Chapter Two: Huo Lingchen
1542 Words
A moment later she bolted, fleeing from his side and dashing back toward the private room.
"Nian Yaxuan! You’re incredible!" Zheng Xiaoke shrieked, and the room instantly dissolved into chaos.
As the door of Room 501 swung shut, the man’s expression darkened. He was just about to instruct his bodyguards to toss the girl into the sea when an important call came through on his phone.
"I’ll be there immediately."
Casting one last frigid glance at the tightly closed door of 501, Huo Lingchen’s face turned thunderous. This time, luck was on her side; the company had run into a serious problem that required his urgent attention.
That woman had better pray they never met again. If she ever crossed his path and provoked him a second time, he would not be so lenient.
Inside, Nian Yaxuan pressed a hand to her burning cheeks. This was the craziest thing she had ever done. Heaven help her—she had just given her first kiss to a total stranger.
Did that count as being unfaithful to her marriage? As cheating while still wed?
Perhaps not. She had already signed the divorce agreement, after all.
Even if Huo Lingchen refused to sign, the law stated that if a married couple lived apart for more than two years, the marriage was considered dissolved.
So whether she still counted as Huo Lingchen’s wife was, at best, uncertain. How could she be accused of infidelity?
And even then, it had only been a single, fleeting kiss...
At that moment, Zheng Xiaoke suddenly let out a piercing scream.
"Oh my God!"
A dozen people nearly jumped out of their skins.
"What is wrong with you, Zheng Xiaoke? You scared me half to death!" Lin Wanying, who had just been about to take a drink, rolled her eyes and patted her chest in alarm.
Zheng Xiaoke rushed over to the still‑dazed Nian Yaxuan, half‑kneeling beside her, shaking her shoulders in agitation.
"Nian Yaxuan, my dear brother, do you have any idea who that man just now was?"
That man, the man she had kissed, was the global idol of women everywhere—the legendary, all‑powerful multinational president of Yuecheng, the one universally known as Young Master Huo.
Nian Yaxuan lifted the flute of champagne on the table and took a deep swallow to steady herself.
"Who is he?"
She had felt he looked familiar and had been wanting to know his name.
"Huo Lingchen!"
Zheng Xiaoke, practically trembling with excitement, spat out the name. Huo Lingchen—he was not a man one could afford to provoke. He was a walking legend.
"Pffft!"
The name had barely left her lips when Nian Yaxuan sprayed the mouthful of champagne she had just drunk. The unfortunate Zheng Xiaoke, now dripping with champagne, stared at the panic‑stricken Nian Yaxuan with an expression of total despair.
"Damn, that was Young Master Huo! Brother Nian, did you just get yourself into serious trouble?"
Han Huiming’s father was the general manager of a financial company in Yuecheng; he had long been familiar with the name Huo Lingchen.
Lin Wanying rolled the name over in her mind, then suddenly let out a scream of her own.
"Yaxuan, you actually kissed Young Master Huo! Yaxuan, Yaxuan, let me kiss you so I can get a whiff of his aura!"
In a daze, Nian Yaxuan grabbed some tissues and began dabbing at the champagne on Zheng Xiaoke’s face, so stunned she even forgot to apologize.
As Lin Wanying lunged toward her, Nian Yaxuan abruptly dropped the tissues and shot up from the sofa.
"Classmate Zheng Xiaoke, did you just call my name?"
She was almost sure she had heard it.
Wiping her face with a wet tissue, Zheng Xiaoke glared at her.
"Yes. Do you have to be this dramatic about it?"
Granted, kissing Young Master Huo was something to brag about for a lifetime, but being sprayed in the face with champagne... she was ready to lose her mind.
I’m doomed. Completely doomed.
Patting Zheng Xiaoke’s hand in a half‑hearted attempt at comfort, Nian Yaxuan muttered,
"You guys go on without me. I’m heading out first."
Everyone watched, dumbfounded, as she hurried from the room.
