The guests present only then learned about the 999 incident concerning Qiao Buyi. Among them, a transmigrator instantly recognized that it was a method of collecting pheromones. Since today’s competition results were not yet out, the clever ones quickly realized that victory and defeat had already been decided.
Huo Jing dejectedly sat down to the side and smoked in sullen silence, realizing their cunning plan and hard-fought performance might have just been completely ruined by a Beta waiter.
To cooperate with the criminal police search, the guests and staff at the venue lined up one after another, waiting to be inspected.
People stood packed front and back. The guests had all cried their eyes red, their knees aching and numb from tension. Some Omegas even needed Alphas to support them. The head waiter glanced around and failed to see Luo Qingcheng or Jiang Heming, held back, and said nothing.
Qiao Buyi had once suffered from pheromone disorder, and a deeply worried Mother Qiao had forced Father Qiao to pull strings and seek out special individuals.
Yet, the badges on the shoulders of the men before them were ones Qiao Buyi had seen before; they were not criminal police officers handling standard pheromone regulation, but rather members of a special operations unit tasked with managing pheromones of the highest hazard level.
Once the inspection of everyone present concluded and no abnormalities were found, several officers prepared to board the helicopter and leave.
Just then, the team leader suddenly sniffed the air as if catching a scent drifting among the fluttering paper flower petals. He looked back toward the opposite mourning hall, his gaze sharp and vigilant, and walked over step by step while raising the long rifle in his hand.
Though Luo Qingcheng was unsure whether the mission had succeeded, it was at least finished. He narrowed his eyes, waiting for his sentence, only to be thrown into a coffin by Mu Xiao without a word of explanation.
A few seconds of surprise left him with not an ounce of strength to resist. Just as he tried to cry out for help, his mouth was covered by a large hand, and the visible light above vanished into pitch black as the coffin lid slowly slid shut.
In the cramped space, hot breaths exhaled against his face. Even in total darkness, Mu Xiao’s towering, imposing shadow instantly dispelled the greater part of Luo Qingcheng’s sleepiness.
Mu Xiao whispered right against his ear, “Don’t want to die? Then don’t make a sound.”
Luo Qingcheng was suffocating. He felt immensely grateful that he had hidden a fruit knife while carrying drinks, and he promptly pressed it against Mu Xiao’s waist.
The threat came as abruptly as it vanished, easing up just a fraction. Luo Qingcheng finally seized the chance to draw a breath, delivering a cold, sharp warning: “Do you have any idea how heavy you are? Touch me again, and this knife won’t have eyes.”
They were pressed too close together, so close that Luo Qingcheng could feel the sparse air completely saturated with Mu Xiao’s dangerous aura. Instead of propping himself up with his arms, Mu Xiao remained face to face with Luo Qingcheng. Amid the sound of each other’s breathing and heartbeats, he used his knee to forcefully wedge himself between Luo Qingcheng’s legs.
A rush of heat like lightning surged from Luo Qingcheng’s waist and hips, racing through his blood straight to the back of his head. His sensitive body trembled with anger for a fraction of a second.
Luo Qingcheng, who would not even dare kill a fish, deeply hated himself for not being ruthless enough. His murderous intent and courage were smashed to pieces by that single press of a knee. His hand holding the knife trembled, never daring to plunge it through Mu Xiao’s thin shirt and into his flesh. Instead, he timidly pulled the blade tip away, terrified that Mu Xiao might accidentally lunge forward and impale himself on it, while simultaneously distressed by his inability to break free from Mu Xiao’s confinement.
Trapped in an impossible dilemma, Luo Qingcheng averted his face in the darkness. “You are pervert and despicable.”
Mu Xiao chuckled lightly. “And you were not lewd or perverted when you were having dirty fantasies about me in your head?”
Luo Qingcheng was instantly choked by the retort, taking several seconds to recover. “If you talk nonsense again, even if I cannot kill you, I can at least carve a few cuts into the back of my own hand.”
That threat actually made Mu Xiao hold his breath; he was nervous about his hands. “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you have stirred up outside?”
Luo Qingcheng’s mind quickly linked it to the bad luck the peaked cap had brought him, knowing the enemies from the club had finally tracked him down.
The body pressing down on him leaned in closer. Luo Qingcheng demanded, “You…”
Mu Xiao instructed, “Change positions.”
