HOYSE CHAPTER 97

Chapter 97 — Can You Stop Smiling

Although he had already received the text message, seeing his younger brother with his own eyes felt completely different.

Xie Ling’s emotions surged and then settled almost at once. He had a thousand questions about that sudden disappearance, but he remembered Gu Xi’s warning and held them back. As long as his brother had come back, what Xie Ling could do was this: when Rong Jing was forced to leave again, he would keep everything running and protect what mattered.

The text from Gu Xi had arrived yesterday. Why was Rong Jing only appearing today? Xie Ling had clearly given him three days.

Rong Jing thought his brother’s expression was a little strange, but he did not dwell on it. They discussed the company’s strategy for the second half of the year, and the conversation moved to the enormous sum Grandfather had left in RS Bank. Letting it sit and accrue interest was not a bad plan, but according to the old man’s wishes they should put it to work and create new value.

With a change at the helm, Xie Group ought to show new momentum.

On how to use that capital, continue scaling Xie Group, or branch into new sectors, they disagreed. Both had their arguments in order and neither could convince the other. Whatever they decided, they agreed on one thing: they would not waste their grandfather’s legacy.

In the original plot, if Xie Jisheng had not gone mad and hunted the rest of the Xie family to the ends of the earth, the group would never have been swallowed by the Wu conglomerate. Even if a buyout had happened, had he treated the elder brother decently, he would not have lost access to that lifesaving fund.
This world seemed to run on a script that claimed everything was fated.

When talk of future direction stalled, Rong Jing simply bowed out. He only wanted to be a salted fish with no dreams. Managing a company interested him less than a grain of rice.

Xie Ling could only smile helplessly. If not to shoulder part of the burden, this kid would never have walked into headquarters to talk shop. He decided to plan slowly and told his brother, “Take care of your own affairs for a while. I will hold the fort.”

By “affairs” he meant the obvious: his brother had finally started dating. In Xie Ling’s eyes, someone like Gu Xi, top-tier, dazzling, and proud, could take off at any time. Rong Jing needed to put his heart into it. As for future investments, those should still pass under his eye.

Seeing that faint, lingering fear in his brother’s eyes, Rong Jing gave an awkward smile.

His earliest bets, like Fun Video, had exploded the moment they went live. A series of small companies he backed around the same time all showed strong upward curves. In the investment world, that was rare. For Xie Group, it was electrifying.

By now, stories of the young investor named Rong were circulating in the industry.

This was why Xie Ling found the phrase “investment black hole” a joke. He had backed Fun to support his brother, not because he believed in the app. The video sector was saturated; early returns could be eye-catching, but the endgame often meant losing your shirt. Who could have predicted that a product so many doubted would go supernova? Fun alone had multiplied Rong Jing’s assets many times over, and the curve was still climbing.

Xie Ling remembered a business interview during Fun’s hottest month. The magazine spoke to CEO Qiu Xiang.

The first half was boilerplate, debt to nine-figure valuation, grind and grit, everyone nodding off, until the reporter asked: “When Fun was at its most desperate, how did you land the one investment that mattered?”

Qiu Xiang, eyes full of nostalgia: “By then I had lost count of the rejections. I was at rock bottom, sitting on the curb and crying. Crying solves nothing. After I wiped my face and stood up, a handsome kid who looked barely out of college walked up and asked, straight out: ‘How much do you need?’”

The reporter leaned forward: “And how much did the gentleman invest?”

Viewers leaned forward too. Then the episode cut to black. Cliffhanger. Everyone had to wait a week, and the comments roasted the channel for being cruel even in finance shows.

Truth was, even Xie Ling did not know the details after he wired that first hundred million. He could hardly ask his brother something so trivial, so he waited with everyone else.

A week later the follow-up aired and, unusually, even slipped onto the trending list. People were curious: who was this young, handsome investor? Where did the money come from? Why Fun, sharp eye or dumb luck?

The omegas focused on the “handsome” part. How handsome, exactly? Why had the CEO emphasized it? Show us the face!

Some tried to dox. A surname surfaced: Rong. Recently a high-profile young executive at Xie Group also had the surname Rong. Could they be the same person?

The rumor mill spun. Some fanbases that disliked Rong Jing sneered first: “So convenient. A fresh grad who is both an executive and a Midas-touch investor? Please.”

Most bystanders found it far-fetched. “It’s a coincidence. Don’t drag him down with wild guesses.”

Fan leaders rallied the troops: “Keep the comments steady. Do not let baseless gossip weigh on him while he is filming.”

In the second episode, Qiu Xiang confessed he had named a figure meant to scare the kid away. “I asked for two million. In truth, eighty thousand would have kept the lights on.”