Was Nian Yaxuan actually going to chase after Young Master Huo?
Who would dare! Rumor had it that the women who had tried to climb into his bed had ended up being tossed naked into the street—sometimes straight into a crowd of men.
A few classmates rushed out of the bar, intending to drag her back from her suicidal impulse.
But they were already too late. She was nowhere to be seen.
Having exited the Blue Night Bar, Nian Yaxuan immediately flagged down a taxi and headed straight for the villa.
Heaven, please—let Huo Lingchen not be at the villa. And even if he was, let him not recognize her. Otherwise he might think she regretted the divorce and was deliberately flaunting herself to get his attention...
The thought was enough to make her chest ache.
Three years ago, after the marriage certificate had been issued, Huo Lingchen had instructed Butler Zhuo to see that she had only the best in food, clothing, and housing.
And yet, she had never once laid eyes on him.
First, because he was perpetually busy with work and spent most of the year abroad.
Second, because even when he returned to Yuecheng, their worlds were utterly different. Their social circles did not overlap in the slightest. It was entirely possible to live in the same city and never cross paths.
Their marriage certificate had always been held by her father. Before he died, terrified that she might try something reckless, he handed her copy over to her husband for safekeeping.
So, even now, she had no real idea what her own husband looked like.
No—strictly speaking, she had once tried to see him at his company.
She had gone several times; each time, she was received by his assistant, and each time she failed to see him. The last time she went, she had not revealed her identity, and the security guards stopped her at the entrance.
At that moment, Huo Lingchen had just returned from a business trip to the United States. Seizing the instant he stepped out of the car, she had managed a single, distant glimpse of him.
That one glance had been hazy and indistinct; by now, she had forgotten almost everything.
Even knowing his name was useless. Young Master Huo lived with a fierce commitment to privacy; he never gave interviews and forbade any media outlet from posting his photograph online.
She remembered that the media had once managed to publish a photo of him with his arm around a female star at a press conference—but the picture had been deleted before she had the chance to see it.
And now, tonight had happened.
She had actually kissed him in a bar.
Well... if he signed the divorce agreement, that would make him, strictly speaking, her ex‑husband.
Besides, rumor had it that there was never any shortage of women around Huo Lingchen—of every figure and type—yet the sort he despised most was the kind who took the initiative.
She was doomed.
Dear God, please let Huo Lingchen fail to recognize her.
Back in the wealthy villa district of Yuecheng, she eyed her own villa and, seeing it shrouded in the usual darkness, finally breathed out in relief.
A false alarm.
Perhaps he had not heard Zheng Xiaoke shout her name. Perhaps he had not recognized her at all.
Sinking onto the sofa in the living room, Nian Yaxuan suddenly felt that she had been too impulsive.
If she had managed to become one of the women Huo Lingchen disliked, wouldn’t that actually make the divorce easier?
Yuecheng University of Economics and Management,
Finance Department, Class 22 of the Third Year
There were a little over fifty students in the class. At least forty of them had passed the entrance examinations on merit; the remaining dozen or so had gained admission through hefty "donations."
Yuecheng University consistently ranked among the top three universities in the country. Even Huo Lingchen himself was a graduate. People would do anything—break their heads open, as the saying went—for a chance to study there.
At this moment, on the lecture platform, the bespectacled elderly professor Dou Mingzhi pushed his glasses up his nose and surveyed the drowsy faces below, his liver almost aching with anger.
"Bang!"
He slammed the textbook onto the desk. A number of students snapped instantly to attention, backs straightening as they sat up.
Only one girl in a white casual jacket, seated in the last row by the door, remained sprawled across her desk, fast asleep.
Professor Dou swept his gaze over the classroom.
"Nian Yaxuan!"
Though his hair was already snow‑white, his voice rang out clear and loud, startling the room into an even deeper silence.
Only the student he had named continued to dream away, oblivious to the fact that every eye in the classroom was now fixed squarely on her.
- Writer
