Just after the fight, it was already past ten when they emerged. The group stayed put and ordered a full table of dishes in the hotel restaurant that the organisers had booked for Zhang Weili. They ate, drank, and celebrated.
“Cheers!”
Everyone raised their glasses and downed them in one.
“Congratulations!”
“No big deal!”
Although Li Ying and Huang Xiumin seemed to be Lu Zheng’s friends, Zhang Weili did not mention the body-tempering pill outright. She simply gave Lu Zheng a grateful nod, then raised her glass in a distant toast to him.
“Wow! Straight to number one on trending! Incredible!” Li Ying exclaimed, holding up her phone.
“Wow! The official account posted the news. Unbelievable!” Huang Xiumin said, equally shocked.
“I’ve properly ridden this wave,” Zhao Xiaodao said with a cheeky grin, noting that she occupied two trending spots.
“Mutual riding all round!” Zhang Weili knew full well that bundled promotion generated far more heat than going it alone.
“Cheers!” Everyone raised their glasses again.
At that moment, a commotion came from the restaurant entrance. The group turned and saw Carla walking in with two other fighters and several companions.
It was already past ten, so few people were dining normally. Apart from their lively table, only three or four scattered tables had a handful of customers.
Thus, the moment Carla’s group entered, their eyes met Lu Zheng’s table.
“Are you close?” Lu Zheng asked Zhang Weili quietly. Many athletes, after all, were rivals in the cage but friends outside it.
“Not close,” Zhang Weili shook her head. Clearly, she and Carla were not that sort.
Lu Zheng and the others nodded and dropped any thought of greeting them.
Yet while they wanted no contact, the other side had no intention of leaving it there.
A burly man walking beside Carla bared his teeth at them, then flipped a single middle finger, the international gesture.
“Bloody hell?” Lu Zheng stared, stunned at the brazenness.
Anger flashed in Zhang Weili’s eyes. “That’s Carla’s boyfriend. He’s also a UFC fighter, light heavyweight champion, Burns.”
Then she watched Lu Zheng extend both hands, flipping two middle fingers back, silently mouthing an F-headed greeting.
Zhang Weili, “…”
Zhao Xiaodao, “…”
“This is our turf. We’re not letting them turn the tables, are we?” Lu Zheng muttered.
As the only man at the table, he had to hold the line. The gesture had to be returned.
His response clearly enraged Burns. The man’s eyes bulged, fury crossing his face. He had not expected this seemingly skinny, weak Asian to stand up to him.
In his mind, Asians, that “model minority”, were only fit to take it lying down.
How dare you!
“Fuck you!” Burns roared, arms flaring, charging straight at Lu Zheng.
“Burns!”
“Burns, stop!”
Some on Carla’s side jumped in alarm. Assistants tried to restrain him, but he flung them aside. Carla and the two other American female fighters watched with gleeful malice towards Lu Zheng’s group.
They had long resented the global fame of Chinese martial arts and looked down on Asians.
Having travelled all the way to China only to lose, Twitter was already full of mockery about failing to beat yellow monkeys. So they were happy to let Burns act, teaching Zhang Weili’s friends a lesson. Then the headlines could read American man thrashes Chinese man, enough to restore their pride.
What did it matter that the American man was a UFC light heavyweight world champion and the Chinese man an ordinary bloke beside Zhang Weili?
American man stronger. End of story.
…
Lu Zheng narrowed his eyes, pushed back his chair, and stood, staring coldly at the charging Burns. Lin Wan, Zhao Xiaodao, Zhang Weili, Li Ying, and Huang Xiumin all rose beside him.
None of them spoke. They all knew Lu Zheng’s ability. Even Li Ying, who reckoned his raw strength inferior bare-handed, trusted he would use whatever was nearby as a weapon.
In actual combat, Lu Zheng was definitely superior.
“Yellow monkey! You’re dead!”
Three steps away, Burns shot his left hand straight for Lu Zheng’s throat.
As an MMA fighter, the grab was fast, precise, vicious. An ordinary person might have been seized and lifted by the neck.
But…
To Lu Zheng, the speed was slow motion. The spread fingers practically invited him to act.
So he did. His right hand flashed like lightning, counter-gripping Burns’s left thumb, then gently twisting outward…
No matter how hard Burns trained his muscles, thumb joints remained vulnerable.
Thumb controlled, the chain ran to elbow, shoulder, half the body. While Burns’s legs still advanced instinctively, his torso could not resist and knelt.
Yes. One reach, joint locked. Burns slid into a kneel before Lu Zheng.
He was a world champion, after all, so Lu Zheng applied a touch of force.
“Aaah!”
Burns’s eyes reddened, he screamed in genuine agony. “Let go!”
“Apologise,” Lu Zheng said calmly.
“Apologise my fucking arse!” Burns snarled. “Fuck you! Die!”
Lu Zheng blinked, added a fraction more pressure.
“Aaah!”
Burns raged. “You sneaked! Shameless! Coward!”
Seeing Burns controlled, Carla’s expression shifted. She charged straight over, the two other American female fighters rushing with her, clearly intending to free Burns from what they saw as a careless “trap”.
In their view, once freed, Burns could carefully crush the entire group.
Zhang Weili’s face changed. She started forward.
But how could she outpace Lin Wan?
Lin Wan slid forward in one smooth step, placing herself between the three women and Lu Zheng.
“No passage here,” Lin Wan said softly. Then the fighter on the left punched straight at her face.
One block, twist, push, send. The woman saw only a blur, felt a shock to her chest, then retreated uncontrollably. Lin Wan receded in her vision until she crashed into a table edge and stopped.
Then she realised Carla and the remaining fighter had followed her path, flying back nearly five metres before hitting the same table and halting.
“WTF?”
“What?”
“Bloody hell?”
One move, and the entire room stood stunned.
Lin Wan lightly withdrew her hand and repeated calmly, “No passage here.”
