The Easter holiday is coming up, so I decided to post tomorrow’s updates today. ( You can check the synopsis page for the update schedule)
Xin Hexue didn’t know what kind of role-playing game Pei Guangji was playing.
Anyway, after that night when his rut period was resolved, Pei Guangji seemed to develop some kind of deeper misunderstanding and suddenly started interacting with him like they were a cohabiting couple.
Several nights, when Xin Hexue was dozing off in a haze, the bedding beside him would suddenly sink.
Someone would hesitate for a moment, then wrap an arm around him from behind, a warm chest pressing against Xin Hexue’s back, completely enfolding him in an embrace.
Xin Hexue had poor health, and his body temperature was always slightly lower than the average person’s. Even in the height of summer, hugging him felt like holding a handful of snow.
The air conditioning in his room was set to thirty degrees.
Xin Hexue really didn’t understand what kind of suffering this person was looking for.
For an Alpha, an indoor temperature of thirty degrees was actually a bit unbearably hot. Every night, Pei Guangji would silently return and just hold him to sleep.
Then at six in the morning, he would get up according to his biological clock and leave without making a sound before Xin Hexue woke up.
He was a light sleeper, so every time Pei Guangji returned late at night and opened the door, he would notice immediately.
Then he would inexplicably hear…
[Pei Guangji’s love value +1]
But he hadn’t done anything at all!
For a whole week, Pei Guangji came back every night just to deliver love value points.
Was his bed some kind of daily check-in point?
During this time, Xin Hexue hadn’t had any direct interaction with Pei Guangji, and he didn’t quite understand what was going on in the other party’s mind.
He just stayed in the villa everyday, and had K play those extremely melodramatic, emotionally over-the-top hit dramas that were popular in the big world, trying to figure out the tastes of its entertainment market.
Most of them were dramas adapted from scum-gong and pitiful-shou literature, making him frown as he watched.
Xin Hexue complained to K, [You people in the big world really have bad taste.]
The scene playing in his mind was once again filled with thunder and lightning, with one chasing, one fleeing, and no escape even with wings.
Xin Hexue found the entertainment value seriously lacking. Even the scene of the two protagonists struggling in the torrential downpour looked unappealing. He said to K, [Don’t play it anymore.]
He quietly put down his knife and fork.
Across the dining table, Pei Guangji suddenly spoke: “No appetite?”
The young man lightly wiped his mouth with a napkin, and even that movement looked like a painting.
He seemed unaccustomed to making eye contact with Pei Guangji, his lashes lowered, lips curving faintly. “The food the butler makes all tastes the same.”
After all, it was a mechanical intelligent butler. Although it had the function of cooking, it was too obsessed with the precise numbers in the recipe, and in the process lost the true essence of cooking.
Pei Guangji had never paid attention to such things.
He didn’t have high standards for food. As long as it met the basic requirement to sustain vital signs and ensured the body’s daily necessary intake, it was enough.
With that philosophy, the Shennong Company had already begun developing nutrient solutions and was preparing to enter the market. Under the worsening environmental conditions, these low-cost nutrient solutions would become the top choice for the common people.
Pei Guangji had the day off today and didn’t need to go to the core zone to work.
But he still subconsciously thought of work.
However, according to the knowledge he read from the textbooks, this was not good.
At some point, the bookshelf in Pei Guangji’s office had been stocked with several books on family management by his assistant.
He somehow ended up reading them.
The book said, communicate more, accompany more, and understand more.
Zoning out during communication was clearly unqualified behavior.
Pei Guangji finished his coffee, sent a message to Jiang Jing, and only after receiving a prompt reply did he say to Xin Hexue, “For dinner, I’ll invite a chef from Zuixianlou. You can see if it suits your taste.”
Xin Hexue hesitated, “Mr. Pei, won’t that be too much trouble?”
Pei Guangji frowned, “No. The Pei family hasn’t fallen to the point where we can’t even hire a chef.”
Seeing how firm he was, Xin Hexue took a sip of warm water and didn’t say anything more.
He felt slightly surprised by Pei Guangji’s attitude. After all, this man had previously told him, “You don’t have the right to refuse.”
When Pei Guangji went upstairs to handle matters in the study, Xin Hexue said: [Check how much love value he has now.]
K: [Pei Guangji’s current love value is 67.]
‘So high?’
