Chapter 297 — Letting Bygones Be Bygones

Tian Long nodded and, without being overly modest, sat down on the sofa beside him, then said to Yang Ce, "Mr. Yang... Ce, if there's anything, please just say it."

"It's about your backer behind the scenes," Yang Ce said. "Tell me everything you know."

"Very well." Hearing that this was what Yang Ce wanted to ask about, Tian Long relaxed. He knew he was desperately afraid Yang Ce might change his mind now—as long as Yang Ce did not go back on his word, he would answer whatever was asked, and he would certainly tell everything he knew without holding anything back!

"As for this backer... I've actually known him for some time now, though we weren't very close before!" Tian Long said. "We met at a banquet—he was introduced to me by a friend."

"What friend?" Yang Ce asked.

"It was President Hua. President Hua introduced us at the time." Tian Long thought for a moment, then said, "Yes, that's right—it was him!"

"President Hua?" Yang Ce's brow furrowed at once. "Which President Hua?"

"President Hua of the Hua Family Jewelry House!" Tian Long added.

"So it was him!" Yang Ce breathed a sigh of relief at once. When Tian Long had mentioned President Hua, Yang Ce had been badly startled—instinctively he had thought of Zhou Yanning's mother! Deep down, Yang Juehuan certainly did not want any backer to have anything to do with Zhou Yanning's mother. As long as it was not her, then anyone else did not matter.

What surprised Yang Ce, however, was that the man who had introduced Tian Long to the boss behind the scenes was none other than President Hua of Hua's Jewelry! Yang Ce knew this man; he had met him once at the very first dinner he had shared with Sun Jie. He was a man who looked utterly sinister, and it was said that he was also the one who had stirred up Guo Jianchao on the side, goading Guo Jianchao into drugging Sun Jie!

After that, the second time he saw President Hua was at Liu Yan's birthday banquet, but even then it was only a passing glance, with not a word exchanged—one brush past, and he had never laid eyes on the man again.

Little had he expected that this man was still in contact with the boss behind the scenes. But judging from the present, this boss behind the scenes had actually attended social gatherings of high society, so he did not seem as mysterious as Yang Ce had imagined—at least Tian Long had seen what the boss looked like.

"Go on," Yang Ce said to Tian Long, pulling himself back from his thoughts.

"Right!" Tian Long nodded and said, "It was like this—after I met the boss behind the scenes that time, I didn't see him again until the beginning of this year, when the boss behind the scenes came to me on his own initiative, wanting to work with me!

He provided me with a great deal of capital, telling me to buy off Sun Lin's subordinates so as to gain control of his company, and he had also, through some channel or other, got hold of certain incriminating evidence against Qu Daming and Liu Chan, telling me to work with those two. What Liu Chan and the others were digging at, naturally, was your company, while on my end what I was to bring down was Brother Jun's company..."

"By the way, have those two come running to you?" Yang Yanchuan asked.

"Yes, those two did come running to me, but they'd been exposed and were of no further use, so I gave each of them a bit of money and sent them packing." Tian Long said.

Hearing that the two had already fled, Yang Shuoxuan stopped concerning himself with them; they were nothing but small fry, and if they had run, then they had run. He nodded and said, "Continue."

"I didn't understand what the boss behind the scenes meant, or why he was so dead set on striking at the companies under your control in Songjiang, but since it was the boss's request, I could only comply," Tian Long said. "But I also knew that with only Liu Chan and Qu Daming, those two little shrimp, nothing much could be stirred up, and then I thought of how Jidun was also your property, so I hit upon the idea of joining forces with the Sui family of Jingshan to strike at your holdings!

Jidun had originally been the Sui family's territory; it was only because you had forcibly taken control of it that Sui Yuejin was burning with fury. So we hit it off at once: the Sui family, along with Qu Daming and Liu Chan, would deal with your company, while I myself would deal with Sun Lin..."

"Sui Yuejin is dead. Did you have anything to do with that?" Yang Xutang asked, having by now grasped the gist of the matter, which tallied roughly with what Sui Yuejin had said.

"What!? Sui Yuejin is dead? When did he die?" Tian Long was stunned, and asked in amazement.

Seeing that Tian Long's expression did not seem feigned, Yang Shuoxuan knew that this matter had nothing to do with him, and so he said, "The night before last, Sui Yuejin was shot dead, in the Sui Group building in Jingshan."

Sui Yuejin was a man of note in Jingshan; presumably the news had been suppressed over there, not to be released until there was some progress in the case. And Tian Long had likely been so busy these past few days that he had paid no attention to such matters—otherwise, even without any news reports, Tian Long should have learned of it through some other channel.

"Who did it?" Tian Long's face tightened as he asked.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you." Yang Ce shrugged. "Go on about the boss behind the scenes."

"All right. The boss behind the scenes said that so long as I agreed to one condition of his afterward, he would provide me with financial support free of charge," Tian Long said. "I didn't pay it much mind and agreed outright. Later, when I was close to succeeding, I couldn't restrain my curiosity and asked the boss behind the scenes just what he wanted me to do, but he said he hadn't decided yet. When I pressed him, he said that if I could help him capture Yang Ce, he would ask nothing more of me!"

That was probably the boss behind the scenes' true aim—it wasn't that he hadn't decided, but that he had deliberately said so to Tian Long, Yang Lanxu thought. But he did not give voice to this, and merely said, "And then you set your sights on dealing with me?"

"Yes..." Tian Long said, somewhat embarrassed. "I thought of your connection with Tian Yan and wanted to use that to lure you in, but I never expected that brat Tian Yan would tip you off... Though now that I think about it, even if you had taken the bait, I might not have been able to handle you—today was no different; I was caught by you all the same, and my martial arts were destroyed..."

"So that's how it was." Yang Ce now roughly understood the boss behind the scenes' plan. Though it seemed a little hard to believe that the boss behind the scenes would come to Tian Long to deal with him, Yang Ce reckoned that the boss behind the scenes, having failed time and again to strike at him, had not known what else to do and so had hit upon this roundabout method of saving the situation; the money he had given Tian Long was a mere drop in the bucket to the boss behind the scenes, a matter of no consequence, and so the boss behind the scenes had had to pay no real price.

"Since you've seen the boss behind the scenes, do you have a photograph of him?" Yang Yanchuan asked.

"Not really..." Tian Long shook his head somewhat helplessly. "The first time I met him, it never occurred to me to take a photo of him, and afterward, whenever we met, it was always a very cautious rendezvous—there was no way he would have given me the chance to photograph him."

"In a little while, find a painter who knows his trade and have him draw a portrait based on your description!" That was the only way Yang Shuoxuan could think of.