"Gu Chen!"
A call broke the silence. Gu Chen turned toward the voice and saw a group slowly entering through the main hall, with Su Qingqing the one who had called out. Su Qingqing had come with her elder brother and father. She was especially dazzling tonight, dressed in a long white gown, carrying a black handbag and wearing pink high heels, both youthful and gorgeous. She was already a beauty in the making, and heads turned wherever she went.
"Class monitor." Gu Chen was a little taken aback by her beauty, but then a smile curved his lips.
Just as Su Qingqing was about to go over and speak to Gu Chen, Su Yi stopped her.
As Su Qingqing's elder brother and the Su Family's eldest son, Su Yi wore a cold expression. He gave Gu Chen a disdainful glance, then said to Su Qingqing, "What are you going over there for? Is that somewhere you should be going? Don't forget who you are!"
"That's Gu Chen, big brother," Su Qingqing reminded him, somewhat puzzled. "Don't you remember him?"
"It's precisely because I know it's him that I won't let you go." Su Yi was twenty-five or twenty-six, but carried himself as if he stood above everyone else, his eyes fixed on the heavens. He sneered, "Do you think they're still Shangjing aristocrats like before? Now he's just the son of an insignificant little business owner. You'd only disgrace our Su Family by going over there."
"Big brother..." Su Qingqing said unhappily.
"Let's go." This time, Su Zhenbei, the head of the Su Family, spoke as well.
Helpless, Su Qingqing could only cast Gu Chen an apologetic look before following her father, Su Zhenbei, into the hall.
They had made no effort to lower their voices, so Gu Chen and his father had naturally heard them. Gu Chen looked calm, but Gu Beichi clenched his teeth, struggling to contain his anger.
Soon, the guests began arriving one after another. They all saw Gu Chen and Gu Beichi, but some pretended not to notice them, while others glanced at them briefly before looking away. Some even went out of their way to avoid them, as if afraid of catching some ill fortune.
"President Li..."
"Boss Wang..."
Several times, Gu Beichi tried to greet acquaintances, only to be ignored or given a polite smile before they hurried away.
In the end, Gu Beichi stopped getting up. With a dark expression, he sat there watching the parade of humanity in the hall.
A month ago, both the Su Family and the other business families had treated them with the utmost respect. But now that Gu Beichi had fallen from power, and with news of the Zhou Family breaking off the engagement causing an uproar, everyone's attitude toward them had changed completely.
"Dad, I'm going out for a little while," Gu Chen said, suddenly rising. "I have a classmate outside."
"All right, go on." Gu Beichi nodded.
Gu Chen walked out of the hall, took a deep breath and clenched his fists.
Of course he had seen how his father had been treated. He knew full well that the Zhou Family was behind it all. If the Zhou Family hadn't put the word out, there was no way these people would have treated him and his father like this!
Just as in his previous life, this birthday banquet was ostensibly a celebration for Zhou Xue'er, but in truth it was a Hongmen Banquet aimed at him and his father.
"Zhou Family, if you want to play today, then I'll play a bigger game with you!" Gu Chen surveyed his surroundings, his gaze icy.
A twentieth birthday was a major occasion, and Zhou Xue'er was the Zhou Family's only daughter of the direct line, so naturally they placed great importance on it. Besides prominent figures from the business and political worlds, the other two great families had also been invited to tonight's banquet.
Gu Chen's gaze soon settled on the representatives of those two families.
On the right side of the courtyard, a group of men in black had gathered. They belonged to the Wen Family, one of the three great families, whose vast power encompassed the Fierce Tiger Society and the Wen clan.
Almost no one approached the Wen Family members. After all, the Wen Family's fearsome reputation was known throughout Zhou City. It was a powerful family with ties to both the underworld and legitimate society, having first made its fortune in Myanmar before gradually becoming more respectable after returning to Zhou City.
On the left was the Xiang Family. Only three of them had come, and they were all seated in the pavilion outside, watching the guests come and go with cold eyes. In the past, Zhou City had been a two-family show between these two families; only after the Zhou Family began to rise had the situation changed. Even so, they remained fairly uninterested in the Zhou Family, so neither family intended to go inside before the banquet began.
After some thought, Gu Chen decided to approach the Xiang Family first. The Xiang Family had practiced medicine for generations before moving into the pharmaceutical business, with factories and distributors across the country. The three people who had come this time were all fairly young, led by Xiang Zexi, the eldest son of the Xiang Family's direct line, who was in his thirties. This was enough to give the Zhou Family face.
However, when Gu Chen was about to walk over to the Xiang Family, he noticed a crowd gathered around the pond in front of the pavilion. Curious, he went over and saw a disheveled old man squatting there with a Go endgame laid out before him.
The Zhenlong Go Puzzle!
Gu Chen recognized the puzzle at a glance.
But the old man looked completely out of place at the banquet. Dressed in shabby clothes and squatting there, he looked nothing like someone attending a birthday party and more like a street vendor in a bustling market.
Guests stood around in twos and threes, seemingly drawn by the spectacle. Their brows were tightly furrowed, and quite a few voices could be heard discussing the puzzle.
Gu Chen stepped forward for a look. In this formation, the black stones were besieged on all sides, with no hope of survival. There were very few places white could play; not only was it constrained at every turn, but every move led to a dead end.
"It can't be solved."
After studying it for a long while, a man shook his head. "This puzzle is unfathomably profound. I haven't gotten anywhere with it. I reckon it's an unsolvable puzzle."
"Yes. I don't think even the Thousand-Layer Treasure Pavilion or the Martial Arts Demonstration Diagram has variations as devilishly cunning as this puzzle. White seems to have a chance of survival, but every move looks like a killing blow."
Another middle-aged woman shook her head.
"This puzzle is even harder to solve than the Spring and Autumn Wondrous Formation. I'm afraid no one in all of Zhou City, or even all of Huaxia, can solve it," a white-haired old man sighed.
It looked as though the people gathered here were all Go puzzle enthusiasts.
A thought stirred in Gu Chen's mind. This was, after all, the Zhou Family's birthday banquet, so why would someone set up a Go puzzle here? He looked around curiously and saw that more and more guests were being drawn over. Some of the older elders were even bringing members of their clans and younger relatives to watch.
The discussion continued around him, but the old man remained unmoved. His eyelids drooped, his eyes seemingly half-open, as though he had fallen asleep.
"What does this man do?" Gu Chen finally couldn't resist asking, catching a young man beside him.
The man glanced at Gu Chen and said in surprise, "How did you get in here? You don't even recognize Xiang Linde, the head of the Xiang Family?"
Xiang Linde, the head of the Xiang Family?
Gu Chen was startled, then realization dawned on him. No wonder this disheveled old man could set up a Go puzzle in front of the Zhou Family's pavilion. So that was who he was!