The guy lunged forward with a punch, but I easily dodged him by stepping to the side. After all I had been through over the past few months, having been embroiled in life and death situations and fighting desperately against armed mercenaries and warriors in Astral Exosuits, an idiot throwing a normal punch at me seemed like a complete joke.
As a bonus, I swiftly stuck my foot out and tripped him. My assailant stumbled right into the driveway where all the luxurious cars were coming in. A Rolls Royce crashed into him, and the poor guy fell from the impact, sprawled on the ground.
Fortunately, the driver was driving at a very slow speed (it was a place for dropping off passengers and switching the drivers with valets, after all), so the guy didn't suffer much damage. Indeed, the driver was able to brake before he ran over the sprawled dude.
"Are you crazy?!" the guy shouted, sticking his head out of the window of his luxury car. To my amusement, I recognized Justin Han. "Jumping out in front of me so suddenly? You want to die, is it?! Can don't involve other people, can or not?"
"Ugh…" the guy pointed at me. "It's his fault! He's the one who…!"
"Whoa, you want to lie in front of this missy, do you?" Lily Ling stepped forward, placing her hands on her hips. "I saw you attack my partner with my very own eyes. You threw the first punch and all Trevor did was dodge you. You went and fell on your own. I'm sure everyone here can testify it too."
"T…that's right!"
"I saw it too!"
Most likely because they all feared Lily's family background, the other rich dudes and gals mingling outside Riverview Hotel were agreeing fervently, adding their own testimonies. Justin Han shot me a suspicious glare – even now he bore great animosity toward me – but he was wise enough to back down and try making use of this opportunity to drag me down.
"Ugh…!"
The guy wailed and writhed on the ground, clutching his arm, which had been broken when the car slammed into him. Even though Justin's Rolls Royce wasn't traveling at great speed, it still packed enough punch to shatter bones upon impact.
Shaking my head, I pulled him off the road and lay him on the ground. Pulling out my smartphone, I prepared to call for an ambulance. The poor guy looked like he was in so much pain that I felt sorry for him. Even if he landed a punch, he wouldn't have been able to break anything.
That said, I didn't regret tripping him and sending him stumbling into the path of a car. He threw the first punch. He got what was coming to him. If he didn't want to get hurt, he shouldn't try to hurt other people in the first place.
"Be careful," Lily was telling me. "His arm doesn't look right."
That was because it was broken, girl…
"Make way, make way!"
To our surprise, someone was moving toward us. A guy who looked very generic yet somehow had the audacity to look arrogant at the same time. I wasn't sure how to describe him, other than he was the typical urban cultivation protagonist. Not overly handsome, but not too ugly either. A kind of blank slate for male readers to self-insert themselves inside.
Predictably enough, everybody except me seemed to know who he was, as well as the beautiful lady next to him.
"Isn't that Bu Fan?"
Of course. His given name had to be Fan. All urban cultivation protagonists were named Fan. Whether it was Mo Fan, Chen Fan, Zhuo Bu Fan, Li Xiao Fan, Lin Fan, Ye Fan, Zhao Fan or whatever Fan, they were all inevitably named Fan. It was like the single most common given name for urban cultivation protagonists.
"Right! Isn't he the son-in-law of the Bing family?"
"Yes! Beatrice Bing! The most beautiful woman in our city!"
That was what the mob was saying, but no matter how I looked at Beatrice Bing, who was beside Bu Fan, though she was undeniably beautiful, she wasn't indisputably number one. Lily Ling could challenge her for the title of most beautiful.
In the first place, how did you determine who was "most" beautiful? Was there some sort of poll to vote for them? Did Beatrice Bing win a beauty pageant three times in a row? Who decided she was number one? Since beauty was subjective – as they said, beauty was in the eye of the beholder – who had the authority to claim that Beatrice Bing was the "most" beautiful?
Before I could ask about that, though, it appeared that the crowd had more important things to say about her husband.
"Ha ha! Bu Fan, the trash son-in-law? I can't believe he has the face to show up at this ball!"
"I don't understand why Beatrice Bing married such a waste. If I were her, I would have divorced him long ago. He's useless, incompetent and always eat soft rice! No job, just stay at home and depends on his wife to raise him. Only thing he is good at is doing housework!"
