"Landlord, are you alright?"
After casually backhanding Zeng Xiaoxian into the floorboards, Hu Yifei turned her attention back to Adrian. Her face was flushed a brilliant, defensive crimson as she looked down at the man crouching on the ground.
Under normal, civilized circumstances, if any man dared to lay a finger on her tits, Yifei would ruthlessly beat them into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp until they couldn't feed themselves. However, the situation was unique. Adrian's brutal grope had been the absolute, perfect tactical counter-measure to her inescapable grapple. Since she wasn't an entirely unreasonable woman, she wouldn't hold a desperate survival tactic against him.
Besides, she reasoned internally, she had managed to violently dislocate his wrist, while he had merely squeezed her right breast. If Adrian had used the full, devastating kinetic force of a palm strike instead of a grope, she knew with terrifying certainty that her ribs would have been shattered and her tit would be permanently flattened.
Although modern feminists loved to shout coping slogans about being proud of flat chests, Adrian knew that if given the choice, every single one of those women would beg for a pair of heavy D-cups. Yifei's breasts weren't massive—probably a firm, athletic B-cup at best—but that made them all the more precious to her vanity. If a martial artist permanently flattened one side, the psychological trauma would be incurable. Thus, she possessed a surprisingly pragmatic understanding of her opponent. True martial artists rarely harbored petty, civilian grievances.
"It is nothing. A minor inconvenience," Adrian gritted his teeth.
The blinding pain of the separated joint was enough to make an ordinary man scream and pass out, but he perfectly maintained his cold, aristocratic persona. He reached over with his good hand, tightly gripping his violently dislocated left wrist.
Crack! With a sickening, echoing crunch of bone and cartilage, Adrian ruthlessly snapped his own joint back into place without blinking.
"Sugoi...!" Guan Gu Shenqi let out a shocked, terrified gasp.
The fight had been so blindingly fast the peanut gallery had only seen violent blurs. Now, watching this pale, supposedly fragile landlord casually reset his own dislocated bones like a hardened assassin on television, the entire bar fell into a stunned, horrified silence. They had never met a man this utterly ruthless in real life.
"Please be lenient next time, Miss Hu. Otherwise, I might actually require a cast," Adrian said smoothly, testing the rotation of his wrist. It would ache for a few days, but his superhuman healing factor would handle it. He offered her a respectful, albeit mocking, martial arts salute.
"Oh, no, I am the one who should be thanking you! If you hadn't pulled your strike, I would be drinking my meals through a straw!" Yifei laughed, waving it off without a hint of awkwardness.
It had to be said, if a man treated a violent tomboy like her as a sparring brother, they would get along flawlessly. But to treat her like a submissive, fragile woman? That would end in tragedy. As the old saying goes, blows forge bonds. After surviving a brutal spar with the complex's apex predator, Adrian instantly integrated himself into the social dynamic of apartments 3601 and 3602.
"Landlord, I absolutely cannot believe you survived a fight with the demon king! You are officially the man I admire most in this life!" Zeng Xiaoxian crawled over, offering a sycophantic, pathetic smile, completely unaware that Yifei was glaring daggers at the back of his empty head.
"Hey, Landlord! You actually have such amazing kung fu? Have you been hiding in your penthouse all these years secretly honing your internal energy?" Tang Youyou asked eagerly, quickly changing the subject to save Zeng from another beating.
"That is correct. My lineage practices the Primordial Qi technique. I have trained in strict isolation since childhood," Adrian lied effortlessly, sitting down gracefully on the leather sofa. "I arrogantly assumed I had mastered it, but I never expected to be bested by Miss Hu. I am truly humbled."
The bar's seating was a casual, intimate arrangement. Guan Gu and Youyou squeezed onto one of the single chairs, while Meijia, Yifei, and the pathetic Zeng Xiaoxian crammed onto the three-seater opposite him.
"Primordial Qi sounds so badass! Are you a secret disciple of the Huashan Sect?!" Youyou asked, chopping her hand through the air like a sword.
"Oh! Do you know the legendary Dugu Nine Swords technique?!" Meijia immediately chimed in, her eyes wide with childish, idiotic wonder.
"Can you two idiots take this seriously for one minute?" Zeng Xiaoxian sighed, massaging his bruised jaw before looking at Adrian. "By the way, Boss... you didn't leave your penthouse just to pick a street fight with Yifei, did you?"
Despite being the resident punching bag, Zeng was occasionally the only one with a functioning brain cell.
"Are you going to raise the rent?!" Meijia gasped, immediately clasping her hands together like a begging rabbit. "Landlord, please! Look how poor and pathetic we are! You couldn't possibly have the heart to bleed us dry!"
"Wait, Landlord, you aren't here to conduct a surprise inspection to see if Guan Gu and I are really a couple, are you?!" Youyou panicked. She immediately wrapped her arms tightly around the Japanese artist's neck in a desperate display of fake affection. The complex had a strict 'half-price rent for couples' loophole they were obviously exploiting.
"Relax. You have all entirely misunderstood my intentions," Adrian sighed, shaking his head at the display of modern, civilized panic.
'Honestly,' Adrian mused darkly, 'when I first saw the System assign a pathetic two points each for Chen Meijia and Tang Youyou, I assumed they would be effortless conquests.'
He had figured a few nice dinners and some smooth lies would have them spreading their legs in a matter of hours. But after this brief, analytical encounter, he instantly realized he had underestimated the psychological difficulty of the task.
Admittedly, their brains functioned on idiotic, sitcom logic, but their core social values were remarkably stubborn.
Meijia might be a clueless airhead who could be coaxed into his bed in three days tops, but her desperate, infatuated personality meant keeping her absolutely loyal and isolated from other parasitic men for a full year would be an exhausting, micromanaged chore.
As for Tang Youyou? The girl possessed top-tier physical assets—a flawless body and face easily suited for the highest echelons of the entertainment industry. But she remained a struggling, impoverished D-list extra because she possessed a fatal, stubborn flaw: she absolutely refused to submit to the unspoken rules of the casting couch.
In this modern era, if a beautiful actress refused to sell her pussy to the investors, she needed absolute, crushing corporate power backing her to succeed.
'She refuses the casting couch?' Adrian smiled internally, his dark eyes analyzing her desperate grip on her roommate. 'Let us see how long that pathetic pride lasts when the landlord holds all the keys to her survival.'
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