People perked up. Where would a regular student get two million?

Qiu Xiang chuckled. “You will not believe it. The kid asked if we could bump it to five million.”

The reporter: “Were you ecstatic? A windfall from the heavens?”
Qiu Xiang: “No. I felt like I had hustled a child and was ashamed. Then I met his ‘parent’ and realized I had overthought it.”
Reporter: “The parent forbade the investment?”
Qiu Xiang: “The parent said, ‘It is tire money for a car. If the little brother wants to play, let him play.’”

The clip blew up. Fun’s traffic spiked again and trended to number one for a time.
Comments poured in:
— “The world owes me a brother like that.”
— “So real-life overpowered CEOs exist. I am swooning.”
— “Does no one notice that this casual ‘play’ is now eight figures in assets?”
— “I kneeled. With traffic.”
— “Why is his twenty-whatever so different from mine? I feel like I lived as a dog.”
— “Investor-sama, should I kneel with clicks or for real?”

Memes multiplied. “It is only XXXXXXX, he likes to XXXXXXX” spread across the internet. Still, the investor never revealed himself. The heat eventually subsided, though people tucked the rumor away. If the mask ever slipped, the reveal would be spectacular.

Because of those investments, Xie Ling no longer believed his brother’s modesty. The kid was excellent at almost everything, except he badly underestimated himself.

At a banquet, after a chat with Qiu Xiang, who trusted and adored Rong Jing, Xie Ling decided to widen the war chest. He allocated more capital and told Rong Jing to deploy it as he saw fit. No matter how he protested, the funds arrived on schedule.

Rong Jing could not argue forever. He stared at the extra zeros in his account, sighed, and launched a second wave of investments, some targeting the five scumbags’ “reserve” projects, others simply to test his luck.

The world had changed. Maybe his infamous “black-hole” luck had expired.

It had not. The lesson arrived fast: do not dabble. He really had no talent for this part.

Worse, several targets were snatched first by the Wu conglomerate. Accidentally stepping on Wu’s toes should have felt great, and it did until he remembered Wu Hanqi’s expression the last time they met. The feeling turned into a strange mix of sweet and sour.

Xie Ling, imagining his brother and future brother-in-law wrapped in newlywed bliss, decided not to third-wheel. He handed over a bag he had asked Zhou Xiang to prepare and basically waved his brother off.

Rong Jing took the bag without checking and got in the car. When Gu Xi asked what it was, he passed it over. Gu Xi peeked inside and laughed so hard his stomach hurt.

Back at their little nest, Gu Xi told him to go look it up by himself. Rong Jing sighed, put it off till after lunch, and headed into the kitchen.

Gu Xi offered to help, but Rong Jing, citing “doctor’s orders,” firmly refused. Thus, Gu Xi wandered the house instead.

He checked the storage room that had given him so much grief. Alongside gas masks were a meticulous spread of other self-defense supplies. It felt less like a rich man’s home and more like a battlefield supply depot.

He picked up the gas mask he hated most and tossed it into the farthest corner. As if he would forget. His memory was excellent.

In the study, he planned to grab a professional book, but a small booklet had slipped down by the desk leg. The housekeeper avoided important rooms like the study, so it had not been tidied.

Gu Xi bent to pick it up. The title on the cover made him pause. He opened it.

1. Come whenever he calls.

2. Always pay attention to his needs.

3. Prepare an apartment he can move into at any time, but do not let him find out.

4. A camper van that stays warm in winter and cool in summer. Modify the power system, gearbox to XX automatic, add an extender…

Page after page. Nearly three dozen entries, and it looked like Rong Jing had planned to keep adding more.

A sponsor’s handbook? It had to be his. What sponsor does all this? Even many “great boyfriends” would not.

The pages had the softened edges of frequent use. He must have read it often before. Rong Jing was meticulous; he would not leave something like this lying around. The copy probably threw it here.

If they had never confessed, maybe Rong Jing would still be following the list, doing his best to be an adequate “sponsor.” In fact, for the first few items he still did them to a T.

Was everything Rong Jing did now just by-the-book? Gu Xi ticked down the list. Quite a few matched.

When he came downstairs, the sound of knife against board made him relax.

This simple, quiet day used to be something he did not dare dream of. With his physique, it would always be hard to find a partner. And even if he found one, would those scumbags let him be?

After the rain, sunlight streamed through the high windows. Gu Xi watched Rong Jing shred vegetables at the counter. Dust motes drifted in the beam.

Just looking at him like this settled Gu Xi’s heart. The corners of his lips lifted without him knowing.
If he could trade everything he had for a day like this, he would.

