Ever since that day, Li Mo had been busy recuperating and carrying his pregnancy, never bringing up Huo Jingxi again.
Aside from the wound on the back of his neck healing rather slowly, his body recovered exceptionally fast. Before long, he was able to run and jump around, though the thick layer of gauze wrapped around his neck always looked a bit conspicuous.
Coupled with the fact that he was now in the special period of pregnancy, the people at the base always took extra good care of him.
As he watched his belly grow day by day, pregnancy didn’t bring him any particularly strange discomfort. He ate and drank normally, and often even forgot that there was still a child inside his belly, constantly wanting to help out with chores around the base.
Though every single time, he would be stopped by others who wouldn’t let him do this or that.
Eventually, seeing that Li Mo simply couldn’t stay idle, they “banished” him to help Sister Zhang, the resident seamstress, sort out thread ends.
Sister Zhang had experienced multiple pregnancies in the past, which had wrecked her health. Now, she could only do some manual labor to earn a meager amount of pocket money for groceries she was a pitiful soul as well.
“You’re pregnant now, so stop competing with the others to do heavy physical labor,” Sister Zhang advised earnestly, looking down at his stomach. “When the pregnancy reactions kick in later, it’ll be enough to make you miserable!”
“Oh…” Li Mo lowered his head, tugging at the thread ends in his hands and answering obediently.
Sister Zhang looked at his belly, reached out to stroke it gently, and then said, “I remember when I was pregnant, around the same month as you, I had lower back pain, backaches, and neck aches every part of my body felt uncomfortable. And the baby inside would keep acting up, making it impossible to eat or sleep well all day long. It was so aggravating…”
Sister Zhang slowly withdrew the smile from her face, replacing it with a hint of worry and an indescribable emotion. “I just wonder where that child is living now, and if they’re still acting up…”
Sister Zhang had originally been born into a lower-class commoner family. Being an Omega, she had received no education. Later on, to enable her younger Alpha brother to marry a better wife, her father had sold her through the black market to a surrogacy agency, specifically to bear children as a surrogate for aristocrats.
She possessed good health and had been pregnant many times, but not a single one of the children she birthed belonged to her. When she was lucky, she managed to catch a glimpse of what her baby looked like at birth, but most of the time, the infants were snatched away the moment they were born.
She had no idea where the children went. After all, there were no blood ties with the baby—only a unilateral emotional bond forged through ten months of pregnancy yet never meeting them—and the employers’ information was kept strictly confidential from them.
After listening, Li Mo gently patted her hand and said, “I don’t know which household he’s in, but he is definitely living in a place full of love right now.”
Sister Zhang furrowed her brow. “Huh?”
“In your heart,” Li Mo blinked and said sincerely.
“Fine, fine, in my heart, in my heart.” Sister Zhang was amused by his answer, then added, “Still, your baby is bound to be a well-behaved child in the future.”
“I think so too. At first, I was worried your pheromone secretion would be insufficient and the baby would fuss terribly, but I never expected him to be this obedient.” Li Ye, who had been standing at the doorway all along, walked in and joined Sister Zhang’s conversation.
Back then, after taking a bullet to the back of his neck and soaking in river water for an unknown amount of time, his injuries had been severe. When Li Ye performed the surgery, he had to remove nearly 70% of his scent glands. Combined with the fact that his glands had previously been artificially modified, this led to a severe deficiency in his pheromone secretion.
Yet pregnancy specifically required those very pheromones to soothe the baby inside the womb.
“At least 30% of the glands were left behind,” Li Mo reached up to touch the back of his neck, which was still wrapped in gauze. “Let me tell you, when they modified my glands back then, they implanted a micro-robot inside. Whenever they felt like it, they could take my life at any moment.”
“So at first, I was planning to just carve out that chunk of flesh myself, but I forgot to bring a knife. Fortunately, I caught that bullet, and fortunately, you came along to operate on me, otherwise I might not be able to produce a single drop of pheromone right now,” Li Mo said with gleeful schadenfreude.
“Listen to this child—” Sister Zhang immediately scolded him affectionately, though her eyes brimmed with deep heartache. “Suffering through all that, yet you’re spinning it as good news.”
