Li Mo felt that he should go consult an astrologer to see if he happened to be running into a year of grave misfortune.
How was it that everyone around him seemed to have figured out his true intentions one by one?
Yet he quickly calmed himself down, subsequently shifting his gaze away from Meng Jinze. He watched the golden alcoholic liquid before him as tiny bubbles rose from the bottom of the glass, only to vanish at the liquid’s surface, just as if something else was about to float to the top as well.
At this very moment, the guard he had kept up for three years was pulled back up, and the vigilance in his heart was magnified infinitely.
In truth, during all these years staying by Huo Jingsi’s side, it wasn’t as though he had never suspected that the Boss behind him might be someone from the Meng family, but he always felt it was impossible.
If the Meng family genuinely wanted to kill Huo Jingsi, then they would certainly have prepared themselves for the annihilation of the Huo family. However, what was plainly obvious was that the Huo, Kong, and Meng families had mutually checked and balanced one another for so many years; how could the Huo family possibly be destroyed merely by virtue of him killing Huo Jingsi?
Once the Huo family discovered that he had been dispatched by the Meng family, it would only culminate in mutual destruction, leaving the Kong family to sit back and reap the spoils as the fisherman.
Yet Meng Jinze’s remarks just moments ago were obviously pregnant with meaning; he had come to test him.
Li Mo shook his head, forcing himself not to dwell on it so much, but his experiences over the past few days left him unable to help himself.
“What’s wrong?” Huo Jingsi’s voice suddenly rang out, and Li Mo found himself enveloped by a pair of warm arms. “Not feeling well?”
Li Mo looked up at him. Whether out of fear or some other reason, a genuine sensation of nausea actually bubbled up inside him.
This made him somewhat doubt whether his professional skills had regressed.
“I just drank a little wine on an empty stomach, it’s nothing.” Li Mo patted the back of Huo Jingsi’s hand. At this exact moment, Huo Jingsi’s embrace unexpectedly afforded him a trace of inexplicable security.
This sense of security flashed by in an instant, followed immediately by a surge of crisis.
He was actually attempting to find a sense of security in Huo Jingsi.
He was acutely aware that he couldn’t afford to harbor even a shred of emotional attachment toward Huo Jingsi; this was by no means a favorable omen for him.
Supported by Huo Jingsi, he was escorted into the lounge.
“If you’re not feeling well, I’ll have the driver take you home first,” Huo Jingsi said with concern.
Li Mo shook his head: “No need, I’ll just wait for you here.”
Huo Jingsi looked at him and didn’t insist further. Instead, he stared at Li Mo in silence for a moment before saying, “Alright then, the driver is standing by outside. If you want to go back, you can do so at any time. I’ll finish up things over there and come find you right away.”
With that, he pressed a kiss to Li Mo’s forehead and released a trace of pheromones, as if offering comfort.
Li Mo nodded. By then, the urge to vomit had subsided. Watching Huo Jingsi leave with lingering backward glances every few steps, his mood finally relaxed slightly.
Based on past experience, before the mission was completed, the safest approach under conditions where one’s operations might be compromised was to secretly eliminate anyone who had already grown suspicious of oneself.
Yet the problem was that these two individuals were Huo Jingyan and Meng Jinze. He wanted to kill them, but out of those two, he couldn’t kill a single one.
Lying on the bed in the lounge, Li Mo felt rather vexed. Back then, his instructors at the academy had never taught him how to cope with this kind of situation either.
A generic “analyze specific issues on a specific basis” was all they used to gloss over it.
Sure enough, when matters came to a head, he could still only rely on himself.
Thinking along these lines, Li Mo made his final decision in his heart.
Take it one step at a time!
Besides, if he were exposed, at worst he would drag Huo Jingsi down to die with him before his own demise; that way, the mission would be completed, and he’d even have company on the road to the netherworld.
In a sense, that could also be considered killing two birds with one stone.
