At the hotel.
The butler set down a report: “That’s about it.”
The butler added: “Mr. Liang has likely confirmed things on his end as well. The PR department is preparing to build momentum around these narratives—they wanted me to report this to you.”
Huo Lan closed his laptop, his expression calm: “Understood.”
The butler, still uneasy, added: “This… is fabricated.”
Having witnessed the creation of the narrative firsthand, the butler had watched in awe as the story grew increasingly elaborate—from a simple tale of greed to a full-blown saga of family feuds. It left him both shaken and humbled.
Worried that Huo Lan might believe it to be true, the butler flipped through the report and explained each part carefully: “The first line is an online rumor, the second was made up by Mr. Liang, and the third came from Manager Duan…”
Huo Lan interrupted: “I know.”
The butler sighed in relief: “Understood.”
Huo Lan found his attitude strange and frowned slightly: “Why would I believe a fabricated story?”
The butler: “…”
The butler wanted to know too but didn’t dare ask. Instead, he quietly put away Mr. Liang’s hip measurements and poured Huo Lan a cup of coffee: “Are you thinking about something?”
Huo Lan picked up the report, glanced at it, and remained silent.
These were things Liang Xiao would never bring up himself. Huo Lan didn’t want Liang Xiao to be haunted by the past and had never asked about it.
Why Liang Xiao left, why he disappeared without a trace, why his pheromones had spiraled out of control.
Why he never came back to find him.
After a moment of silence, Huo Lan spoke softly: “Did his manager ever say what really happened back then?”
The butler hesitated briefly before shaking his head: “Not exactly. But the version we released might be closest to the truth.”
When Duan Ming met with Xingguan’s team, he had shared some details about Liang Xiao’s past—though vague on specifics. He mentioned that Liang Xiao had no family to care for him at the time, was held captive by a group of con artists, and encountered some unexpected incidents.
During casual conversations with Duan Ming, the butler had picked up bits and pieces of the story: “But according to Mr. Duan, when Mr. Liang left Jiangnan—”
Huo Lan’s breath suddenly grew heavier as he raised his gaze sharply to stare at the butler.
The butler froze momentarily before finishing instinctively: “It seemed like… those con artists were planning to harm him.”
Huo Lan’s chest tightened as turmoil churned within him. He struggled to suppress it and closed his eyes briefly before asking in a low voice: “Did anything happen?”
In truth, he had already suspected this.
Knowing that Liang Xiao had been trapped in a den of con artists explained many things.
Why young Liang Xiao had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Why he refused to disclose his background. Why everything from his name to his identity was fabricated.
Why, after returning home and exhausting every possible avenue for investigation, there was nothing to be found.
Huo Lan had pieced together some guesses but still couldn’t be certain whether young Liang Xiao had left safely or smoothly—or if he’d truly managed to leave that place behind.
The butler wasn’t entirely sure either and hesitated slightly: “There shouldn’t have been any incidents. Mr. Duan said they were ‘planning’ to act against him, but Mr. Liang noticed and left early.”
Huo Lan’s chest rose and fell several times. Pressing his fingers firmly against his temples, he closed his eyes again and leaned back into his chair.
“Are you… feeling sorry for Mr. Liang?”
Noticing Huo Lan’s expression, the butler cautiously tried to comfort him: “You weren’t there back then—it’s not your fault…”
Softly, he added: “But you’re here now. With you around, nothing will happen to Mr. Liang anymore.”
Huo Lan’s shoulders tensed silently as his fists clenched tightly.
His pheromones were becoming unstable again, causing a headache. He pressed hard
against the center of his brow and murmured: “I’m here.”
The butler froze in place: “What?”
Huo Lan repeated firmly: “I’m here.”
“I should have realized earlier,” Huo Lan said softly, his gaze lowered. “He asked me to handle work because he absolutely didn’t want to do it himself.”
The butler vaguely recalled this incident, and as he thought it over, his expression completely changed: “The person you met in Jiangnan—”
The butler struggled to swallow the words ‘wild omega’ one by one, looking at Huo Lan in disbelief: “How could it be…?”
