Why visiting the Huo family made Li Mo feel like he was facing a formidable enemy wasn’t because the members of the Huo family were difficult to get along with. On the contrary, Huo Jingsi’s father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, uncles, aunts, and cousins were all exceptionally friendly toward him. Although he wasn’t born into the aristocracy, none of them had ever minded his background, and he could genuinely feel that this entire family truly treated him as one of their own.
There was only one person whose unpredictability unsettled him: Huo Jingsi’s younger sister.
Before he had ever set foot in the Huo family residence, he had heard people whisper that Huo Jingsi’s sister suffered from a severe psychological disorder, spending all her time hiding in her room and never stepping outside.
However, the day he accompanied Huo Jingsi to the Huo estate for the first time, the moment they stepped through the front doors, he spotted Huo Jingyan lurking by the stairwell, secretly observing him. Even though she was a few years younger than him, her gaze was as deep and fathomless as the ocean. When he lifted his head to look back, locking eyes with her for a few seconds, she instantly stood up and bolted back to her room.
He still remembered Butler Zhou chuckling and making light of it that day, saying, “That’s our Second Young Miss. She never comes out to see people under normal circumstances. Perhaps she knew the young madam was coming and wanted to sneak a peek. Look at that—she got shy and ran back inside.”
Despite those words, Li Mo knew Butler Zhou was simply smoothing things over. At the same time, an unprecedented wave of uneasiness welled up deep inside him.
He had no way of knowing how much of a threat this reticent younger sister might pose to him, because this sense of unease stemmed entirely from his own intuition and lacked any tangible basis.
As their subsequent visits grew more frequent, that unsettling sensation only intensified, especially since Huo Jingyan always loved lurking in distant corners, staring at him unblinkingly without a single movement.
That gaze felt as though it could see straight through him to his core. He even had the absurd, wild speculation: Could Huo Jingyan be an “undercover agent” planted around Huo Jingsi just like me? Except he couldn’t detect a single element of “friendliness” within her eyes.
That stare made him feel somewhat guilty, as if Huo Jingyan had instantly pierced through his disguise, recognizing that he carried a mission and had come to assassinate her older brother.
He had once attempted to initiate communication with Huo Jingyan, but as expected, he was met with a closed door every single time.
The only saving grace was that this sort of reclusive behavior happened to align with the persona he needed to cultivate. Moreover, whenever Huo Jingyan rebuffed him, members of the Huo family would proactively step in to smooth things over, explaining that the Second Young Miss simply had that kind of temperament and never liked talking to anyone.
Yet, why on earth would he want to talk to such a freak? If not for the fear of exposing his identity, he wouldn’t have bothered lowering himself to ingratiate her with hot face pressed against a cold butt.
And so, those walking-on-eggshells days had slipped by in the blink of an eye—three whole years.
Though no major hitches had occurred during this time, to Li Mo, Huo Jingyan remained an unpredictable time bomb waiting to detonate at any moment, as if the mere instant he stepped into her line of sight, she would automatically trigger a countdown to self-destruction.
“What’s wrong?” Huo Jingsi’s deep, low voice rumbled beside his ear as he raised a hand to lightly stroke Li Mo’s head in a comforting gesture. “Don’t want to go?”
“No.” Li Mo shook his head. Realizing his previous emotions had leaked through, he adjusted his expression instantly. He sidestepped Huo Jingsi’s concerned gaze, pasting on a perfectly calibrated, bitter-yet-helpless smile that was poignant enough to evoke pity while prompting others to guess at hidden hardships he refused to voice aloud.
“Mother is urging you again?” Huo Jingsi drew him into an embrace and asked.
He was referring to Huo Jingsi’s mother nagging them to have a child; Li Mo knew this well.
These aristocrats placed the utmost importance on carrying on the family line, and Huo Jingsi’s mother was no exception.
When he and Huo Jingsi had first married, it was easy enough to brush off inquiries about when they planned to have children by hiding behind the excuse of “letting nature take its course.” But things were different now; the two of them had already been together for three years—even if they wanted to let nature take its course, nature had long since run out of patience.
Fortunately, this noble matron born in the economic capital possessed a relatively open mind. Ever since he and Huo Jingsi expressed their desire to wait a few more years until things stabilized before considering children, she had never brought the subject up in front of Li Mo again.
To her, as long as they had a plan, there was no need to rush things at this exact moment though certain malicious gossip regarding Huo Jingsi remaining childless despite being married for so many years wasn’t quite as pleasant to the ear.
Li Mo had caught wind of those rumors as well. He recalled how, around this time last year, gossip had circulated claiming that he and Huo Jingsi were experiencing a marital crisis. Public opinion ran rampant; after all, ordinary commoner Omegas like him marrying into a wealthy conglomerate typically made their first order of business bearing a child to cement their status—one wasn’t enough, they’d pop out two. But someone like him, who showed zero signs of a bun in the oven while remaining active on the front lines of public visibility, naturally sat securely right at the vortex center of imperial high-society gossip.
