Jiang Deqian finished a bottle and turned it upside down. Just as he was about to say something, Bi Shenghua across from him had already opened her second bottle. He had no choice but to pick up his second bottle too and repeat the process, working with the bald, tattooed man to get the cap off.
That way of opening bottles was cool, but doing it too often looked like trying too hard, and it was nowhere near as fast as biting the caps off.
By the time Jiang Deqian finished his third bottle, Bi Shenghua had already drained her fourth.
She bit the cap off her fifth bottle and spat it far away with a ptooey. Only then did Jiang Deqian set down his third empty bottle.
"Could you hurry it up?" Bi Shenghua planted one foot on a stool, rested her arm on her knee, and waved her bottle. "Should I take a nap in the grass up ahead and wait for you? Taking this damn long just to drink beer-are you even a man?"
Everyone caught the barb in Bi Shenghua's words. She was finding a roundabout way to call Jiang Deqian a tortoise.
Three bottles were nothing to Jiang Deqian, but he had not expected this short, flat-chested girl who looked neither male nor female to drink so fast.
Still, he was not worried. She was a woman, after all. Even if she poured it straight down, how much beer could that belly of hers hold? He did not believe he would lose, and in front of his buddies, he could not allow himself to lose, either.
He downed his fourth bottle without hesitation, sneered, and picked up his fifth as well. This time, he did not ask the bald man behind him to open it barehanded. Instead, he dutifully used a bottle opener.
More and more people gathered in the bar. Every time either of them emptied a bottle, the crowd cheered and broke into thunderous applause.
Qingmu had been a little worried at first, working out how to salvage things if Ruhua lost. But after watching for a while, he relaxed.
He knew Ruhua could hold her liquor, but he had not expected her to be this good.
Although the rakishly handsome landlady usually wore loose, baggy men's clothes, no change of clothing could change the fact that she was a woman. The slender waist hidden beneath those clothes was no thicker than other women's.
All in all, aside from dressing like a man, having a somewhat flatter chest, somewhat shorter hair, a slightly more heroic pair of sword-like brows, and a somewhat coarser way of speaking, Qingmu still regarded her as a woman.
But tonight, Qingmu began to question whether this woman really was one. He simply could not imagine where all that beer was going.
It seemed drinking, too, was a matter of mysticism. Sometimes it really did come down to talent.
Now Qingmu turned his attention to the bald man behind Jiang Deqian. In his eyes, Jiang Deqian was at most a rich young master who liked nightclubs and had the money to keep women, but his instincts told him this bald man was dangerous.
Only after finishing his eighth bottle of beer did Jiang Deqian realize he had misjudged the situation.
This tomboy could not just drink-she could really drink.
His belly was painfully bloated. In the past, he had always drunk these little 330-milliliter bottles without a care. At a time like this, all he had to do was go to the restroom and take a piss, and everything would be fine. He had always thought going to the restroom had nothing to do with how well someone could hold their liquor. Only today did he realize that, with beer, your capacity depended entirely on how well your bladder and prostate worked.
He began to regret it a little.
With his status, there had been no need to get bogged down here. He could easily have smashed the bar to pieces and taken her away. It was just that neither his nightclub visits nor his keeping women was anything to be proud of, and he did not want his older brother to find out.
His older brother, Jiang Deguan, was a man who cared about face. He controlled an ocean shipping and trading company that specialized in buying garbage and scrap abroad and selling it to domestic manufacturers.
It was an extremely profitable business.
Developed countries and regions such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Europe produced vast quantities of industrial waste every day, but processing it was very expensive. If someone was willing to buy it, they were happy to sell it at rock-bottom prices or even give it away. China imported tens of millions of tons of garbage each year, worth tens of billions of US dollars.
Once this purchased foreign garbage reached China and people were hired to sort and classify it, it became excellent industrial raw material, chiefly discarded electronics and plastic products.
Naturally, plenty of people competed for a business that required almost no capital. At overseas trading ports, many ethnic Chinese gangs were involved, and the competition was every bit as fierce as it was over drugs and arms.
In China, the shipments mainly arrived at three major ports: Shenzhou, Yangcheng, and Jingang. Those who could collect goods directly there all had connections and clout. Jiang Deguan's ocean trading company collected its goods at Shenzhou Port, then resold them to electronics and chemical factories in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui.
Jiang Deqian did not know exactly how much influence his brother Jiang Deguan had or how much money he made each year. He only knew that his brother was ruthless and domineering enough to cover for him no matter how enormous the trouble he caused.
The last time he had killed a university student while speeding in his sports car, the cameras had recorded everything, yet his brother had settled the matter with just two phone calls.
Recently, his brother's business seemed to have run into trouble. His temper had grown volatile, and he had repeatedly warned Jiang Deqian to rein himself in and not cause trouble. He had even assigned him a bodyguard, ostensibly to protect him, but in reality also to watch him and keep him from getting into trouble.
Just looking at the bald man behind him gave Jiang Deqian a headache. His name was Hou Biao, nicknamed Monkey. He had served in the military and ranked among the best of the bodyguards his brother kept. With someone like that following him, he was certainly safe, but he was not nearly so free.
So Jiang Deqian had been very well behaved lately. He no longer went street racing and rarely hung around nightclubs. He had only hooked up with a pretty college girl through a pimp in the university district. The girl attended a music conservatory and said she had a part-time job singing at night. He had not thought much of it, but to his surprise, she ran off after just two days.
Unable to swallow his anger, he had someone beat up the pimp. After finally finding out that the girl sang regularly at this bar, he brought a few people over to demand her back, only to run into a tomboy who would risk her life to protect her own.
Bi Shenghua was like a wild mare, and her primal wildness instead stirred his desire. He thought that if he tamed this tomboy and trained her a little, she might prove more enticing than that good girl.
So he had teased Bi Shenghua into drinking, never expecting it to turn into a drinking contest, much less for this tomboy to have such an astonishing capacity.
After eight bottles of beer, Bi Shenghua showed no sign of being unable to continue, aside from a slight flush on her face. Jiang Deqian, meanwhile, was so desperate to urinate that his face had turned bright red and sweat covered his head. His sweat-soaked clothes clung tightly to his body.
As Bi Shenghua tipped her head back to drink her ninth bottle, a sour surge suddenly rose in Jiang Deqian's throat. A beer belch welled up, and he nearly vomited.
The bald Hou Biao whispered something in Jiang Deqian's ear, but Jiang Deqian shook his head.
Frowning, Hou Biao secretly removed the strand of opaque amber beads from his wrist. With a gentle pinch, he snapped the cord, caught one bead in his right hand, and held it between three fingers, aiming at Bi Shenghua's belly, ready to flick it out.
Although opaque amber was light and a flicked bead would not be enough to injure someone, he believed that with his technique and finger strength, striking the stomach of a woman who had drunk five or six jin of beer would be enough to make her vomit.
Just then, a hand as powerful as an iron clamp reached over like a ghost and seized his wrist.
Hou Biao instinctively struggled, but could not break free.
He turned to look and saw a man with a bird's-nest head of hair and two thick brows set in a doleful expression, watching him with the hint of a smile:
"Amber this nice must be expensive, right? If you don't want it, why not give it to me?"