Li Ye also recalled how, when Li Mo was first injured and he changed his dressings, even a fraction too much force where the gauze adhered to the skin would tear open the newly grown tissue, causing blood to flow freely. Despite having seen plenty of such scenes, his heart still ached in sympathy.
Yet Li Mo was still able to laugh.
Hearing this, Li Mo’s expression instantly shifted to mimic a child who had done something wrong, which thoroughly amused them both.
All in all, during his time staying at the base, although food, clothing, housing, and transportation had dropped by more than a few tiers, everyone here treated him very well. Because the people at the base generally paid no attention to the political games among imperial aristocrats, most of them didn’t recognize him. The few who did treated him with a respect that transcended everything else.
The only thing was that occasionally he would wake up startled from his sleep, only to find himself all alone in the bed (plus the baby in his belly making it technically two, perhaps). Lacking the suffocating sense of security he used to feel sleeping next to Huo Jingxi, he actually found himself feeling a bit unaccustomed to it.
Deciding it must be a sleeping posture issue, he later took to wrapping himself tightly in his quilt every night, and that problem troubled him no more.
During those months of pregnancy, the baby inside didn’t give him much trouble, though due to his insufficient pheromone secretion and chaotic body hormones, the child ended up being premature, arriving to meet him at eight months.
On the day the child was born, Li Ye carried the little one over for him to see. Even though he was extremely weak at the time, he couldn’t help offering a heartfelt, deadpan critique: “My, why is he so ugly?”
With genetic material from outstanding outer appearances like his own and Huo Jingxi’s, surely some of it should have been inherited, right? Li Mo had thought that in absolute despair back then.
The newborn baby whose oxygen saturation index was temporarily below normal, giving his skin a somewhat purplish tint at less than five minutes old: ……
Of course, the nickname Nuonuo was given to the little fellow by Li Mo later on. It was because Nuonuo was so attached to him, being all fair, clean, soft, and squishy like a glutinous rice cake, hence the name Nuonuo.
When it came to choosing a formal given name, he pondered for a long time over whether the little one should take his surname or Huo Jingxi’s. The reason for his hesitation was very simple: his own name had been given to him much too casually, and truthfully, growing up, he hadn’t shared any deep emotional bond with the teacher who picked him up. Therefore, he wasn’t particularly keen on having Nuonuo carry his surname.
Moreover, if anything unexpected were to happen to him in the future, Nuonuo could at least go back and claim his father.
Once the surname was settled, Li Mo began flipping through dictionaries. It wasn’t until Nuonuo was a month old that the little guy’s name was finally decided: Huo Zhaoci.
By this time, Nuonuo had big eyes and long eyelashes, and everyone praised him, predicting he would surely grow up to be a gorgeous baby. So one night while Nuonuo was asleep, Li Mo secretly leaned over to offer the little fellow an apology.
“Mom shouldn’t have said you looked ugly when you were first born.”
The little guy smacked his lips twice, ignoring him entirely.
So Li Mo struck while the iron was hot: “Your silence means you’ve forgiven me, alright?”
The little guy still said nothing, so Li Mo chose to take that as forgiveness and drifted peacefully off to sleep.
There were quite a few children at the base, many of whom had been born right there. Though their origins remained a mystery with no one knowing whose sperm and egg had combined to form their zygotes the people at the base treated every single one of them as their own flesh and blood.
Consequently, nearly everyone possessed plenty of experience in raising children. As for the postpartum meals, Dr. Li personally oversaw them, and Sister Zhang had sewn several outfits ahead of time while waiting for the baby to be born, leaving Li Mo with virtually nothing to worry about.
Not only the adults, but the older children at the base also harbored immense joy over the little brother’s birth. The moment Nuonuo was born, the older boys and girls brought their most treasured plush toys to Li Mo’s room, shyly declaring they wanted to gift them to Nuonuo.
Because money was scarce, the base didn’t really have useless luxury items like toys. Those two patched-up little bears and ducks placed at the head of Nuonuo’s crib represented the purest form of affection among children.
