Chapter 62

Huo Jilin: "..."

So this was how Chen Jue saw him? Standing high above everyone, bossing people around, a total dictator?

Okay, maybe there was a little truth to that, but that didn't mean he had to be cast as some emperor.

Why would a modern guy want to be an emperor?

He just wanted to be in the pharma business.

Huo Jilin took a deep breath and explained it to Chen Jue, breaking it down piece by piece: "I want to team up with you to build a pharma legend. I'll fund all the research—you just focus on your surgeries. I believe no one else in this world understands you or supports you the way I do."

He said it so sincerely, but Chen Jue's lips curled slightly: "Funny, I seem to remember that in our last life, you were the one who opposed me the most. At the 520 in-vitro embryo press conference, what exactly did you say about me then?"

A dull ache settled back into Huo Jilin's chest. He knew it was the boomerang effect—what goes around comes around.

He had used Chen Jue as a warning to others way too many times—so many that even his own conscience couldn't let it go.

Especially regarding the 520 in-vitro embryo research.

Back then, Chen Jue had been dead set against it. No matter how many seminars they held, he always voted no and flat-out refused to join the research team.

By then, Chen Jue was already a shareholder at Zhonghai Hospital, and his word carried a lot of weight.

Yet even with all those interview mics in his face, he still said the same thing he'd never wavered from.

"I don't support in-vitro embryo reproduction research, and I never will.

Even if the population drops, that's the natural order of things. We shouldn't interfere artificially, and we shouldn't break the laws of natural reproduction for our own selfish reasons. Slapping the name '520' on in-vitro embryos doesn't change what they are—they're still machines. What they produce isn't a baby—it's a monster. It will never adapt to this natural world, and one day it will bring all of humanity to extinction..."

You can imagine the waves those words stirred up.

There are always two sides to any debate—two opposing views.

Those in favor, those against.

And the majority are just fence-sitters going with the wind.

The pro side's arguments were:

1. It frees women from the pain of childbirth, truly achieving gender equality, and ends the fight over who has to carry the baby;

2. It ensures eugenics and better child-rearing, allowing early detection of fetal abnormalities, guaranteeing the baby's health, and reducing the harm of miscarriage for women;

3. It brings hope to couples who can't conceive, and opens up another possibility for same-sex families.

The benefits seemed so obvious that most people supported it and called for the technology to be developed ASAP.

So Chen Jue's stubborn stance baffled them, and with certain people fanning the flames, it sparked fierce opposition.

The public abuse came down on him like a blizzard.

Lightweight, baseless, unfounded—pure personal attacks from a moral high ground.

"He doesn't understand women's pain in childbirth. He's a sexist pig, unfit to be a doctor."

"Genius doctor, huh. Cold-blooded and heartless."

"He's the real monster. They say geniuses are all cold-blooded weirdos."

"So cold-blooded, no wonder his parents dumped him at birth."

"Is he bitter that his parents abandoned him, so he's pushing this? Does he think his stance will save anything? There are plenty of deadbeat parents out there. Honestly, better to have that kind of parent than a government-bred in-vitro embryo!"

"Stop guessing. We've all said it—he's a freak. Who can understand how a freak thinks? If you ask me, his parents were right to dump him. Geniuses all have personality issues."

"Someone like him, abandoned and heartless—it's a wonder Dean Chen treats him like his own son and lets him take over Zhonghai Hospital."

"A guy like him doesn't deserve to be a doctor who saves lives. Zhonghai Hospital is doomed with him as its heir!"

Huo Jilin closed his eyes for a moment. So he did remember those words clearly after all.

These remarks were so extreme, and so specifically aimed at Chen Jue, that it was obvious someone was pulling the strings.

Chen Jue was Dean Chen's adopted son, and a lot of shareholders didn't want to see him take over Zhonghai Hospital. They'd stop at nothing to drag him down. Their methods were shady and dirty—compared to Huo Jilin openly using Chen Jue as a warning to others, they were truly classless.

At the time, Huo Jilin hadn't held a press conference for Chen Jue because he wanted to see who was crawling out of the woodwork. He wanted to catch them red-handed, buy out all their shares, and settle things once and for all.

Chen Jue was the shield out front while Huo Jilin swung the scythe from behind, and together they reshaped Zhonghai Hospital.

...

So even back then, he already thought of Chen Jue as one of his own.

But his actions had been way too harsh. He'd been too cruel to Chen Jue.

