My Weak Lover Became A Weird Boss - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: He Loves Me, and Exactly Zero People Care

“Wen Zhu?”

Because Wen Zhu had been silent for too long, the voice on the other end of the line called his name again.

“Okay, I understand,” Wen Zhu said, looking at the bean paste roll in his bowl; it was so sweet it tasted bitter. “Get back to work. I’m hanging up now.”

On the television, a video of the explosion was playing on a loop. Terrifying thick smoke swirled above. Perhaps because the footage was captured in such a hurry, the content was slightly out of focus—consequently, no one noticed the eerie ring of dark cyan surrounding the smoke.

News segments cycled from “Ms. Liu spends a fortune to find her son who went missing three years ago—a thinning-haired Pomeranian” to “Mistresses and side-pieces unite with the legal wife to poison a cheating scumbag, regrettably sentenced.” Through it all, Wen Zhu remained motionless, quietly watching the TV, though his eyes never truly focused.

The golden light of the sun gradually sank into his pitch-black pupils. A day that would seem restless to a human was, to many ancient, nameless, undying entities, merely a few cycles of breath.

It was only when the golden glow on the balcony faded into dimness that Wen Zhu finally moved. He reached out to turn off the television, but his body suddenly stiffened. The moment he raised his arm, hideous black veins coiled around it.

As day shifted to night, faint moonlight spilled into the room.

The shadow on the white wall behind him sank into deep darkness. When the moonlight hit, a giant, distorted black shadow was projected onto the pale wall—a shadow so large the wall could barely contain it.

In the next instant, the writhing giant shadow on the wall shrank.

Hiss—

Wen Zhu felt familiar, icy scales press against his back. A smooth, pure white snake body wound tightly around his spine and up his arm. This snake was at least as large as an anaconda, yet its entire body was a flawless ivory white. Its resilient jaw opened into a bloody maw, its sharp fangs glinting with a cold white light under the moon.

“Have you all gone mad?” Wen Zhu frowned. He used his other hand to pry open the white snake’s mouth. With a ruthless “crack” of his fingertips, he snapped off a fang. Blood immediately sprayed across half his arm from the wound. He spoke in an impatient, cold voice: “Even you’ve come out to seek death?”

Clearly, it was his own bad temper! Yet he pushed the blame for his violence onto a naive little snake.

The giant white snake tensed in pain, flicking its tongue violently at Wen Zhu. Its body coiled into a strike position, but after its golden vertical pupils met his indifferent gaze, it deflated again. It couldn’t swallow Wen Zhu in one bite, and constriction had little effect on him. The white snake immediately began to act out a show of pathetic grievance.

“I have a bad temper?”

Wen Zhu tossed the fang—he’d lost count of how many he’d pulled—into the trash can. He ignored the black veins and vessels crawling over him, which wriggled with increasing excitement after smelling blood of the same scent. His tone was quite gentle, sounding more like a soft murmur than a question.

The bloody maw, which had been majestically flicking its tongue, was suddenly squeezed shut by a pale hand, nearly causing the white snake to bite its own tongue.

Looking up, Wen Zhu was smiling as he stared at it: “Tell me, where exactly is my temper ‘bad’?”

Firstly, an anaconda cannot speak. Secondly, even though it couldn’t speak, it was still being held by the mouth by a tyrant who was lashing out in embarrassment!

Wen Zhu snorted, wondering why he was arguing with a stupid snake that knew nothing but eating.

The television was clicked off.

Outside the window, the skyscrapers were still draped in eternal lights that stretched across the long, rugged river. From somewhere, the aroma of charred tiger-skin green peppers drifted in; night was when the city felt most alive with the “scent of human life.”

Wen Zhu withdrew his gaze. At some point, the giant snake had coiled around him, settling peacefully in several circles. Its porcelain-white scales were patterned with mysterious markings. He gently hooked the white snake’s chin, and its blood-stained tongue tentatively and trustingly brushed against his fingertip.

After a long silence, Wen Zhu spoke softly:

“But this might not be a bad thing.”

“Let them slaughter each other. None of them are anything good. It’s better if they all die out.”

He lowered his eyes with exhaustion, hiding the deep-seated loathing and fatigue within. The giant white snake pressed intimately against his fingertip as if in agreement—even though it understood nothing.

Pei Qingshan had recently moved the Beidou Bureau’s office near his home, so he was returning home more and more frequently. Liao Xin and the Beidou staff went from “Who? You said who left work on time? That workaholic named Pei?” to “He’s off on time again! Is no one going to do anything about him?!”

At this stage, since no higher-ranking leaders had come down yet, the disgruntled crowd could only seethe in silence.

“Yo, brought lunch from home again?” Li Weiguang passed by Pei Qingshan’s table holding a tray, looking sourly at the four colorful little lunch boxes on his desk.

Pei Qingshan chewed on a pork rib, thought for a moment, and then critiqued: “A bit dry.”

“Who asked you?” Li Weiguang snorted. He had intended to sit down, but his path was blocked by a long leg appearing out of nowhere.

