Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

Hearing they were going for a stroll around the university, Xiaoying got excited too. She set down what she was doing and said happily, "Wait a moment, I'll go change—I should at least dress a bit more like a student."

"Hurry up, then." Xu Peng found it a little funny, though he could well understand how she felt. Xiaoying's grades in high school hadn't been bad; that she hadn't gone on to university and had come to the city to work instead was purely down to her family's circumstances.

Xiaoying's family was in the village, where they ran a small shop that didn't bring in much. With the whole family to support, there was simply no way they could cover her expensive tuition, so in her senior year of high school she had been forced to drop out.

She had left school for financial reasons, but that did nothing to diminish her longing for university. Knowing there was no chance she'd ever attend one in this life, she simply wanted to walk around a campus, to at least soak in the atmosphere.

Before long, Xiaoying came out in a rather plain set of winter clothes, and she really did look like a freshman. Even Xu Peng's eyes lit up.

"I never would've guessed, Xiaoying—dressed like that, you really do look like a college student," Li Dagang said with a laugh.

"Please. Standing next to you, I don't. You look like some white-collar type from the working world, come to campus to hunt for girls," Yang Ce said, needling Li Dagang.

"Haha, then hunt away, what's the harm? I don't have a girlfriend anyway," Li Dagang said, utterly unbothered.

Xu Peng gave Xiaoqiu a few more instructions, then took the money and such out of the bar counter, leaving only some small change inside, and headed out of the billiard hall with Yan and the others.

When Xu Peng saw Yang Juehuan's car, he visibly froze. Xu Peng knew the family circumstances of Yang Juehuan—you could say they weren't much better than his own—yet here he was, already driving a BMW.

Seeing the doubt in Xu Peng's eyes, Yang Ce said in surprise, "Dapeng, hasn't Dagang told you about my situation?"

"No, he hasn't," Xu Peng said, shaking his head.

"Yang Ge, I thought you'd already told Dapeng," Li Dagang said, shaking his head. Then, to Xu Peng: "Dapeng, Yang Ge's doing insanely well for himself now. From here on, I'm planning to throw in my lot with him. What about you—ready or not?"

"Me?" Xu Peng had first assumed Yang Ce was inviting him to join the underworld. But that didn't seem to be it. In the underworld, how could anyone afford a BMW? You'd have to rise to what—a local boss at the very least—to have that kind of money.

Ordinary street thugs—forget buying a car; most of them probably don't even have money to go out and have fun. Take those few guys who came to the pool hall looking for trouble earlier—they were all the type with little cash in their pockets, always scheming up ways to squeeze a bit of money out of other people.

"Dagang, Dapeng has his own ideas. Let's not push him. Let him think it over on his own—when he's got it sorted out, he'll come find us," Yang Hengye said.

Wang Yanqiu sat in the passenger seat, while Li Dagang, Xu Peng, and Xiaoying sat in the back. The X5 was fairly roomy, so three people in the back seat didn't feel particularly cramped.

"Brother Yang, what exactly are you doing these days?" Xu Peng had been afraid that a life of fighting and killing would drag down Xiaoying and the child—after all, he was a family man now, and he cared about such things a great deal.

But from the looks of things now, that didn't seem to be the case, so he couldn't help but ask. After all, people climb upward and water flows downward; if there was a better career out there, Xu Peng wasn't about to cling to this little pool hall.

"I've started a jewelry company with Zhang Bin," Yang Hengye said. "Zhang Bin—you probably know him too. A buddy of mine from high school, pretty close with Li Dagang. He just didn't skip class much."

"Oh, now I remember. You came to the pool hall with him before." Xu Peng nodded. "Brother Yang, sorry about that—I thought you were still running with the underworld."

"The underworld, heh, how should I put it—there's some connection. When you do business, it's more or less unavoidable to deal with those circles," Yang Hengye said. "Take you, for instance. You run a pool hall and you'd like to do business in peace, but there are always little thugs from the streets coming around to cause trouble, collecting protection money and whatnot."

Xu Peng had to silently agree. True enough—that was just how it was. You might not go looking for them, but they would come looking for you.

"Sometimes, if you want to grow a business, the local underworld becomes an obstacle. If you don't keep these people happy, they'll make trouble for you day in and day out. After all, they're all money-grubbers who can't stand seeing others make a profit—they just want something for nothing," Yang Ce explained. "So if you want to root that out once and for all, you have to hold the underworld in your own hands."

"Hold it in our own hands? How is that even possible?" Xu Peng exclaimed with a bitter smile.

"Fortunately, things aren't too bad. Baolin, the big boss of Songjiang, is on good terms with me, so we can go about our business without worry." Yang Ce didn't tell Xu Peng too much—some of what lay in between was highly confidential, and Yang Shuoxuan didn't want too many people to know.

"Ah?" Xu Peng was rather surprised. How could he not have heard of Baolin's name? But he never would have guessed the man was a good friend of Brother Yang's.

"Tell you what, Dapeng." Yang Ce could tell Xu Peng's tone was no longer as firm as before, so he said, "I've got an idea. If you're genuinely interested in the pool hall business, then let's keep at it."

"What do you mean?" Xu Peng was taken aback, not quite understanding.

"We can set up a billiards club, or a members' hall, and take the business up a level—not limit ourselves to what we have now," Yang Ce explained.

"But that would take a lot of money, wouldn't it?" Of course Xu Peng wanted to do better in business—who wouldn't want a bigger enterprise?

"Hey, Dapeng, you don't have the money, but Brother Yang does!" Li Dagang laughed. "Brother Yang puts up the cash, you run the place, and when there's profit you split it fifty-fifty. How's that?"

Li Dagang knew Yang Ce didn't care about this kind of money at all, so he had simply taken it upon himself to speak for Yang Ce and put it out there.

"Ah—how could I accept that?" Xu Peng knew that to really open the kind of club Yang Ce was talking about, you'd need at least a million in capital, and that money would basically all be coming from Yang Ce. He'd only be contributing his own labor—what folks call a hired hand. How could he take half the profits?

"What Li Dagang said is basically what I mean," Yang Hengye said. "No need for formalities among brothers. Think it over—if you feel it's workable, we'll plan it out carefully. Don't worry, pulling out three to five million on the spot won't hurt me much."

Hearing this, Xu Peng's face was full of astonishment. He'd thought a million in investment was already a huge sum—he never imagined Brother Yang would put in three to five million for this.

It would be a lie to say Xu Peng wasn't tempted, but if it didn't go well and he lost all of Brother Yang's money, what would he do? Even though Brother Yang certainly wouldn't blame him for it, he himself would feel awful.

Xiaoying, off to the side, was even more astonished. She never would have guessed that Dapeng had such a formidable friend, and a close buddy at that—why had he never mentioned it before?

"All right, I'll think about it," Xu Peng said with a serious nod. He understood Yang Juehuan's intentions too—Yang Ce was really just helping him. Otherwise, Yang Ce would never have any interest in investing in a billiards club.

To be continued

960. The Challenge