-bellied middle-aged man next to Shen Qianzhong.

"Director Li, you're here too? Perfect, this falls under your jurisdiction. Why don't you come here to inspect the goods?"

The middle-aged man, referred to as Director Li, turned deathly pale instantly, as if he had encountered a plague god. He abruptly took two steps back, quickly distancing himself from Shen Qianzhong.

Shen Qianzhong's pupils contracted sharply.

At that moment, he finally understood that Bai Jingyou was not there to die.

He's here to overturn the table.

The air in the main hall of the Bauhinia Pavilion seemed to freeze.

The light reflected from the crystal chandelier fell on the face of the pot-bellied Director Li, making his cold sweat clearly visible.

He almost subconsciously took two steps to the side and back, his movements stiff as a rusty puppet, instantly creating a chasm between himself and Shen Qianzhong, a chasm of mutual avoidance.

This chasm is exactly the effect Bai Jingyou wanted.

"Director Li, what's wrong with you?" Bai Jingyou asked with an innocent smile, waving the A4 paper in his hand. "Weren't you just chatting happily with Young Master Shen? You haven't even examined the quality of this graphite yet."

Director Li's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

Having spent many years in the capital, he knew all too well the weight of this piece of paper.

If the illegal export of special graphite is confirmed, not only will Shen Qianzhong be imprisoned, but even he, the director who failed to supervise effectively, will spend the rest of his life in jail.

"Mr. Bai... you're joking." Director Li forced a smile that looked more like a grimace, his eyes not daring to glance at the paper. "Mr. Shen and I just bumped into each other by chance. Since you have family matters to discuss, I won't disturb you any longer. I have a meeting at the ministry, so I'll take my leave."

After saying that, Director Li, who usually had a certain air of authority in the capital, didn't even bother to grab his coat. He turned around and strode quickly toward the side door, his back view as hurried as a frightened rabbit.

Shen Qianzhong stood by the second-floor railing, his outstretched hand frozen in mid-air, wanting to stop him, but unable to utter a sound.

His face was twitching.

Director Li's departure is not only the loss of an ally, but also an extremely dangerous signal: the rats on the Shen family's big ship are starting to jump ship.

"Wonderful."

Ye Lingqing leaned against the Roman column by the door and clapped twice slowly. The sound was crisp and clear, but it sounded particularly jarring in the deathly silent hall. "Shen Qianzhong, it seems that your face isn't as valuable as you thought."

Shen Qianzhong took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the surging rage and fear in his heart.

He slowly withdrew his hand, pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, and revealed a venomous gaze behind the lenses.

"Bai Jingyou." Shen Qianzhong walked down the stairs step by step, each step heavy. "Do you know what you're doing? You used a forged document to scare away the officials. This is a serious crime."

The black-clad bodyguards surrounded them, and the atmosphere became tense.

Jiang Mengyao's arm trembled slightly as she held Bai Jingyou's, but she did not back down. Instead, she raised her head and coldly surveyed the burly men around her.

"Forgery?"

Bai Jingyou chuckled and took out a lighter from his pocket.

With a whoosh.

A pale blue flame shot up.

Amidst everyone's astonished gazes, Bai Jingyou held a corner of the document—a document powerful enough to cause an earthquake in the capital—to the flames.

Flames licked the paper and spread rapidly.

"What are you doing!" Shen Qianzhong's pupils contracted sharply, and he instinctively tried to rush over and snatch it.

"Don't move." Bai Jingyou said calmly, his voice not loud, but carrying a chilling intimidating force. "If you take another step forward, I can't guarantee my hand won't shake. If I accidentally post this recording online, it won't look good for anyone."

He held up his phone with his other hand, the screen showing a recording interface.

Shen Qianzhong abruptly stopped in his tracks.

Flames engulfed the documents, and black ash, like black butterflies, fluttered across the expensive carpet of the Bauhinia Pavilion.

Bai Jingyou only let go when the flame reached his fingertips, letting the last scrap of paper turn to ashes.

He clapped his hands, as if brushing away something dirty.

"Young Master Shen, don't be nervous." Bai Jingyou blew out his lighter, a slightly wicked smile on his face. "This is just a copy. The original... is currently lying in a scheduled email address. If I don't cancel it by nine o'clock tomorrow morning, it will automatically be sent to the Supreme People's Procuratorate's complaint mailbox, and copied to those foreign media outlets that love to break news."

