The door to the private room was kicked open abruptly, the commotion so loud that the people inside all paused their actions to look toward the entrance.
“Is Young Master Pang planning to cause trouble here?”
Yi Yan leaned against the doorway, the smile curling the corners of his lips carrying a chilly edge.
As every clear syllable escaped his lips, the smile on his face deepened, and the freezing aura grew even more oppressive!
“Yi, President Yi?” Pang Tangwen slowly lowered the empty wine bottle he had just raised.
Yi Yan arched a single eyebrow. “Did I interrupt your good time?”
“No, no, no, how could that be!”
Seeing Pang Tangwen looking utterly terrified and spineless brought a deep sense of amusement to Yi Yan.
Pang Tangwen, however, falsely believed with misplaced sharpness that he had caught onto this hint of a smile from Yi Yan.
Seeing Yi Yan’s seemingly amicable expression, one that appeared entirely devoid of any desire for conflict, Pang Tangwen confidently assumed that Yi Yan was standing on their side.
Empowered by what he assumed was a far more formidable backer, Pang Tangwen grew even more arrogant.
Suddenly, he pointed a fierce and menacing finger at the semi-conscious Lin Ze and accused him.
“President Yi, you have no idea, this punk just had the nerve to openly provoke me! He, he actually dared to hit me!”
Looking at Pang Tangwen’s bruised and battered face, Yi Yan let out a soft oh and lightly arched an eyebrow.
Pang Tangwen grew increasingly furious.
His gaze turned increasingly venomous as he picked up the empty wine bottle from his hand, preparing to smash it straight onto Lin Ze’s head.
With lightning-fast reflexes, Yi Yan blocked Pang Tangwen’s attack, his eyes narrowing with a gloomy, fierce glint as he delivered a heavy punch straight into Pang Tangwen’s abdomen.
The sheer force of the blow sent Pang Tangwen stumbling backward several steps.
The pain caused him to clutch his stomach and grimace in agony.
“Pang, President Pang?”
The surrounding subordinates all released Lin Ze and rushed over to support Pang Tangwen.
Even with their boss having been attacked, no one dared to show the slightest dissatisfaction toward Yi Yan’s actions.
The subordinates wore ugly expressions as they stood there, caught in a difficult dilemma.
Pang Tangwen hadn’t even fully recovered his wits yet.
Enduring the pain, he struggled back to his feet and asked, “Why?”
“You’re laying such vicious hands on my friend?” Yi Yan asked coldly, the words dropping like ice.
Everyone present widened their eyes in shock!
Who could have possibly imagined that a humble waiter from this bar could have connections to the heir of the Yi family!
They were actually friends?!
The lackeys who had laid hands on Lin Ze all retreated half a step backward in terror, swallowing hard against their will.
Had they known there was any connection between them, Pang Tangwen would never have been blind enough to touch Lin Ze.
After all, the Yi family’s enterprise far outranked and overwhelmed their Pang family!
“As for whoever touched him, you will all return the same treatment to yourselves. I will come to check the results tomorrow night.
If anyone dares to try to cover it up and I find out, do not blame me for taking matters into my own hands.” Yi Yan finished speaking with absolute calm.
He gazed down with darkened pupils at Lin Ze, who was slumped on the floor, frowning with his eyes tightly shut.
With two or three swift strides, he stepped forward, scooped the person up into his arms, and walked out.
In an instant, the only occupants left in room 3033 were a group of people trapped in their own remorse and torment.
Yi Yan carried Lin Ze into his car.
After turning on the vehicle’s heater, he stepped back outside.
Lin Ze squinted slightly, forcing his eyelids open with immense difficulty. The high-concentration alcohol in his stomach churned violently, leaving a debilitating wave of dizziness hovering persistently over his head.
“Where is this?”
Lin Ze’s breath reeked entirely of alcohol. His voice was somewhat hoarse, and his throat felt as though it had been scraped by a sharp blade, burning and dry.
Why was he in a car?
Wasn’t he just in that private room moments ago?