Huo Lan closed his eyes.
Young Liang Xiao had been so fixated on getting his meal card because he just wanted to eat enough to fill his stomach.
Young Liang Xiao had been busy working odd jobs all day, his strength insufficient, his body bruised all over, and so exhausted that he could barely stand—because that den of con artists had been demanding money from him.
And the money they demanded was what young Liang Xiao had tried to scam from Huo Lan.
Teenage Huo Lan came from a wealthy family. Everything he needed was provided for him. Focused solely on studying and avoiding the mischief of others, he barely understood the value of money.
Young Liang Xiao didn’t even need to make up excuses to deceive him. A few words were all it took to get what he wanted.
The allowance sent by Huo Lan’s family sat untouched in a drawer. Next to the bank card was a note with the PIN written on it.
Not once did Liang Xiao take it.
…
Looking back now, Huo Lan could hardly understand how he had been so oblivious at the time.
After all, Liang Xiao back then was just a fledgling little con artist.
No matter how convincing his act was, moments of genuine sincerity would slip through when his youthful nature emerged.
“Mr. Liang… might have planned everything,” the butler said cautiously. He had initially intended to tell Huo Lan about Liang Xiao’s difficult days alone in the capital, hoping to tug at his heartstrings and push things along. But now, he didn’t dare bring it up and instead carefully added, “Leaving was probably part of his plan.”
The butler tried his best to recall details and connect the two of them: “Didn’t Mr. Liang draw two circles and a triangle for you?”
Huo Lan’s voice was low: “Why did he draw them?”
The butler froze for a moment, opening his mouth but unable to answer.
Huo Lan closed his eyes: “I… didn’t know anything.”
When young Liang Xiao was being held captive by con artists, Huo Lan hadn’t noticed a thing. He had even punished Liang Xiao by making him stand as punishment for not memorizing his lessons properly.
When those people were about to harm young Liang Xiao, Huo Lan still hadn’t noticed anything. Instead, he inexplicably fell into a deep sleep that night. When he woke up, he had even felt a bit happy about successfully completing his differentiation.
Huo Lan couldn’t stop repeatedly questioning himself—when Liang Xiao ran away alone back then, had he suffered? Had he endured hardships?
Without access to the meal card outside, what did young Liang Xiao eat or drink?
He was just a child—not even an adult yet. What kind of work could he find? Where did he live?
He had to find a way to survive while evading those people and figuring out how to carve out a path for himself.
When did young Liang Xiao differentiate? When did his pheromones spiral out of control? And why didn’t he use inhibitors?
…He didn’t know.
All these years, Liang Xiao had been struggling to survive on his own, and Huo Lan had remained completely unaware.
The butler was silent for a long time before asking softly: “Have you… asked Mr. Liang about any of this?”
Huo Lan replied quietly: “He doesn’t know.”
The butler was surprised: “Mr. Liang didn’t recognize you either?”
Huo Lan shook his head.
The butler froze for a moment, then recalled what Huo Lan had looked like in his youth and understood: “You hadn’t differentiated back then…”
Before a young Alpha differentiates, their physical traits don’t show significant enhancement. At that time, young Huo Lan had been thin and frail, with a reserved and serious personality. He also wore glasses, making him seem vastly different from the person he was now.
Huo Lan nodded slightly, his tone somber: “Back then in Jiangnan, he wouldn’t even let me tell him my name.”
Standing in the snow, the butler felt a pang of sadness: “Mr. Liang might have been afraid of falling for you.”
Softly, the butler tried to explain on Liang Xiao’s behalf: “Mr. Liang was young back then—he probably thought that if he didn’t ask your name or learn about you, he wouldn’t develop feelings for you.”
The snowflakes swirled above Huo Lan’s head as his expression grew even more subdued: “He never had feelings for me.”
The butler: “…”
Cautiously, the butler asked: “How do you know?”
“The day I confessed to him,” Huo Lan said softly, “he told me.”