Shen Qianzhong's face turned deathly pale instantly.

He can't afford to gamble.

The Shen family is large and powerful, but Shen Qianzhong is only one of its pillars.

If this matter drags the entire family down with him, the old man will be the first to cripple him.

"What do you want?" Shen Qianzhong gritted his teeth, his voice squeezed out from between his teeth.

"It's simple." Bai Jingyou straightened his collar, his tone returning to its usual nonchalant languidness. "First, during my stay in Beijing, I don't want to see any more of those low-level tactics like not being able to book a hotel or get a taxi. The Shen family is a prestigious clan; don't resort to such underhanded methods. It's beneath them."

Shen Qianzhong clenched his fists tightly, his nails piercing his palms: "Okay."

"Secondly," Bai Jingyou pointed to the bottle of Romanée-Conti that had been decanted in the center of the hall, "this wine is quite good. It's a pity that Director Li didn't get to drink it earlier. I'd appreciate it if Young Master Shen could take it to the Jiang family's old residence in Shichahai as a welcome-back dinner for me."

This is blatant humiliation.

Having Shen Qianzhong personally deliver the wine was tantamount to announcing to the entire circle of the capital that the Shen family had bowed down to this outsider.

The hall was deathly silent.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for Shen Qianzhong to explode.

However, Shen Qianzhong simply closed his eyes, his chest heaved violently a few times, and finally, he slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, his face returning to that deathly calm.

"Alright." Shen Qianzhong opened his eyes, his gaze like a poisoned knife. "I'll have someone send the wine over. Young Master Bai, I hope you have a good appetite and can handle this generous gift."

"You don't need to worry about that, Young Master Shen." Bai Jingyou took Jiang Mengyao's hand, turned around and left. "I've always had a good appetite, especially for tough food."

The three turned and left.

Only after the Maybach's taillights disappeared into the night did Shen Qianzhong suddenly grab the crystal ashtray on the table and smash it hard against the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror.

"Splash—!"

The mirror shattered, reflecting countless twisted and ferocious images of Shen Qianzhong.

"Bai, Jing, You!"

……

Shichahai, the old Jiang family residence.

There is no splendor of the Bauhinia Pavilion here, only blue bricks and gray tiles, old trees and crows at dusk.

As the vermilion gate was pushed open, a mellow, aged woody scent mingled with the fragrance of osmanthus blossoms in the courtyard wafted out.

Although this three-courtyard siheyuan has been uninhabited for some years, it is clearly cleaned regularly and is spotless, exuding a unique sense of composure characteristic of Beijing.

"call……"

Jiang Mengyao didn't let out a long breath until she entered the courtyard. She felt as if all her bones had been removed and leaned softly against Bai Jingyou.

Just now at the Bauhinia Pavilion, she was only holding on because of her belief that she couldn't let Bai Jingyou down.

Now that I've relaxed, my back is already soaked in cold sweat.

"Were you scared?" Bai Jingyou put his arm around her waist to make her more comfortable, his tone gentle, unlike the aggressive madman he had just been.

"A little." Jiang Mengyao nodded honestly, looking up at Bai Jingyou's profile with admiration and lingering fear in her eyes. "Jingyou, what if Shen Qianzhong had really attacked just now?"

"He wouldn't dare."

The one who answered her was not Bai Jingyou, but Ye Lingqing, who was leaning against the door frame.

Ye Lingqing held a delicate folding fan in her hand, which she had casually taken from the car earlier.

She looked at the two of them with a half-smile: "The higher Shen Qianzhong's position, the more he cherishes his life. Young Master Bai has hit his weakness today and played a trick on him."

"It's not entirely a ruse." Bai Jingyou helped Jiang Mengyao sit down on a stone bench in the courtyard. "The black account is real, and the scheduled sending is real too. The only illusion is that I'm actually less willing to fight to the death than he is."

[After all, what I want is to make the Bai family bigger and stronger, not to come to the capital and become a suicide bomber.]

"You're a madman." Ye Lingqing closed her folding fan, giving a fair assessment. "However, I'm very satisfied with this play. Shen Qianzhong's embarrassed look is enough to make me laugh for a year."

She glanced at the sky, yawned, and said, "Alright, now that you've landed safely, I should head out too. This old house has a lot of gloomy energy; it's not suitable for a beauty like me to get my beauty sleep."