008 Damp Male Ghost

The restaurant downstairs.

The long dining table, which could accommodate twenty people, was only set with two sets of tableware, with Huo Yanxi firmly occupying the main seat.

Huo Zidu felt an instinctive fear when he saw Huo Yanxi, and he carefully sat down to his lower right.

"Uncle."

Huo Yanxi put down the newspaper, his dark eyes gleaming with indifference. "I don't have time to coax the child. Please behave yourself every day you stay here."

He was very cold.

They didn't care at all whether their cold words would hurt the child's self-esteem.

Huo Zidu trembled, his head hanging low as obediently as a little quail, "I understand."

"Teacher Xie is in charge of your studies and life here. You were very rude just now. Go apologize to her after you finish eating."

Huo Zidu was full of resistance, but under Huo Yanxi's imposing gaze, he had no choice but to nod and say, "Oh."

Huo Yanxi had little patience. Seeing that he was obedient, he stopped talking and picked up his chopsticks to eat in silence.

This meal should have included Xie Yaoyao and her son.

However, when Uncle Jian went to call them, Xie Yaoyao said that Xie Ziyu was shy, so the two of them ate in the room.

Uncle Jian reported back to Huo Yanxi, who said nothing and instructed the servants to bring the food to their room.

The restaurant was quiet. Huo Yanxi barely ate a couple of bites before putting down his chopsticks, his appetite failing.

He lowered his eyes and stared blankly at a certain dish.

Thin eyelids obscured the light in his eyes, making him look like a dozing lion.

The blindingly bright sunlight outside the window cast a serene shadow of a person, suggesting a sense of loneliness at such a height.

He sat for a moment, then got up and went upstairs.

Huo Zidu let out a long sigh of relief and slumped into his chair. His terrifying uncle was finally gone. He belatedly rubbed his bloated stomach, feeling a bit of indigestion.

Uncle Jian walked over, glanced at the food on the table that hadn't been touched much, and sighed with worry.

Huo Yanxi has entered another period of anorexia.

Along with the symptoms of anorexia, bipolar disorder and self-harm tendencies also occur.

Uncle Jian picked up his phone and notified the psychologist and family doctor to be on standby at any time.

Huo Yanxi is having another episode.

Huo Yanxi has indeed fallen ill.

He went upstairs, but instead of returning to his master bedroom, he went to the locked room.

He stayed there for most of the day, and no one saw him, including Uncle Jian.

After Xie Yaoyao and Xie Ziyu finished lunch in their room, Uncle Jian brought over a stack of documents that was half a person tall, accompanied by a servant.

Uncle Jian said that Huo Yanxi had instructed Xie Yaoyao to prepare a detailed and professional teaching plan for Huo Zidu's studies, which Huo Yanxi needed to review.

After Uncle Jian and his men left, Xie Yaoyao casually picked up the top document and started flipping through it.

Some time ago, major media outlets suddenly began criticizing Huo Yanxi and his nephew Huo Zidu for their discord.

They claimed that Huo Yanxi was domineering, ruthless, profit-driven, and lacked empathy. He couldn't even tolerate his own nephew, so how could he possibly steer the Huo Group?

The continuous reporting over the past month finally shook the stock price of the Huo Group.

Old Master Huo couldn't stand it anymore, so he sent someone to the United States to bring Huo Zidu back.

In order to allow the media to capture their filial piety as uncle and nephew, Huo Yanxi even went to the airport to pick them up.

Xie Yaoyao flipped through Huo Zidu's academic reports and found that apart from his barely passing English, all his other subjects were major failures.

I spent five years in the US, and all I grew was my height, not my brain.

Xie Yaoyao spent an afternoon and an entire evening reviewing the half-person-high materials and then worked through the night to develop a teaching plan.

As dawn was breaking, she finally finished her teaching plan, stood up, and stretched.

Xie Ziyu was sleeping soundly on the bed like a little pig. She tiptoed over and leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.

The room was dry, the blankets were cool and dry, and it was quiet all around. No more dripping water would ever seep into his dreams.

This is the life she has always dreamed of giving Xie Ziyu.

Xie Yaoyao wasn't sleepy, so she left the room and went to the courtyard to breathe in the fresh air of Taiping Mountain at five in the morning.

A morning breeze swept through the camphor forest in the mountains, carrying a mixture of fresh plant scents and the distant sea odor that brushed against Xie Yaoyao's cheeks.

She leaned on the wrought iron railing with both hands. The surface of Victoria Harbour had not yet been awakened by the daylight, and it was as dark and deep as ink left to sit in an inkstone all night. The air was filled with the smell of money.

In the port city, the gap between the rich and poor is an insurmountable chasm.

She chose to divorce Huo Yanxi back then because she knew that a dragon should not be confined to shallow waters.

Now he possesses the wealth at the pinnacle of the world, surrounded by admirers, no longer needing to suffer the scorn of others, no longer needing to risk his life drinking, and his dignity will not be trampled underfoot.

That put her mind at ease.

If Xie Yaoyao had eyes in the back of her head, she would have noticed that someone was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in the dimly lit room on the second floor, openly and brazenly observing her.

Her back was sturdy, but there was a familiarity to it, as if I had seen her somewhere before.

Suddenly, a gap appeared in the clouds, and indigo sunlight poured down from the east.

Xie Yaoyao saw the Central glass curtain wall complex gleam with a cold, steel-gray light, which then transformed into an array of upright icicles.

Daylight broke.

She turned around, intending to go back to her room to sleep for two hours, when her gaze inadvertently fell upon a person standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor.

Xie Yaoyao has excellent eyesight; she recognized Huo Yanxi, who had been missing for most of the day, just by his figure.

A white shirt hung haphazardly on his body, with faint dark red stains on it.

His skin had lost its color, turning a transparent, plaster-like pale white. Cold sweat soaked his forehead and clothes, clinging to his skin and adding to the chill.

As the sky grew brighter, the man standing in front of the French windows appeared as if he were a beautiful object that had been forcibly damaged.

His body was covered with traces of violence and pain, and his fragile and broken appearance as a damp male ghost was a stark contrast to his usual elegance and composure.

Xie Yaoyao was both shocked and frightened. How could he have become like this?

Did she see it wrong?

When she looked over again, the floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor were empty, as if what she had just seen was just an illusion.

Xie Yaoyao couldn't fall asleep no matter what.

Finally, dawn broke, and the servants in the villa began their work. She took the project plan she had worked on all night to Uncle Jian.

"Uncle Jian, this is a teaching plan I worked on overnight. Should I present it to President Huo in person?"

Uncle Jian was directing the servants to clean when he heard this. He looked at Xie Yaoyao with a kind smile.

"Teacher Xie, please give it to me. I'll take it upstairs and show it to Fifth Master."

Xie Yaoyao glanced subconsciously towards the second floor. She wanted to see Huo Yanxi and confirm whether that glimpse she had seen that morning was just her imagination.

"Uncle Jian, shouldn't I report to him personally?"

Uncle Jian smiled and shook his head, "No need, thank you for your hard work, Teacher Xie. You should go back and rest first. When all the teachers arrive this afternoon, Fifth Master will call you together for a short meeting."

Xie Yaoyao was taken aback.

Judging from Uncle Jian's composed demeanor, Huo Yanxi should be unharmed.

Was it all just a dream?