"Qin Ruyan, haven't you always relied on that seductive face of yours? Do you dare make a bet with me?" Song Zizhou pointed at his own face, his voice sharp and grating.
"I bet you'll lose! If I lose, you can do whatever you want with this face of mine! You can even carve it up with a knife!"
He paused, a cruel smile spreading across his face. "But if you lose, I get to carve up that face of yours with my own hands!"
This wager caused every woman present to involuntarily draw in a sharp breath. For a beauty, disfigurement is far more agonizing than death!
Qin Ruyan's body trembled violently. She could care less about family property or social status, but wagering her own face touched upon her bottom line as a woman!
"What? Too scared?" Song Zizhou laughed triumphantly. "Weren't you acting so tough just a moment ago?"
"We accept the bet." Before Qin Ruyan could reply, Lin Feng's calm voice sounded once again.
He stepped in for Qin Ruyan, accepting this most vicious wager on her behalf.
He turned his head to look at the somewhat flustered Qin Ruyan, offering her a reassuring smile.
There was not the slightest trace of reluctance in that smile, only absolute confidence, as if in his eyes, all of this was nothing more than a harmless game.
For no apparent reason, Qin Ruyan's heart settled. Looking at the man before her who shielded her from all the wind and rain, and looking at those vile faces eager to tear them limb from limb, an unprecedented courage surged from the depths of her heart.
She took a deep breath, stepped forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with Lin Feng, and swept a cold, clear gaze across Song Zizhou. Her voice was crisp and resolute: "Fine, I bet with you! I'll play along to the end!"
"Hahahaha! Good! This is getting more and more interesting!"
Just then, a voice filled with arrogance and a cold, sinister laugh came from the entrance of the banquet hall.
The crowd looked toward the source and saw Qiao Yu swaggering in, surrounded by a group of bodyguards. The fingerprints on his face had faded, but the resentment and ruthlessness in his eyes were greater than ever.
The moment he appeared, the temperature in the entire hall seemed to drop a few degrees.
Qiao Yu's gaze locked directly onto Lin Feng, the corners of his mouth curving into a cruel arc. "Broken hands and feet? That's letting you off too easily."
He walked to the center of the crowd like an absolute monarch, and pronounced his sentence to Lin Feng: "I'll add to the wager too. Lin Feng, if you lose, not only do I want your limbs, but I also want..."
His gaze slowly drifted downward, landing on Lin Feng's lower body, and a look of extreme humiliation and perversion appeared on his face.
"I want you to castrate yourself with your own hands, right in front of everyone!"
These two words caused every man present to instinctively cross his legs, a chill shooting straight from the soles of their feet to their scalps. Too ruthless! This was no longer mere humiliation; this was meant to completely destroy a man's dignity!
"Young Master Qiao is mighty!"
"Young Master Qiao is right! Dealing with trash like this calls for methods like this!"
Qin Kun and Cao Quan immediately crowded around like pug dogs, loudly chiming in.
Seizing this golden opportunity to suck up to Qiao Yu, Liu Xinhuan rolled her eyes and immediately shrieked, "Just betting on those things is so boring! Let me add one more! I'll put up one hundred million! I bet that Lin Feng and Qin Ruyan lose utterly and completely!"
With that, she scanned the surroundings and shouted with extreme demagoguery: "Everyone, don't just stand there and watch! Since Qin Ruyan and Lin Feng are so brave, we might as well grant their wish!"
"If you have money, contribute money; if you have strength, contribute strength, and place your bets! I want to see how much debt the two of them can possibly shoulder!"
"When they lose, every single one of us will be our great campus beauty's creditors! Making her do whatever we want will just be a matter of a single word, won't it? Hahaha!"
Liu Xinhuan's proposal was like a spark thrown into boiling oil, instantly igniting the darkest and most greedy desires in the hearts of everyone present.
"Miss Liu is right! How can a bet be without stakes? I'll put up twenty million, betting they lose!" a pot-bellied real estate developer responded first.
Ill-intentioned light flickered in his eyes as he uninhibitedly swept his gaze over Qin Ruyan's exquisite body curves.
"I'll put up thirty million!"
"Damn it, our campus beauty is every man's dream in Haicheng! Making her owe me money is an opportunity I'd regret missing for the rest of my life! I'm putting down fifty million!"
"Count me in! Eighty million!"
The entire banquet hall completely degenerated into a crazy casino.
Those so-called upper-class elites, usually dressed in suits and looking respectable, all tore off their hypocritical masks at this moment, revealing greedy and ugly faces.
Like a pack of sharks that had smelled blood, they rushed forward, waving checks and credit cards with only one goal — to become one of the straws that broke Qin Ruyan's back.
So that later on, they could rightfully play with this high-and-mighty goddess in the palm of their hands.
Qin Kun, Cao Quan, Song Zizhou and the others were so excited their faces flushed red. They even found a professional lawyer to draft the wager on the spot and set up a public account to pool all the bets.
The numbers rolled and soared crazily on the LCD screen.
Two billion!
Five billion!
Eight billion!
Finally, when the last person making an additional bet signed their name, the bright red number firmly settled at — ten billion!
Ten billion in Chinese currency!
This number pressed heavily upon everyone's heart like an insurmountable Mount Everest.
Looking at that astronomical figure, Qin Ruyan felt the world spinning, her vision darkening in patches, and her body swaying.
She was finished. Her life was completely over. Even if she sold the entire Qin Family, she wouldn't be able to scrape together a fraction of this money.
She was finished. Saddled with a massive debt of ten billion, she would be torn to pieces by this pack of wolves, wishing she were dead.
Despair engulfed her completely like icy seawater.
She regretted it. She shouldn't have brought Lin Feng, she shouldn't have listened to his absurd remarks, and she certainly shouldn't have thrown herself into an irrecoverable abyss in a moment of impulse.
Just as Qin Ruyan's psychological defense was about to collapse, a warm hand grasped her cold little hand. She instinctively looked up, only to see Lin Feng's face glowing with excitement.
"We've struck it rich! Ruyan, we're rich!" Lin Feng leaned into her ear and growled excitedly, with the tone of someone who had just won the lottery jackpot.
"Ten billion! A full ten billion! Now the resources for the rest of our lives are guaranteed!"
Qin Ruyan was completely dumbfounded.
She looked at the jubilant man before her as if looking at a monster, a lunatic.
Was he crazy? Did he know what he was saying? They were saddled with ten billion in gambling debts, facing broken limbs, disfigurement, and castration, yet he was celebrating getting rich?