"You couldn't get hold of the guy who invited you?" Zhang Yang heard that and deliberately turned his head to look at Wang Yan.

Wang Yan shook his head. "No idea. As soon as the guy showed up, they took our phones away! Otherwise why would I say they came prepared! They didn't even give us a chance to make a call! Fuck this, society's vicious as hell! I almost planted it today.

Oh right, about tonight, YOYO still doesn't know, does she? If she finds out she'll skin me alive!"

Seeing Wang Yan looking all shaken, Zhang Yang curled his lip and deliberately scared him: "Uncle police has already notified the family."

"Fuck, for real?" Wang Yan shuddered on the spot. But he quickly reacted, realizing Zhang Yang was messing with him. If YOYO really knew, she probably would've already come over to kill him.

"I told you to stay put, but you just had to go out and mess around. Got a long memory now, huh? You guys smoke the laced cigarettes in the private room? Why'd they arrange a drug test for you?" Zhang Yang asked again.

Mentioning the laced cigarettes, Wang Yan slapped his forehead hard. "Shit, now that you say it, that might really be it!

Chu Bro, remember that young guy who came with Old Wu? That skinny cigarette he handed over, it tasted kinda weird!"

Sitting in the passenger seat, Zhou Chu rolled the window down wider, blew out a smoke ring and recalled for a few seconds. "I also thought it tasted off. He said it had a popping bead in it, so I didn't think too much!

The guy fucking with us is playing dirty. If the test really came out with something, we wouldn't even need to compete anymore—we'd be thrown straight into a cell!"

"Enough, let's go back first and talk later. For now just pretend nothing happened."

After a few quick words, Zhang Yang basically got the gist of it. He shifted gears, stepped on the gas and headed toward the hotel.

By the time the car got back to where they were staying, it was already close to three in the morning. The guys sat in Zhang Yang's room and analyzed for a bit but couldn't figure out anything useful. They were really sleepy, so they each went back to their own rooms to rest.

After Zhang Yang locked the door and lay down again, WeChat pinged.

He glanced at it. It was a message from Han Mocheng.

"You got them out, right? What happened? Did you piss someone off?"

Zhang Yang replied: "Someone set us up. They got some little hostess girls, and there was probably something in the cigarettes too! Luckily you used your connections and reacted fast. Otherwise if the frame-up stuck, that'd be rough as hell."

"Need me to try and dig into it? Could it be that bastard Qin Xiao's people doing this?"

When Han Mocheng mentioned Qin Xiao, his tone turned gritted-teeth again.

"Unlikely. He already knows what kind of pull you have, he backed off and paid up. Why would he stir us up again?

Besides, their target this time should've been me. I didn't go to the social, so they settled for going after Wang Yan and the guys instead. You have a way to check?"

"I can try, but odds of finding anything aren't high. Unless we play it bigger—find a way to nab the punk who put the drugs in. Might be able to squeeze something out of him. Otherwise… want to give it a shot?"

Hearing that, Zhang Yang instinctively shrank back.

Tianjin might not be Beijing, but it's still crawling with hidden dragons and crouching tigers. Right now, even though there was a screw-up, nothing seriously bad happened yet, which Zhang Yang could just about accept.

When it comes to serious business, Han Mocheng always speaks cautiously. If he says he's not confident, that means it'd be a huge stretch to pull off. Forcing it just to fight for momentary pride really isn't a smart move.

If things blew up, Zhang Yang wouldn't be able to clean up the mess. He'd have to rely on the connections of either Han Mocheng or Meng Fan's family. The more favors you owe, the deeper you sink. Twisting your arms and legs to go beg people—truly smart people don't do that.

The enemy's in the dark and he's out in the open, so the smartest choice right now is to stay on guard and drop the pursuit.

"Forget it. We're not underworld guys, we can't afford to play this game with them. Just be more careful, real business comes first." Zhang Yang declined.

"Alright, let's just leave it at that for now.

It's not that we can't stir shit up, it's just the favor I'd owe my old man's contacts would be too big—not worth it.

If there's nothing else, I'm going to sleep. Have to get up early tomorrow, maybe still catch a nap." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"Sleep."

...

Putting down his phone, Zhang Yang lay on the bed and calmly started thinking.

In terms of personal grudges in W City, he really didn't have any mortal enemies in real life. But once you open for business, if you factor in commercial stuff, then the list of people you've crossed gets a lot longer.

Like Ma Xiaofei, who'd gone head-to-head with Zhang Yang before and got smacked down by him. That guy had every reason to look for a chance to get revenge.

Or the boss of Baoding Little Yellow Bait, the company running this competition. If he found out Zhang Yang had brought people to crash his event, in theory he'd also have the motive.

As for all the little frictions and minor conflicts with others, there were even more of those. Even if he went over them one by one till dawn, he might still not figure it out.

Right now there was no solid evidence anyway, so he might as well not get hung up on it. It'd be hard to get a clear answer. At worst, he'd just keep his eyes open going forward. Since the other side was using such low-life tricks, chances would definitely pop up again.

Thinking this, Zhang Yang rolled over, plugged in his phone charger, and fell into a deep sleep.

While Zhang Yang was asleep, somewhere else in Tianjin, a certain someone holed up in a hotel couldn't sleep at all.

It was clearly a combo that had never failed before. All the setup was in place and they were just waiting for the result. But man proposes and God disposes. They'd only just brought the guys back when the call came, straight from the municipal bureau's chief secretary. The whole process wasn't even finished before they had to let them go.

He'd heard before that Zhang Yang's team had some clout, but the man behind this had never imagined they were this powerful.