The pain in his body, coupled with the sharp throbbing and haze in his head, made his guard automatically shoot up even in this unfamiliar space!
The car door was pulled open, and Lin Ze’s heart skipped a beat.
They couldn’t possibly be taking him somewhere to dispose of his body, could they?
With his entire body devoid of strength right now, he didn’t even have the power to resist!
Panicking, he frantically twisted the door handle, desperate to get out, but was yanked back by the arm as the person who had just gotten into the car pulled him firmly inward.
Lin Ze slammed his eyes shut, his heart turning cold by half as he thought to himself that he was doomed!
“Where are you trying to go?” Yi Yan asked.
Upon seeing the person who had entered the car, the heart that had been leaping wildly in Lin Ze’s throat finally settled down.
“Yi Yan? Why are you here?” he asked.
“If I hadn’t shown up tonight, your head would have been cracked wide open.” Yi Yan raised an eyebrow, his expression remarkably calm.
Lin Ze gripped his trousers tightly, his expression extraordinarily awkward.
He never expected to run into a scum of such inferior character as Pang Tangwen tonight, and he had fallen victim to quite a few of the man’s schemes.
Gazing at the fine beads of sweat on Yi Yan’s forehead, he paused in a daze. “Were you also beaten up by them?”
After being subdued earlier, his mind had started spinning into chaos, and his ears had rung with a persistent buzzing that made it impossible to clearly hear what anyone around him was saying.
He had managed to pry his heavy eyelids open, and all he had witnessed was a blurry scene of people exchanging blows in a chaotic brawl.
Yi Yan’s sharp eyes caught the loophole in Lin Ze’s words.
Without missing a beat or showing a flushed face, the corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Mn, took a couple of punches, but it’s nothing.”
“Don’t move for a second.”
Lin Ze’s body stiffened, unsure of what the other man intended to do.
Finished speaking, Yi Yan opened the tube of medicine he had just bought from the pharmacy and gently dabbed it onto Lin Ze’s bruised and swollen mouth corner.
The ice-cool ointment melted against his skin in under three seconds, and a pungent medicinal scent filled Lin Ze’s nasal passages.
He furrowed his brows slightly in discomfort.
Watching the serious and meticulous expression on Yi Yan’s face as he applied the medicine, Lin Ze felt a strange awkwardness settle into his chest, yet he still managed to mutter, “Thank you.”
Only a few days ago, he had glared at Yi Yan and given him the cold shoulder, never imagining that the man would set aside past grievances and step in to rescue him today.
Recalling those past fragments of memory made Lin Ze wonder if perhaps he had been far too narrow-minded.
Perhaps Yi Yan wasn’t as truly terrible as he had imagined in his heart?
“Why did you help me?”
Somehow, Lin Ze found himself voicing the inner thoughts running through his head.
“Isn’t doing a good deed just the right thing to do?”
Yi Yan curled his lips into a faint smile, turning the question back on him.
Lin Ze was utterly stunned, his brain flashing frantically through the phrase good deed.
He never thought he would live to hear Yi Yan boast about doing a good deed himself!
After a brief moment of silence, Lin Ze asked again, “Why do you always come looking for me? We clearly aren’t close.”
“Didn’t I tell you a while back that I wanted to be your friends? Did you forget about that?”
It was the first time in his life he had ever humbled himself to make friends with someone, only to have it completely forgotten.
Yi Yan’s voice remained completely devoid of ripples. The eyes that had held a trace of warmth just a second ago instantly turned frosty, though Lin Ze failed to notice.
“Friends?” Lin Ze parted his lips slightly, uttering the two words with disbelief.
“That’s right, friends,” Yi Yan replied.
Now it was Lin Ze’s turn to lose his focus.
Hearing a scion of a wealthy family express a desire to be friends with him was happening for the second time in his life.
He had always assumed that only pure and innocent young masters like Li Yu would foolishly choose to be friends with him.
After all, he had nothing to his name, so what right or qualification did he have to mingle with people from aristocratic circles like them?
