Chapter 5
My Little Tyrant's Surprise Attack and the CEO's Surrender
After Huo Shaoyan left, the enormous apartment felt strangely empty.
Qi Xing lounged sideways on the sofa, hugging a pillow he'd taken from the bedroom—the one Huo Shaoyan had used last night. He yawned lazily, buried his face in it, and inhaled deeply. Mmm. The faint red-wine scent smelled wonderful.
This newly presented Omega body was far too prone to sleepiness. But whenever he closed his eyes, the only person circling through his mind was that buzz-cut, cold-faced yet softhearted CEO.
“It's been five hundred years since we last saw each other, and we've only been apart for half a day. How did I already start missing him?” Qi Xing muttered to himself with a laugh.
He tapped his slender fingers against empty air, then rolled over and sat up. Since he missed him, he might as well go see him.
The old “Qi Xing” had loved in a tortuous, roundabout way. Even when he went to deliver a meal, he would agonize outside the company for ages, then slam the insulated lunchbox onto the desk and insist, despite clearly wanting to do it, “Godmother told me to bring this over.”
The current him had no such awkward pride.
Qi Xing picked out a loose, pure-white silk shirt and paired it with a pair of fitted black pants, showing off those impossibly long legs to perfection.
He replaced the scent-blocking patch on the back of his neck, adjusted his collar in front of the mirror, then grabbed the original owner's car keys and pink phone before heading out.
Watching the high-tech transportation flying through the sky and racing along the ground, he suddenly realized he couldn't remember how to drive this... car.
He had no choice but to walk. After buying a box of the slightly bitter dark-chocolate mousse Huo Shaoyan could usually tolerate from a century-old dessert shop on the corner, Qi Xing stood at a modern intersection surrounded by towering buildings and crisscrossing elevated tracks—and fell completely silent.
How was he supposed to get to Shaoyan's company?
Although the original owner's memories were in his mind, many of them seemed to have vanished somewhere. For a “man from ancient times” who had spent more than five hundred years living in a mausoleum and guarding an ice coffin, he gracefully admitted it: He was lost.
“Well, well! Isn't this our Young Master Qi?” an exaggerated cry rang out behind him.
Qi Xing turned around and saw a young man with striking silver-gray hair and a flashy jacket staring at him in disbelief.
His memories quickly returned.
Lin Zixiao, the original owner's best friend—a Beta who wasn't exactly brilliant but was innocent and loved having fun.
“Lin Zixiao?” Qi Xing raised an eyebrow.
“Oh my God, Xingxing! Why are you dressed so... so ethereal today?” Lin Zixiao circled Qi Xing twice, clicking his tongue in wonder. “Don't you usually refuse to leave the house until you're covered head to toe in luxury-brand logos? And what's with the dessert in your hand? Where are you going to make a scene this time?”
“To Huo Corporation, to have lunch with Shaoyan,” Qi Xing said matter-of-factly.
“Pfft—!” Lin Zixiao nearly choked to death on his own saliva.
“You're disgusting. Stay away from me!” Qi Xing quickly dodged the droplets flying toward him and said with disgust.
Lin Zixiao stared at him with widened eyes, as if he were looking at an alien. “What did you say you were going to do? Have lunch with Ice-face Huo? Didn't you used to practically want to bite him every time someone mentioned him, saying he was always sticking his nose into your business?”
“That was then. Now I'm certain he can't live without me.” Qi Xing smiled faintly, his beautiful, almost androgynous face seeming to glow in the sunlight. “Actually, you showed up at the perfect time. I don't know the way. Take me there.”
“Huh? You've lived here for twenty-two years, and you're telling me you don't know the way?” Lin Zixiao looked skeptical. But when he saw his best friend's unfairly beautiful face, he still thumped his chest. “Fine, fine, fine. Today, I'll be your chauffeur!”
Ten minutes later.
“Lin Zixiao, are you sure this is the right way?” Qi Xing took a deep breath as he looked at the increasingly desolate old district around them, then cast a suspicious glance toward the driver's seat.
“Uh...” Lin Zixiao stared at the red dot spinning wildly on the navigation screen and scratched his head awkwardly. “The high-tech navigation systems all went on strike today! I didn't realize this multi-level interchange was so complicated... I've actually never been to Huo Shaoyan's company before. Ha-ha.” After two dry laughs, the two “high-tech idiots” stared blankly at each other by the side of the road.
Qi Xing was considering whether to use the less-than-ten percent of his cultivation he had left to teleport there when he suddenly remembered that he didn't know the destination well enough to use instant teleportation.
An elegant silver-blue sedan slowly pulled to a stop beside them.
The window rolled down, revealing a refined, scholarly face.
