GEGBWFS 22

Zhong Lu numbly finished hanging up the clothes and said, “I’ll walk you to the entrance of the villa complex.”

Lu Ziming had been hiding for a long time, waiting to take Ye Xianyun home. At the last moment, someone beat him to it. He immediately straightened up and said, “I’ll take him.”

Ye Xianyun said, “Wait for me in the car by the security booth. I want to take a walk.”

Lu Ziming really wanted to grab President Huo by the shoulders and ask, “Can you please do something about your wife?!”

Zhong Lu did have something to say. Ye Xianyun had dug out their marriage agreement today, and he needed to explain why he had absolutely no memory of it.

“Actually, I lost my memory,” Zhong Lu pulled out the all-purpose excuse. “Three weeks ago, I hit my head on the edge of the bathtub while taking a shower. No one noticed that night, and the next morning when I woke up, I couldn’t remember a lot of things. I thought I had married Huo Zhehan normally.”

Ye Xianyun asked, “Did you get it checked out?”

Zhong Lu lied, “Yeah, the doctor said since there were no other symptoms, I didn’t need treatment for now. For some reasons, I couldn’t tell Huo Zhehan I had amnesia. Now that I know about the agreement, I’m afraid he’ll think I’m unprofessional and make me break the contract and pay compensation. I don’t have that kind of money.”

Ye Xianyun frowned in worry. Fifty million was an enormous amount—something they couldn’t pay back even if they worked their whole lives. At this point, their only option was to focus on tutoring Huo Yu well and wait for the contract to end on its own.

If only he had money, he could lend it to Zhong Lu to fight the contract in court.

If it were anyone else, he might’ve borrowed a bit from Lu Ziming but Zhong Lu just had to be the wife of Lu Ziming’s boss.

Zhong Lu said, “Can you help me keep this a secret?”

Ye Xianyun replied, “Of course. If you ever need any help, just come to me.”

Zhong Lu walked him to the entrance. Lu Ziming’s car was already parked there with the hazard lights flashing.

He spotted a chain pharmacy across the street and went in to ask about “how to stay healthy at 24.”

The clerk took one look at this gullible-looking fool and, doing the math, persuaded him to stock up on everything—supplements for kidneys, iron, calcium, and brain health.

Zhong Lu picked up a bottle of calcium tablets and shook it next to his ear. Relying on his sharp hearing and sense of touch, he judged that the tablets were even thicker than large capsules.

He didn’t like swallowing large pills, so he put the calcium tablets back.

“No, thanks.”

Even with fifty million in debt, he still resisted taking medicine—just like in his previous life.

At the checkout counter, an elderly man with graying whiskers was paying for a basket full of all kinds of health supplements. Judging from the cashier’s enthusiastic attitude, he was clearly a VIP customer.

Zhong Lu walked up to him. “Sir, can I buy your empty bottles?”

Though the old man had just paid a bit of an unnecessary IQ tax at the pharmacy, his intelligence bounced back the moment he stepped outside. “What do you want these for? Planning to fill them with fake medicine and sell it?”

Zhong Lu said, “No, I’m sick and need to take medicine regularly, but I don’t want people to notice. I want to use supplement bottles to cover it up.”

The old man asked, “What kind of sickness?”

Zhong Lu replied, “…Terminal.”

Late-stage internet addiction.

Ten minutes later, Zhong Lu had gotten over a dozen empty bottles, all carefully chosen from brands under the Huo family’s subsidiary companies. It was stuff that even Huo Zhehan would give a thumbs-up to.

He then went to a convenience store, bought some white sugar tablets, portioned them into the bottles, and screwed the caps on tight. It looked completely legit.

Huo Zhehan stood in the center of the master bedroom, checking whether the tutor showed any signs of trying to flee. Hearing footsteps behind him, he asked without turning around, “Went to see Ye Xianyun off?”

If he weren’t sure there were no issues between Ye Xianyun and Lu Ziming, Huo Zhehan would’ve suspected Ye Xianyun was another Zuo Yin.

Why did the educator always choose friends based on looks?

“Went to buy supplements.”

Zhong Lu had known Huo Zhehan would ask, so he opened the bag and took out the bottles, lining them up in two rows. It an impressive sight, practically spelling out “treasuring life” across his face.

