Chapter Ninety-Seven: Jiang Yu, I Regret It!

A breeze drifted by, and with autumn already here, there was a hint of chill in the air.

Jiang Yu stood at the very edge of the rooftop, hands clasped behind his back, his clothes snapping in the wind.

A hotel employee pushed through the crowd and hurried over, asking Zheng Fu in a very low voice, "Mr. Zheng, a group of people has arrived downstairs. They say they have come all the way from Monaan to attend the wedding. Should we let them up?"

At those words, Zheng Fu could hold on no longer and slumped into his chair on the spot.

Zheng Mu looked at Jiang Yu in a daze, her eyes full of confusion.

"Move it, all of you. We rode for two days straight and I am choking on my temper. I swear, your hotel must be tired of living, is that it?"

The furious shout came from afar and drew nearer.

The newcomer was nearly six feet three, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, built in a way that was downright rugged, his face covered in a full beard, dressed in a black overcoat. In terms of presence alone, even Li Hao fell a step short.

In the dead silence, he strode forward with a tiger's gait and a dragon's bearing, ignoring everyone present, and went straight to stand behind Jiang Yu.

Then, all at once, the man's wild arrogance vanished. In a respectful tone, he said, "Monaan's Li Mu pays his respects to Master Jiang."

Master Jiang?

This was not the first time the Jiang and Zheng families had heard that title.

It seemed that many people addressed Jiang Yu that way. With so many wealthy magnates visiting today, it was clear they had all come for that very title.

People from Monaan Province had begun to arrive.

The rooftop grew crowded. Those tycoons whose fortunes barely broke a hundred million could not even qualify to enter; they could only stand at the very edge.

Jiang Yu waved a hand. "No need for such formality."

Li Mu, the man in power at the Monaan Chamber of Commerce, was rumored to be the adopted grandson of Du Yuesheng. In Monaan Province, he stood in direct opposition to Tang Chenghua, and the two were known as the Twin Heroes of Monaan.

Even Li Hao was nothing before him.

A true great man.

Among the common people, Li Mu's influence had already reached a critical threshold. One step farther, and he would enter that higher world.

Then, more than a dozen men dressed impeccably and carrying immense presence appeared, as if by prior appointment, all of them coming up together.

A collective gasp swept through the crowd. Every one of them was a famous tycoon from Monaan.

Jiang Yu turned around, and with countless powerful figures gathered around him, he walked to He Bing. A gentle smile touched the corners of his mouth. "Back then I said that the wealthy magnates of Jiangbei and Monaan would have to show me due respect and address me as 'sir.'"

"Now do you believe it?"

That smile held an indescribable elegance and charm.

Then, He Bing took a deep breath, lowered her head, and picked at her fingernails. "Jiang Yu, I am sorry. We underestimated you."

He Bing had once believed that Jiang Yu had only one path in life: to rely on his talent for study, get into a good school, and then, with a prestigious diploma in hand, go work for a big company. If he could earn more than ten thousand a month, that would already count as success.

Even if he could not compare with the rich second-generation heirs, he would still have surpassed many of his peers.

That was why, when she had gone to such lengths to get Jiang Yu an admission notice from Peking University, only to be rejected outright by him, she had felt such disbelief, such fury.

Now she finally understood, with complete clarity, why Jiang Yu had looked down so coldly on that notice from Peking University.

The reverence of over a hundred tycoons from Jiangbei and Monaan was his true trump card.

In the next few minutes, more and more people arrived on the rooftop. Every single one of them was a powerful figure whose net worth exceeded a hundred million.

Jiang Yu stepped onto the bright red carpet laid across the floor. The crowd parted to either side, and he walked straight to Zheng Xuan. "I said before that what I had achieved was beyond anything you could imagine. You also never knew who it was you were talking to."

"You were curious about what kind of grand gift I would give you, weren't you? Well, now you've got your wish. You saw it yourself. Are you satisfied with this gift?"

Regret, shock, terror, confusion, and more than a dozen other emotions tangled together and stabbed viciously into Zheng Xuan's heart.

Her slender body swayed a few times, and in the end she half-kneeled to the ground without saying a word. The power of these people, when added together, was enough to destroy a hundred Zheng families. Some of them were beings the Zheng family would have to look up to for the rest of their lives.

"Jiang Yu, who are you, really?"

All the arrogance Zheng Xuan had ever had was ground into dust by Jiang Yu today. At this moment, she was left only with utter humiliation, and under those layered, complicated gazes, she had lost completely and miserably.

That kind of helplessness, one could do nothing against, was enough to drive a person to despair.

Zheng Xuan's parents looked as though all color had been drained from them; they seemed to have lost their souls and collapsed into utter defeat. The two of them slumped in their chairs, staring blankly ahead, not uttering a single word from beginning to end.

Jiang Yu kept his gaze fixed on Zheng Xuan and spoke in an even tone. "Do you believe what I said now?"