Through word-of-mouth retelling and deliberate fabrication, those rumors spawned countless versions. Some claimed Huo Jingsi was physically incapable—at which Li Mo had sneered in utter contempt. If Huo Jingsi couldn’t do it, then not a single Alpha in this entire world was functional.
Others whispered that the couple’s relationship was discordant, pointing to the fact that they had slept in separate rooms for all these years of marriage. To that, Li Mo could only roll his eyes; he prayed devoutly for separate rooms every single night just to spare himself the anxiety of wondering whether Huo Jingsi was going to strangle him to death in his sleep.
Most importantly, the peak of these salacious rumors happened to coincide with the period when Li Mo was suffering through the torments of Huo Jingsi’s suffocating sleeping postures. As a result, the moment he saw one of those rumors, he reported it, terrified that such trash gossip might reach Huo Jingsi’s ears and disrupt his sleep even further.
The only thing that brought him a shred of satisfaction was that among all those varied gossip threads, not a single one claimed he was the one who was incapable—at least, none that he had laid eyes on.
To be frank, it wasn’t that he was entirely averse to having a baby; as far as he was concerned, giving birth was just a matter of getting a slice opened on his belly, and he wasn’t afraid of pain. His real barrier was moral guilt.
After all, sooner or later, either he was going to kill Huo Jingsi or Huo Jingsi was going to kill him. If they brought a child into the world, the poor kid would end up either fatherless or motherless. Putting aside his own subjective feelings on whether he wanted kids, objectively speaking, doing something like that to a hypothetical, nonexistent child was just plain, unadulterated evil.
So his hands were tied. To rack up a bit of good karma for his next life, he genuinely couldn’t give the Huo family a baby.
“No.” Li Mo shook his head, riding the momentum of Huo Jingsi’s words to paint his face with profound guilt while uttering insincere sentiments: “I just feel bad that we’ve been together for so long yet haven’t given your parents the joy of grandchildren.”
“What’s there to feel bad about?” Huo Jingsi chuckled, drawing him gently into a tight embrace. “As long as the two of us are together, we have a long future ahead of us.”
“Mn.” Li Mo offered a soft, submissive affirmation, wrapping his arms around Huo Jingsi’s waist and pressing his entire body against the man’s chest, looking every bit like a fragile, defenseless little white lotus.
Oh god, I’m about to bow down to my own acting skills. How on earth can anyone pull off such a sickeningly contrived act of playing the pitiful victim with such natural fluidity?
Li Mo preened inwardly with smug self-satisfaction.
It’s an absolute crime against the entertainment industry that someone of my caliber hasn’t gone into acting; think of the massive loss this is for the silver screen!
Huo Jingsi, of course, had no inkling that the person melting into his embrace and pulling at his heartstrings held internal thoughts that contrasted wildly with his outward appearance; he merely wished to offer genuine comfort to his beloved spouse.
The banquet was scheduled for the evening, so they planned to drop by the Huo residence around noon to pay their respects.
The July sunlight was ferociously intense. Even at eight o’clock in the morning, the temperature had already soared to a scorching 33 degrees Celsius, and the blinding glare of the sun made people’s eyes sting.
Inside the luxury chauffeured car, Li Mo was holding the morning newspaper fresh off the press that very morning, reading through it with meticulous care—
“Li Mo, Wife of Huo Family Heir Huo Jingsi: The Most Beautiful Flower of Humanity Amidst Disaster…”
He mouthed the news headline word for word internally, shifting his gaze to the accompanying photo. It captured the exact snapshot from a few days ago when that ragged little boy handed him a wild flower. Huo Jingsi stood right beside the two of them, and with his presence anchoring the frame, he looked precisely like an impregnable mountain offering an absolute sense of security.
The article itself echoed the narrative.
“To understand the disaster conditions in Sector 69 and visit his wife, who had already stood firm on the front lines of the disaster zone for three full days, Chairman Huo Jingsi cast aside his exhaustion immediately upon concluding the imperial political conference and set off directly for the disaster site.”
“‘Seeing Chairman Huo made our hearts, which had been thrown into panic for days, finally settle down completely. We felt an overwhelming sense of security!’ remarked one refugee. With Chairman Huo personally taking the helm, we believe Sector 69 will soon recover its former vitality from the merciless onslaught of the floods…”
Reading this, Li Mo clicked his tongue in disdain internally.
First off, look at that headline. He hadn’t actually done anything remarkably useful—he had simply brought supplies to conduct rescue work at the earliest possible window after the flood struck, something anyone else could have done just as well. Huo Jingsi’s PR team really didn’t need to elevate him onto such a lofty pedestal with titles like “the most beautiful flower of humanity”… This was clearly just leveraging public opinion to build momentum for Huo Jingsi.
And secondly, look at the body text—there was truly no need to put on such a grandiose front. If they weren’t constrained by needing to maintain a shred of face, they probably wished they could publish the following instead:
“Huo Jingsi’s wife went to help out with disaster relief, and Huo Jingsi went too! The Chairman’s personal visit to the disaster area demonstrates a genuine commitment to protecting the rights of ordinary citizens from a place of true empathy. Once he assumes office as Governor-General, he certainly won’t treat you all poorly, so everyone hurry up and cast your votes for him!”