Huo Zhehan: “…Going too far.”

His gaze swept over the table, and with a raise of his hand, he swept the dozen or so bottles straight into the trash. So young, yet taking health supplements meant for the middle-aged. He was just putting unnecessary strain on his liver and kidneys. Must’ve been talked into it by some overzealous salesperson.

Only a bottle of lutein was left on the table. Zhong Lu looked down into the trash can—hmm, those were the sugar tablets he just bought.

Huo Zhehan said, “Have the housekeeper back tomorrow to cook. Food is better than supplements.”

Zhong Lu stared at the pile of bottles and rubbed his fingers together. Should he fish them out later or not? They were all his favorite flavors—what a waste to throw them away.

After all, those supplements were bought by the educator to show his commitment. Tossing them seemed wrong. Huo Zhehan softened his tone slightly and leaned in a bit. “Is that okay?”

Only then did Zhong Lu remember that the warm family model didn’t include a live-in cook. If Huo Zhehan wanted to bring her back, he needed the educator’s approval.

He had been wanting to end that mode for a while, so he nodded—decisively, yet with restraint.

Afraid he might dig through the trash, Huo Zhehan crouched down, tied up the garbage bag, and took it away with him.

“By the way, where’s Huo Yu?” Zhong Lu asked.

Huo Zhehan was actually a little touched. It was the first time he had seen Zhong Lu show concern for their son. “One of his classmates is having a birthday. He went to a party—probably staying up all night.”

Zhong Lu muttered under his breath, “Oh, so he gets to stay up all night.”

Partying this hard right before school starts, he must’ve finished all his homework, right?

Zhong Lu judged by his own standards. Back in the day, around this time, he wouldn’t even go to an internet café. He would just stay home catching up on homework.

Huo Zhehan, completely unreasonable, said, “You two aren’t the same.”

I’ve got a contract hanging over me, of course it’s different.

Zhong Lu argued in his head, trying to reason it out. “I’ve been on the road all day—I haven’t even hit four hours of screen time yet.”

Huo Zhehan couldn’t help but laugh and glanced at his watch. “It’s exactly nine o’clock. You get at most three hours. You have to be in bed before midnight.”

Zhong Lu seized the chance to negotiate. “Then I need to move the computer into the bedroom. That way I can shut it down at 11:59:30 and be in bed by twelve.”

Huo Zhehan laughed in exasperation. “You really can’t spare even a single minute?”

Zhong Lu nodded stubbornly.

Huo Zhehan matched him, just as unyielding. “Fine. You hand over the ethernet cable at midnight every night. One minute late, and I’ll pull it out myself.”

Zhong Lu: “What if I haven’t finished a game?”

Huo Zhehan: “I trust you can manage your gaming time wisely.”

Zhong Lu let out a sigh. He hadn’t won this round against the capitalist. What a loss.

The two of them went downstairs together, disassembled Huo Yu’s desktop and monitor, and moved everything into the master bedroom.

Huo Zhehan pressed his forehead. The educator was a bit impatient—he would just buy Huo Yu a new setup tomorrow.

Zhong Lu turned on the computer and logged into his account. Normally too proud to smurf in low-rank matches, the irritated God Abandon begrudgingly started a new alt.

He didn’t feel like thinking, he just wanted to warm up his hands.

Since the computer was now in his private master bedroom, Zhong Lu wasn’t worried about the Huo family finding out about his streams. With a mountain of debt looming over him, he figured every bit of income helped and started a livestream.

As soon as he went live, his rapidly growing fanbase flooded in. Seeing that Zhong Lu had switched to a new account, they immediately sent a wave of cheerful greetings.

【Opening that damn alt again, huh?】

【What, too scared to use your top-50 main account now?】

【Lulu! Can’t handle losing? Scumbag!】

Zhong Lu had expected the backlash, so while playing, he took time to respond to the barrage of comments.

“Not in the mood to think today.”

“I’ll use the main account next time, stream the climb to top twenty.”

“I never lose—how could I be a sore loser?”

The fans ranted for half an hour, but gradually shifted to seriously watching Zhong Lu play. The comments turned to game-related discussions, along with a few worried mom-fans still fretting over their son’s love life.

