Translator: trangcugia
Editor: anhnguyen12332
Thank you for your well wishes in the last chapter! I have safely arrived in Melbourne, Australia and will officially begin my study as of tomorrow. (Deakin University student here, anyone?)
A special thank to trangcugia, one of my lovely translators for doing this chapter while I get settled into my new life. Love you, daring!
***********
Xia Yao never expected his marketing campaign for the company during this vacation would bring such a reputation.
For the last few days, the company hotline has been under constant threat of being overloaded. Streams of reporters and guests passing through the front door seemed unending. Several trainers and staff members soon took turn to return to the company before the vacation even ended, in order to keep their workplace safe and under control.
Not surprisingly, outstanding reputation would sooner or later result in jealousy from other competitors in the same occupation. As people were paying more attention to the company, false information with an aim to damage it was spreading on the Internet at a horrendous pace. Fortunately, these was all unsubstantiated rumors, not enough to have any remarkable effects on the company's overall image. Having said that, there were still numerous threats which continued to bother Xia Yao.
As Yuan Zong had just left, and with Xia Yao being familiar to the company's management board, he was now in charge of all responsibilities, from important affairs like maintaining some relationships and online promoting to small things such as taking care of tree pots in the working room, keeping an eye on their blooming process. It seemed like completing these two different kinds of task must be two different people.
Moreover, it was Xia Yao who was making decisions. Regardless of positions, everybody had to ask for his permission when having the need to find Yuan Zong to get their problems solved.
In this company, Xia Yao was not at all a fat cat, but all managers were more than willing to obey him.
They said, "You're like family now, so everything is up to you to decide. At the end of the day, you're the brother-in-law of the Yuan household."
"What ever you say, as long as you listen to my commands, you can feel free to call me that guy's son!"
At the beginning of March, as Xia Yao felt all his staffs were up to their head in work even during vacations, he gifted them with a two-day holiday to an onsen (hot spring). Meanwhile, he brought along two parrots to the company for a leisurely walk outside.
Hardly had he cleared a branch lying in his way when the phone in his pocket rang.
Glancing at the name Xuan Da Yu, Xia Yao immediately felt the familiar frustration. Since the day coming back from Wang Zhi Shui's home, Xuan Da Yu kept acting like a psycho, calling Xia Yao even when there was nothing worth telling him. The number of calls could range from three to thirty four per day. "Lemme tell you this, because Wang Zhi Shui was done in with, you no longer feel the urge to chase him, Therefore you couldn't think of what better to do but to fucking be my tail?"
"Somehow that's true." Xuan Da Yu chuckled. "What are you doing now?"
Xia Yao kicked a stone on one side of the road, "Working for the bodyguard company."
"Again? Why do you keep on visiting that place? You have a share in it, do you?"
"No, just because today the staff are busy with some affairs out there, so I stayed behind to assist in managing the work."
"Who tells you to assist?"
Xia Yao lied, "My God! Wang Zhi Shui appeared right at your front door."
With his usual instinct, Xuan Da Yu turned his eyes to the window.
Xia Yao laughed before hanging up.
The phone rang again after a while. Xia Yao didn't reply, tucking his phone deeper into the pocket, till he could only hear one parrot muttered broken words matching with the ringing tone. The phone didn't stop ringing, and even ringing right after it had stopped, as if the person at the other end of the line was in an emergency.
Xia Yao quietly swore: Xuan Da Yu, don't you know you're freaking annoying? But when he opened his phone, all the calls were not from Xuan Da Yu but his staffs, who were supposed to be enjoying their holiday.
With anxiety swirling in his stomach, Xia Yao quickly slid the answering button as receiving the next call.
"Is that Xia Yao? Hurry to our place, this is not good at all!"
When Xia Yao arrived at the site, everything was in total chaos. Thirty four people were attacking each other, the majority of which were the company's bodyguards, struggling against some unknown aggressive chaps. There was also the guard of the resort who just dared to stay on one side, trying hard to stop the gangs with his words...
"What's happened?" Xia Yao hastily asked Shi Tian Biao.
The man replied, his eyes reddened with anger, "We were only having a hot bath when a gang stormed in and barked nonsensical stories, trying to embarrass us. At first, thinking about the company's image, we just chose some words to make these people get out of there, but they not only ended up shouting at us but also used violence. You see, all of us are decent men, how can anyone tolerate this?"
Xia Yao glared at the gang with steel eyes, asking, "Do you know these guys?"
"Only one."
"Which one?"
Shi Tian Biao pointed at a guy, "He's called Wang Chian, a bodyguard from the company Hei Bao [1], nicknamed Heizi [2]."
([1]: Black panther. [2]: Hei in both words means Black, Dark)
Hei Bao was also a bodyguard company as well as a security advisor, which had long been a rival of Yuan Zong's company. This company went into business quite early and has made a name for themselves, attracting all kinds of cream of the crop. That being said, after two years losing against Yuan Zong's company, its personnel soon bore a deep resentment that yearned to be let out like what was happening in this unexpected battle. Actually Shi Tian Biao understood all these things, and seeing that his company was currently in a difficult situation, the ones who suffered most must be him and his colleagues whether they could win or not.