“Xing? Zixiao? What are you two doing here?” Shen Linfeng, Huo Shaoyan's childhood friend and family acquaintance, smiled at the two somewhat bedraggled young men.
“Big Brother Shen!” Lin Zixiao looked as if he'd seen his savior. He opened the car door and rushed over. “We're lost! Xingxing wanted to go to Huo Corporation to find Huo Shaoyan, but I brought him all the way out here to the middle of nowhere!”
Shen Linfeng looked at Qi Xing in surprise, then smiled gently. “Shaoyan's company is in the opposite direction. At this hour, he should be in an executive meeting. Qi Xing, is there something urgent you need him for?”
“Nothing urgent.” Qi Xing fanned himself with his slender fingers in disdain and said with brazen indulgence, “I just missed him. Big Brother Shen, could you call him for me? I don't want to look at this idiot's useless navigation anymore. Tell him to come pick me up.”
Shen Linfeng froze for a moment. In their eyes, Qi Xing had always avoided Huo Shaoyan as if he were terrified of him. Since when had he become so openly clingy?
Still, he good-naturedly pulled out his phone and dialed Huo Shaoyan's private number.
At that moment, in the top-floor conference room at Huo Corporation headquarters, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
Dozens of executives sat with their heads lowered, trembling so hard they scarcely dared to breathe. Huo Shaoyan sat at the head of the table, radiating an icy, bone-chilling pressure.
His clean buzz cut made him look even more aggressive. His fingertips tapped against the tabletop in a steady rhythm, each click sounding like a death knell.
“Redo this proposal. If I don't see an acceptable budget proposal by tomorrow afternoon, the entire planning department will be sent to the branch office to clear land.” His merciless voice fell, and cold sweat poured down the executives' backs.
Just then, the private phone on the table began to vibrate.
Huo Shaoyan's brow furrowed. Not many people knew his private number, especially at this hour.
He glanced at the screen and saw Shen Linfeng's name. He was about to hang up, but then he thought it might have something to do with Tang Wanrou or Qi Xing. He raised a hand to signal a pause in the meeting and answered.
“Linfeng, what is it? I'm in a meeting.” His voice was cold and hard.
But the voice that came through the phone wasn't Shen Linfeng's warm, gentle one. Instead, it was a familiar voice, soft and clingy, even carrying a hint of brazen entitlement.
“Shaoyan, what kind of meeting are you in? I'm practically starving.”
Huo Shaoyan's fingers stopped tapping against the table.
The executives in the conference room had been bracing themselves for the CEO to explode. To their horror, they discovered that the icy aura surrounding their normally decisive, frost-faced, iron-blooded CEO had miraculously dissipated by more than half in an instant.
“Qi Xing?” Huo Shaoyan's voice unconsciously lowered, carrying a trace of helplessness. “Why are you using Linfeng's phone? Where are you?”
“I'm at some intersection whose name I don't know, and it's so hot here.” Qi Xing whined into the phone, his drawn-out tone seductive and a little aggrieved. “That idiot Lin Zixiao took a wrong turn. I'm exhausted. My feet hurt, and I can't walk anymore. Come pick me up. I want to eat at that private dining restaurant near your company. Godmother told me it's good. Come eat with me.”
“Stop fooling around. I'm in an important year-end meeting.” Huo Shaoyan's face darkened, but there wasn't even a hint of reproach in his voice.
“I don't care.” Qi Xing gave a soft hum, his little-troublemaker streak emerging with utterly brazen confidence. “If you don't come, I'll stand here in the sun. If I get tanned or suffer heatstroke, I'll go back to Godmother's house tonight and tell on you. I'll say you left me hanging and made me wander the streets until I got dark and ugly. Then you'll have no choice but to marry me.”
That trick again. And Huo Shaoyan fell for it every time.
He could almost see the fair, beautiful young man through the phone—pouting unhappily while smugly waiting for him to give in.
Huo Shaoyan rubbed his brow and looked at the executives in the conference room, all of them staring in shock with their necks stretched out as they secretly listened.
“...Go sit in Linfeng's car. Don't stand in the sun.”
Huo Shaoyan stood up and buttoned his suit jacket as he issued his orders in a low voice. “Have Linfeng send me his location. I'll be there in ten minutes. Don't wander off. Do you hear me?”
“Got it. Hurry up, okay?” Qi Xing laughed triumphantly and hung up.
Huo Shaoyan lowered the phone and looked at the speechless subordinates below him.
Without changing expression, he packed up his briefcase and said flatly, “Meeting adjourned. Submit the proposal to my office tomorrow. Have my assistant handle everything else.”
With that, the CEO strode out of the conference room on his long legs, moving like a gust of wind and leaving behind a group of executives staring at one another as if they had just survived a disaster.
Had the CEO... just smiled at the person on the other end of the phone?
Oh my God. Was the world about to end?!