【Did Lulu and his husband make up after the fight?】

【That background wall looks pretty rich—so why is he always eating instant noodles?】

【Did he move to a new place?】

【This has to be his husband’s house, right? I knew his man was loaded.】

【I wanna start selling supplements too.】

【Judging by the size of that bedroom, Lulu’s place has to be at least 300 square meters.】

【I regret being so quick to tell him to break up last time.】

Zhong Lu had always streamed from a rental apartment, with a blue curtain as the background. Last time, he joined an interview from the bedroom using his phone and only the headboard was shown in the front-facing camera. Today, the camera was pointed directly at him, capturing the bed and wardrobe behind him in full view.

Normally, Zhong Lu didn’t respond to personal questions. It wasn’t until he noticed the stream chat that he realized how frequently the word husband was popping up.

Focused on gaming, God Abandon had no idea that all the husband talk stemmed from last time, when President Huo had randomly muted people.

The more you forbid something, the more people love to bring it up.

Zhong Lu frowned and said coldly, “Don’t bring up irrelevant people in my stream again. Say it and you get muted.”

【#IrrelevantPeople#】

【Lulu’s so snappy—did your husband cheat on you or something?】

The so-called irrelevant President Huo had just opened the stream on a whim, curious about Zhong Lu’s sudden shift in attitude tonight—maybe he could figure it out by watching.

The moment he entered, he heard that line. Without a second thought, Huo Zhehan muted the person who mentioned cheating for an hour.

Ban reason: Spreading rumors.

Zhong Lu was waiting for the next match, chin propped on his hand while staring at the chat with a world-weary expression. Seeing that the viewers still wouldn’t let it go, he sneered, “Why do you keep bringing him up?”

“He won’t let me game. I might not even be able to stream tomorrow.”

That was the truth—if he was limited to four hours a day, most of it would go to squad matches with teammates, leaving little time to stream.

The chat’s mood shifted instantly. President Huo’s reputation flipped from “Lulu’s husband” to “chauvinistic control-freak jerk.”

【Whoever’s stopping Lulu from streaming, I’ll fight them to the death!!!】

【Lulu plays so well—he could go pro if he wanted. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to game?】

【Some men are glued to their phones 24/7 but still try to control their wives like this.】

【This is no way to live. Divorce! Has to be divorce!】

Huo Zhehan: “…”

That angry? Angry enough to rant to strangers online?

He sent Zhong Lu two aircraft carrier gifts.

Zhong Lu stared at the unexpected support, feeling like he had finally found his voice through the internet—even if some of it wasn’t exactly true.

Still fuming over losing to the power of money earlier today, he was now itching to expose President Huo’s true colors and let the public drag him.

Only fellow RESCUE fans could truly understand him.

“He even makes me go to bed before eight.”

“If I don’t sleep, he pulls the plug on my internet!”

It was actually midnight, but Zhong Lu worried the viewers wouldn’t relate, so he applied a bit of artistic license and said eight instead.

When you’re navigating the anonymous internet, you can’t reveal too many real details.

Reasonable, and perfectly justified.

The chat went silent for a moment. After a while, someone cautiously asked, “Not to question whether you married a rich old man or anything, but… may we ask how old your husband is?”

Zhong Lu: “…”

Huo Zhehan let out a laugh—furious and amused. He never imagined the educator would be out here spreading rumors online.

Eight o’clock, huh?

Next time it actually is eight, he better not come crying.

Zhong Lu paused for a moment before clarifying, “He’s twenty-eight.”

Since eight o’clock sounded so extreme, the viewers were baffled and started guessing the reason.

【Does Lulu have health issues? Needs an early bedtime for recovery?】

【Doesn’t seem like it. The way he flames viewers and mashes the keyboard during games—he could set the desk on fire.】

…

【Emmm… is it because you play games every night and there’s no couple time, so your husband’s upset?】

【That’s it. If I had such a gorgeous wife playing games every night, I’d be mad too.】

Zhong Lu: “…”

Talk too much, and you dig your own grave.

He cleared the chat with one click.

The one thing that comforted him most in the contract was the clause about separate bedrooms—no sharing a bed without consent, and if violated, the aggrieved party had the right to request termination.

At midnight, Zhong Lu shut down the computer right on time, unplugged the ethernet cable, and hung it on the doorknob.

