Captured By The Cold Detective (BL)-Chapter 474: Never Been So Calm

Without a pause, the two men answered in unison, "No need."

It was only at times like this that they could cooperate with each other. Either way, none of them could stand the sight of the other; if they were to stay together in the same room for a period of time, there was a high chance that they would start killing each other.

Luo Xuan was helpless, but he had no way to change their minds. "Okay, if you say so."

"Well," Ku Jin stood up in a clutter and finished his cocktail in one large gulp. "I guess I will get going because I need to track down a certain someone who has been hiding from me." He glanced at He Juan playfully as he said that, then he took out a flash drive, handing it to Luo Xuan. "Here’s the thing you asked for, Boss. See ya!" He shoved his hands into his pocket and sauntered away, humming under his breath.

He Juan mentally noted to send a message to Jia Molei after this, asking him to be more careful when he stepped out of the house for the next few days lest he would get bitten by a mad dog. Now that the annoying one had left, He Juan finally had the chance to greet the Omega, "Boss, it’s been a while."

Luo Xuan took Ku Jin’s seat, and upon hearing this, the look in his eyes softened. "Indeed," he hummed softly. "I haven’t seen you for a while, and you have already changed so much, XIU. Haven’t I told you not to address me so formally?"

Pretending not to hear the meaning behind the first half of the sentence, He Juan chose to respond to his last question instead, laughing helplessly, "How can I dare to be casual with you? You’re the Boss, after all, and you have a reputation to uphold. What if those guys under me hear me addressing you so carelessly and choose to follow suit? We can’t let that happen, can we?" Without waiting for Luo Xuan to reply, he switched the topic in a casual tone, "What is it that you asked the Manipulator to do? I thought you no longer bothered yourself with the organization?"

"Just some personal matters," Luo Xuan shot him an amused look. "If I want to ask something about the organization, I’d surely seek you out. But it seems like I don’t need to be worried. You have been taking good care of Xuanlong in my absence, haven’t you?"

When Luo Xuan put it like that, there was nothing more He Juan could say. This was just how Luo Xuan was; seemingly gentle and friendly, but in fact he would always keep people at an arm’s length as if he was wary of letting anyone get too close. He Juan supposed that it had something to do with his past, the very reason why he decided to build Xuanlong to get rid of the pests in society.

All He Juan knew about him was what he was willing to share— he had no idea who his father was, his omega mother struggled to raise him before succumbing to illness, and he had a hard time growing up surrounded by the malice and prejudice of society. It was due to this harsh upbringing that he chose to build his own forces.

But now, with the revelation of the secret experiment and Luo Xuan’s uncanny pheromones that resembled those of the mutated Alphas, doubts began to gnaw at He Juan’s mind.

Had Luo Xuan been truthful about his past?

Which part was a lie, which part was the fact he deliberately concealed? Did he really have a hand in all of this mess?

Absentmindedly, He Juan blurted out, "I have something to ask."

Luo Xuan raised a hand to stop him. "Are you sure you want to talk here?" He summoned a staff member and asked for a private room, before beckoning to He Juan. "Let’s go."

With his mind a jumbled mess, He Juan followed after the Omega as they were led into a private room, away from the main lounge. He did not even notice what the room looked like, nor how the staff kept sneaking curious glances at them, obviously misunderstanding the business of a pair of Alpha and Omega inside a private space.

He Juan paid them no heed, because as soon as the door closed behind them, he immediately took the crumpled paper out of his pocket, smoothed it down before pushing it across the table to Luo Xuan. The paper bore obvious marks of being crushed multiple times, its ink smudged from the sweat on his palm. In spite of that, there was no way Luo Xuan couldn’t recognize his own signature.

However, he merely cast it a nonchalant glance before asking, "What is this?"

He Juan kept a close watch on his expression as he asked, "Is that your signature? The one you signed with your own hand? No signs of forgery?"

Though puzzled, Luo Xuan still played along with him with a hint of mirth in his tone, "What? Do you think my skill has dulled after being away for three years? What about this?" He picked up the half-burned paper, turning it back and forth in his hand, but he couldn’t seem to find anything special to make He Juan look so solemn.

So it was his real signature?