Two arms slipped around Rong Jing’s waist from behind. He stopped his hands. “No mischief. Go sit at the table.”

Gu Xi pressed his cheek to Rong Jing’s back and asked, muffled, “Does our contract still count?”

Lightning flashed through Rong Jing’s mind. He had forgotten that.

“I will go tear it up later,” he said.

“Tearing it up is a waste. Burning paper is bad for the environment.”

“Then what do we do?”

“You forgot my other identity? Be my secret lover and let me steal you home, all right?” Gu Xi rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

Rong Jing dodged that deliberately tempting look, scooped the omega up, and carried him. Gu Xi startled, closed his eyes, already picturing bed or couch or—

Rong Jing set him down at the dining table. Gu Xi’s eyes flew open. His flushed face froze, then smoothed into a calm mask.

“Sit,” Rong Jing said firmly. “Do not move. When we finish eating, we will do a little studying.”

“What are we studying?” Gu Xi asked.

“How to handle alphas properly.”

In the original plot, Gu Xi had been too pure and paid for it. Rong Jing was determined to make him sharp. When facing alphas, the harder the better. A moment ago he had almost lost his temper.

After lunch, Gu Xi insisted he wash the dishes while Rong Jing sat and “supervised.”

Then he declared he needed a short rest before any “lessons.”

He used Rong Jing’s thigh as a pillow. By the time Rong Jing thought to rouse him, the omega was already asleep on his lap. Looking down at that rosy face, Rong Jing sighed and pinched his cheek. “You did that on purpose.”

He tucked a throw over him, adjusted Gu Xi’s position, and finally remembered the bag from his brother. While easing Gu Xi into a more comfortable angle, he googled a few keywords on his phone: deer antler, seahorse… effects?

The top result: “tonic for virility.”

Rong Jing: …

Thank you, ge…

He glanced at the sleeping omega, who looked especially content. Had he laughed a little too loudly just now?

Still, in the original story Gu Xi feared intimacy. Rong Jing gave a wry smile. “He probably will not want any of that.”

---

The “Heaven’s Will” was not so easy to deceive. Wu Hanqi had agreed to Rong Jing’s bet partly because he appreciated him, a young man he found interesting, and partly because he wanted to run an experiment. If he obeyed Heaven’s Will and sealed one of the five senses, what would happen? If he defied it, what then?

Time delivered an answer.

After he lost his sense of taste, the Wu family’s fortunes did not falter. If anything, they improved slightly.

But this time, when he tried to tip the scales, something broke the balance. He’d been coughing blood for days, chest tightness dogging his steps, a disruption he could not ignore.

He went to the hospital. Nothing was wrong.

If Heaven’s Will decided “he” was disobedient, it could always slap a terminal diagnosis on him.

That was a threat. And Wu Hanqi was not a man who accepted being controlled. Not by people, not by gods.

He had endured as a boy, gone wild in his youth, and become restrained in middle age. After childhood, no one dictated his fate. He liked Rong Jing because he saw himself in him, each era, each layer. When he liked something rare, he preferred to cultivate it, to raise a worthy opponent and play on the market board.

Not wage some life-and-death war. This was not a palace coup. Killing did not fit his style.

Since he was young, he had sensed that something about this world was off. He had a secret he told no one: he could feel a pattern, a strange law shaping events.

Take Gu Xi, for instance. From birth, the omega seemed to draw the world’s attention without trying. Calling Gu Xi the center of the story would not be an exaggeration.

It bored him, because he could feel outcomes in advance such as Wu family’s inevitable success and Xie family’s gradual decline.

Rong Jing was the only one who broke pattern. How could that not be interesting? In a dull life, he was a stripe of color.

Days later the warnings escalated.

Several S-class labs burst into flames one after another. Staff died but police found nothing. A shadowy agency stepped in and also found nothing.

The dead were buried with honor and their families received generous compensation.

Something out there had been driven mad. Wu Hanqi sensed it. He laid flowers, paid his respects, then went alone to his last S-class lab in the capital.

Standing on the platform, he looked up at the heavy sky. “If I do not play by your rules,” he said calmly, “what can you do to me?”

He knew exactly what Heaven’s Will wanted: for him to sacrifice his five senses to wipe out the bug. Why should he clean up a mess it could not handle? It had given him power. That was inviting a wolf into the house.

Lightning split the clouds and wind screamed. A bolt struck the lab and fire leapt, racing outward.

Those days, Wu Fuyi had felt on edge. His father’s face looked wrong.

When he went to the study and found it empty, the tissue in the trash was stained red. Was it blood?

He panicked and called his father’s aide. He learned his father had gone to the lab. Several labs had had “incidents,” and the group’s stock had dipped.