“He said he only saw that person from back then as a friend.”
The butler felt weak: “Well… he couldn’t exactly tell you during your confession that the person from back then was his unresolved past romance…”
The situation at the time had been too complicated for Huo Lan to explain clearly. He glanced at the butler briefly and chose not to elaborate further.
After some thought, the butler offered a suggestion: “Have you tried asking Mr. Liang indirectly? Without revealing too much—just casually asking if he’d want to meet that person again?”
Huo Lan closed his eyes briefly: “I’ve asked.”
The butler tensed nervously: “What did Mr. Liang say?”
“He said no.”
Huo Lan continued: “Mr. Liang said that if they ever met again, he’d run as far away as possible.”
The butler pressed further: “Why?”
Huo Lan shook his head in confusion: “I don’t know.”
The butler knew that young Huo Lan had developed feelings back then. Accepting the idea that Mr. Liang was Jiangnan’s wild omega, he instinctively shifted blame away from Mr. Liang and back onto President Huo.
“Could it be that you weren’t trying hard enough back then—that you didn’t make your feelings clear to Mr. Liang?”
Tentatively, the butler asked: “Did you explain things properly?”
“I… tried my best,” Huo Lan replied softly.
“Every day, I studied with him, helped him memorize lessons, and encouraged him to practice writing characters. I reviewed all of his homework—correcting mistakes and making him rewrite them neatly.”
The butler: “…”
“If there were questions he couldn’t solve,” Huo Lan continued, “I’d explain them until he understood. If there were things he couldn’t memorize, I’d supervise him until he learned them by heart.”
The butler: “…”
“I also tried to make things clear to him,” Huo Lan added quietly.
“On the day before he disappeared,” Huo Lan said with lowered eyes, “I finally worked up the courage to tell him.”
The butler felt his heart tighten painfully: “What did you say?”
Huo Lan replied softly: “I told him I was willing to spend my entire life helping him memorize lessons.”
The butler was speechless.
A small layer of snow had accumulated on Huo Lan’s head, his voice growing softer: “But he still left.”
The butler pressed his heart, took a deep breath, and refuted with difficulty: “You probably shouldn’t use ‘but’ in that sentence…”
Huo Lan was stunned: “What should I use?”
The butler thought to himself, obviously you should use “therefore.” The fact that Mr. Liang managed to stay for so long before leaving was truly a love that moved heaven and earth.
If it had been someone else, they might not have even needed the scammer organization’s pursuit to kill them—they probably would have packed up and left on the first day.
After silently complaining for a while, the butler met Huo Lan’s gaze and finally said sympathetically: “Then.”
Huo Lan was momentarily stunned, picked up a walnut and held it in his hand, correcting himself: “Then…”
Huo Lan said softly: “He still left.”
Huo Lan lowered his head, looked at the walnut in his hand, and gently placed it on the table.
The night little Liang Xiao left, he had a fever and headache and couldn’t focus on reading. Worried that memorizing texts would be too mentally taxing for little Liang Xiao, he thought of shelling some walnuts for him.
Little Liang Xiao was very picky; he only wanted intact walnut kernels, complaining that broken ones didn’t look good and refusing to eat them no matter what.
The young Huo Lan couldn’t control his strength well. He tried his best to shell an entire bag in his room but only managed to collect a small handful of intact walnut kernels.
When he woke up the next morning, those walnut kernels were still hidden in the drawer.
He never got the chance to give them away.
The butler accompanied him at his side, quietly organizing the contracts, and finally completely understood young Huo Lan’s inner conflict from back then.
The butler carefully pulled their Mr. Huo out of the snow: “When you came back then, was it to find Mr. Liang?”
After young Huo Lan’s differentiation, his pheromones would have impacted his mother, so his father strictly forbade him from returning to the Huo residence. But what his father didn’t know was that shortly after his differentiation, young Huo Lan had secretly returned to the capital once.
At that time, his father had taken his mother out to relax, while the butler stayed at home. Upon receiving the news, he secretly went out to meet young Huo Lan.
