“Ha… hahaha…”
Rong Duo lowered her eyes and laughed dryly, pretending she didn’t understand what he meant.
Luo Ran helplessly picked up the conversation. “You’re the highest-ranking person here, General. Stop fooling around. We’re going to be late for the meeting.”
Luo Ran followed Lucas away.
After the meeting ended and he dealt with some urgent paperwork, Luo Ran took his own aircraft to a discreet clinic on the outskirts of the city.
The clinic was nothing like the regular medical facilities in the city. It was simply a small, cozy, exquisite-looking farmhouse, with vegetables and flowers planted all around the outside.
Even though food could easily be produced by machines, the owner insisted on growing everything by hand.
Luo Ran’s private doctor, Xia Zhi, had been waiting for him for quite some time. He was sitting in the living room reading a book.
Xia Zhi was an Omega more than twelve years older than Luo Ran, but the years had treated him exceptionally well and had left few obvious traces on him.
Moreover, Xia Zhi had a lively personality and a youthful mindset, making it even harder to tell his age.
At that moment, sitting in a living room filled with books, Xia Zhi looked exactly like someone who enjoyed a leisurely life.
Xia Zhi had once been an exceptionally skilled doctor, as well as the medical department’s ace military physician. But after a major incident during a war several years ago, he had withdrawn from that life. Nowadays, he simply grew and sold vegetables and wrote things to make a living, only taking on a few familiar clients.
Luo Ran had become one of those clients purely by accident.
At the time, Luo Ran had gone to inspect a construction-site accident in the outskirts. Xia Zhi’s younger brother worked at the construction site and was there helping out as well.
When the two met for the first time, Xia Zhi immediately saw that Luo Ran was an Omega pretending to be a Beta, and that he was suffering from severe psychological trauma.
Xia Zhi felt genuinely sorry for Luo Ran’s condition. He was also worried that Luo Ran would have difficulty finding a doctor given his circumstances, so he became his secret private physician.
“Good afternoon.”
Luo Ran pushed open the door and sat down beside Xia Zhi.
After being Luo Ran’s doctor for so many years, Xia Zhi had long since become a close friend, so Luo Ran naturally didn’t stand on ceremony with him.
“Ranran’s here!”
Xia Zhi shook his head helplessly.
“You’ve lost weight again. I told you to eat three meals a day on time. I wonder if you’ve actually been following that advice.”
“Work’s been pretty busy…”
“Have you been taking your medicine on time?”
Xia Zhi patted Luo Ran on the shoulder.
“Remember, you still shouldn’t overwork yourself. That General of yours is one person below everyone and above everyone else. Can’t he find more people to help? You’re working like a beast of burden for him. Are you his secretary or his nanny?”
Luo Ran coughed awkwardly and, avoiding the subject of Lucas, obediently nodded.
“I’ve been taking the medicine on time. I have two doses left.”
“Good.”
Xia Zhi said, “Come into the examination room with me. I’ll give you a checkup and prescribe your medicine.”
The room where Xia Zhi kept his precious medical equipment was in the basement.
The two went downstairs, and Xia Zhi performed an EEG and a full-body examination on Luo Ran. He even repeated some of the tests twice, as though trying to confirm something.
When they returned to the living room, Xia Zhi looked rather delighted.
“Your mental state has improved a lot recently!”
“With the medicine you customized for me, I’ve been getting better year by year.”
Luo Ran wasn’t flattering him. Xia Zhi’s medicine really was effective, and his mental state had indeed been improving more and more.
“That’s not what I mean.”
Xia Zhi explained, “You’ve always been improving. Psychological trauma can eventually heal as long as you receive consistent treatment. But what I’m talking about is that you’ve made an obvious, almost breakthrough-level improvement recently.”
Xia Zhi blinked and smiled mischievously.
“Did some powerful Alpha mark you? Are you in love?”
Like Lucas, Luo Ran’s pheromones were also a rare SSS level. Only an Alpha of an equally high level could bring him any healing effect.
Xia Zhi chuckled and nudged Luo Ran with his elbow.
“When did this start? And you didn’t even tell me?”
“I…”
Luo Ran stopped.
After being temporarily marked, he had indeed felt slightly better over the past two days.
“An Alpha whose strength matches yours can stabilize your pheromones.”
Xia Zhi smiled.
“You have to understand, pheromones above the S level are genuinely dangerous.”
“I’m not in love…”
Luo Ran said helplessly, “I’m this busy with work. How could I possibly date?”
“Hmm… In any case, I hope you can maintain this. That way I can reduce the dosage of your medicine.”
“I can’t.”
Luo Ran firmly clarified, “It was only a temporary mark, and it won’t continue.”
Seeing that Luo Ran was clearly avoiding the subject, Xia Zhi frowned slightly but didn’t press him any further. After all, Luo Ran wasn’t someone who could easily be bullied.