Xin Hexue originally thought Pei Guangji’s love value would be the hardest to increase, but now it seems not necessarily so.
His long eyelashes hid the emotions in his eyes as he contemplated his next move.
K silently observed the kitten’s thoughtful expression, recording each angle frame by frame with its snapshot function.
This helped it understand the host’s personality and smoothly advance the mission progress.
K archived the photos into a private folder.
………
Pei Ying was surprised to find that dinner tasted different.
Zuixianlou’s dishes were famous in District One and the Core Zone. When large families held banquets, they usually contracted Zuixianlou for catering.
It was said that Zuixianlou’s head chef had Huxia bloodline, and many of their dishes were recreations of palace cuisine from ancient Huxia dynasties.
The cooking process was complex. Though delicious, it didn’t suit the current fast-paced lifestyle and couldn’t be mass-promoted. Most of the time, only families who controlled the majority of the Federation’s wealth would choose to indulge.
Seeing the young man eat a little more than usual, Pei Ying guessed the reason.
His gaze swept past Xin Hexue and landed on Pei Guangji. He asked lazily, “Gege, have you been busy with work lately?”
Between the brothers, aside from greetings when they met, this was probably the most they ever interacted…Pei Ying casually asking whether Pei Guangji was busy with work.
Pei Guangji answered coolly, “Mm.”
Pei Ying knew that his older brother, as the heir of the Pei family, was inevitably too busy to even sit down, completely different from a defective product like him who had been eliminated from birth.
There was a deep gloom in his eyes formed from unwillingness.
Pei Guangji pushed the dish that Xin Hexue clearly liked more toward him, then asked, “What is it?”
Pei Ying replied carelessly, “Oh, the school’s having a parent-teacher meeting in senior year. The old man definitely won’t be free.”
Pei Guangji: “Is there a strict requirement for parents to attend?”
Pei Ying curled his lips, “No.”
Pei Guangji: “Mm.”
That meant he wouldn’t attend.
Pei Ying was just going through the motions asking. He didn’t take the parent-teacher meeting seriously, he just found it troublesome if the teachers asked about it.
Xin Hexue said softly, “I’m full.”
‘He eats too little.’ Pei Ying looked at him with a frown.
Pei Guangji thought the same. He pushed the dishes toward Xin Hexue. “Eat a little more.”
He felt Xin Hexue was too thin. When holding him, his spine poked into his hands. This was not good health wise.
Even though that was what he thought, what he said came out cold and stiff. “If you don’t finish it, it’ll be wasted.”
“…”
Even Pei Ying was impressed by his brother’s low EQ.
Xin Hexue lowered his head and picked up his chopsticks to get more food.
——-
That night, while Pei Guangji was flipping through documents in the study, there was a knock on the door.
He said calmly, “Come in.”
There was a soft creak.
Pei Guangji looked up.
The young man walked in from behind the door, wearing comfortable loungewear, his temperament gentle and soft, making Pei Guangji subconsciously want to hug him.
Xin Hexue’s voice was very light as he placed a contract on the desk in front of him. “Two copies, I’ve signed both. I forgot to give them to you earlier.”
Pei Guangji glanced over the content and his body stiffened.
The contract, bearing both of their names and fingerprints, valid for one year, defined his relationship with Xin Hexue.
Pei Guangji opened his mouth and was just about to speak when a call from Jiang Jing came through the next second.
He answered, leaving Xin Hexue off to the side.
Pei Guangji: “What is it?”
Jiang Jing: “Young Master, about the fire at the pharmaceutical factory in West City of District Six…The new manager found a key clue, but said the clue is important and wants to meet you in person to report it.”
Worried Pei Guangji wouldn’t take it seriously, Jiang Jing added, “He said it’s related to the mutant species.”
Pei Guangji hadn’t avoided the call in front of Xin Hexue, so he could faintly hear the contents.
‘Mutant species…’
Xin Hexue silently repeated the term in his heart.
In the script, his ending was becoming cannon fodder on the frontlines during the war between the mutant species and humans.
The content briefly mentioned a resistance organization leading the mutant species called “Huozhong.”
*Not sure if it matters, but “Huozhong” means “spark/a revolution”.
That organization’s name also happened to be connected to one of Pei Guangji’s childhood friends, Qiu Yuan.
Right now, the dominant powers in the Core Zone were Shennong Pharmaceutical’s Pei family and Nuwa Bionics Manufacturing’s Xi family.