The newly differentiated young alpha, emaciated from months of fever caused by pheromones, had a distant coldness about him that kept people at bay, and his eyes already showed the harshness that would later hurt both others and himself.
The butler wasn’t clear about why he had returned, but was so alarmed that young Huo Lan had differentiated on his own that he dragged him to the hospital for an examination.
The examination at that time couldn’t actually detect any problems, which relieved the butler.
Years later, when Huo Lan’s gland had completely differentiated, the hidden dangers of his unstable pheromones gradually became too obvious to ignore, revealing the effects of his hasty and accidental differentiation.
Huo Lan thought for a moment, closed his eyes: “He… always used to ask me what the capital was like.”
Huo Lan: “I didn’t know where to look for him…”
“But haven’t you found him now?”
The butler didn’t let him continue thinking, gently interrupting: “With such an unbreakable and inseparable fate between you and Mr. Liang, shouldn’t you be pinning him against the door and kissing him?”
Huo Lan: “…”
His chest still ached, and he couldn’t help but frown, his tone slightly heavy: “Why are you all thinking about these things every day?”
The butler sighed wearily: “What else should we think about? Are you planning to pin Mr. Liang against the door and make him memorize lessons?”
Huo Lan froze, clenched his fists tightly, and lowered his gaze, remaining silent.
The butler quickly sent a message to the household staff, instructing them to install a password lock on Mr. and Mrs. Huo’s study and to change the password daily—emphasizing that under no circumstances should President Huo be informed.
After all, the power of knowledge wasn’t infinite.
If Mr. Liang were driven away again by being forced to memorize lessons, none of them might survive the aftermath.
“Some things can’t be kept hidden forever,” the butler said patiently, trying to reason with him. “You need to find opportunities to ease into it with Mr. Liang—step by step—so he subconsciously starts accepting it…”
“I understand,” Huo Lan replied softly.
“We’ll also help you look into what happened after Mr. Liang left back then,” the butler offered. “What you need to focus on is living well with Mr. Liang.”
Huo Lan’s eyes flickered slightly, clearly moved by the words as he lifted his gaze.
The butler continued: “Mr. Liang hasn’t been in the best mood these past two days.”
Huo Lan frowned: “Why?”
This part had come directly from Mr. Liang himself. The butler thought it was most likely because you touched his butt and didn’t seem satisfied, but he swallowed the words before they came out: “I’m not sure.”
After some thought, the butler added: “It could be because of the recent public attention—it might have reminded him of past events, leaving him a bit melancholic.”
Huo Lan nodded slightly and murmured: “He’s been showing some of his old habits again.”
Clenching his fists, Huo Lan continued: “When he’s in a lot of pain… he still refuses to bite me.”
The butler: “…”
Looking at the tense muscles in President Huo’s shoulders and neck, the butler figured that Mr. Liang probably just couldn’t manage to bite him.
Not daring to say more, the butler simply nodded: “Understood.”
“Mr. Liang needs you to accompany and comfort him as much as possible,” the butler advised.
Huo Lan nodded in agreement.
“And you should be gentler with Mr. Liang,” the butler added.
For instance, not forcing him to memorize scripts in the middle of the night—and making him write lines if he failed.
Carefully choosing his words, the butler said: “Treat Mr. Liang like… like a precious and fragile dream.”
The words struck a deep chord within Huo Lan, causing a faint tremor in his chest and shoulders. He nodded: “I will—”
Before he could finish speaking, the second hand ticked past 10:59 for its final mark, and suddenly, the master bedroom door burst open with a loud bang.
Liang Xiao had spent an entire evening doing extra glute workouts. Finally finding his optimal state, he had just taken a hot shower before rushing in through the steam at precisely the right time.
Huo Lan looked up in stunned silence as Liang Xiao stormed in.
The so-called precious and fragile dream, now brimming with excitement, grabbed Huo Lan’s hand and pressed it against his butt: “Well? Is it round now?”