If they wanted to associate with him, they surely had to be after something, right?
Otherwise, it simply didn’t make sense.
When Yi Yan had first laid eyes on him, the man had adopted a roguish, cynical posture and asked, “Lin Ze, do you think we can become good friends?”
Naturally, Lin Ze had felt nothing but disdain for the word friends coming from the mouth of a pampered young master.
Friends?
Heh, those were at best mere drinking buddies, parasites who were useless once the wine and food were gone.
The very moment trouble struck, they were always the absolute first ones to run away!
He had no need for that kind of friends.
He had neither the time nor the inclination to play games with them.
Lin Ze had quickly thrown Yi Yan’s words to the back of his mind.
Yet why, when he was beaten to within an inch of his life tonight, was Yi Yan, someone who had no obligation to him whatsoever, willing to step up and help? Clearly, Yi Yan could have just stood by and mocked him mercilessly like before.
Anyway, thank you for tonight.
He had never been one to let someone else’s kindness go unacknowledged, nor did he like owing people favors.
“What do you think, Lin Ze?” Yi Yan asked.
Lin Ze naturally understood what the question implied.
“You really just want to be friends with me?” Lin Ze asked.
“What else? What could I possibly expect to gain from you?”
Yi Yan smiled, his clear and radiant eyes beneath his brows staring straight into Lin Ze’s vision, pristine and entirely free of impurities.
“Is it really that hard to want to be brothers with you? I know you probably always assume the worst of me, don’t you?” He lowered his eyelids, his expression turning somewhat aggrieved and wounded.
Lin Ze thought to himself that it was hard not to assume the worst.
“Do you hate me?” Yi Yan asked. “Look, I took the initiative to befriend you and got ignored, and tonight I saved you from a beating and got ignored too.”
Yet, seeing that wronged expression and remembering how the man had disregarded everything to pull him out of the hands of those thugs and taken injuries in the process, Lin Ze felt a genuine stir of emotion in his chest.
He couldn’t bring himself to speak coldly to him anymore.
“I don’t hate you.” Lin Ze’s dryly spoken words instantly made Yi Yan’s eyes light up brilliantly.
“So, does that mean after tonight we’re brothers?” he asked.
“Mn.” Sweeping away his previous cold demeanor toward him, Lin Ze nodded firmly in agreement.
“That’s great.” Yi Yan smiled, his subtle brown pupils shimmering with tiny specks of light.
Lin Ze took in every bit of this interaction.
“Right, it’s getting late. I should head back.”
As Lin Ze reached for the door handle to get out, Yi Yan stopped him.
“It’s too late to easily catch a cab. I’ll drive you home,” Yi Yan said.
“No need, I rented a place right around here. It’s quite close, so you don’t need to trouble yourself with driving me back.” Lin Ze patted his own hair in refusal.
Seeing that Lin Ze was determined to walk, Yi Yan didn’t press the matter further.
“Oh, right, Lin Ze. Take these medicines with you.” Yi Yan handed all the remaining ointment tubes from the bag over to him.
“No need, you keep them to use on yourself.” He refused.
He didn’t know the extent of Yi Yan’s injuries, but compared to his own, they ought to be minor.
After all, his own face had already taken hits, and if the bruises deepened tomorrow, he would look all the more hideous.
Meanwhile, Yi Yan’s face was still clean and untainted, showing none of the compromised elegance of a pampered young master.
That must mean the blows had landed beneath the cover of his shirt.
Looking at the bag of medicine in Yi Yan’s hand, Lin Ze felt a tinge of embarrassment as he declined.
If he needed more bruise ointment later, he could always buy more, as pharmacies were a dime a dozen downstairs from his apartment.
Lin Ze smiled and waved his hand, insisting it wasn’t necessary.
“Take them. If you don’t take them, does that mean you still look down on me as your brother?”
Lin Ze froze. He hadn’t expected Yi Yan to phrase it quite like that, but he could hear the genuine sincerity underlying the words.
Scratching his head with a trace of awkwardness, he replied, “Alright then, thanks a lot!”