Back then, someone had actually asked who the child’s father was. That person knew nothing of Li Mo’s past identity nor his relationship with Huo Jingxi, acting out of pure curiosity. Seeing how adorable Nuonuo looked, they figured his looks couldn’t possibly be attributed solely to his mother’s high (attractiveness), and thus wanted to know what the father looked like.
Aside from what appeared in newspapers, high-ranking imperial officials rarely had candid daily photos leaked to the public. Yet those newspaper photographs alone made it blatantly obvious just how prominent Huo Jingxi’s status was.
Li Mo actually had quite a few casual photos of Huo Jingxi saved on his old phone, mostly unflattering shots he’d sneakily taken from dead angles while Huo Jingxi was asleep. However, that phone had been left behind at Huo Jingxi’s house and was likely discarded by now.
After scouring the internet with great effort, he finally managed to find a relatively dignified photo to show that person. The other person squinted at it for a moment before offering a heartfelt exclamation that Nuonuo would undoubtedly grow up to be a stunning child!
When Li Mo retrieved his phone, he was in no rush to delete the photos. Staring at the picture for a long time, he realized that seeing this long-lost face reappear before him still stirred a complex tumult of emotions in his heart.
Picking up his phone, he placed the photo side by side with pictures of Nuonuo. Glancing at the photo, then glancing at Nuonuo, he noticed that the baby’s eyebrows and eyes resembled his own, while the nose and mouth mirrored Huo Jingxi’s.
Ah, the superior genes had all been inherited right where they needed to be.
Li Mo expressed profound satisfaction.
He forgot to delete that picture of Huo Jingxi, so it remained tucked away in his photo album alongside countless pictures of Nuonuo.
And just like that, nearly two years passed in simple, joyful days.
Throughout this period, he actually managed to catch news regarding Huo Jingxi from time to time.
Ever since his “death” that year, he had experienced a belated awakening, coming to understand certain truths.
For instance, the “boss” behind him had essentially been part of the Meng family’s faction. For instance, the Meng family had known his true identity all along, while Meng Jinchi’s association with Huo Jingyan inevitably involved leaking certain details to prompt Huo Jingyan into uttering those exact words to him.
Furthermore, Meng Jinze had likely known from the start that he couldn’t defeat Huo Jingxi head-on, which was why he chose to drive a wedge between him and Huo Jingxi at the peak of the commoners’ public support for Huo Jingxi. Yet, uncertain whether Huo Jingxi would actually kill him, Meng Jinze had additionally embedded a kill-switch mechanism inside his glands. Either way, escaping death was impossible; but his demise would deal a fatal blow to the Huo family’s gubernatorial campaign.
Turns out, a part of him had once been bound to a fated doom from which there was no escaping death. Fortunately, he only realized all of this in hindsight. If he had attained such total enlightenment while still by Huo Jingxi’s side, he might truly have surrendered to that cruel fate.
I am so lucky.
On the day those realizations clicked into place, Li Mo left those four words in his diary.
Yet Li Mo also had his moments of deep vexation.
As Nuonuo slowly learned to walk and talk, he inevitably began asking that one question Li Mo could never quite sidestep.
“Mom, where is dad?”
Little Nuonuo stared at him with bright, sparkling eyes, leaving even Li Mo—someone who used to fabricate lies with effortless ease—at a complete loss. He could only gloss over it by deflecting: “Dad… dad is in a very far away place, and besides, Mom is right here keeping Nuonuo company.”
“Mm-hmm!” Nuonuo nodded, answering obediently, “Nuonuo likes Mom!”
With that, the little fellow rolled over, burrowed into his embrace, and drifted soundly off to sleep.
Gazing at Nuonuo in his arms, Li Mo reflected on how, despite initially planning to abort the pregnancy upon discovering it, he had to concede that watching the little guy slowly grow up had brought him the purest form of happiness through Nuonuo’s very existence.
If only life could continue passing by in such peaceful happiness forever.
Pressing against Nuonuo’s soft little cheek, Li Mo devoutly whispered a wish like that in his heart right before falling asleep.