Li Weiguang sneered: “Trying to trip me? How old are you to be doing something so childish?”

“Come, sit.” Pei Qingshan jerked his chin, and Liao Xin immediately made a space opposite him.

“What for?”

“I want to ask you something.”

Seeing Pei Qingshan’s expression so serious, Li Weiguang froze and sat down in front of him.

“What happened?” Li Weiguang lowered his head and asked in a low, frowning voice. Did the Red Tower pull some new stunt?

The atmosphere among the three turned heavy. Even Adjutant Liao cast a wary glance.

Two minutes later—

“What?” Li Weiguang dug at his ear in disbelief. “You’re having a marital crisis?”

Exactly zero people cared.

“Do you even know how to talk?” Pei Qingshan gritted his teeth. “It’s just that married life has become a bit flat!”

“Boss, have you ever actually had ‘passion’?” Adjutant Liao asked sharply.

“If you’re full, go find a way to get the Security Council to approve our funding,” Pei Qingshan glanced at Liao Xin with contempt. “You’ve been going to mixers for three years and they haven’t done you any good.”

Li Weiguang—who had married his childhood sweetheart the moment they reached legal age and was still happily married after a ten-year marathon—actually became the most authoritative voice among the three. He gave a fake cough: “Since when is a relationship a competition? Arguments are normal. It’s even more normal for the passion to fade after living together for so long.”

“Is that so?” Pei Qingshan was skeptical. He hesitated, strangely unwilling to tell the others about those eye-catching red marks and the jacket. He emphasized: “I don’t even spend two months a year at home.”

Based on the actual time spent together, weren’t he and Wen Zhu supposed to be in the “passionate honeymoon” phase?

“That top student professor from Lin University clearly doesn’t have a fiery personality; ‘ice beauties’ are all like that,” Li Weiguang offered a different perspective. Then he paused, staring into Pei Qingshan’s eyes. “Besides, you’re hiding so much from him. Let me ask you: Have you ever thought about where these lies will lead you both?”

Whoever discovered one day that the husband they had shared a bed with for seven years was a complete fake—from his background to his profession to his entire life experience of the last twenty-plus years—would probably have a breakdown, right?

“Have you two ever truly known each other?”

“He loves me, he relies on me, and he only lets me get close. That’s enough,” Pei Qingshan said with certainty. “Even if that day comes, we will never reach that point.”

Even if Pei Qingshan had been bothered these past few days by the cooling of their relationship, it was only to the level of “bothered.” He could always feel Wen Zhu’s reliance on him.

Wen Zhu had almost no friends, let alone family or relatives. It felt like Professor Wen was an anti-social person who rarely even attended faculty dinners. Whenever Pei Qingshan was home, Wen Zhu would push away all social engagements outside of work to stay home peacefully like a cold but clingy Persian cat—even though Pei Qingshan knew this reliance was likely due to Wen Zhu’s profound lack of security from his family of origin.

Li Weiguang hummed twice, saying cryptically: “Your judgment in relationships isn’t necessarily as precise as it is on the battlefield.”

Pei Qingshan glanced at him but didn’t take the bait.

“Trust must come before love.”

“Loving someone is like this: you only start to love when you dare to bloodily peel back every inch of your skin and expose your heart—with nowhere to hide—to the other person, letting them hold your true thorns and scars in their hands.”

“Until that moment, you haven’t truly begun to love.”

Li Weiguang babbled a bunch of profound, mystical nonsense. Acting as an experienced mentor, he patted Pei Qingshan on the shoulder and then, taking advantage of the “favor” he’d just done, openly began to help himself to the colorful little lunch box in front of Pei Qingshan.

He picked up a glossy, braised pork rib covered in savory sauce.

“Ooh, these little ribs look quite flavorful.”

Half a minute later, Li Weiguang spat the rib back out after wrestling with it between his upper and lower teeth, having only managed to inflict superficial damage on the meat.

Under Pei Qingshan’s subtle gaze, Li Weiguang remained silent for a long time before concluding: “It really is dry.”

This guy named Pei eats this stuff every day with such relish? Is he actually some breed of canine?

Pei Qingshan acted as if he didn’t see the “stop-while-you’re-ahead” look in his eyes. He pulled his vibrating phone from his pocket: “What is it—”

“Impossible. I never misjudge pork ribs.” Li Weiguang murmured stubbornly, using his chopsticks to dig through the perfectly colored braised ribs again.

The man in front of him stood up. His tall frame suddenly blocked the sunlight, casting a heavy shadow over half the table.

One hand gripped the four corners of the lid and snapped it firmly back onto the pink lunch box.

“Stop eating.” Pei Qingshan’s phone screen was still lit on the call interface. A flash of cold light flickered in his dark, lowered pupils, and his expression was grim. “The eight victims rescued from the ICU… they’re all dead.”

They had turned the suburban factory upside down. The technical department, led by the Beidou Bureau, had spent days and nights with a dozen people conducting surveys and investigations, yet they couldn’t find a single energy source capable of causing such a massive fire.

Now that the survivors had all died, the last lead was completely severed.