Once one of the three major conglomerates, the Qiu family had now declined in comparison to the other two.
The reason was a biological modification lab founded by the previous generation of the Qiu family. They had conducted experiments on humans and other organisms that could only be called insane, claiming they could create a species perfectly obedient to human commands, meant to replace workers in dangerous jobs like security and firefighting.
The lab’s name was Prometheus, boasting it could steal the fire seed from the heavens.
In the end, it backfired.
A fire broke out, and tens of thousands of test subjects disappeared from the lab.
What followed were non-human mutant species that repeatedly caused social chaos and harassed the Federation’s borders, impossible to eliminate or kill.
The Qiu family had once attracted vast social investment through their biological experiments under the name “Huozhong” and created these mutant species. Now they had pivoted to opening military factories, profiting from researching and selling high-lethality weapons capable of wiping out the mutant species.
Currently, the heir of the Qiu family was Qiu Yuan, one of Pei Guangji’s childhood friends.
Xin Hexue fixed his gaze.
He had come over tonight with the contract on purpose, to remind Pei Guangji.
He had no intention of letting Pei Guangji continue to muddle-headedly indulge in some kind of role-play, walking the route of “sex first and falling in love later”.
First, it didn’t suit the taste of the big world’s audience; second, he had other mission targets that required him to earn love value points and heartbreak points.
Xin Hexue patiently waited for Pei Guangji to finish the call.
Sure enough, after the call ended, Pei Guangji’s gaze fell on the contract and on him, his eyes devoid of warmth. “Okay, just leave it.”
The Alpha put on his coat and left into the rainy night.
………
Pei Ying threw his workbook onto the living room sofa. He couldn’t even be bothered to copy the answers.
It was raining outside and tree shadows were swaying.
Perfect for taking in some strong alcohol, then falling asleep.
He went to the bar and opened a bottle of special-brew whiskey.
A loud crash came from the second floor.
Pei Ying’s eyelids twitched.
He dropped the glass and rushed upstairs in three quick strides.
The young man had collapsed on the floor. Fortunately, the ground was covered with a soft carpet.
Even so, the young man’s face was pale, sweat soaked the hair on his forehead, his brows furrowed…looking both disheveled and beautiful.
“What happened?”
Pei Ying stepped forward and helped him onto the sofa.
Xin Hexue’s vision blurred from the pain, his voice so weak it seemed squeezed out, “Guangji…?”
Soon, he recognized the person through the symbol on the earring. “Pei Ying?”
Bean-sized drops of cold sweat slid down his forehead, stinging his eyes. “I… my stomach hurts…”
The dishes made by Zuixianlou had the taste of the imperial kitchen from his past life, and Pei Guangji had also urged him to eat more, so he hadn’t resisted and overate.
It was probably acute gastritis.
Xin Hexue had suffered too much, so he was far too familiar with this troublesome body of his.
Pei Ying: “Hold on. There’s no stomach medicine at home. I’ll call a doctor over.”
He made the call to the family doctor.
Then, he hesitated, and also sent a message to Pei Guangji.
[ Xin Hexue has a stomachache. He was just looking for you. Do you want to come back and check on him? ]
Pei Guangji, who was sitting in the back of the aircraft, received the message and frowned.
He was on the way to meet the manager of the West City pharmaceutical factory in District Six.
Pei Guangji thought of the contract in the study and recalled his own foolish behavior over this period.
He had only brought a lover back to deal with the restlessness of the rut period.
Moreover, there weren’t even any “feelings” between them yet.
Not to mention it was only for a one-year term.
Pei Guangji felt he had taken the other party too seriously.
He wasn’t that important.
It was just withdrawal symptoms after the rut period acting up.
Pei Guangji successfully found a reason for his recent loss of control.
He even warned Jiang Jing, “Don’t leave messy books in my office again.”
Jiang Jing was silent for a moment. “Understood.”
Pei Guangji looked again at the message Pei Ying had sent about the stomachache and going back to check on Xin Hexue.
His eyes fell on those words, then calmly sent a reply.
[ If he’s sick, then let him see a doctor. ]
Pei Guangji ordered, “Send the medical team to the mountainside villa.”
Jiang Jing wiped sweat. “Yes.”
Pei Ying was feeding Xin Hexue some warm water.
He glanced at Pei Guangji’s reply and raised an eyebrow.