With this thought, Li Mo’s mindset broadened considerably. Holding a pack of dried fruit, he lay on the lounge bed, nibbling on them out of sheer boredom.
Staring at the warm yellow lights overhead, he suddenly recalled the past events between himself and Huo Jingsi.
Years ago, in order to straighten out Huo Jingsi’s temper, Huo Chengbi had thrown him into the imperial military to undergo rigorous training for several years, figuring that once he came out, he would proceed with further cultivation followed by marriage and taking a wife.
Huo Jingsi didn’t object to Huo Chengbi’s arrangements either, except that he wore the three stark characters of unwillingness plastered across his face. One marriage proposal after another fell through, and unsurprisingly, every single one of them failed because the other party complained his temper was far too abrasive.
Those hot-tempered wealthy Omegas would even point straight at the bridge of his nose and curse: “So what if you’re Huo Jingsi? Not a single Omega in this lifetime will ever like an Alpha like you!”
At that time, the regulation prohibiting intermarriage between aristocrats and commoners had not yet been abolished, and those aristocrats seeking an alliance with the Huo family all came with ulterior motives. Huo Jingsi saw through it with crystal clarity, so he wasn’t annoyed by these matters, while the Huo family had no need to stoop downward to seek marital ties either.
Consequently, the matter kept getting delayed.
And this delay dragged on for several years right up until the former governor abolished the regulation banning intermarriage between aristocrats and commoners, and Huo Jingsi had already ascended to the position of Director, yet the seat of the Director’s spouse remained empty.
Fang Zhenlin had then suggested finding someone with a milder temper, someone who could serve as a counterbalance to Huo Jingsi.
Huo Jingsi had no objections, but deep down he was unwilling to spend the rest of his life simply drifting through existence with a civilian Omega, prompting him to put forward the condition that a contract must be signed prior to marriage.
This was the reason why the persona assigned to Li Mo was gentle and mild-mannered rather than anything else, and why Huo Jingsi and Li Mo entered into a contract marriage.
Yet in truth, both of them were well aware that the reasons for the collapse of those previous matches certainly weren’t limited to the other party simply disliking Huo Jingsi’s temper. Furthermore, no matter how bad Huo Jingsi’s temper was, it wouldn’t reach such an extreme extent, which meant he must have purposely acted that way.
As for why he finally agreed to marry Li Mo, Huo Jingsi made no attempt to conceal it, stating bluntly: “Because you’re the best-looking one.”
On the surface, Li Mo feigned shyness, while inwardly cursing him for being shallow numerous times over.
Little did they know that prior to his arrival, he had even studied everything from the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting to subjects outside the assassin curriculum, forcing himself to read through classic literature and novels of both past and present, domestic and foreign, operating on the assumption that high-class aristocratic households like the Huo family ought to place greater weight on internal charm rather than external appearance.
Thus, he had initially assumed that success as an assassin relied purely on professional competence, never expecting that in the end he would still have to sell his looks.
This abruptly made him feel that the profession of an assassin wasn’t quite as mysterious and unfathomable as he once thought.
Still, he also felt fortunate; after all, it hadn’t wasted the several months prior to his arrival when the Boss had forced him to endure daily beauty routines and physical conditioning.
Come to think of it, his Boss truly possessed premonitory foresight and thorough consideration.
Affection born purely from lust was bound to be somewhat unstable, however. What truly caused the emotional dynamic between him and Huo Jingsi to undergo a transformation was an incident that occurred two and a half years ago.
At that time, Huo Jingsi hadn’t held the position of Director for very long, and outsiders all praised him as a youth of exceptional promise, basking in boundless glory.
Yet only he and those closest to him knew that despite leaning against the towering mountain that was the Huo family, securing his footing firmly in the seat of Director still required genuine capability after all, real metal requires a strong anvil.
In places where others couldn’t see, an untold number of eyes were staring straight at Huo Jingsi, waiting for him to tumble down from that position.
During that particular instance, Huo Jingsi was targeted by a clandestine assassination attempt, and Li Mo happened to be right by his side.