With no better idea, Wu Fuyi called Rong Jing. He picked up while he and Gu Xi were in a supermarket debating carrots. Big and sweet? Or small and fresh? They bought both in the end.

Hearing the panic in Wu Fuyi’s voice, Rong Jing explained the situation to Gu Xi. 

Gu Xi thought for a second, swallowed the bitterness down, and said, “Go check on him. It might be serious.” Then, silently: I am coming too.

Gu Xi drove and they picked Wu Fuyi up en route. He climbed in without a word.

They reached the outskirts. From a distance they could already see flames devouring the lab. Gu Xi dialed the fire department, while Rong Jing and Wu Fuyi jumped out and ran toward the blaze.

On the roof, a man stood wreathed in firelight like a god in the storm.

Fire butterflies swirled around him, and whenever the waves of heat rolled close, they were pushed aside by some invisible force, leaving a patch of empty space at his feet.

He held his hand to a lick of flame. It shrank back. “As expected,” he said softly. “You cannot kill me.”

You gave me power and bound yourself to me. You shed your advantage the moment you merged with me. Now you cannot kill me. All you can do is threaten.

Just as Rong Jing had learned that Heaven’s Will could not erase him outright, Wu Hanqi had found the same flaw.

He had used himself as bait, wagering his life to get the answer. Once Heaven’s Will empowered him, it could not destroy him. In fact, it would now have to protect him. As he reached for the reins, as if in answer, Wu Fuyi ran to the building below. He saw a figure on the roof, maybe his father, maybe not, and shouted, “Dad!”

Wu Hanqi looked down at his son. Doctors had once said this child would not live. He had raised him by hand, inch by inch. Even if he had made mistakes later, it did not change the love for his only child.

Wu Fuyi would have charged into the inferno if Rong Jing had not grabbed him. A burning steel beam fell from above. If Rong Jing had not knocked him flat, it would have crushed him.

Wu Fuyi stared at the smoking beam, shaken. Was that there a moment ago?

Wu Hanqi watched, then looked up at the thundering sky.

The message was clear. If I cannot kill you, I can kill your son. The bug named Rong Jing must go. Remove him and the world returns to normal.

What “normal”? A story shackled by rules, where everyone must play their assigned part?

That kind of “normal” can go to hell.

In his mind’s eye, Wu Hanqi saw the little lights he used to track sides. The last figurine on his own side was flickering.

The gold tile that represented Gu Xi and the red “BUG” tile that stood for Rong Jing were also flashing.

Both sides were at the edge. If “his side” won, the old Heaven’s Will would only grow stronger, restoring the status quo, and as its proxy he might not survive the outcome.

If Gu Xi and Rong Jing shattered the system and burned away the last of its strength, the world would be remade and the old Heaven’s Will would wither. As its host, he might die as well. 

But that was also the best window for seizing control.

Wu Hanqi’s ambition had always been frightening. He intended to turn from prey into hunter and take the reins.

Wu Fuyi lay on the ground and saw his father step through fire and walk toward him.

Behind that figure, fire butterflies erupted and rioted in the air. For a heartbeat he forgot how impossible the sight was.

Rong Jing, too, watched Wu Hanqi emerge from the flames. The man’s eyes were colder, steadier, as if all the ripples had frozen over. A true observer.

“Uncle Qi,” Rong Jing said.

Wu Hanqi tipped his head and told his son, “Come.”

Wu Fuyi went to him. Seeing that not even his father’s clothes were singed, his mind stumbled. He stole a glance at that icy profile and fell silent.

Father and son brushed past Rong Jing and Gu Xi.

“Pray for yourselves,” Wu Hanqi said.

The words drifted through the blaze. Blood stained his lips again as he wiped them.

Its power is fading.

To hasten the dissipation, I will “aid the tyrant.” You will have to defy heaven completely. Break everything.

There is a kind of man who prepares to strike you even as he smiles and wishes you luck.

When Rong Jing saw that smile on Wu Hanqi’s face, every hair on his body stood up. Whenever that man smiled at him like that, nothing good followed.

You are fine, sir. Could you stop smiling?

Sirens wailed in the distance as engines screamed up the road. Gu Xi looked at the storm of fire butterflies, then at Wu Hanqi’s retreating back. A chill crawled beneath his skin. He squeezed Rong Jing’s hand tight.

“I cannot shake the feeling his intentions are not pure,” Gu Xi murmured. “We already fight off As and Os. Now a B wants to join the competition?”

Rong Jing: “…”

Just like that, the tension cracked.

Rong Jing interlaced their fingers. As long as this person was beside him, what was there to fear?

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