northernbook #408 - Be confident
#408 - Be confident
Those seats were almost the best in the hall besides the main one, so they shouldn't have been empty until now.
Lu Jing originally wanted to remind Cheng Guan, but then he thought that with Cheng Guan's prudence, he wouldn't overlook such a thing, so he didn't say anything and silently followed behind Cheng Guan with the other academy disciples.
As the eight of them walked towards the center of the hall, as Lu Jing expected, more and more eyes fell on them, and even those who had been reveling in the singing and dancing earlier moved their eyes away from the thighs and breasts of the dancers.
Cheng Guan, however, seemed to feel nothing, still holding his head high and chest out, maintaining his previous pace, neither deliberately speeding up nor slowing down.
He walked all the way to the table in the very center, and was about to sit down when he heard a strange voice from not far away, "Hold on!"
The speaker was a foreign man with a high nose, deep-set eyes, and blond hair and brown eyes. He looked quite handsome, but for some reason, his eyes always looked a little sinister.
Perhaps because he often made a living at sea, his skin and the skin of his men were tanned bronze. He spoke in somewhat broken Chinese, word by word, "You can't sit here."
Cheng Guan sneered, "What a joke. This is the capital of my Great Chen Kingdom, and this is the imperial palace of my Great Chen. When did it become your place, you foreigners, to point fingers?"
After saying that, he unceremoniously plopped down.
The blond, brown-eyed man shook his head when he saw this. "I remember that you Chen Dynasty has a saying, it seems to be called 'Good advice is hard to persuade a ghost destined to die.' This prince kindly reminded you, but you didn't listen, and why did you have to insult us? Does your dignified Celestial Empire only have this much tolerance?"
"Displaying the Celestial Empire's tolerance is something the Ministry of Rites should do. What does it have to do with my Directorate of Astronomy?" Cheng Guan said matter-of-factly.
The foreign man who claimed to be a prince was actually speechless by his retort.
And Cheng Guan had already begun to call Lu Jing and the others to take their seats.
However, his actions were seen as a provocation in the eyes of the foreigners, so the guy who claimed to be a prince changed his face when he saw this. He narrowed his eyes, suddenly reached out and grabbed a chopstick from the table, and threw it at Cheng Guan.
The chopstick was obviously infused with internal energy, and with a whistling sound, it looked terrifying. If it hit, it would either kill or cripple.
As a result, Cheng Guan didn't dodge or evade, still sitting in his seat, just like Jiang Taigong, who was firmly seated on the fishing platform, with a hint of mockery on his lips.
No, it was more than not bad, he was simply full of courage. Thinking of this, the foreign man who claimed to be a prince couldn't help but regret that he shouldn't have held back just now. He really had the impulse to kill the little official of the Chen Dynasty directly, but when he thought about where they were now, he finally didn't want to make things too big.
But he didn't expect that he would be used by the other party to boost his prestige. Although he also showed a good skill, he was ultimately making a wedding dress for others, and he was resentful.
Lu Jing also sat down next to Cheng Guan at this time, and gave the latter a thumbs up, "Lord Cheng is calm in the face of danger, truly a hero!"
But to Lu Jing's surprise, when he finished saying this, Cheng Guan still didn't react, like a clay sculpture.
Lu Jing was still thinking that Cheng Guan was addicted to pretending, and he had to maintain that posture in front of his own people, but then he saw a large amount of sweat suddenly oozing from the latter's forehead, and his face turned pale.
Cheng Guan turned his head and glared at Lu Jing, "Why didn't you… why didn't you guys take action just now?!"
"Huh?" Lu Jing was a little confused. "Lord Cheng, you wanted us to take action? But I saw that you looked so calm, I thought you were confident."
"Isn't it because I have you guys that I'm confident?" Cheng Guan rolled his eyes, "Otherwise, how dare a common person like me, who doesn't know martial arts and hasn't cultivated, confront those yellow-haired foreigners who don't look easy to deal with? But you guys are good, none of you helped me at the critical moment."
The more Lord Cheng spoke, the more aggrieved he became. "If that person was just scaring me just now, you would never see me again."
Seeing that he was sad, Lu Jing could only comfort him, "Don't worry, Lord Cheng, there won't be a next time. When you encounter any danger later, I will definitely take action in time and protect you."
Cheng Guan felt relieved after receiving the guarantee from Lu Jing, a first-class master, and his face gradually returned to normal.
The whole person returned to his previous steady appearance.
However, Lu Jing noticed that the hostile gazes around him did not decrease, and many of them had a bit of schadenfreude in their eyes when they looked at them, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
However, apart from the foreign man who claimed to be a prince, no one came to make trouble for them again, which made Lord Cheng, who was prepared to show his heroic posture, a little regretful.
After Lu Jing and the others took their seats, several more groups of strange people and strangers walked into the Chui Gong Hall, and soon filled the tables in the hall.
Everyone thought that tonight's banquet was about to begin, but no one expected that they would wait another hour and a half. By the time the moon outside the hall had risen very high and the dancers in the hall had changed several times, everyone was hungry, and then they heard the eunuch's announcement outside the door, saying that the official was about to arrive.
As a result, everyone, who had managed to cheer up a bit, waited expectantly for another half an hour, but still didn't see the shadow of the official.
Even Cheng Guan couldn't help but complain. Fortunately, after another quarter of an hour, there was finally the sound of footsteps coming from outside the hall.
Then, a middle-aged man with a height of seven feet, a strange and majestic appearance, and a square forehead and long face, walked into the hall in large strides, surrounded by a group of people.