Luo Qingcheng wanted to take the upper position even more, though he did not explicitly point out that Mu Xiao’s build was simply too overpowering. Still, his breathing turned ragged. “How are we supposed to switch when we are crammed in this tight?”
Indeed, given the narrow coffin and Mu Xiao’s tall, muscular frame, shifting positions meant their bodies would inevitably be locked in tight, friction-filled contact, especially when both of them were wearing only a thin shirt and dress trousers.
In the profound silence that followed, both men tacitly agreed to keep their minds strictly out of the gutter.
Mu Xiao loosened his collar tie and leaned sideways, pinning Luo Qingcheng against the side of the coffin so they could barely squeeze together. Once sideways, Luo Qingcheng turned over and climbed flat onto Mu Xiao’s body.
And just like that, the dagger was smoothly snatched away from him.
Before he could even react while lying prone on this natural bed board, the back of his head was firmly pressed down, forcing him to tuck himself in.
Luo Qingcheng was, after all, a man over one meter seventy tall, yet he was completely and forcefully folded down against Mu Xiao’s lower body. If Luo Qingcheng had not practiced judo and possessed a remarkably flexible body, there would not have been any room for him to survive here at all.
Mu Xiao certainly was not doing this out of the goodness of his heart to help him survive a calamity; it seemed he, too, was wary of something.
With no other choice, Luo Qingcheng compressed both his body and his pride, while simultaneously hearing Mu Xiao utter a verification that filled Luo Qingcheng with dread.
“Shh. They are here.”
The two of them held their breath. Whether inside or outside the coffin, it was deathly still. In that terrifying darkness, Luo Qingcheng’s face could only press tightly against Mu Xiao’s lower abdomen, his curled arms gripping Mu Xiao’s belt with a death grip.
The scent of wood shavings from the coffin lid suddenly made Luo Qingcheng nauseous, and it brought a terrifying thought to mind.
If they were completely filling up the coffin, where on earth had Mu Xiao’s actual corpse gone?
Luo Qingcheng broke out in a cold sweat, yet he could not dare open his mouth to ask. Fortunately, with the sweltering summer heat outside, the coffin actually had air conditioning running inside. Inadvertently brushing against Mu Xiao’s solid abdominal muscles, the fiery heat of his body finally helped Luo Qingcheng anchor himself back to reality.
The world seemed submerged in darkness. Luo Qingcheng reflected on how, in less than thirty-six hours since transmigrating into the ABO world, whether dealing with the system’s missions or the current vendetta hunting him down, he was like a plant battered by wind, frost, rain, and snow. His heavy eyelids felt like iron gates slowly dragging shut on their latch.
After all, he had pulled an all-nighter, his nerves had been strung to the absolute limit, and perhaps due to some lingering primal instinct, coupled with the fact that he was resting on a pure, naturally temperature-controlled bed, even the awareness of a pervert’s danger coefficient was bound to fail at some point.
Just before his consciousness and rationality vanished, Luo Qingcheng made a resolute decision and shifted the grip of his hands on the belt to a much more controlling position.
The exact second, he grabbed onto Mu Xiao’s most vital spot, Luo Qingcheng felt Mu Xiao’s body give a distinct shudder, the exact same kind of shudder he had felt earlier when pinned down.
After that, there was no further reaction.
The triumph of male competition brought a sense of satisfaction to Luo Qingcheng, who was born a Beta.
This satisfaction allowed Luo Qingcheng to rest his head on Mu Xiao’s abs while holding onto his vital assets. Just imagining such a sleeping posture was utterly obscene, yet it was precisely this posture that allowed Luo Qingcheng to listen to Mu Xiao’s rhythmic heartbeat as he was dragged by overwhelming sleepiness into an even deeper darkness.
A few days prior, when Mu Xiao had flown out in a helicopter, he had narrowly escaped death; he knew full well that plenty of people wanted him gone.
Thus, he went with the flow, initiating a plan involving a bequeathed inheritance and a fake funeral.
Originally, he had been an SSS-level hazard subject studied within a base. His pheromone danger coefficient was over a thousand times higher than the national index, and his lethality was terrifyingly immense. One day, he escaped and happened to encounter the real Mu Xiao, who had just been murdered by others. Driven to a dead end, he assumed Mu Xiao’s identity.
As he grew increasingly skilled at controlling his own pheromones, he began tracking down his enemy, the biological research professor Luo Qingcheng.
