Do Not Bully A Thirty-Year-Old Elderly Person! - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: “Old Bastard, Are You Still Trying to Die?”

Huo Suo had spent half the day getting a handle on the situation. He had formulated countless plans in his head and had mentally vetted every potential suspect, starting with his own assistant Qin Sui and going all the way up to those board members at Jihong Group who were practically salivating at the prospect of his downfall.

When this man worked, he was no different from a machine. Cold-blooded and ruthless, he would disassemble every living person like a set of mechanical parts, peering at them under a microscope until every detail was exposed, refusing to remove anyone from his scale of suspicion until he was certain they had no flaws.

However, as of now, he truly had no leads to explain this bizarre phenomenon. But at the very least, Huo Suo knew that news of his “condition” must not leak. Otherwise, those old vultures who had been watching him with greedy eyes for so long would surely consume him—and this high schooler—until not a single bone remained.

Zhou Zhan lived in an old neighborhood in the East Alley. Although the exterior looked dilapidated, the interior was surprisingly tidy and clean.

Huo Suo leaned against the doorframe, carrying a giant flashlight and wearing an expressionless face: “Don’t you plan on installing electric lights?”

“Can’t you see it’s a tripped breaker?” Zhou Zhan retorted coldly to his sarcastic remark, skillfully pulling a toolbox from the cabinet.

“My eyes deceived me,” Huo Suo sighed, as if suddenly enlightened. “Looking around, I don’t see a single high-wattage appliance. It’s so bare I didn’t think it was possible to trip a circuit.”

“Yeah, all the appliances in this house combined don’t have as much power as your mouth.”

He watched as Zhou Zhan rolled up his priceless shirt sleeves, fiddling with the breaker box for a long time to no avail. Huo Suo frowned and ordered: “Stop fixing it. Until we switch back, you’re staying at my place.”

Huo Suo lacked many things, but he certainly didn’t lack real estate.

Taking a step back, was he really expected to let the CEO of a listed conglomerate stand in a decrepit shack trying to fix a circuit breaker? If his business rivals saw the CEO living in such misery before his twilight years, they might actually feel relieved.

Zhou Zhan had his back to him, his expression unreadable, but Huo Suo could hear a cold, emotionless laugh from the high schooler: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Except for Huo Sicheng, Huo Suo had little experience in raising “children.” He acted like a feudal patriarch who hadn’t forgotten his life as a Qing Dynasty noble. Unwaveringly, he snatched the phone Zhou Zhan had left on the shoe cabinet and started looking for a house, swiping through several options: “Take a look… Hmm, there’s one near your school, and another villa that’s just been renovated. Pick one you like.”

“…” Zhou Zhan had been playing the “hating the rich” persona for over a decade and was almost dazzled by the sugar-coated bullets of capitalism. He clicked his tongue, ungratefully snatched the phone back, turned the screen off, threw it on the sofa, and told Huo Suo concisely, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Two pairs of eyes stared at each other in the dim light—

One second, two seconds, three seconds… “Zzzzt!” The light bulb flickered twice, and brilliance returned to the room.

Huo Suo subconsciously closed his eyes, only half a beat late in remembering that he wasn’t in his original body.

Sure enough, he heard a low curse. He opened his eyes to see Zhou Zhan uncomfortably taking off his glasses, his palms pressing against his eyes, which were reddened from the sudden exposure to bright light.

“Sit down, close your eyes, take a moment,” Huo Suo said. He was very familiar with this routine. He turned, grabbed a clean towel from the bathroom, soaked it in cold water, and placed it over Zhou Zhan’s eyelids. “In the future, if you encounter bright light in the dark, close your eyes first.”

The house was filled with scents that were extremely familiar to Zhou Zhan. A safe environment should have allowed his consciousness to relax after an afternoon of tension. But his home rarely had a second person, and even more bizarrely, this strange second person was, physically speaking, himself.

Zhou Zhan was just a soul clumsily squeezed into another shell, dazed and uneasy, accepting the unfamiliar pain of this body while caught off guard.

He tilted his head back, his stinging eyes involuntarily shedding physiological tears. A cool, damp towel was placed roughly over his lids. Immediately, the pads of a hand covered his eye sockets with practiced skill, precisely massaging in circles, miraculously relieving the headache caused by the strain on his ocular nerves.

Strange yet familiar breaths intertwined in the dead of night.

The boundaries of “self” and “other,” which had always been clear and sharp since childhood, suddenly blurred for Zhou Zhan.

“Feeling better?”

No one understood this broken body better than Huo Suo himself; his technique was expert.

Under the towel, the high schooler mumbled: “…Better.”

“Since you’re better, let’s continue.” Huo Suo took the opportunity to sit on the nearby sofa, fingers interlaced between his legs, in a typical negotiation stance.

Zhou Zhan took the towel to the bathroom to wring it out, placed it neatly on the rack, and sat back down: “Fine, what else do you want to talk about?”

“Are you working while studying?”

“More or less.”

