The day Julian Liang appeared at Beijing University, the sunlight was so perfect it bordered on excessive.
Golden fragments of light cut through the carved European-style French windows of the Life Sciences building, reflecting dazzling patches of white glare across the terrazzo floor. Fine dust motes floated in the air. It should have been a mid-afternoon that cleared one's mind, but a crowd suddenly emerging at the end of the corridor shattered this tranquility into pieces.
Flanked by a cluster of Beijing University board members and department leaders, the man surrounded right in the center appeared exceptionally conspicuous.
He wore a deep grey suit tailored with extreme precision, fitting impeccably without a single wrinkle, and a few deceptively dignified streaks of silver gray touched the hair at his temples. Tilting his head slightly as he listened to the introduction from an old board member beside him, a refined and scholarly smile hung on his face—every single movement, every frown and smile, was identical to ten years ago.
Silas Shen happened to be walking out from the turn of the corridor at an unhurried pace, cradling a stack of newly signed clinical funding agreements in his arms.
Yet, the exact instant he lifted his eyes, entirely without defense, he crashed straight into that pair of deep eyes brimming with hypocritical amusement.
Boom—
It felt as though a silent bolt of thunder exploded right beside his ears. In that split second, all the clamor, the sunlight, and even the flowing air within the building completely evacuated from Silas's perception.
He felt as if he were being violently and cruelly dragged back into that dark, damp abyss of ten years ago by an invisible, massive hand.
It had been just such a bright and beautiful sunny day; it had been just such a refined and scholarly smile that made it impossible for anyone to pick out a single flaw. That man had once stood before the office desk, speaking to him in a near-benevolent tone of an elder superior: "Silas, your talent shouldn't be buried. Stay and help me run experiments."
Then came that professor's office, locked from the inside with the curtains drawn tight.
Then came the top-tier Alpha pheromones hanging in the air, so suffocatingly dense they neared lethal levels, carrying a powerful inducement.
Then came that massive trap woven from "genetic instinct," which he could not break free from no matter how he pounded, how he cried out, or how he exhausted every ounce of his body's strength.
"Professor Shen?"
The crowd ahead had stopped at some unknown point.
Looking at the pale-faced young professor standing at the corner, a strange glint flashed swiftly through the depths of Julian Liang's eyes, and the smile on his face seemed to carve itself even deeper. Turning his body, he took two steps forward with a nauseating sense of familiarity and nostalgia, his cadence carrying an offensive intimacy: "It really is you. Having not met for so many years, you haven't changed a bit."
Silas stood in place, unmoving.
His legs felt as though they had been poured full of thousands of pounds of pig iron, nailed deathly onto the cold terrazzo floor. The hands hidden within the wide sleeves of his white lab coat clenched tightly into fists. Because he exerted far too much force, his rounded fingertips dug deeply into his palms, pinching startling white marks into the delicate skin.
Even across a distance of several meters, that suffocating sense of despair from ten years ago still surged toward him like an overwhelming tidal wave.
"Professor Liang."
Silas spoke slowly. His voice was extremely light and extremely cold. Every single word that dropped felt like ice shards violently hacked out from a glacier in the northernmost lands, carrying an un-concealed resistance.
"I hear you are already a star professor in the Life Sciences department now? The younger generation is truly to be feared."
Julian Liang took a step forward, deliberately closing the distance between the two. Tilting his body slightly, he lowered his voice to a volume only audible to the two of them, his tone sticky and sinister: "And that blocker study that's currently so popular across the entire network—"
He paused, the smiling eyes laced with the venomous gleam of a viper: "Truly remarkable. But... Silas, you should know best that in this world, there are some things science can never change in a lifetime. For instance—an Omega's physiological instinct toward an Alpha."
The exact millisecond his words fell.
Boom!
An exceptionally secretive pheromone, yet packed with a malicious, provocative intent, drifted out into the air without any forewarning.
That was Julian Liang's pheromone—a cold, viscous agarwood that carried the stench of rotting wood.
That was a foul odor Silas could never forget in this lifetime, even if he were burned to ash. In the past ten years, this scent had transformed into a fanged demon countless times, dragging him into the suffocating abyss during his late-night nightmares.
Instantly, Silas felt as though a bundle of rusted iron wires had been stuffed into his stomach, twisting and churning violently. An intense wave of physiological nausea shot straight to his crown, causing even his fingertips to begin numbing uncontrollably.
He subconsciously wanted to step back, wanting to distance himself from this filthy thing. Yet his knees, triggered by the most tragic PTSD trauma deep within his body, were so soft they could not muster a single shred of strength; his entire person swayed uncontrollably.
At the absolute eleventh hour, just as he was about to lose his footing and reveal a disheveled state before his mortal enemy—
A broad, highly textured palm carrying a burning hot temperature suddenly extended from behind without any warning, catching his slightly swaying lower back exceptionally steadily and exceptionally firmly.
