This trending topic surged incredibly fast, reaching the number one spot in no time.
In the video, Huo Ranyin’s front and side profiles were captured crystal clear. Even though he raised a hand to block the camera… it completely failed to conceal his outstanding beauty.
The onlookers merely gave token praise to Huo Ranyin’s agile combat skills, while the comments section was uniformly filled with—
“Hubby is so handsome.”
Of course, there were also more emotionally expressive ones, such as—
“Whoever dares to ruin my husband’s beauty, the car wheels will have to run over my face first.”
“I’m so mad! So mad! My husband lost three strands of hair in the video.”
“If my husband doesn’t spare me a glance soon, I’m going to need emergency resuscitation in the ICU.”
In just half an hour, Huo Ranyin had become the “cloud husband” of millions of netizens. Ji Xun felt that his level of delusion as a novelist had been completely outclassed by the masses. But a subtle sense of smugness still welled up in his heart.
Sorry about that, you’re all a step too late. The real, legitimate one is sitting right here…
You can only look, while I can touch and feel, hug and kiss.
Ji Xun scrolled down gleefully.
In the trending topic, some highly capable netizens had even turned the video into screenshots, zoomed in on the details, slightly color-corrected it without even adding filters, and arranged it into a three-panel vertical format for easy mobile reading, delivering a direct critical hit of sheer beauty.
Ji Xun clicked on this post, and the top comment was much wilder than the previous one, directly stating: “Fuck me, husband.”
Ji Xun: “…”
He couldn’t help but use his alternate account to leave a comment: “He is my husband.”
It didn’t take long for someone to reply to him: “Caught another one. My gay cage has a bountiful harvest today.”
As soon as this reply came out, his comment was rapidly pushed to the top of the comment section.
Below it were enthusiastic and sincere messages from netizens.
“Go ahead and chase him, bro. You definitely won’t catch him.”
“Sis feels so much heartache seeing you in a fruitless heat over a People’s Police officer.”
“I understand the feeling of having no ‘1’ to rely on, sis. Want me to help you find a fierce top?”
Ji Xun, who only just realized he had set his account gender to male: “…”
He wiped away a drop of sweat, turned off his phone, and stopped looking at the internet commotion he couldn’t keep up with.
Speaking of which, where was Huo Ranyin right now?
The scene of the incident was the intersection in front of the Aiqin Club.
Without a doubt, Huo Ranyin wouldn’t be at the intersection, but he would be—nearby.
Ji Xun found Huo Ranyin behind the club. When he found him, Huo Ranyin was sitting alone on a park bench. His legs were spread apart, his elbows resting on his thighs, his body leaning slightly forward. His brows were furrowed as he stared thoughtfully at a flowerbed where green grass had just sprouted…
“What are you thinking about?” Ji Xun walked up beside Huo Ranyin.
He picked up the phone that Huo Ranyin was loosely holding. It was on the WeChat interface, displaying the video link shared by Tan Mingjiu.
The dazed Huo Ranyin snapped out of it. Before he saw Ji Xun’s face, he first saw the phone screen Ji Xun was holding up in front of him, playing his heroic act from half an hour ago.
Ji Xun sat down next to Huo Ranyin, looked back and forth between Huo Ranyin’s face and the screen, and commented:
“As expected, you look best in person. The camera still can’t capture your true essence.”
“…”
Ji Xun scrolled down the chat history.
The group chat was passionately discussing the matter. Tan Mingjiu, being the first to discover the news on the trending searches, recognize Huo Ranyin, and share it with everyone, was naturally the most active. He also mentioned that colleagues from the Ning City Propaganda Department had even reached out to him, saying that since it was a good deed, they might as well take the opportunity to promote it…
“News spreads really fast,” Ji Xun sighed.
“It is quite fast,” Huo Ranyin evaluated.
“How about submitting a report to the organization to have them suppress it?” Ji Xun suggested.
“…”
Facing Huo Ranyin’s surprised gaze, Ji Xun chuckled, “You think you’re smart, but now you’re starting to think I’m stupid. You’re usually so cautious around cameras, and it’s obvious you didn’t want to show your face in this recording. Do you think I can’t guess why? It’s inconvenient, isn’t it?”