“You don’t have to struggle so much in the future. I will sponsor you in my personal capacity, whether for high school or university.” The CEO was accustomed to trading benefits for benefits. “In return, until I find a way to switch back, you must stay with me, play my role, and not let a single bit of news leak.”

The conditions sounded excellent. Even a capitalist as stingy with concessions as CEO Huo felt he had been very generous.

However, the rebellious high schooler rejected him without hesitation: “During this period, I will play you, and you will play me. Once our identities are switched back, you are you, and I am mine.”

He made it clear he didn’t want to have anything to do with capitalists and wealthy families. CEO Huo was rarely shown such blatant disgust, especially by a mere child. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the high schooler for a long time.

The rebellious high schooler was a newborn calf unafraid of tigers, gazing back steadily without the slightest hint of retreat.

Huo Suo frowned slightly, seemingly contemplating the feasibility. Faces of cunning old men slid past his mind one by one. In the end, he didn’t trust Zhou Zhan to act as him: “Think about it again. I’ll find a way within half a month. I’ll hire A-University graduates to tutor you for all the lessons you’ve missed. Besides that…”

“You still didn’t understand what I meant.” Zhou Zhan had no intention of listening further. He interrupted him, his brow furrowed and voice low: “I said, I only accept one way. I don’t want my life to change because of you.”

On that face, which usually wore an immovable mask, a flicker of youthful, sharp malice appeared.

CEO Huo sneered: “Naive.”

Zhou Zhan returned the sneer: “CEO Huo, frankly speaking, you are the one in a bigger hurry.”

“…”

When cursing others as cunning old foxes, Huo Suo knew he was also a veteran cunning old fox himself. Being outmaneuvered by a child in a trivial matter made him so angry he laughed: “Do you think I’m bargaining with you?”

He had never been a soft-hearted entrepreneur with a conscience; that stuff had been fed to the dogs eight hundred years ago. In negotiations, Huo Suo had accumulated countless unscrupulous experiences that made others back away in fear.

His dark, heavy eyes were like the blade of a finely honed knife.

Huo Suo’s gaze fell on Zhou Zhan, but it pierced through him, through the ill-fitting skin and flesh, and nailed itself directly onto his soul. Zhou Zhan felt his skin, muscles, and bones being peeled away layer by layer under that gaze, displayed bloody and raw in public, making one’s hair stand on end.

Zhou Zhan sneered inwardly. He stood up slowly, looked down at Huo Suo, hooked his lips in a malicious provocation, and leaned over: “Besides bargaining with me, do you have any other choice, CEO Huo?”

Under the moonlight, his eyes were brightly scorching, like two wild fires burning fiercely.

Huo Suo reached out and grabbed the dark red tie, forcing Zhou Zhan to look at him eye-to-eye before threatening in a low voice: “You wouldn’t want to test that.”

The distance between the two was extremely close. Logically, being this close to one’s own face should have felt weird, but both seemed not to notice, seeing only the eyes full of malice, calculation, and scrutiny.

The atmosphere was stiflingly tense. Their muscles were tightly coiled, in a ready-to-strike state; it was anyone’s guess whose eyes would twitch first, and the next moment would be a punch to the face.

CEO Huo was also very double-standard about keeping up appearances. For example, right now, he felt no psychological burden about bullying the young. His mind was solely focused on beating this arrogant youngster into submission.

“CEO Huo, I’ve tolerated your family for a long time.”

The arrogance of their entire family—was that some kind of hereditary disease? They should really see a doctor.

“Then you’ve been very patient.” Huo Suo hooked his lips into a smile that wasn’t quite a smile.

It was like a spark on a fuse, ready to detonate.

But this bomb, which had reached its breaking point, failed to ignite. A loud, metallic crash suddenly echoed throughout the space.

Immediately afterward, a pitch-black shadow darted out from nowhere and leaped onto Huo Suo’s shoulder.

“Garlic bird! Garlic bird!”

“Garlic bird, not easy—”

The little creature’s voice was sharp and thin, flattened into a single line, but unexpectedly clear in its articulation. It used its chaotic tone to mediate the fight.

Upon hearing this sound, Zhou Zhan’s expression changed drastically.

The confrontational atmosphere suddenly deflated, like a balloon pricked by a needle.

Huo Suo was stunned for a long time before reacting: “What is this thing?”

“Dead bird.”

“?”

“Budgerigar.” Zhou Zhan tried to pluck the “dead bird” from Huo Suo’s shoulder, but the creature had the body of a bird and the nature of a loach. It stood on Huo Suo’s shoulder one moment and on Zhou Zhan’s head the next, dashing back and forth without knowing who its owner was.

Finally, Zhou Zhan had to let the bird hang on his priceless suit and stood up to feed it, resigned to his fate.

“Xiao Lan-zi—”

“Old bastard, are you still trying to die—”

Huo Suo followed subconsciously and heard the bird pecking violently at his suit, spitting foul language: “…”

“You zebra—” (A regional swear word)

To this, the master, who was long accustomed to it, explained: “The bird my grandfather raised. He used to live in Hancheng.”