Cultivator God, Thanks to Beautiful CEO

Chapter 2

"My father is the Vice Director. Tomorrow morning, I’ll personally ensure your evaluation records are filed with gross medical malpractice. By the end of this week, your medical license will be permanently revoked, and you'll be kicked out of Apex Medical Center like a diseased dog."

Vanessa wrapped her arms tightly around Gavin’s waist, leaning against his shoulder while staring at Melvin with absolute indifference. "Get out of our apartment, Melvin. You're ruining our mood!"

Melvin stared at the woman he had loved and protected for half a decade. The final embers of warmth in his heart died completely, replaced by a pitch-black abyss of icy silence.

Slowly, agonizingly, Melvin dragged himself up from the floor. He didn't gather his clothes. He didn't look back at the trash can. He turned his back on them without uttering another word and walked out into the dark hallway.

Outside, torrential rain poured down, soaking Melvin to the skin the second he stepped out of the building. Rainwater mixed with the blood trickling from his forehead, but he felt no physical pain—only a crushing, hollow void inside his chest.

He stumbled toward his battered sedan, unlocked the door, and collapsed into the driver's seat.

His career was sabotaged. His five-year love was a lie. He had reached absolute rock bottom, stripped of his dignity and left with nothing in the cold, unforgiving city.

Five years of devotion. Six months of midnight fares. All discarded alongside a half-carat diamond ring.

He sat motionless in the dark, his mind numb, when his phone suddenly vibrated against the console. The rideshare screen flashed with a high-priority, black-tier pick-up dispatch—a luxury request originating barely two blocks away near the VIP exit of the Grand Plaza Hotel.

Mechanically, Melvin tapped the screen to accept. He cared nothing for the fare; he simply needed to move, to drive, to keep his thoughts from sinking back into the sound of Vanessa’s laughter.

Five minutes later, the sedan glided to a halt beside the shadowy side exit of the plaza. The rear door burst open almost immediately, bringing with it a sudden wave of high-end jasmine fragrance and an intense, unnatural heat.

A woman tumbled into the backseat, collapsing heavily against the leather interior.

"Drive..." a voice gasped out—sharp, commanding, yet shuddering with breathless desperation. "Get away from this place... now!"

Melvin instinctively glanced toward the rearview mirror, and his pulse froze.

Even beneath the dim dashboard glow, her face was unmistakable. It was Evelyn Cross—the famously ice-cold CEO of the Cross Consortium and majority executive director of Apex Medical Center.

Renowned across the province as an untouchable corporate empress, Evelyn was legendary for her formidable intellect, regal poise, and ruthless composure.

Yet right now, the untouchable CEO looked entirely unravelled.

Her porcelain skin was flushed a deep crimson, and fine beads of perspiration glistened along her collarbone.

Her dark eyes were dazed, heavy-lidded with an uncontrollable, feverish fog, and her slender fingers pulled frantically at the top buttons of her dark silk blouse.

"Ma'am." Melvin twisted around in his seat, one hand already reaching for her wrist. "Your core temperature is climbing past forty. I need you at Apex Emergency, right now."

"No." Evelyn's fingers locked onto the headrest, scorching through the leather. "No hospitals. No authorities. If anyone photographs me in this state, everything I built is finished by morning."

Melvin held two fingers against her radial pulse and counted.

One hundred and sixty-four. Skin flushed carmine from throat to collarbone. Pupils blown wide and unfocused. Severe hyperthermia stacked on top of acute chemical neuro-stimulation — a compound engineered to strip a person of judgment and manufacture a scandal.

What Melvin had no way of knowing yet: Julian Cross had been feeding his wife measured doses of the same compound for eight months, hidden inside a nightly herbal tonic prescribed by a private physician. Tonight's glass at the banquet carried forty times the usual concentration.

"Westridge Hill," Evelyn said, her breath hitching. "My estate. Take me there."

Ten minutes later the sedan skidded to a halt before the wrought-iron gates.

Melvin came around to the passenger door. The moment he extended his hand, Evelyn tumbled forward into his arms, radiating heat through the silk like a furnace.

"It hurts—" Her arms locked around his neck, dragging his chest against hers. "Help me. Please. Make it stop."

Melvin caught both her wrists and drew them down, holding them steady between them.

"Miss Cross." He kept his voice level, the way he had been trained to speak to patients past the point of reason. "Listen to me. Whatever you think you want right now, the drug wants it. Not you. Tomorrow you would never forgive either of us."

"You—" Her eyes struggled to focus on his face.

"I am your doctor tonight. Nothing else."

Lifting her, Melvin carried her through the entrance and laid her flat on the sofa in the grand living room. He knelt beside her, pressed his palm firmly over her sternum, and reached for the deep pulse.

In that exact instant, Evelyn's Pristine Yin Qi — driven to a volatile pitch by the toxin — poured through his palm and struck something buried far beneath his ribs.

A deafening resonance rolled through Melvin's consciousness, like an ancient bronze bell tolling across centuries.

Beneath his torn shirt, a hidden dragon mark flared gold. An ancestral seal, dormant in his bloodline for eleven generations, shattered.

The Sovereign Astral Meridian.

A vast ocean of memory broke over him — divine medical scriptures, celestial acupuncture, martial disciplines refined across centuries — all of it flooding into his soul at once.

BOOM!

Golden celestial qi erupted from his core and tore through his limbs. The severe myopia that had chained him to heavy lenses since childhood dissolved inside a single heartbeat. His vision opened into absolute clarity, unlocking the legendary Astral Sight.

Looking down, Melvin's gaze pierced straight through skin and muscle. Crimson meridian pathways lit up across Evelyn's body, and there — clustered thick around her heart and threaded deep into her nervous system — sat eight months of accumulated black residue.

Eight months and Melvin realized, and something cold settled in his stomach. Somebody has been killing this woman slowly, and she has no idea.

The same celestial qi swept back through his own exhausted vessel. His split knuckles sealed over. His fatigued muscles rebuilt themselves into something dense and refined. Thirty-six hours of accumulated exhaustion evaporated, replaced by the boundless vitality of an urban cultivator.