He Juan couldn’t even begin to describe his current feelings as he revealed, "I found it in the archive room at the Alzheimer’s research institute in the suburbs of Yuyang. Does it ring a bell?"

Luo Xuan paused for a fleeting moment with his lashes lowered, making it impossible for He Juan to gauge his reaction. Without giving him a chance to respond, He Juan continued solemnly, "Luo Xuan." The omega raised his head in surprise, not expecting He Juan to call out his name all of a sudden after his earlier refusal. "Tell me, are you also... a product of this experiment?"

He Juan had mentally prepared himself for this throughout the entire journey here, but his heart still sank when Luo Xuan shrugged with a wry smile, "I think you already know the answer to that, no?"

He Juan inhaled sharply. Despite the cold autumn weather, He Juan still felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The glare of the lightbulb and the sunlight streaming in through the windows suddenly turned unbearable. "Why..." he found himself asking, his voice hoarse. "Why didn’t you tell me anything? If I hadn’t found Blue Lotus’ men in the Queen of Spades..." he trailed off, because a sickening thought had just crossed his mind.

He swallowed past the dryness on his throat and asked out of nowhere, "Do you know who Blue Lotus is, Boss?" Luo Xuan merely stared at him without a word, and He Juan did not actually need him to answer either because he added, "He was the ringleader of drug distribution in Yubei Province. You know how I’ve been hunting down the omega trafficking organization? I found that he was involved in this, so I started to track him down. It took me over a year, but I finally caught him early this year."

He Juan leaned back to the chair, shadows casted over his features as he recounted the events with a numb voice, "He had been hiding at a secret facility in Qingxi Province, because he would supply omegas to them. There’s something I have been wondering all this while... of all places, why must Blue Lotus show up in the Queen of Spades? Why was he there on the same day as my men?"

Queen of Spades— that was where everything started.

If He Juan had not received the report from his men that day, if he had not gone to that bar with the intention of catching Blue Lotus, he wouldn’t have stumbled upon Ye Qiu’s pheromones. And the subsequent events wouldn’t have happened either.

"What are you trying to say, XIU?" Luo Xuan asked, still with that good-natured and gentle tone, as if he was coaxing a misbehaving child.

He Juan’s knuckles cracked from how hard he was clenching his fists. "Don’t you have something to ask me? Don’t you want to know how I came to know about the secret experiment that was supposed to have been buried under the rug?"

A subtle frown formed between Luo Xuan’s brows. "Calm down, XIU. You are—"

"I am calm," He Juan interrupted him in a way that was very unlike himself. "I have never been so calm, Luo Xuan. Do you want to know what Blue Lotus told me when I tortured him? Even until the end... he refused to admit that he had stepped foot in the Queen of Spades."

That night, there were so many eyewitnesses who caught sight of Blue Lotus — five of He Juan’s men, and Ye Qiu – but the man himself claimed that he had never been there, that he had never left Qingxi since he heard that XIU was looking for him. No matter how much torture He Juan inflicted on him, even until he was hanging on his last breath, he still insisted on defending his claim. At that time, He Juan thought – no, he fooled himself into thinking that Blue Lotus was just saying that in order to escape punishment, unaware that his actions had backfired and fueled He Juan’s wrath instead.

He made himself believe that it was the case, because he did not want to entertain the other possibility.

If... If Blue Lotus indeed was not there, then who was the man everyone had seen? Who could have impersonated him to the point where his own subordinates did not even notice anything amiss?

In this world, there was only one person who could pull this off flawlessly, and also set up such an intricate scheme as if everyone was no more than chess pieces he could move around as he pleased— and that person was none other than Luo Xuan’s right-hand man.

The Manipulator might be a mad dog, but he was and would always be loyal to Luo Xuan, whom he had acknowledged as the Boss.

"What happened that day..." He raised his eyelids, revealing a pair of bloodshot eyes that stared right at Luo Xuan. "...was it a coincidence? Or have you been planning them for a long time, Boss? Is this your way of showing me the truth?"

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A/N: I know it takes so long for the truth to be revealed, but congratulations to those who have guessed that Blue Lotus in the Queen of Spades that night was not really him ^^