Iron-hard arms swept around his waist without a word of permission and hauled him in.
Zong Wen's tall frame sank down with him, using Chi Xingran as a life-sized pillow, his entire face buried in the hollow of his neck.
The hot, heavy breath against his skin made Chi Xingran's hair stand on end.
“Holy—let go! I sell skills, not my body!”
Panicking, Chi Xingran braced both hands against the man's chest and shoved.
But Zong Wen's arms were locked like welded steel. However he thrashed, the man did not move an inch.
“Don't move! Whatever you do, don't move!”
Assistant Zhou came scrambling over like a man crossing a minefield, groveling up to the island with both hands pressed flat in the air, voice squeezed to a hoarse whisper. “Mr. Chi! I'm begging you! Ancestor! Do not struggle!”
Dr. Chen, meanwhile, wore an expression of pure, feverish awe. He hurried close and all but held his breath over the portable monitor strapped to Zong Wen's wrist.
The second hand ticked.
Dr. Chen pushed up his rimless glasses, voice trembling.
“Deep sleep! He's entered deep sleep on his own! Every reading is stable! Three years—Mr. Zong hasn't managed this in three whole years!”
“Let go! I don't care if it's deep sleep or a nap—my spine's about to snap!”
Shoulder dead numb, Chi Xingran gritted his teeth and pried at Zong Wen's fingers.
“Mr. Chi! A thousand yuan a minute! Cash, settled by the second!” Assistant Zhou's eyes were rimmed red with panic. “Just don't move. We will not short you!”
Chi Xingran froze mid-pry.
He blinked, and the abacus in his head started spinning.
Sixty thousand an hour. If he slept five hours... three hundred thousand!
“Deal.”
Chi Xingran pocketed the temper instantly, and even leveled his shoulder out—couldn't have it digging into his sugar daddy's precious jaw.
Assistant Zhou mopped his forehead, waved the bodyguards out, and the whole crowd tiptoed from the kitchen.
Ten minutes passed.
Chi Xingran's entire right side had gone to wood.
“No good. This money costs too much. I need a side hustle to hedge.”
He hadn't logged enough stream time tonight, and the guaranteed payout was not up for sacrifice. One-handed, he fished his beat-up phone out of his pants pocket, propped it against a spice jar, and framed the shot.
In the frame: just Chi Xingran in his old-man undershirt, and behind him the trailing half of a black silk robe, Zong Wen's whole face buried in shadow.
The moment the stream went live, notification pings went berserk.
The recording of the midnight blind-date disaster was still blazing across the internet, and the rubberneckers flooded in at once.
«The streamer's finally live! Word is you flipped the Second Young Master's blind date table?»
«Is that a real person or a mannequin behind you? That robe's fabric looks expensive as hell.»
«Keeping a pretty boy behind our backs? What kind of new thirst-trap scheme is this?»
Chi Xingran dropped his voice and rolled his eyes at the camera.
“Thirst-trap nothing. That's our village's village idiot. Shy around strangers—can only sleep if he's holding onto me.”
“All right, folks. Tonight let's talk about my second aunt. The nightmare one.”
One-handed, he grabbed fried peanuts off the plate and tossed them into his mouth, voice lowered into gossip mode.
“My second aunt—you can hear her abacus beads clicking three villages over. Back when my cousin got married, she haggled over the bride price for half a year to save money, and in the end gifted them a whole crate of top-shelf liquor bottles—filled to the brim with well water!”
“Then when the bride's family called off the wedding, she went and lay down wailing at their front gate, saying they'd scammed her out of two crates of rotten apples...”
His tongue was quick and his punchlines quicker.
The viewer count climbed like it was on fire—straight past several hundred thousand.
«LMAOOO. Fancy bottles full of well water. That granny understood resource integration!»
«Is the streamer's mouth rented? Savage as hell, hahaha!»
«Wait. The person behind you just moved!»
On camera, the knot between Zong Wen's brows was actually smoothing out.
All that chattering had not woken him—instead it had become a hypnotic white-noise machine. Zong Wen's fine nose nuzzled unconsciously against the side of Chi Xingran's neck, his face burrowing deeper, arm tightening, locking him firmly in place.
The live chat detonated.
«HOLY— He really nuzzled him!»
«That pale skin and that jawline—that is a certified top-tier handsome man!»
«Top gifter sent ten Carnivals! Show us his face!»
«Don't stop! Two more nuzzles and I'm sending the yacht!»
Donations were rocketing on the backend, and Chi Xingran's eyes lit up like light bulbs.
A thousand a minute in cuddle fees plus a screen full of gifts. Pure profit!
Mid-gossip, his stomach lodged a formal complaint.
That whole bowl of noodles had gone to Zong Wen; he himself had eaten a few strands of greens. Now the cold fried chicken drumsticks left over from the delivery, sitting by the stove, were making his mouth water.
While Zong Wen slept deep, Chi Xingran held his breath and sent his right hand creeping, furtive, toward the greasy paper-wrapped bundle.
One centimeter. Two...
The instant his fingertips were about to brush that crackling fried skin—
The big hand that had been locked around his waist shot out, impossibly fast!
Smack!
Zong Wen caught his wrist with clamp-force precision, stopping him dead in midair.
Chi Xingran sucked in a cold breath and froze solid.
Millions of viewers held their breath along with him.
The next second, the head buried in his neck lifted slightly.
Zong Wen gave a cold glance at the wrist he had gripped red, then swept his gaze over the gift effects flooding the screen and let out a cold snort, voice low and rough with just-woken sleep.
“It's the middle of the night, Streamer Chi. Making quite a nice living behind my back, aren't we?”