“…Mm.”
“Your combat skills are great, and you’re even more familiar with drug trafficking than I am. You used to be in narcotics, right?”
“…Mm.”
“It seems my guess wasn’t entirely accurate,” Ji Xun continued. He thought of how Huo Ranyin was so young yet held such a high position; and he thought of the penetrating scar on Huo Ranyin’s collarbone. It was brown, like a giant, irregular star branded onto the skin.
He had kissed this star.
He had kissed its rugged, uneven, lifeless surface.
When he kissed it, he would sometimes feel a sense of doubt, wondering how on earth this scar came to be.
Was it pierced by a rebar during an explosion? Was it stabbed by a screwdriver during an arrest?
Now he thought there was another possibility.
“Were you…” he said, “an undercover agent?”
There was another possibility.
Being discovered while deep undercover, a hook pierced into his collarbone, hooking the bone, suspending him in the air like a slaughtered animal.
“…I was,” Huo Ranyin finally admitted.
Once it was spoken, what followed was much easier.
In truth, perhaps Huo Ranyin never intended to hide it from Ji Xun. It was just that they weren’t close at first, and later there was no need to flaunt his scars, so things naturally progressed to this point.
“Near the border,” Huo Ranyin’s tone was calm, neither boasting nor humble. “I was undercover for about two years. Right as the net was about to close, my identity was exposed, and I took some injuries. After it ended, I returned to the country. My superiors originally wanted me to work in the narcotics division, but I submitted a report saying I wanted to go into criminal investigation, so I was transferred to head the CID.”
“We swept them up pretty cleanly, but a few scumbags still got away. They’ve wanted revenge for a long time, constantly tracking my whereabouts and putting a bounty on my head. There’s something strange about this incident,” Huo Ranyin said. “I never said I was a police officer, so why does everyone on the trending search keep calling me ‘the most beautiful cop’? The old lady I saved, and the driver of the silver sedan, are very suspicious too. That old lady isn’t as old as she appears; and when the driver of the silver sedan was about to hit someone, he showed no signs of panic whatsoever. Everything looks like it was premeditated…”
“Hmm…” Ji Xun was deep in thought. “Yeah, why ‘most beautiful cop’ and not ‘most handsome cop’?”
“…Ji Xun.”
“What?”
“Stop messing around,” Huo Ranyin frowned.
“Just lightening the mood, why so serious?” Ji Xun leaned casually against the park bench, speaking slowly and methodically. When he put his mind to it, he could always stay a step ahead of most people. “Back then, you were alone in the wolf’s den and you were never afraid. Now that the other side is just a bunch of scattered stragglers, there’s no reason for you to start being overly cautious. Based on what I know about you, you’d just think about killing them off one by one, pair by pair. So, you aren’t worried about yourself; you’re worried about me—but there’s no need.”
“Oh,” Huo Ranyin murmured. “Shouldn’t I worry about you?”
“Objective analysis,” Ji Xun said. “First, they don’t even know where you are right now, much less about our relationship. So it’s highly unlikely they would target me right off the bat. Second, I’m an ex-detective after all; I have the awareness, and the combat skills… are still somewhat there. Give me a little trust, will you?”
“At a time like this,” he looked at Huo Ranyin and gave a slight smile, “if you don’t trust me, who do you trust?”
“If…”
“There are no ifs. Recalling my earnest teachings to you in the past, I’ve now profoundly realized that I was far too reckless before, and my stance wasn’t firm enough.” Ji Xun said with mock solemnity, “Let’s find our original intentions, learn our lesson, and make sure we use human wave tactics to defeat them. We must absolutely never fight alone and give criminals a chance to strike!”
Like the sky clearing after a rain, Huo Ranyin finally laughed out loud.
