Chapter 390 — No Return Without Getting Drunk

Wei Zhao nodded and got into the car. Once An Liwen had climbed in after him, the car pulled away slowly. An Liwen had evidently booked the hotel in advance, just waiting for Wei Zhao's consent.

The venue this time was still the Starlight Grand Hotel — it seemed An Liwen intended to get back on his feet right where he had fallen.

The private room was the same one as before, but there were a few more people in it. Besides that Su Tai-zao, there was the effeminate-looking man from last time, and beside him sat a fat man like a laughing Buddha. At the sight of An Liwen entering, all three rose to their feet — plainly they all took their cue from him.

"Mr. Lin, you've come!" Su Tai-zao walked over warmly and took Wei Zhao's hand, yet a flicker of venom passed through his eyes. He was not about to swallow the beating he and An Liwen had taken that day so easily.

"Ha ha, Brother Su, what happened to your forehead? Huh? I noticed just now that Brother An has a bandage on his head too... don't tell me the two of you were playing at head-butting and knocked into each other?" Wei Zhao had spent so long in Shen Yushu's company that he had begun to talk a little like her. Even as he said it, he felt a twinge of shame — his imagination really was too fertile... he could just picture the two of them bent over, straining with all their might, charging headfirst into one another...

Su Tai-zao broke out in a cold sweat and felt even more annoyed. Who was the idiot here? Banging heads together? Only someone whose skull was full of water would do that! Why the bandages were on their heads — didn't you know perfectly well?

Still, the point of today was to coax Wei Zhao into drinking, not to tear off all pretense. Su Tai-zao could only suppress his anger and say with a smile, "Bumped into a door by accident, ha ha... come, let's not dwell on it. Mr. Lin, please take a seat — let me introduce you to a couple of brothers!"

Wei Zhao nodded. After they were seated, Su Tai-zao introduced the effeminate man and the laughing-Buddha fat man. The effeminate one was Yang Ganglou, and the fat man was Su Tai-wei. Yang Ganglou's family was in the foreign trade business, while Su Tai-wei was Su Tai-zao's cousin.

"I'm very glad to meet Mr. Lin today!" Su Tai-wei said. "I hear you're also Brother Jianwen's savior. I'm a little older than you, so I'll take the liberty of calling you Brother Lin. Brother Lin, what do you say we drink until no one can walk straight today?"

"Sure." Wei Zhao nodded.

"Huh?" Su Tai-wei froze. According to the plan he and An Liwen had laid, Wei Zhao would hardly fall for it so easily and agree to drink until they all dropped — after all, who in his right mind would get blind drunk with his enemies?

So Su Tai-wei had prepared a whole arsenal of persuasion, with An Liwen and Yang Ganglou chipping in ideas on the side. This Yang Ganglou was the strategist of the Su family's younger generation — a sharp mind and a belly full of dirty tricks. Today's scheme had been his idea.

After some plotting, they had decided to trip Wei Zhao up at the drinking table. Best of all if they put him in the hospital; if not, then once he was drunk they would arrange a little show and record it.

Still, all this was backroom scheming, not a fight brought out into the open. Even if Gu Mengyao got wind of it, she presumably could not complain. An Liwen was quite confident of that.

But Wei Zhao's response caught them all off guard. No sooner had Su Tai-wei spoken than Wei Zhao agreed without the slightest hesitation, leaving them all rather dumbstruck!

Su Tai-wei felt as if a fishbone were stuck in his throat. The speech he had prepared went unused, and he felt thoroughly stifled! He had meant to wait for Wei Zhao to refuse, then deliver a long lecture, reasoning with him and appealing to his feelings — but now there was no need at all.

Seeing their astonished faces, Wei Zhao merely smiled. "Ha ha, you all know I'm the young lady's attendant. At home, I never get to drink — so I've been craving it a little..."

At those words, everyone had a flash of understanding! So that was it. And it did make sense — Wei Zhao, as Gu Mengyao's attendant, had been hired with Gu Pengzhan's money. Surely he could not go on drinking heavily every day? What kind of conduct would that be?

So now that he had finally gotten such a chance, Wei Zhao naturally would not let it slip by! Hearing him say so, everyone immediately relaxed. They had thought Wei Zhao might be up to some trick — but it seemed he really had made up his mind to drink until the night was a blur!

"Ganglou, go fetch a few crates of beer, let's quench our thirst first, then bring out the hard stuff!" An Liwen ordered Yang Ganglou.

Mixing beer and liquor got you drunk easily and wrecked your stomach — drink enough and you might end up with bleeding or a perforated ulcer. There was no denying An Liwen was a vicious sort. "Quench our thirst," and he wanted several crates of beer!

But An Liwen's aim was to drink Wei Zhao to death — or, failing that, at least get him drunk and then stage a little show for him! Though Wei Zhao seemed to have some capacity, An Liwen was not worried in the least. He, Su Tai-zao, and Yang Ganglou need hardly be mentioned — all veterans of the drinking wars. Back when they were the Four Young Masters of Songshan, who among them had not been a prodigious drinker?

Yang Ganglou, the strategist, was even more so. Even without anyone urging him on, he knocked back glass after glass at home. Before every scheme to set someone up, he had to down a bottle of strong liquor. Could such a drunkard be measured by ordinary standards?

Of course, if these three still could not drink Wei Zhao under the table, they had a final trump card — Su Tai-wei! This fellow was the oddity of the Su family, practically a vat of liquor himself. Not only could he drink, he was a master of every dangerous drinking method there was: red wine with Sprite, whiskey with iced tea, beer with cola, or red, white, and beer taking turns, one after another... all of them tricks that could kill a man and never pay for it!

Such methods would finish anyone else off at once, but Su Tai-wei had been pickled in a vat of liquor since childhood — his father ran the Su family's brewing business — so he was a creature of the liquor vat himself.

With Su Taiwei as his life-saving trump card, what did An Liwen have to fear?

Soon, under Yang Ganglou's direction, several waiters filed in carrying boxes of beer printed with foreign labels and set them down on the floor.

One glance was enough to send a flicker of anger through Wei Zhao's heart. These people were truly vicious, weren't they? Beer, and they had to bring out the strongest stuff? If not for his own experience, anyone else would likely have ended up in the hospital tonight!

An Liwen had said he wanted a few boxes of beer to quench their thirst, but the beer Yang Ganglou had the waiters haul in was "Tactical Nuclear Penguin," a brew with an extraordinarily high alcohol content!

The alcohol content of "Tactical Nuclear Penguin" was six times that of ordinary beer. To Wei Zhao, of course, that was nothing, but for an ordinary person it was more than enough to get dead drunk!