Yet he was right, who on earth could put up with these rivals' nonsensical violent actions?
As Xia Yao was still deep in his thoughts, a bottle of wine flew to his direction before shattering into thousand pieces next to him.
Shi Tian Biao roared, "Fuck you, son of a bitch!" lunging at the gang like an enraged wild animal.
Xia Yao realized the other gang only struggled with his team but could not actually return their blows, and all those men looked like some sort of uneducated street gangsters. In other words, there were only few real bodyguards here, while the others were all indiscriminately picked and added to the team. Knowing well their inferiority, these guys chose to regularly provoke Xia Yao's colleagues, and more than half of them were being beaten hard by the men on his side.
"Quick, take a photo!"
Hearing the yell, Xia Yao turned to its direction, his heart beating violently. Indeed, there were several reporters with cameras at the door, and they even seemed to have stood there for quite long to record the chaos.
The bodyguards of Yuan Zong's company soon became panicked. There was no shadow of doubt that this was another scheme of the press in collaboration with Hei Bao, using dirty tricks to deteriorate them.
Xia Yao hesitated, too nervous to resort to violence in such a situation, while his enemies' insults had no sign of stopping soon.
"What should we do now?" Shi Tian Biao asked Xia Yao, "Do we need to call Boss Yuan?"
"Don't." Xia Yao stayed perfectly calm. "Keep fighting."
His order confused Shi Tian Biao. "Keep fighting? These reporters have taken photos of us, continuing to fight means seeing them as invisible. If they publicize this news, we will immediately be..."
In front of more than thirty men, never before had Xia Yao felt such a vigorous energy.
He yelled, "Put in all of your strength! I'll make do with whatever outcome it is!"
Right after his statement, all the colleagues' tolerance shattered! The thud of deadly blows against flesh, the clank of weapons could be heard as far as the main entrance, along with the smell of trailing blood. This certainly further spurred the reporters' hunger, as they lifted the cameras again at the sight of Yuan Zong's staff's 'flawless co-operation', when they were supposed to have left long ago.
Xia Yao flew at the guy called Heizi like a mad tiger, punching him right at his front, indirectly knocking out two front teeth. With another tornado of fatal kicks, Xia Yao landed his pair of legs on the Heizi's chest. The rugged body soared onto the air in the predicted orbit, continuing to moving for another ten meters before eventually stopping at a camera's lens. Heizi seemed to be satisfied with this act of a being victimized in the eyes of the press, which will served as a proof of Yuan Zong's personnel's brutality.
Only when Heizi couldn't move an inch off the ground, and was just lying prone there with his eyelashes slightly moving in a cunning manner, did Xia Yao stop.
Finally everything had been brought under control. When the reporters were about to leave, a car suddenly pulled off in front of them.
The window slid down, as a head appeared behind it curiously.
"Wanna go somewhere for a drink?!"
At the first glance, the reporters recognized the stranger was an organizer of television propagandas, who they have hung out with several times. So they wasted no time to get into the car in search of some drinking pub.
Half an hour later, Xia Yao managed to catch up with them.
Noticing their chaser, the reporters' faces all turned pale. They were afraid that Xia Yao had known they were just puppets of a greater power.
Unexpectedly, Xia Yao smiled at them and said, "I have a special thank for you."
The reporters glanced at each other, feeling a chill down their spine.
"Today our company and the Hei Bao had a one-to-one combat in the hot spring resort, just to have a little fun and of course nobody wanted reporters to make a fuss out of it. We didn't expect you to be so helpful that you even recorded all the rounds. Once these videos are publicized, won't the bodyguards' spirits will be lit up?"
No reporters dared to open their mouths.
"Oh, you don't know that we were just fighting for fun? And also, can you let me see those pictures?"
The leader of the photographer squad couldn't do anything but handed Xia Yao his camera container.
Finding a photo of good quality depicting his fight with Heizi, Xia Yao told the reporters, "He's a leading personnel of Hei Bao, having received several prestigious prize. In my company, I usually grind soy beans (means he plays around, no serious practice), I never expected to have defeated him at the drop of a hat. When editing this, please make my face look somehow more good-looking."
Picking another photo, Xia Yao looked at it carefully and praised, "You did choose such a perfect corner for the lens! Powerful eyes, formidable aura of a fighter, this is certainly not bad at all."
The reporters finally left the pub with frightened expression on their pale faces.
Back to his home that evening, Xia Yao was totally done in, his two hands swelling up for punching relentlessly during the day. When Yuan Zong called him, he only managed to keep the phone on his knee, leaning on the screen to talk.
"So tired." He mumbled.
"Why so?" asked Yuan Zong.
"I went out playing for an entire day."
"So go to bed early."
Xia Yao hummed in agreement, and fell asleep with his head on the phone, with Yuan Zong's steady breaths as a lullaby.
**********
I can't breath at this sweetness overload 😭😓. My Xia Yao is such a good wifey, doing everything for his husband while he's away.
Love,
Ann