With all her strength, Zheng Xuan managed a helpless nod. "I believe it. I do... I believe it."

"Shaoqi!"

Suddenly, a cry of terror exploded from the crowd.

Only then did everyone notice that Jiang Shaoqi had somehow made his way to the edge of the rooftop. He had gone over the railing and was staring dumbly down at the traffic a hundred meters below. There was still plenty of bright red blood at the corner of his mouth. Under the strain of fury crashing into his heart, the blood in his body had begun to churn wildly, and in a little over an hour, much of his hair had turned white.

No one could endure such a blow.

Jiang Shaoqi was a man of proud spirit, and in such a wretched situation, he could not afford to lose.

"I am the dragon of the Jiang family. I am the genius. You are all lying to me."

His eyes were empty, stripped of all color.

"Jiang Yu, you're deceiving everyone, aren't you? You're just trash, someone who will always be trampled under my feet. This has to be a dream."

Jiang Shaoqi looked half-mad. He was spouting nonsense, both hands gripping the railing tightly, half his body already hanging out over empty air. The moment he let go, he would plummet from a hundred meters up.

"Shaoqi, don't do anything foolish."

Tears streamed down Jiang Yun's old face as he dropped to his knees in Jiang Shaoqi's direction. He had been wrong. Wrong from start to finish. Only now did he understand that it had been his own hand that had led the Jiang family step by step toward ruin.

Over these past few days, the Jiang family had taken on more than fifty million in outside debt.

At the latest, in another week, the Jiang family would be forcibly bankrupt. One blow after another had crushed everyone there.

"Father, Mother, I am sorry."

The expression on Jiang Shaoqi's face suddenly twisted with fear, his emotions in violent upheaval. Everything he had been most proud of was gone. It was the same as falling from the altar reserved for genius, and that feeling was worse than death.

From this day forward, he would become nothing more than a shell, a walking corpse with no thoughts and no will, stumbling through life in a daze.

"No..."

His aunt's eyes rolled back, and she collapsed to the ground.

Zheng Xuan clutched her ears and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Ah!"

She was on the verge of collapse, her voice hoarse, her hair disheveled.

Many people shook their heads and sighed. They had brought this on themselves, and now they were finally tasting the bitter fruit.

As for Jiang Shaoqi, his hands suddenly went slack, and he fell from the hundred-meter height.

At the same instant, dozens of screams rang out. Ma Tianzong shook his head and said softly, "Why put yourself through this? With Master Jiang's character, how could he really bear to watch the Jiang family fall into ruin? As his relatives, could you honestly not see that?"

The moment Jiang Shaoqi fell, Jiang Yu moved.

He stepped out once and appeared more than ten meters away, swift as a ghost. No one could even make out his motion.

It was like the way no one could ever truly catch the speed at which light traveled.

After a few more steps, Jiang Yu was suddenly beyond the rooftop, standing in the air at a distance, as though an invisible floor beneath his feet were holding him up. That figure descended like a heavenly ladder, and in the blink of an eye he flew downward toward the building below.

Jiang Shaoqi, still plummeting, only felt someone seize him by the collar. When he opened his eyes, he saw a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Jiang Yu's expression remained unchanged as he planted one foot against the hotel's outer wall. In an instant, it was as if thunder had burst from clear ground. Where his foot landed, the wall exploded apart, and more than a dozen cracks spread in every direction.

The windows on that entire floor shattered as well, glass shards spraying outward in all directions.

The feeling was like the scenes on television where one rode the clouds and mist through the sky. Jiang Shaoqi stared blankly at Jiang Yu's face, and in the space of a single breath he had been thrown back onto the rooftop.

Jiang Yu stepped down through empty air, and with each step he took, his figure descended a little more. After ten steps, he landed lightly among the crowd.

"I fear Master Jiang's cultivation has already reached the late stage of the unified-force realm. He could enter the realm of the Earth Immortal at any moment."

Li Hao was practically worshiping him.

The people of both the Jiang and Zheng families were so stunned by the sight that they could no longer speak.

At that moment, Jiang Ziyue's delicate hand flew to her red lips. The figure of Jiang Yu walking across empty air just now was exactly the same as the one she had seen by the River Yu that night, walking atop the waves.

It was the same as the heavenly figure who had held lightning in his hand at the Huatian Tower.

It was him. It really was him.

Both hands pressed hard over her mouth, tears poured down in streams.

"Jiang Yu, it really was you."

Though Jiang Ziyue was in tears, she was also smiling, astonished and delighted all at once.

Jiang Yu knew what she meant.

He nodded at once. "Yes. The man you saw on the cruise ship, walking the wind and treading the waves, was me. And at Huatian Tower, the one who held lightning in his hand was also me."

Zheng Xuan pressed her face against the carpet, her lips trembling with difficulty as her voice turned hoarse.

"I regret it. Jiang Yu, I regret it!"