Li Mo vividly remembered that he had accompanied Huo Jingsi to inspect a certain project in the mountainous region of the Zhaohui Base. The opposing side had hired a death-defying operative who drove the vehicle the two of them were sharing straight off the winding mountain road.
The car was installed with professional bulletproof and crash-resistant protective mechanisms, so tumbling down the mountain wasn’t terrifying in itself.
What was terrifying was that the enemy had made thorough preparations: before boarding, the driver had strapped a timed explosive to his own body and triggered the countdown the moment the vehicle plunged over the cliffside, attempting to blow them both to smithereens within the window before the car rolled to the bottom and anyone inside could react.
It was Huo Jingsi’s first time encountering such an incident, whereas Li Mo was even more astonished—before his mission had even shown the slightest hint of progress, his own little life was about to be forfeited. Fortunately, both of them had undergone professional training, adopting precise defensive postures at the very first instant.
They both knew the Director’s official vehicle was equipped with protective systems; as long as they maintained that posture without moving, even tumbling down the mountain inside the vehicle wouldn’t inflict severe harm.
Yet amidst the ticking countdown of the bomb, the two of them quickly realized something was amiss. The moment he spotted the explosive strapped to the driver, Li Mo’s eyes widened, completely shedding his delicate, well-read, frail Omega persona. Finding the right pivot point when the vehicle’s jolting lessened, he kicked open the car door beside him with a single blow and rolled out.
Shortly after, the vehicle crashed into a thick, stunted tree and came to a halt.
Li Mo immediately rushed forward. The driver in the front seat was already unconscious, but the explosive strapped to his body was less than a minute away from detonating.
Meanwhile, Huo Jingsi remained trapped in the back seat because the driver, immediately after triggering the countdown, had shoved the driver’s seat all the way back and pinned it flat, trapping Huo Jingsi’s legs in a death grip.
At that moment, knowing his leg was fractured, Huo Jingsi endured the excruciating pain in his legs and roared at Li Mo: “Run, don’t worry about me! The bomb’s going to blow any second, neither of us will survive if you stay!”
Yet Li Mo could no longer hear a single word of what Huo Jingsi was shouting. His face was entirely devoid of expression that was the sole occasion across those three years when he threw caution to the wind regarding the risk of exposure, because his mind was occupied solely by a mission that had shown not a flicker of progress, paired with one singular thought:
No, Huo Jingsi cannot die right now. Huo Jingsi has to survive, he has to keep this life, waiting to be killed by me in the future!
Had Huo Jingsi ever grown suspicious of him back then when he watched the ordinarily gentle and fragile Li Mo snap the car door apart with raw, brute force? Perhaps the agonizing pain had made him oblivious to everything else by the time Li Mo dragged him bodily out of the vehicle through sheer force of will.
Dragging Huo Jingsi who was a whole circle broader and heavier than himself out from the wreckage had exhausted the entirety of Li Mo’s strength, but he had no leisure to overthink it; the bomb was about to detonate. Gripping Huo Jingsi’s hand, he dragged him as far away from the vehicle as possible.
The ticking sound signaling the impending explosion abruptly blasted beside his ear. The instant the bomb detonated, Li Mo instinctively used his own body which was a full circle smaller than Huo Jingsi’s to shield the person in his arms.
With a heaven-shaking explosion of “Boom”, his hearing was temporarily lost for a few seconds.
And within those few seconds, Huo Jingsi was lifting his gaze from within his embrace, remaining silent, staring at him in a daze. The complex emotion in the other man’s eyes instantly brought him back to his senses. Averting his gaze from Huo Jingsi’s, he shoved him out of his arms. Watching the towering flames surging into the sky before them, Li Mo sprawled flat upon the ground, an unprecedented sense of relief washing over his entire being.
Thank goodness, thank goodness, Huo Jingsi isn’t dead. This life of mine still belongs to me.
That had been the only thought in his mind at the time.