"I heard his in-laws are getting furious and pressuring their daughter to divorce him, so that they can arrange a marriage with another more useful and competent person from a wealthy family."
"Do you guys seriously have nothing better to do than to trash-talk other people?" I snapped at them. "And is this the time to be gossiping about Mr. Bu Fan while there's a guy with a broken arm here? If you have time to chat, why not call the ambulance or help me with first aid?"
The rich mob gave me a rude stare and ignored me. The fucking bastards. Also, what was with their dialogue? They sounded as if they were ripped out of a cliché, cheesy son-in-law story.
"There's no need to call the ambulance." Bu Fan waved me away. "This level of injury, I can treat."
"Uh, okay?"
I made way for him, and to my surprise, he produced a set of silver needles, which glowed in the faint light. Before I could say anything, he punctured the victim's skin with the needles, performing acupuncture.
"Um, bro, you know this guy is suffering from a broken arm, right? A fracture? Why are you performing acupuncture on him?"
"Just shut up and don't disturb me," he snapped. He continued poking needles into the poor guy's body. Meanwhile, all the other mob characters laughed and insulted him.
"An incompetent trash deluding himself into believing he's a doctor?"
"Isn't he just going to make things worse? I would like to see if the Bing family will compensate for more damages after he screws up."
"Is he an idiot? Bragging like this, won't he have no face left after he has an epic failure right in front of so many people?"
"Are you guys serious?" I glared at them. "You don't want to help, never mind. But you're just standing there, watching and trash-talking the only guy willing to help. And you talk about shame?"
"It's his fault for bragging instead of leaving the victim to an expert!" One of the crowd people sneered. Right at that moment…
"Done."
Bu Fan pulled out the needles and rose to his feet, keeping them. He turned and stalked off, with everyone gawking at him. A few of them laughed.
"Even until the end, he wants to pretend…!"
"Thank you!"
The accident victim got up, flexing his broken arm and testing it. He bowed to Bu Fan fervently, his complexion returning to normal.
"You healed my broken arm in a few minutes! You're a divine doctor!"
Everyone's jaw hit the ground. I was shaking my head in disbelief. This had to be utter bullshit. No, really. How the fuck did Bu Fan use ACUPUNCTURE to heal a fracture? How did he mend a broken bone within minutes just by ACUPUNCTURE?!
This made no sense whatsoever. It wasn't that I looked down on traditional Chinese medicine. If anything, I had huge respect for it. But anyone who did even the slightest research into traditional Chinese medicine would know that you do NOT heal broken bones with acupuncture. That acupuncture was not a miraculous cure-all that could cure everything from cancer to kidney failure.
Evidently the original author and creator of Bu Fan had never actually done any research on real traditional Chinese medicine whatsoever and was just making up these absurd situations so that he could slap everyone's faces with his so-called mastery of miraculous medicine.
I gave up. I just couldn't go along with this farce any longer.
Even Bu Fan's wife, Beatrice, was in disbelief. She watched her husband return to her side, and then she reached out.
"How did you do that? You never told me you learned medicine before."
Of course. The cliché "wife didn't know anything" scenario in the usual son-in-law story. I wondered why these sons-in-law were so desperate to keep all their skills, hidden abilities or background a secret, allowing everyone to label him as trash. They would claim that they loved their wives and do anything to protect their wives' reputation and wellbeing, but it never occurred to them that they were creating more problems for their wives by hiding their identities in the first place.
Or perhaps this was the reincarnation cliché where the original son-in-law was genuinely a piece of garbage, only to die somehow so that a more competent cultivator could reincarnate into his body (in some cases, that cultivator would happen to be the son-in-law's future self). That explained why he was trash this whole time, only to suddenly become a genius out of no fucking where.
"Oh, I just read it somewhere and picked it up," Bu Fan replied vaguely, obviously giving the standard response in all these stupid son-in-law stories. He then grabbed his wife's hand and gently pulled her into the interior of Riverview Hotel.
Shaking my head, I followed Lily and the other mob characters straight into the hotel lobby.