Yet right now, this Luo Qingcheng was too vastly different from the one in his memories. He was just an ordinary, low-ranking temporary worker at a company, and his speech was no longer cold and ruthless; instead, it carried the warm, earthy fragrance of human life.
If he, Mu Xiao, was a ghost, then Luo Qingcheng right now was truly human.
He felt fear, he felt distress, and he knew how to beg.
Back when Luo Qingcheng had asked him for his pheromones, Mu Xiao had assumed the other man was finally baring his fangs to strike. But seeing his panicked, terrified, and fearful expression, Mu Xiao simply could not imagine what on earth Luo Qingcheng could possibly use to resist a lethal dose of death pheromones.
Mu Xiao had abandoned the idea of plunging his folding knife into Luo Qingcheng’s heart, choosing instead to release a massive wave of pheromones toward him.
To Mu Xiao’s utter shock, that massive concentration of death pheromones not only failed to kill Luo Qingcheng, it did not even affect a single person at the funeral.
It was absolute cosmic impact, the moment of imminent collision exploding instead into soft cotton fluff. All creation remained completely unharmed, and an unshakeable iron fortress was instantly softened by Luo Qingcheng’s touch.
The God of Death was defeated by a mortal, and Mu Xiao fell into the mortal world.
Lying in the coffin, his soul had truly been resurrected.
At this very moment, pressed in tight intimacy against Luo Qingcheng inside the coffin, it was the first time in his memory since his secondary gender differentiation that he had ever blended his breath with that of a living human. Every single one of his nerves was strung as tight as a bowstring.
Thank goodness it was pitch black; tucked beneath him, Luo Qingcheng could not notice a single trace of it.
Several pairs of footsteps softly approached the coffin. Mu Xiao had already formulated a countermeasure: if the party intended to execute him on the spot, he would use Luo Qingcheng as a scapegoat to escape.
Yet he had underestimated his petrified body; in that critical first second, he simply could not pull it off.
Wrath and murderous intent were roasted and boiled away by the passage of time within his imagination.
Special operations forces walk through a rain of bullets year-round. Their sense of smell is razor-sharp, their iron-fisted methods bold, and their attention to detail meticulous. The team leader waved his subordinates back and stepped forward to push open the coffin lid with one hand.
Mu Xiao’s calm face and the upper half of his formal suit were exposed to the team leader’s gaze. Facing that icy visage, the team leader’s narrow eyes seemed capable of piercing through a person’s soul. Over ten seconds passed, and the other team members stepped closer without detecting anything amiss. Most importantly, their detectors did not emit any alarms.
Just as they were about to leave, the team leader reached out, wanting to check the scent gland at the back of Mu Xiao’s neck. If a pheromone hazard coefficient exceeds the limit, a black skull marked with an S-grade hazard level is branded onto the back neck gland.
The mourning hall plunged into absolute silence.
Mu Xiao’s uncle summoned his courage and walked over with a sorrowful expression. “Officer, my nephew passed away a few days ago. He lost his parents since he was a child, and his brief life was lonely and bitter. He has never violated any rules or laws. If you do not believe me, you can go investigate. Please, Officer, show some mercy. If we miss the auspicious hour, I am afraid my nephew will be reincarnated into a zoo, and tell me, how am I supposed to face my elder sister and brother-in-law down below in the future?”
As Mu Xiao’s uncle spoke, he gave a genuinely acted performance complete with snot and tears.
The team leader’s gaze shifted from Mu Xiao’s face to the honest-looking middle-aged man’s face. That genuine grief did not look the least bit acted out, and what he said made sense. To the deceased, the living owes the utmost respect. The team leader abandoned that fleeting suspicion, and the coffin lid was resealed, plunging Mu Xiao and Luo Qingcheng beneath him back into darkness.
Amid the respectful gazes of the crowd, the team leader led his men onto the helicopter.
Yan Xun, who had still wanted to rush forward and speak, was grabbed back by Qiao Buyi, whose look conveyed a clear message: If you want to die, I am not stopping you.
In the end, Yan Xun was merely envious and hateful; he was not about to throw his life away.
Luo Qingcheng, of course, had no idea just how high the tension had been during that scene. Only much later did he learn that while he was sleeping soundly while holding onto Mu Xiao’s most precious asset, it had also been the moment of most agonizing restraint and forbearance for Mu Xiao.
As for Mu Xiao, he could only be grateful that Luo Qingcheng slept so quietly. If he had been a snorer, Rose Island would have turned into Death Island that day.