“If anything happens, you have to tell me.”
When Luo Ran nodded, Xia Zhi sighed helplessly.
“I really don’t know what happened to you to leave you with an injury like this. If you say it’s serious, you don’t look like a typical patient—you’re not suffering, going insane, or unable to take care of yourself. But if you say it’s a minor injury, it really is a huge wound in your mind.”
Based on the timing, it had happened during Luo Ran’s second year as Lucas’s secretary.
But Luo Ran had completely forgotten about it. He had no idea why he had ended up with an injury like this.
Luo Ran felt as though he had forgotten something.
But he couldn’t remember, and there was no way to force himself to.
“Oh, right.”
Xia Zhi suddenly clapped his hands.
“I uploaded your information to a matchmaking website! Of course, I used a fake name!”
Luo Ran: “…”
Luo Ran stared at him in disbelief.
“You really uploaded it?”
“Of course. Didn’t you agree?”
Xia Zhi blinked and assured him, “It’s an official government-certified website! Everyone has to register under their real identity, so there’s absolutely no chance of scammers.”
Luo Ran felt a little embarrassed.
“I didn’t exactly say you could upload it…”
Luo Ran’s family had also been urging him to find a partner, but he was simply too busy. He was constantly running around taking care of things for Lucas every day—where would he find the time to socialize?
Unlike Lucas, Luo Ran wasn’t opposed to dating, nor was he opposed to marriage. He simply didn’t have the energy for it.
After Xia Zhi heard about this before, he had joked that he could help. Luo Ran had merely shaken his head helplessly.
And so, that had been taken as tacit agreement.
“Our Ranran is so handsome and so outstanding. I guarantee your terminal will be flooded with messages!”
Xia Zhi patted his chest confidently.
“Then our Ranran can find himself a thoughtful partner who can take good care of you.”
“Ah…”
Luo Ran was utterly helpless.
But since it was already uploaded, so be it.
He was very laid-back when it came to relationships and simply believed in letting things take their natural course. He also didn’t resist the blind dates his family arranged for him, meeting one person after another over time.
Except, for some inexplicable reason, every single one of them ended in failure.
The two chatted for a while, after which Luo Ran had lunch at Xia Zhi’s place before leaving.
Luo Ran couldn’t stay any longer either. He had received an email from the research institute, but it wasn’t the DNA report. Instead, it was a notice asking him to accompany Lucas to the institute in person to collect it. The captain of the guard team came along as well.
Along the way, Luo Ran wore a bright smile on the outside, but inside, he was panicking like crazy, as though he had swallowed a hundred bags of popping candy.
Lucas and Luo Ran entered the laboratory one after the other.
Lucas said viciously, “We’ll find out which bastard it was soon enough.”
“…Mm.”
Luo Ran could only nod and say something to cover up his emotions.
“I just don’t know why the research institute didn’t simply email the report to me.”
The captain smiled. “Maybe there’s some special circumstance.”
Please don’t let there be one, Luo Ran thought.
That was also what made him nervous.
Why did the two of them have to go there in person?
Logically speaking, he had already switched the sample. It should… be impossible for him to get caught out, right?
Luo Ran took a deep breath and decided not to scare himself unnecessarily.
“General and Secretary Luo are here.”
The director was an elderly man, but he was still energetic and sharp. When he saw the two of them, his expression immediately became somewhat strange.
Luo Ran asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Well… You should look at the report yourselves.”
The director instructed his assistant to activate the projection screen, and a report appeared before everyone’s eyes.
The first and most obvious thing everyone noticed was the photograph on the file.
A fluffy brown dog’s head.
Name: Orpheus
Years: Star Calendar 451–462
Classification: Canidae — Domestic Dog
At that moment, the goofy dog head was staring straight at everyone and smiling.
The atmosphere became strangely quiet.
The General… had fucked a dog.
He had really fucked a dog.
Lucas’s face turned as hard as iron. The look on his face was terrifying.
The captain standing behind them couldn’t hold it in anymore. Very, very quietly, he let out a tiny—
“Pfft.”
He laughed.
Lucas’s expression became even more terrifying.
Luo Ran: “…”
Luo Ran looked up at the ceiling.
All right.
He had only heard that that batch of samples had been discarded and was no longer useful, and that the detailed files had also been deleted from the database. That was why he had dared to use one so boldly.
He hadn’t expected…
Pfft.
Luo Ran had originally wanted to laugh too.
But then he thought about it.
Wait.
If the General had fucked a dog, didn’t that mean he was…
the dog?
Luo Ran: “…”
His smile gradually disappeared.jpg
Seeing Luo Ran’s strange expression, Lucas angrily growled at him,
“I know what I fucked, don’t I?! Can’t I tell whether it was a human or a dog, a man or a woman?!”
Luo Ran: “…………”
Luo Ran: “Mm.”