It was the first day, he might as well play along.

…

The next morning, Huo Yu was dropped off at home by the driver and immediately noticed the long-absent housekeeper back on duty. A sweet, comforting scent of steamed cakes drifted from the kitchen, stopping him in his tracks. He stood there gazing through the kitchen glass with deep emotion.

School was about to start. Had his dad finally grown a conscience and decided to feed him well before term began?

Aunt Su hadn’t seen Huo Yu in a month and had missed him dearly. “You’ve lost weight! Come have your favorite steamed cake. If there’s anything else you want for breakfast, just tell me.”

Huo Yu took a piece of cake. He wasn’t hungry—he had stayed over at Wang Hao’s place after partying until one and had already eaten breakfast—but he said sincerely, “Auntie, your cooking is amazing.”

Aunt Su remembered how hard it used to be to get Huo Yu to come eat, and smiled. “Aiyo, such a sweet talker now.”

Huo Yu: “What’s for lunch?”

Aunt Su took inventory of the ingredients and listed off several heavy-tonic dishes like “black-bone chicken stewed with goji berries.”

Not exactly Huo Yu’s favorites, but he had learned to appreciate the days when the housekeeper was around. “Thank you for all the work, Auntie.”

Zhong Lu had also gotten up. He fell asleep easily and woke naturally once he was rested, so adjusting his schedule wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just hard to maintain.

Coming downstairs, he spotted Huo Yu eating steamed cake and quickened his pace, grabbing him and pulling him outside. After checking left and right for any sign of the client, he finally lowered his voice and asked, “Did you finish your summer homework?”

Huo Yu instantly choked. He thought his stepmom had completely given up on him—why launch a surprise inspection two days before school started? Was this even human?

“Cough, cough, cough—”

Huo Yu hacked away while Zhong Lu, with a fatherly weight, patted him on the back. “Hm?”

The pressure on his shoulder felt like it might turn into a tidal wave at any moment. Huo Yu squirmed a bit and answered guiltily, “Not yet.”

“How much do you have left?”

Huo Yu mumbled like a mosquito: “…”

“Louder.”

“Twenty essays. Eight workbooks…”

Zhong Lu’s eyes turned dangerously stormy. “And how much have you finished?”

If he had actually done a lot, then maybe the homework load was genuinely unreasonable—robbing students of a joyful summer. Huo Zhehan was a reasonable person; there might still be room to argue.

“I lost my pen… haven’t bought a new one yet.”

“You’ve got to be f—”

Zhong Lu nearly had a heart attack. In that moment, he finally understood the parents who broke down while helping with homework and even sympathized with their irrational outbursts. Some had arguments, hit their kids, tore up notebooks. Others went as far as lying in the middle of the road, not wanting to live anymore.

Huo Yu had felt pretty justified up to this point. So what if he didn’t do the homework? Worst case, the teacher tattled to Huo Zhehan. It’s not like they would refuse to enroll him.

His dad had donated two entire buildings to the school.

However, seeing Zhong Lu practically ready to hold a kitchen knife to his neck and force him to finish his assignments now, Huo Yu cautiously asked, “Are you… gonna tutor me?”

Tutor my ass… Zhong Lu wanted to kill someone.

No wonder so many people refused to marry or have kids. These two—father and son—were enough to make God Abandon roll over in his grave from sheer rage.

“Go catch up. Now.”

There was still time. One pen, one night, one miracle.

Huo Yu stalled, “I was hoping to catch up on sleep first…”

“Wait right there.”

Ten seconds later, Zhong Lu came back out holding the kitchen knife.

“What are you catching up on? Say it again.”

“…Homework.”

The Huo estate was huge, and Huo Yu lived on the first floor with no shortage of rooms. In addition to a bedroom, game room, and walk-in closet, he even had a private study.

The study hadn’t been used in so long that opening the door felt strange, like it didn’t belong to the villa at all.

Huo Yu fished a ballpoint pen out from between some books and sat stiffly at the desk, looking miserable.

He had zero desire to do homework. He had barely paid attention last semester, failed every subject, and after a summer of nonstop gaming, any knowledge he once had was long returned to the teachers.

However, he knew Huo Zhehan was home. If Zhong Lu was here to tutor him, that meant he had full approval—like an imperial envoy carrying a blade. If Huo Yu dared to resist, Zhong Lu’s kitchen knife would strike first, and his dad’s beating would follow right after.