Zhonghai Hospital was eventually reshaped as he had wished—he became the major shareholder, with Chen Jue and Dean Chen as the second-largest shareholders.

But Chen Jue stopped talking to him after that.

It wasn't until Chen Jue died that Huo Jilin was eaten up by regret.

Because he'd said something even crueler back then.

When Chen Jue returned after hiding away for a month, Huo Jilin hadn't comforted him. Instead, he had said:

"Chen Jue, if you can't keep up with the times, then get out of the way. Zhonghai Hospital needs to stay at the forefront of medicine. And if you can't even withstand this much pressure, then don't bother inheriting Zhonghai Hospital!"

The Huo Jilin of that time was a man with a heart of iron.

He had never been the soft type, and three years in the military had made him even more unyielding.

In his view, this kind of setback was nothing.

The more people tried to stop you from inheriting, the more you should knock them all down.

Huo Jilin couldn't bring himself to look Chen Jue in the eyes now.

The boomerang had hit him dead center.

The pain he felt now was exactly the pain his words had inflicted on Chen Jue back then.

Chen Jue was not a cold-blooded, heartless person like him.

Huo Jilin's gaze fell softly on Chen Jue's round, protruding belly.

Among all those curses, there was one that was the most vicious—and it had come true.

"Toxic masculinity—let him go through childbirth pain in his next life, then he wouldn't dare talk like that..."

Huo Jilin thought those people had blamed the wrong person.

He'd been back for almost a month, and Chen Jue had never once mentioned his belly to him—not a hint of joy, not a word of complaint.

He was a man carrying this child, yet he never complained, not once.

Even Zhang Yan, who adored kids, had complained about the weight of his belly, the lower back pain, and the swollen legs and feet.

Chen Jue's legs and feet were swollen too, and he soaked them in herbal medicine every night to ease the swelling, but he never said a word.

Every word in his medical notes was about the embryo's development, what the pregnancy felt like, how his body was reacting—not one word about his own mental state.

He was like a robot growing this baby.

He was like the perfect test-tube embryo.

That thought stung, but it had become reality.

Huo Jilin took a deep breath. "Let me explain everything to you."

Chen Jue shook his head slightly. "Whatever you say."

He didn't care anymore, about anything.

What Huo Jilin feared most was Chen Jue not caring about anything—it made his heart, which had just started to heal, ache all over again.

He sat up straight, determined to explain—he had to explain. He'd been so arrogant back then, refusing to explain a single thing to Chen Jue, just standing on his high horse and demanding total obedience. He'd brought his whole military approach into his relationship with Chen Jue, which led to countless sleepless nights of regret later.

"Let me start from the beginning.

You know pharma companies are regulated by the government, right? Huachen Pharmaceutical is no exception. As the top dog in the industry, it doesn't just have to answer to the government—it also has to carry out state-assigned missions."

"The mission is to innovate in medicine, to break through barriers no matter the cost."

Huo Jilin looked at Chen Jue, a bitter smile in his voice: "When other countries are working on this tech, we have to work on it too. Maybe we'll never use it, but we can't afford not to have it.

Just like nukes built and parked in the national arsenal as decoration, our medical tech can't fall behind any other country.

Looking at the darker side of it, we need to figure out what other countries are really up to with their test-tube embryo research.

Looking at the big picture, it's about stockpiling human resources for the nation, pushing back the day humanity goes extinct. Maybe you'd say this will destroy humanity, but if what we create... are monsters, then when the world becomes unlivable, maybe only the monsters will survive..."

Huo Jilin sat cross-legged on the kang—a traditional Chinese heated brick bed—his tone calm, with no coldness or ruthlessness, which made him seem genuinely sincere.

Chen Jue glanced at him.

Huo Jilin saw things from a different angle than he did.

Niko once said there's no right or wrong in this world, just different perspectives.

When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. Everything has two sides; there's no absolute right or wrong, only what fits human nature better at that particular moment.

Chen Jue spoke, slowly: "Maybe you're thinking about the country, and you have to do it that way, but I'm a human being, and I stand from a human perspective.

I'm against test-tube baby gestation not just because I'm afraid those kids will become spare parts for organ transplants, but also because I worry about what genetic optimization could lead to.

In the short term, picking good genes and improving them through test-tube embryos seems like a good thing—making every kid smarter, healthier, and more physically perfect.

But everything has two sides. From a human genetics standpoint, choosing superior genes means getting rid of inferior ones, no way around it. Over time, human genes will become more and more uniform. Without natural selection and environmental diversity, humans as a species will lose the ability to adapt to natural disasters.