How much better would phrasing it like that be? It would save ignorant readers from having to ask extra questions about who on earth Li Mo was.
“What’s wrong? Unhappy with how this news report was written?” Huo Jingsi, seated right beside him, suddenly piped up.
A jolt of shock spiked through Li Mo’s heart, momentarily making him wonder if the man could read minds. Without skipping a beat, he casually raised the newspaper to eye level and replied, “No, just thinking that this photo makes you look a bit like a security guard.”
An overwhelming sense of security.
Huo Jingsi chuckled as well, teasing back, “Then next time I’ll tell them not to hide in such tricky angles.”
Li Mo offered a polite smile, though he didn’t find the remark amusing in the least.
He knew that once this news piece circulated widely, Huo Jingsi’s image among the common people would inevitably soar to even loftier heights. Those ordinary citizens would foolishly believe Huo Jingsi was their savior, entirely oblivious to the fact that the man viewed them as nothing more than ignorant, insignificant ants.
Over all these years spent undercover by Huo Jingsi’s side, the profoundest lesson he had absorbed was that those self-righteous aristocrats had never once regarded commoners as human beings.
When plebeians attempted to claw their way upward through sheer hard work, in aristocratic eyes, it was nothing more than overreaching ambition. Smashing those hard-earned efforts to pieces required nothing more than a casual flick of a tongue.
Above all, to those arrogant nobles, such tragedies were merely a form of amusement little more than idle gossip to pass the time over after-dinner tea.
Li Mo lowered his eyelids, folding up the newspaper as he resumed refining his assassination plan against Huo Jingsi in his mind, using the mental exercise to sweep away these messy, distracting thoughts. After all, his sole purpose here was to kill a target; aside from securing Huo Jingsi’s trust, everything else was beyond his purview and entirely outside his control.
When he had first accepted this assignment, his handlers hadn’t instructed him to assassinate Huo Jingsi immediately. Instead, they ordered him to go undercover by Huo Jingsi’s side and wait; once the opportune moment arrived, someone would naturally step forward to brief him on when to strike.
What puzzled him, however, was that although they required him to embed himself as a mole by Huo Jingsi’s side, they neither demanded any intelligence leaks regarding Huo Jingsi’s operations nor arranged for any dead-drop contacts. These past few years had been so desperately idle he felt like he was sprouting moss, leaving him with no choice but to continuously polish and perfect his assassination blueprints entirely on his own.
He had fantasized about the scenario of assassinating Huo Jingsi in his head a countless number of times. Every single location where Huo Jingsi might possibly appear had been mapped out, and he had even plotted several distinct escape routes. Naturally, whether the mission succeeded or failed, the probability of him being killed on the spot remained exceedingly high, but at the very least, he had prepared thoroughly for the preservation of his own skin.
As for everything else he’d just leave it up to fate!
Li Mo blinked his eyes shut for a brief moment, hammering down his final resolve internally.
At that exact second, he suddenly felt someone gently sliding a finger across his knuckles.
A slow question mark drifted upward in Li Mo’s mind. Opening his eyes, he glanced downward and discovered that Huo Jingsi was slowly slipping a ring onto his ring finger.
Li Mo: ???????
It was a diamond ring. The band was sculpted into the shape of interlocking vines, with a teardrop-cut diamond embedded right at the center. Visually estimated, the stone weighed no less than three carats with a clarity rating no lower than VVS1. The most ingenious detail of the overall design, however, was the winding vine tendrils branching out beside the main diamond, encrusted with countless micro-pave diamonds that caught the ambient light to scatter dazzling, multi-colored fire brilliance in every direction, breathing infinite life into what might otherwise have been a rigid design.
At a single glance, anyone could tell this single piece of jewelry could buy dozens of his lives over.
“Passed by an auction house by chance when I was in Sector 8,” Huo Jingsi murmured as he settled the ring firmly onto his finger, then lifted Li Mo’s hand to plant a light, lingering kiss across his knuckles. “Thought you’d like it, so I brought it back along the way.”
Showing off again.
Li Mo rolled his eyes internally, yet the corners of his mouth curled upward in a smile he couldn’t suppress no matter how hard he tried. The grin sparked by sheer wealth was far purer and more genuine than the natural diamond resting on his finger.
“Like it?” Huo Jingsi asked, thoroughly pleased to have successfully amused his fair beauty.
Li Mo withdrew his hand, admiring the ring sparkling on his finger in meticulous detail before shifting his gaze to meet Huo Jingsi’s, offering a gentle nod of assent.
He finally understood why the domineering CEOs in romance novels were so obsessed with using such trinkets to capture the protagonist’s favor; gifts like this made him happy too.
Consequently, he made a silent, heartfelt executive decision right then and there—
When the time came to kill Huo Jingsi, he’d make sure to go a little easier on him.