Chapter 3392 — A Warm Reception

Seeing Wei Zhao standing there dumbstruck, the Tang leader felt rather awkward, and Tang Taizhong likewise had no idea what that expression on Wei Zhao's face meant, nor what he ought to say.

"Brother Arrowhead, I think they're dying to get themselves a son-in-law!" Shen Yushu got out of the car and said to Wei Zhao, "Oh, right—Bingtang of the Ice Palace seems to have some connection to the Tang family."

"Oh…" Wei Zhao suddenly understood. Could it be that the Tang family had heard Bingtang was going to be his littlest-littlest-littlest-littlest wife, and so had taken him for their son-in-law?

Seeing that lukewarm, neither-hot-nor-cold look on Wei Zhao's face, the Tang leader truly did not dare say more. He assumed Wei Zhao was still fuming over the Tang family's severing of ties with Tang Zhi at the birthday banquet—and if Wei Zhao's anger had not yet cooled, then to keep talking now would be courting death.

"Young Hero Lin, I have already instructed the kitchen to prepare a banquet. Would you prefer that we sit down to eat now, or rest a while first?" Tang Taizhong dared not bring up Tang Zhi again, and grew ever more deferential toward Wei Zhao—he had even begun calling himself "this humble one," all in the hope of earning Wei Zhao's forgiveness.

True, some of the dishes had been added at Tang Taizhong's order after the fact, but a banquet is not something that requires every dish to be laid out before one may eat; serve one and eat one, and that is perfectly acceptable too. So with what had been prepared earlier, they could sit down right now.

"I'm not hungry, and I'm not tired. We came here to solve a problem—let's first talk about this hidden Tang family business of yours," Wei Zhao said with a wave of his hand, declining Tang Taizhong's offer and cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

Wei Zhao was a chef himself—was he going to be impressed by a single banquet? And he was a ** practitioner besides; the fatigue of travel meant nothing to him.

"Then… very well. Young Hero Lin, Director Song, this way please. And these three are—?" Tang Taizhong did not recognize Shen Yushu or Yu Xiaoke.

"Shen Yushu of the hidden Yu family, the swordswoman Yan of the Thieving Sect, and the fiancée of Kang Jingming's elder brother from the Xuandan Sect," Wei Zhao introduced them briefly. "All of them count among those closest to me."

"Ah! Your names have long preceded you, long preceded you!" Tang Taizhong hurriedly cupped his hands and said—though "long preceded you" was pure nonsense; he had never heard of any of the three. Especially the last one: Elder Kang Jingming of the Xuandan Sect he did know, but how had Kang Jingming's elder brother's fiancée gotten mixed up with Wei Zhao?

This Wei Zhao was ** enough—even this was possible? And Kang Jingming had agreed to it? Well, apparently he had, otherwise why would he not dare breathe a word to this day? At that thought, Tang Taizhong found Wei Zhao ** all the more.

"Old Master Tang is indeed a man of wide experience. Shen Yushu used to belong to the Chen family of the secular world—she has only just learned of her true parentage as a Yu, and the name 'swordswoman Yan' was simply made up by her. Her name is Yu Xiaoke," Wei Zhao said. "As for Wang Xinyan, I have already forced Kang Jingming to make his elder brother scram. She is my girlfriend now."

"Uh…" Tang Taizhong broke into a sweat on the spot. He had only tossed out a few casual compliments—how was he to know he had flattered all the wrong people? He felt thoroughly glum. "The people at Mr. Lin's side—I would say they are all formidable sorts, so surely they must be illustrious names…"

Still, when he heard that Wei Zhao had actually forced Kang Jingming's elder brother to scram, he thought: just how ** must a man be for Kang Jingming to give in like that?

The group entered the Tang family's reception hall. Tang Taizhong volunteered to yield the seat of honor to Wei Zhao, but Wei Zhao waved it off and took a guest seat instead—he could not care less for such empty formalities. "Old Master Tang, it's not as if we haven't met before. If there's something to say, say it."

"Very well, then I won't stand on ceremony. The matter is like this…" With that, Tang Taizhong recounted to Wei Zhao and the others everything that had happened to the Tang family's businesses over this period—though all of it was what he had already told Qiu Lingshan before.

"In other words, have these people come to rob you again in the past two days?" Wei Zhao asked.

"Yes, they came yesterday, and the day before that as well—they've come every day straight. Whether they'll come today, I don't know!" Tang Taizhong said, rather helplessly. "The hidden Tang family has only just set up a great many businesses in the secular world. If they keep robbing us like this, we'll be bankrupt!"

The hidden Tang family had done business before, true, but always of the shadowy sort. Now that the Hidden Family Arbitration Association's restraints had lost their force, the Tang family had grown reckless—and not the Tang family alone; the other hidden families were the same. Everyone had rushed into the secular world to scoop up gold. After all, hidden families had many connections and many roads to profit.

Sure enough, the hidden Tang family had wanted to make a killing, and so had poured its entire fortune into the venture, branching into a great many trades—jewelry, rare medicinal herbs, retail and wholesale, private lending, and so on and so forth.

Originally, backed by the Tang family's influence, these businesses had all been thriving. But who could have foreseen that a gang of robbers would suddenly appear and begin plundering the Tang family's holdings—jewelry shops, rare herb shops, retail and wholesale stores, lending companies, every one of them robbed in turn?

Yet the Tang family could not simply shut their doors—otherwise those few companies that had just begun to build up a clientele would have to start building it all over again from scratch. So the Tang family could only keep resupplying while pleading for help from the Mysterious Investigation Bureau.

"If that's the case, then I say we go take a look at your stores directly—if someone tries to rob them, we can act at once?" Wei Zhao thought for a moment and said.

"That is a fine suggestion, but the trouble is that the Tang family's holdings are extremely scattered, spread across many nearby cities. With that many holdings, we could sit in one shop for a month and never see the robbers show up…" Tang Taizhong said with a bitter smile.

"Hell, aren't hidden families forbidden from doing business? Why the devil did you set up so many holdings?" Hearing that these businesses were not even in one place—that they sprawled across regions—Wei Zhao glared at Tang Taizhong in some annoyance. "Then there's no other way. We'll just have to wait until you're being robbed, and then go catch them."

"That's the only way, then…" Tang Taizhong nodded. Though he reckoned there might still be losses, at least Wei Zhao's arrival could cut those losses to the minimum. "Then, everyone, shall we go to the dining hall and join the banquet?"

"Let's go, then." Wei Zhao had nothing else to do, so he nodded and agreed.

To curry favor with Wei Zhao, the hidden Tang family had gone to enormous pains this time—Tang the Second had made the chefs pull out every trick they had, producing a spread akin to a Manchu-Han Imperial Feast.

But Wei Zhao was plainly not much interested in such things and merely picked at a few bites, whereas Shen Yushu and Yu Xiaoke went straight to work, laying siege to the banquet table. (To be continued.)