“Alright then.” Ji Xun pulled out a crumpled tourist map from his pocket and unrolled it in front of Huo Ranyin. It was the Qin City tourist map that Ai Yin had handed him in the room earlier that day. “Your enemies are in Southeast Asia. Even if they felt a sudden telepathic connection and saw you the very first second you got on the trending searches, it would take them at least 48 hours to prepare their weapons and ammo, lock onto your identity, track your whereabouts, and fly over from Southeast Asia. Think about it from another angle: we are absolutely safe for these 48 hours. I suggest we just do whatever we were going to do. For example, using these 48 hours to tour Qin City first, and then go back to Ning City to set traps and ambushes, waiting for the scumbags to come to us?”
“Good idea,” Huo Ranyin said. “I’ll listen to you.”
“Then listen to me on one more thing,” Ji Xun said. He pointed his finger at a spot along the coastline of Qin City. “Next, we’re going here.”
Huo Ranyin looked at the map, his gaze deepening.
That place was…
It was neither a scenic tourist spot, nor a commercial shopping district.
It was an abandoned port.
When Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin arrived there, the sun was just beginning to set.
The orange-red evening sun was gradually touching the distant sea level. The last rays of sunlight surprisingly carried the intensity of the midday sun—as if knowing it was about to bid farewell to the world, it poured out all its remaining light and heat at once, dyeing the ocean and the earth into a vast expanse of crimson and orange.
The abandoned port was deserted. All that remained were rusted blocks of iron, scattered shipping containers of various sizes that had been left behind, and wooden pilings sticking out of the pier. Those individual wooden pilings looked like the hands of a dying person grasping at the sky.
Exhausting all strength, only for it to be in vain.
“You’ve even investigated up to this point.”
As Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin arrived, Huo Ranyin broke the silence.
Their feet had already stepped onto this abandoned port. A wall of wild grass grew along the embankment, rustling thickly in the bleak wind. Ji Xun said, “We still have to get down to business here… My matters and your matters both count as business. When I first met you, I always wondered why you were so rich at such a young age. After all, ordinary people resent the rich.”
He joked.
“Later, I came here and learned from your relatives that you took your mother’s surname. Digging a bit deeper, I found the shipbuilding tycoon from 30 years ago, Huo Shanyuan.”
“He is my grandfather,” Huo Ranyin said. “My father married into the family, and I took my mother’s surname, so my mother’s father is considered my grandfather.”
“He seemed to have passed away not long after you were born.”
“Yeah… I don’t have a very deep impression of him. By the time I had memories, my grandfather was already bedridden. He probably died when I was around four. His assets were inherited by my parents, and eventually by me. But while my grandfather built his fortune in shipbuilding, my parents weren’t good at it. So after he passed away, they immediately set about selling the shipyard. The buyers later sold it again, and after changing hands a few times, it was left abandoned here.”
“Your grandfather had your mother take in a live-in husband; didn’t he want her to inherit the family business?” Ji Xun asked, surprised.
“My mother wasn’t my grandfather’s only child,” Huo Ranyin explained. “My mother had an older brother. My grandfather was always grooming my uncle and was generally quite permissive with my mother, doting on her like a pampered lady. But my uncle died of illness before my mother got married… They had no choice but to have my mother inherit the estate and recruit a live-in son-in-law. Things were rushed, and there wasn’t much room for choice. Perhaps what my grandfather was thinking at the time was to groom the next generation.”
“It’s a pity the old man’s health wasn’t great.”
“Losing a son in his old age was too huge a blow for an old man.”
“If he could have held on for a little longer, held on until you grew up into an adult…” Ji Xun looked at Huo Ranyin, thinking of the scene he had peeked at in Huo Ranyin’s home—a cotton quilt as heavy as a coffin tightly covering a crying child…
The other man guessed what was on his mind.
A trace of a sarcastic smile flitted across Huo Ranyin’s lips.
The embers of the setting sun were like flames burning at the corner of his mouth.
“Did you want my grandfather to protect me? I’m afraid that wouldn’t have gone as you wished. Did you not investigate this matter? Then again, I suppose no one would tell you about such a shameful thing, no matter who you asked. But I’m guessing you’ve probably figured it out to some extent, you just couldn’t bear to say it.”
“I really did suffer a lot of domestic abuse when I was young. Curious as to why my parents treated me like that? The answer is very simple, and not surprising at all.”
“Because I am…”
“A child born of an affair.”