That continuous warmth smoothing into his skin across his clothing acted like the strongest shot of adrenaline, forcibly halting Silas's falling body.
"Professor Julian Liang, is it?"
A low voice carrying a youth's unique clarity, yet currently as cold as if it had been soaked in ice water for three days, abruptly resounded behind Silas.
Hunter Huo had appeared at some unknown point.
He wore an exceptionally simple black pure cotton sweatshirt today, his brilliant blonde hair appearing somewhat dazzling under the sun. His left hand was casually slipped into the sweatshirt pocket, while his right arm, in a posture of near-absolute possession, steadily and without a single shred of avoidance encircled Silas's slender waist.
Those puppy eyes that would usually curve into crescent moons and act spoiled for sweets the moment he saw Silas were currently narrowed slightly. The light within them was as cold as a dark iron blade tempered in ten-thousand-year frost.
Looking at this young man who had suddenly cut in, the smile on Julian Liang's face froze for a brief instant.
"I've heard of you. The senior who caused quite a 'sensational stir' in the academic community back then."
Hunter hooked up one corner of his mouth. Zero warmth could be found in that smile; instead, it carried a high-and-mighty disdain unique to the eldest young master of a top-tier clan. Tilting his chin up slightly, he glared down aggressively at the middle-aged man before him: "But you are a busy man who forgets things easily, so you might not know me yet—allow me to introduce myself. I am Professor Shen's family."
Boom—!
Almost the exact instant the word "family" fell, a violent riot invisible to the naked eye erupted within the air of the corridor.
Without half a hint of warning, the near-terrifying genetic suppression belonging to a top-tier Alpha surged out silently yet completely overwhelming the area.
This time, it lacked the restrained, submissive demeanor shown to his elders at the ancestral estate, and it held none of the sweet, intentional pleasing directed at Silas in the laboratory. It was a scorching, blazing orange scent that carried a dense warning flavor, packed with a heavy sense of deprivation and aggression.
That burning,熾热 orange aroma was like an ancient giant beast whose reverse scale had been touched, instantly tearing that nauseating scent of rotting wood agarwood into shreds until not a single speck remained, utilizing a near-unstoppable, overbearing posture.
This was the absolute and most ruthless declaration of sovereignty when a top-tier Alpha's territory encountered a provocation.
Standing opposite them, Julian Liang's complexion finally stiffened completely in this split second.
No matter how deep his experience was, his breathing instinctively hitched when facing this absolute genetic suppression of bloodline and rank. He retreated half a step backward in a somewhat disheveled manner, his gaze circling around Hunter's remarkably arrogant and handsome face before ultimately settling back onto Silas's face, which had recovered a fraction of color.
"Family?"
A highly sinister dark glint flashed through Julian Liang's eyes, and the words he uttered carried a gnashing-of-teeth undercurrent: "Silas Shen, having not met for so many years, you've actually... found quite a powerful backer."
Sarcasm, filth, insinuation. These foul vocabulary words had once nailed Silas deathly onto a pillar of shame ten years ago.
Silas's fingers tightly clutching the agreements turned white at the knuckles once more upon hearing those two words.
"He is not a backer."
Just before the pheromones surrounding Hunter were about to go completely berserk and thoroughly obliterate the piece of trash before them, Silas, who had remained silent all this time, finally spoke slowly.
Although his voice remained cool, it no longer possessed the tremor and panic from before.
Silas straightened his body. Extending a hand, he gently pushed at Hunter's large hand encircled around his waist.
Hunter's entire frame had been wound tight due to his immense fury. Sensing Silas's resistance, he felt somewhat aggrieved and stubbornly refused to let go. Yet in the next second, Silas did not push him away as he had anticipated; instead, he slid his hand down along Hunter's palm.
That pale, slightly cool long hand, inch by inch, exceptionally firmly and exceptionally forcefully, locked deathly together with Hunter's large, callus-fingered hand.
Ten fingers laced together.
Silas lifted his head, those phoenix eyes hidden behind his gold-rimmed glasses appearing as clear and bright as a blade, stabbing straight toward the unsightly face of Julian Liang. He corrected word for word:
"Professor Liang, you heard incorrectly. He is not my backer."
"—He is my family."
The sunlight poured down without a single shred of reservation, illuminating the gold-dappled corridor until not a single trace of haze remained.
Two equally outstanding, equally proud young men stood side by side right here within the most solemn teaching building of Beijing University, openly and honorably with their fingers interlaced, right under the astonished and shocked gazes of countless board members and department leaders.
Looking at those two identical dark blue ties, as well as that shred of absolute determination and unyielding confidence that had never appeared in Silas's eyes before—signifying he had found his harbor—the mask Julian Liang had maintained flawlessly for years finally manifested a distorted, completely shattered crack at this very moment.