If one day a virus shows up that targets those improved, uniform traits, it could infect everyone in no time—and that would be the end of humanity.

Maybe you think that's a long way off, but the dinosaurs died out in the blink of an eye."

Huo Jilin watched him in silence. Chen Jue had actually said this much to him. Back then... back then Chen Jue had said it too, in his thesis. Unfortunately, his views were drowned out by the mob condemning him, and no one listened, calling it alarmist.

But this was Chen Jue—a genius doctor's unique perspective.

Too far-sighted, too rational, devoid of any emotional coloring, so it wasn't accepted by the masses.

Huo Jilin just looked at him and smiled. He hadn't accepted Chen Jue's view back then either. Or rather, he carried a certain cold, bloodless gene within him. He thought if genes were inferior, there was no use keeping them.

Let extinction come. Why should humanity live so long?

The selfish, the greedy, the detestable—all deserved to die out.

If the world were left with only geniuses like Chen Jue—calm, rational, with a grand worldview—how peaceful the Earth would be.

Huo Jilin just watched Chen Jue, wondering why he had been so slow to realize he admired him.

This made everything he had done before come back to haunt him.

Huo Jilin took a deep breath, suppressing the fear inside him.

He thought, back then, he had no choice.

He was a gun of the state.

He stood from the perspective of the state machinery, opposed to Chen Jue's.

It wasn't that the country lacked foresight, but that the country cared about more complex things, lacking the pure medical mindset of someone like Chen Jue. The country had to first consider immediate survival—if it couldn't survive the present, how could it talk about humanity's eternal development?

So he, as the blade in the state's hand, struck down and made Chen Jue the sacrificial lamb to scare the chickens.

He always told himself he would explain to Chen Jue later, that everything he did was for his own good, that serving the country was serving Zhonghai Hospital, which in turn was serving Chen Jue.

Why had he so arrogantly assumed Chen Jue was his, a close one who needed no explanation?

Why had he so arrogantly assumed Chen Jue would surely understand his actions?

Why should Chen Jue understand him, especially when he had targeted him so relentlessly?

For five years, he had so autocratically, so single-mindedly targeted Chen Jue.

Haha.

Huo Jilin let out a bitter laugh.

He had to admit his brain had truly been flooded with Chen Jue.

Chen Jue was as cold-blooded and calm as he was, the same kind of person. He couldn't help but fix his gaze on him, and over time, he had settled into his heart.

So back then, Huo Jilin didn't feel much guilt. He only did what he thought was right, and even if a flicker of guilt toward Chen Jue crossed his mind, it didn't stop him from doing what he did.

He was inherently a cold-blooded person.

Until Chen Jue died later.

Only then did he realize his blood had truly run cold, leaving him standing motionless before Chen Jue's body as if turned to stone.

Chen Jue's tragic death was like a blade that stabbed right through his heart, and when feeling finally returned to his numb limbs, a searing pain ripped through his chest.

He never knew there was a pain so intense it could make him unable to stand.

His hands trembled so violently that he couldn't lift the white cloth draped over Chen Jue.

It was Chen Jue's death that suddenly made him realize he was an executioner—the one who'd killed Chen Jue.

If not for Chen Jue's sudden death, he would never have realized how cruel he'd been to him. He was the major shareholder of Zhonghai Hospital; everything at Zhonghai Hospital was his, and Chen Jue, as the future heir of Zhonghai Hospital, should have belonged to him too.

Anything that was his should obey him without question; anything that was his should...

He forgot he wasn't a god. He forgot Chen Jue wasn't his.

Chen Jue's sudden departure was like a meteorite crashing into him, leaving him stunned.

When he finally did recover, the pain came rushing in.

All the cruelty he'd shown Chen Jue now came back to haunt him.

That's why he clung to Chen Jue's urn, refusing to let go.

He deserved it all.

Huo Jilin closed his eyes, taking slow breaths to ease the pain in his heart.

That night, he finally faced his own heart and admitted he regretted it.

No amount of explanation could erase the regret that was gnawing at his heart.

The occasional tightness in his chest wasn't a physical illness—it was a sickness of the heart. It was a disease he couldn't overcome himself; whenever he thought of how he had driven Chen Jue to death, the pain made it hard to breathe, and he felt he should have died alongside Chen Jue.

It turned out that after Chen Jue's death, he didn't want to live either.

It took him a while before he opened his eyes again.

He thought, Chen Jue, I'm coming.

This life, I won't make those mistakes again.