First the blade, then the belt—a two-man combo.

After spending some time together, Huo Yu had reluctantly accepted his stepmother and didn’t want to go against him. Wearing an expression of deep suffering, he opened to page one of 8th Grade Math.

First question… uh, how was he supposed to do this again?

He glanced at his stepmother for help. Word was, the guy had graduated from a prestigious university but Huo Yu struggled to picture him in a tutoring role.

“Idiot.”

He yanked the workbook over, tore the answer pages from the back, and slapped them down in front of Huo Yu. “Hurry up and copy. You’ve got six workbooks to get through tonight. Don’t tell your dad.”

Huo Yu: “…”

Utterly stunned.

You—You can do that?

He instantly pressed down the answer sheets and began copying at lightning speed, his handwriting a mess that looked more like spell-casting than words.

Zhong Lu folded his arms and kept watch for him.

Suddenly, footsteps approached the door. With the keen instincts of a gaming king, Zhong Lu immediately recognized them—Huo Zhehan.

In a flash, he snatched the answer sheets away and flipped the workbook to the last few pages.

Huo Yu was completely lost.

The next second, Huo Zhehan knocked twice. “I’m coming in.”

He had heard that Zhong Lu was helping Huo Yu with homework and figured it was worth taking a look at this rare warm and domestic moment to make up for all the recent chaos.

The educator sat in the chair beside Huo Yu, body slightly turned, pointing to a question as he explained, eyes patient and full of scholarly insight.

“Looking at this one, first off, A and D are out. B doesn’t work either, so the answer is C.”

“Got it?”

Huo Yu nodded like a duck that had just been struck by lightning. “Uh-huh.”

Huo Zhehan didn’t catch every word, but from what he saw, the educator looked impressively professional and composed.

Zhong Lu turned his head and said to Huo Zhehan, “Almost done. Just a few pages left.”

“Do a bit more, then come out for dinner.”

Huo Zhehan went for a run. As soon as he left, Zhong Lu let out a breath, pulled the answer sheets back out, and slapped them on the desk. “Hurry up.”

Huo Yu felt like an overworked peasant in some old-time rural drama.

When Huo Zhehan finished his workout and Aunt Su called them for dinner, Huo Yu immediately tossed down his pen and bounded to the door like a happy husky.

Being under high-pressure surveillance to copy homework, even for just a little while, had digested all the breakfast he ate at Wang Hao’s house that morning.

Meanwhile, Zhong Lu ripped pages from all eight of Huo Yu’s workbooks—one every few pages to reduce the workload. Rrrip, then he balled each one up tightly, imagining it was Huo Zhehan’s head.

When the bin was full of wadded-up homework, Zhong Lu carefully hid it.

Damn, there were so many characters in Chinese, politics, and history… it was starting to look impossible to finish in two days.

Huo Zhehan was sitting on the new sofa in the living room, scrolling on his phone while waiting for his wife and kid to come eat. He meant to check his email, but since he had been visiting the Duoyou streaming app a lot lately, it accidentally opened to Lulu’s stream.

A few red dots appeared in the message tab. Duoyou’s assistant had sent him a bill and congratulated him on topping the weekly leaderboard, awarding him a long list of honorific titles.

Huo Zhehan didn’t even look at the bill—he swiped the red dot away.

However, at that exact moment, Huo Yu happened to walk behind the sofa and caught a glimpse.

Just one glance and he spotted the keywords: “cross-dress,” “donation,” “670,000.”

The full sentence clicked together in his mind automatically.

“Dad! You donated six hundred seventy thousand to a cross-dressing streamer?!”

Huo Yu was so shocked he forgot to lower his voice.

His dad donating to a girl streamer felt more surreal than his stepmom making him copy homework.

He had only been out one night—what the hell had happened to this household?

A vein bulged on Huo Zhehan’s forehead. “Shut up!”

Zhong Lu drifted through the living room like a ghost. Oh? Girl streamer, huh?

“Donations, huh. If you’ve got the guts, just marry her.”

The ever-righteous God Abandon didn’t even want the breach-of-contract payout.

Huo Zhehan: “…”

Right. I did marry her.