“Slap.”
Without the slightest bit of politeness, Zhou Nannan slapped Huo Ci across the face. “You dare threaten my cousin? A divorce we must get a divorce.”
Chu Lianxing had originally only suspected that Huo Ci knew something, but now he could be certain: he knew about the matter with Huang Chuyan, and even about the surveillance footage that had mysteriously vanished when Zhou Nannan fell down the stairs.
“Big Brother, are you listening to me?” Seeing Chu Lianxing staring blankly at Huo Ci and losing his focus, Zhou Nannan felt a trace of anxiety. His face was indeed quite handsome; it was understandable that her brother could soften his heart after looking at it for too long.
She shook Chu Lianxing’s arm while acting spoiled, though in her heart she was thinking that if she’d known earlier, she wouldn’t have hit him quite so hard.
“Li Yuanbai, take Nannan home.”
Zhou Nannan was pulled outward by Li Yuanbai. Before leaving, she didn’t forget to pull back her voice and shout toward the inside: “Big Brother, you must remember to get a divorce; I’ve placed the agreement on the table.”
After Zhou Nannan left, Huo Ci also dismissed the remaining bodyguards.
In an instant, the previously bustling villa grew empty and quiet.
Huo Ci collapsed weakly onto the floor, his tall, sturdy physique looking entirely mismatched with this frail act.
Chu Lianxing bent down and hammered his leg; his activity level these past few days had completely exceeded his usual amount.
Coupled with the fact that it was winter, his leg couldn’t take it anymore, and he had simply been stubbornly enduring it until now.
He walked over to the sofa and casually gave Huo Ci a kick: “Stop pretending.”
The two of them, who had been locked in mutual confrontation and fierce competition for many years, understood each other far better than they imagined.
In his youth, Huo Ci could trade blows evenly with him in a fight without falling behind, let alone now when he had been trained by specialists for all these years.
It was possible that he might claim he couldn’t beat Li Yuanbai, but letting the other party pin him down and beat him was impossible, let alone letting his younger cousin hit him.
It was merely a gamble that his heart would soften.
Huo Ci scrambled nimbly up from the floor. The marble flooring was a bit chilly, and fearing that his body was too cold, he didn’t dare directly rush up to hug Chu Lianxing.
Instead, he sat down not far from him.
Chu Lianxing closed his eyes, waiting for him to confess on his own.
Yet the man showed not a shred of self-awareness; one moment he was poking his arm, and the next he was pinching his hand.
Once he felt that his body had completely warmed back up, he hung himself straight onto Chu Lianxing.
Chu Lianxing gave Huo Ci a shove, but Huo Ci, mindful of his body, only lightly hovered against him.
With a slight exertion of force, Chu Lianxing pushed him away. Huo Ci allowed himself to be pushed back by Chu Lianxing’s strength, tumbling down onto the sofa while pulling Chu Lianxing down to tumble onto him, gathering him completely into his arms.
“Still not planning to talk?”
Huo Ci’s expression remained calm and unruffled, except that his moist eyes stubbornly refused to look at Chu Lianxing: “Talk about what?”
Whenever Huo Ci lied, he would subconsciously look past the other person’s shoulder. However, as a boss, letting people know you were lying was a major taboo, so after the Huo family went bankrupt, he had broken that habit yet whenever he faced Chu Lianxing, he still reverted to it.
Chu Lianxing propped himself up by pressing against the other man’s abdominal muscles, straightening his posture. Huo Ci acted like a little dog: when Chu Lianxing got up, he got up too.
Chu Lianxing pushed him aside, and he pressed right back on; he pushed him aside again, and he pressed back on, until finally Chu Lianxing simply gave up caring and let him cling to him: “Tell me why my dying would be the result of a divorce?”
Huo Ci lied with a straight face: “That’s because I—I love you too much. After a divorce, I would turn love into hatred.”
Chu Lianxing picked up a magazine from the table and smacked him over the head with it: “Talk properly, and besides, the one you loved was Su Zhili.”
Just as Huo Ci opened his mouth to refute, he heard Chu Lianxing continue:
“Is there some special reason that prevents the two of us from getting a divorce, otherwise we will die? And have you been dedicated to researching this aspect all these years, with your research subjects including not limited to our high school and university classmates, as well as our mutual friends?”
Huo Ci’s eyes widened abruptly, his breath choked off by an invisible, massive pair of hands as he wondered how on earth the other could have guessed it.
Immediately following that, a sense of relief washed over him. That’s right—he was so smart, how could he possibly fail to guess it given so many abnormal occurrences in daily life?
He let out a long sigh and recounted the whole story in detail: “I’m not sure how much of it I’m allowed to speak out loud.”
Chu Lianxing raised an eyebrow. Viewed this way, this mysterious power was not something under their control, and Huo Ci wasn’t the sole beneficiary either; otherwise, he wouldn’t even be able to speak of it.
“I found out the truth after the car crash. This world is being manipulated by someone; based on my observations, you were the earliest one to awaken and break free from its control.
It’s a pity that relying solely on your individual strength was not enough to contend against it, so it manufactured a series of obstacles to push you toward your ultimate end.
When I awakened, it should have been the time for both of our deaths. Even though neither of us died in the end, the plot continued advancing toward its conclusion.
Even though you didn’t die, your body grew weaker and weaker, as though you were slowly walking toward death.
That’s why I climbed into your bed, using external public opinion to force you to marry me and alter our trajectory, and then told Elder Chu about this right before he passed away, making him issue a strict, absolute command that the two of us must never divorce.”
Chu Lianxing: “You told Grandpa because Grandpa was nearing death and about to leave this world, meaning this mysterious power could no longer control him.
Following the tropes of a novel, this can be called the Will of the World. Perhaps this is a novel world.”
The four words, ‘a novel world,’ had barely left his lips when “Bang.”
A heavy, sturdy chandelier located eight hundred meters away from the two of them detached itself, crashing down right in the space between them.
Huo Ci was completely unharmed, while Chu Lianxing’s left arm was mangled and shredded into a bloody mess by the chandelier.
This was the Will of the World retaliating against them, punishing Chu Lianxing for his transgression.
Seeing the sea of scarlet blood made Huo Ci flash back to the night his father jumped to his death; his visceral organs trembled violently.
When people experience extreme panic, they lose their basic instincts. Huo Ci didn’t even react to call for a family doctor.
He merely gripped Chu Lianxing’s injured arm blindly.
It wasn’t until Chu Lianxing himself called and summoned the doctor that Huo Ci finally snapped back to his senses, taking the tweezers to carefully clean out the shallow fragments of glass embedded in his flesh.
“So, all those times you went against me in the past, was the plot manipulating you? Let me think—who on earth are the male and female protagonists?”
As those words fell, the house began collapsing with Chu Lianxing as its center.
Huo Ci shielded Chu Lianxing as they dodged everywhere, while simultaneously covering Chu Lianxing’s mouth to prevent him from continuing to speak.
Unfortunately, it was already too late. The moment Chu Lianxing uttered the names of Gu Jinyu and Su Zhili, the house collapsed completely, dragging down the surrounding residential villa district along with it.
Even though so many people’s houses were collapsing, and even though the two of them were holding each other tight, the only person buried beneath the ruins was Chu Lianxing alone.
That night was brightly lit as firefighters, medical staff, and media reporters all pulled an all-nighter.