Chapter 11 — The Mighty, All-Powerful Genie

That morning, Nhã Kỳ had an important appointment with a foreign investment partner at a five-star hotel in the city center, and because her personal driver suddenly called in sick, Bách Nguyên volunteered to drive her there, an offer she reluctantly accepted simply because she had no other choice at the last minute.

The road leading into the city center during rush hour is always crowded, with traffic moving little by little through the intersections. When their car stopped at a red light at a major intersection, Bách Nguyên suddenly felt a strange flow of instability creeping into his senses - the extraordinary intuition left over from thousands of years as a genie, being able to sense dangerous changes about to happen before they actually happened.

In just a split second, a cargo truck lost its brakes from the far slope and rushed straight toward the busy intersection, while the traffic light was still allowing pedestrians to cross the street. A boy about seven years old, holding a small ball in his hand, accidentally ran ahead of his mother in the middle of the road, completely unaware of the danger that was coming at breakneck speed.

Without a second of hesitation, Bách Nguyên opened the car door and rushed out at a speed that no normal person could achieve. He jumped over a distance of nearly ten meters in the blink of an eye, his hand reached out to grab the boy, turned around to cover, and rolled away from the trail of the truck's wheels sliding on the road just a few inches away. The truck finally stopped after knocking over a few potted plants on the side of the road, and Bách Nguyên stood up, carrying the boy who was crying out of fear in his arms, completely unharmed, as if just a normal step and not a narrow rescue between life and death.

Nhã Kỳ, sitting in the car, witnessed that entire moment through the glass window, her heart pounding, not only because of the panic at the accident that almost happened, but also because of the extraordinary speed and strength that she had just seen in the man she had always considered useless, only good at planting trees and fixing faucets in the house.

"There's no way a normal human could run that fast," she muttered to herself, her eyes still glued to Bách Nguyên who was handing the boy back to his mother who was sobbing with joy and gratitude, then returned to the car with a calm expression as if nothing had ever happened.

She pushed the car door and stepped out, her legs wobbled slightly from the shock she had just experienced, her hands clutched the side of the car to maintain balance while her eyes still did not leave his figure in the crowd gathered to watch the accident.

"Are you okay?" She asked as he sat in the driver's seat, her voice trembling slightly which she tried to hide.

"I'm fine," Bách Nguyên replied briefly and restarted the car as if nothing special had happened.

"You just ran so fast that I couldn't see clearly." Nhã Kỳ looked at him intently, her eyes full of questions. "Normal humans can't do that."

"Maybe I was just reacting instinctively in an emergency situation," Bách Nguyên replied, trying to keep his tone calm, even though in his heart he knew he had just revealed a part of the ability that he had been trying to hide for over a year. "The human body in times of danger sometimes has amazing abilities that are not normally shown."

The boy's mother, after calming down, tried to run after their car to thank them again, but Bách Nguyên just rolled down the window, smiled and said that anyone in that situation would do the same, and then quickly drove the car away, as if wanting to avoid unnecessary attention that his recent action might bring. Nhã Kỳ looked at the way he handled the situation, and was even more convinced that this was not a random reaction of a normal person, but a deliberate control, as if he had been used to having to hide his true abilities for a long time.

Nhã Kỳ did not say anything more, but she was not completely convinced by that explanation. During the rest of the way to the hotel, she silently observed Bách Nguyên with a new curiosity that she had never had before, questions began to appear in her mind: who really was this man? Why had he always been patient for over a year, enduring all of her cold treatment in a strangely calm way, as if he were hiding something much greater than the simple appearance he still shows every day?

During the meeting with foreign investment partners that day, Nhã Kỳ still maintained the necessary professional demeanor, but her mind many times absent-mindedly returned to the image of Bách Nguyên rushing through traffic in just a split second.

That evening, after the meeting with the investment partner ended successfully, Nhã Kỳ returned to the villa in an unusually confused mood. She went to meet Lâm Đắc Tường, who she believed had been with her family for a long time, hoping to find answers to the questions rising in her heart.

"Uncle Tuong, do you know anything about Bách Nguyên's past?" She asked directly, without beating around the bush. "Where does he come from? Who is his family? Why did my grandfather choose him for this marriage?"

Đắc Tường paused for a moment, feeling awkward before that direct question. He promised both Vĩnh Bảo and Bách Nguyên that he would keep this man's true origin an absolute secret, until Bách Nguyên himself decided to reveal the truth at the appropriate time.

"I don't know much about his past, ma'am," he replied, trying to keep his tone as natural as possible. "I just know the boss trusts him a lot, and believes he will be a good person for you."

"You're hiding something from me." Nhã Kỳ frowned, her sharp eyes were not easily fooled, her voice was both tough and somewhat pleading, rarely seen. "Today I just witnessed him do something that no normal human being could do. He ran so fast that he saved a child from a truck that lost its brakes in just a split second, as if he had some superhuman strength."

Đắc Tường was silent for a long time, trying to find an answer that would not betray his promise to keep the secret, nor completely lie to the person he considered his biological descendant. "Miss Nhã Kỳ, I think perhaps you should ask Bách Nguyên directly about that, when he is ready to share. I believe that he has no intention of causing you any harm, on the contrary, he always cares about your safety and happiness more than you think."

"So at least tell me, is he any danger to my family?" Nhã Kỳ continued asking, her voice still filled with a bit of anxiety that had not subsided.

"Absolutely not," Đắc Tường responded immediately, without any hesitation. "I can guarantee with my life that he will never do anything to harm you or this corporation. On the contrary."

That vague answer only made Nhã Kỳ's curiosity increase, but she also realized that forcing the old housekeeper to reveal the secret was not the right solution. That night, she lay in bed, over and over again recalling the image of Bách Nguyên rushing out of the car at extraordinary speed, his eyes strangely calm in the middle of a life and death moment, as if this was not the first time he had faced similar dangerous situations.

She also began to remember other small details that she had never paid attention to before — how he always knew exactly how she liked to drink ginger tea when it was cold even though she never said it, how he always appeared at the right time every time she needed some small help around the house, how he never showed resentment or resentment no matter how badly she had treated him over the past year.

"Who really is this man?" She asked herself in the darkness of the room, feeling for the first time in her life a strong curiosity mixed with insecurity about the nominal husband she had been deliberately ignoring for the past year.

She looked up at the ceiling, trying to put together all the disparate pieces in her head, but the more she tried to figure it out, the more she felt like she was facing a bigger puzzle than anything she had ever encountered in her familiar world of business. She was completely unaware that the answer to that question would be even stranger and more extraordinary than anything she could imagine on sleepless nights like these.