Both back-baskets were filled with bitter gourds, and they weighed a ton.
Chen Yuxi struggled as he carried the bitter gourds out, his arms trembling slightly.
He secretly clenched his fists a couple of times and picked up the shears to get back to work… taking quite a while to recover.
Only then did he notice that Wang Lanyin, who had previously been helping him, had switched over to helping Qi Xun.
Just as he managed to pick a few bitter gourds, Qi Xun had already filled another basket over there.
He didn’t think too much of it and continued working.
By the time he huffed and puffed his way through half a basket, Qi Xun walked over carrying two baskets and emptied his half-filled small basket right into Chen Yuxi’s half-full one.
Hearing the commotion, Chen Yuxi turned around and blinked in confusion: “Teacher Qi?”
Qi Xun glanced at him and placed the empty basket right in front of him: “Keep going.”
With that, he grabbed one basket in each hand and strode briskly away.
The back-baskets brimming with bitter gourds looked as light as feathers in his hands, like he was just carrying a couple of clothes.
Chen Yuxi looked over at Wang Lanyin.
Wang Lanyin waved a hand: “Teacher Qi said he wanted to run a few steps.”
Chen Yuxi didn’t understand, but he respected it.
He went back to harvesting bitter gourds.
However, from that moment on, he never had to transport a single basket of bitter gourds again.
Every time his back-basket was close to full, Qi Xun would silently walk over, empty the bitter gourds, and haul the basket away.
After a few times, Chen Yuxi started to get anxious.
If this segment aired… let alone Qi Xun’s fans, even random internet trolls would tear him apart online.
Therefore, the next time Qi Xun walked over to empty his basket, Chen Yuxi slammed his hands down on it: “Teacher Qi, it’s my turn.”
Qi Xun stopped and raised an eyebrow at him: “Why?”
Chen Yuxi glanced at the cameras shoved in their faces and insisted, “You can’t do all the work.”
Qi Xun: “Why not?”
Chen Yuxi: “…I’m going to get flamed.”
Seeing that the man was about to say something else, he gritted his teeth: “Besides, aren’t I supposed to be respecting my elders?”
Qi Xun: “…”
He lifted the brim of Chen Yuxi’s bamboo sun hat and flicked him on the forehead with a light rap.
Stung by the pain, Chen Yuxi instinctively covered his forehead and looked up in a daze: “T-Teacher Qi?”
Qi Xun scoffed: “I’m only five years older than you!”
He hoisted the back-basket again and trotted off.
Chen Yuxi blinked and looked over at Wang Lanyin, who had turned her head toward the sound.
Amused, Wang Lanyin glanced at the camera and teased, “Just let him do it if he wants to. Maybe he treats it as weighted training.”
Chen Yuxi, who treated running errands for express deliveries as weighted training, gave a dry chuckle and silently turned back to clipping bitter gourds.
Before long, Qi Xun returned.
The farming squad resumed their quiet bitter gourd harvesting in silence.
Chen Yuxi was starting to hit his physical limit.
As a lazy, good-for-nothing homebody, continuously bending down, searching, clipping vines, and dropping fruit for over half an hour straight was brutal—his arms were about to give out.
He turned sideways, using the bitter gourd trellis as cover to shake out his arms secretly, and gritted his teeth to keep going.
“There aren’t many left,” Qi Xun suddenly spoke up. “Take a break.”
Wang Lanyin, the oldest of them all, finally snapped back to reality: “Oh my, you two led me astray. We’re actually allowed to rest.”
Dropping her shears, she sighed with a smile: “I’ve never seen anyone work as honestly as you two. Barely a word spoken, and we’ve already harvested more than half an acre.”
Chen Yuxi stopped as well, scanned their surroundings, and said in pleasant surprise: “You’re right.”
Thank goodness, I was about to drop dead from exhaustion.
Qi Xun had already picked up his water bottle and taken the lead in walking out.
Hurrying to catch up, Chen Yuxi and Wang Lanyin followed.
The three of them grabbed their water and sat down right on the edge of the field ridge.
Wang Lanyin and Chen Yuxi intentionally left the center C-seat open for Qi Xun.
Not expecting Qi Xun to initiate conversation, Wang Lanyin raised her voice to chat with Chen Yuxi across the way.
“Look at the director! I bet he’s on the verge of tears, turning a proper variety show straight into an agricultural channel.”
Chen Yuxi first glanced in the director’s direction, then leaned forward slightly to reply: “You can’t blame me for that. Neither of you were talking, so of course I could only focus on working.”
Since he was the most obscure person here, how could he possibly dare start up a conversation?
Wang Lanyin laughed playfully: “Aren’t you talking quite a lot right now?”
Chen Yuxi: “That’s different… What do you guys normally chat about when you’re working?”
Wang Lanyin reminisced: “Oh, we talk about all sorts of things. Once, we went up the mountain to dig for spring bamboo shoots…”
As she shared an interesting anecdote, Chen Yuxi, wanting to show politeness, leaned forward slightly to look past Qi Xun at her.
Qi Xun, having finished his water, set his bottle down on the ridge, rested his arms on his knees, and leaned forward lazily.
Blocked by Qi Xun, Chen Yuxi could no longer see Wang Lanyin. Realizing it looked rude, he instinctively straightened his back and peered over Qi Xun’s head to look at Wang Lanyin instead.
Just as he caught the beginning of the story, Qi Xun let out a yawn and raised his arms to stretch.
Blocked once more, Chen Yuxi blinked and leaned forward and downward again.
Having finished his stretch, Qi Xun began rolling his torso left and right as part of a warm-up exercise.
Chen Yuxi almost got clipped and instinctively glanced at him.
Acting as if nothing was amiss, Qi Xun finished his warm-up, braced his arms behind him, and leaned back lazily on the field ridge.
Finally, Chen Yuxi was able to turn his head comfortably to look at Wang Lanyin again.
Right as Wang Lanyin finished her funny story, he chimed in with an enthusiastic “Hahahaha” and leaned forward to add a couple of sentences.
Qi Xun curved the corners of his lips upward as well.
Since Qi Xun held the highest billing and was… rather difficult to please, Wang Lanyin, acting as the show’s host, had been keeping a low-key eye on him the entire time, so she naturally didn’t miss this smile. Breathing an inward sigh of relief, she figured her efforts to warm up the atmosphere weren’t in vain—the big boss finally had a pleasant expression on his face.
Seizing the momentum, she immediately dug up another interesting story to share.
After resting like this for a few minutes, Qi Xun finally spoke up to interrupt them, leading them back to work.
With less than a quarter of an acre left, Wang Lanyin’s physical stamina gave out, so she switched to a mix of half-clipping and half-playing while chatting with Chen Yuxi.
Chen Yuxi was exhausted too, but since Qi Xun hadn’t stopped, he didn’t dare rest either and could only grit his teeth and push through. Fortunately, Qi Xun had taken over the heavy lifting of transporting the bitter gourds, which made things significantly easier for him.
Moreover, terrified of saying the wrong thing and being maliciously edited by the production team, he had to pay absolute attention to Wang Lanyin’s words, causing his movements to slow down unconsciously.
By the time Qi Xun walked over to help clear out his ridge, it dawned on him—Qi Xun had already finished harvesting all the bitter gourds on the other trellises.
He was stunned: “That fast?”
Even Wang Lanyin was shocked: “You finished it all by yourself?”
Qi Xun let out an “Mhm,” calmly clipped off the final few gourds, and said, “Alright, let’s head back.”
Chen Yuxi and Wang Lanyin looked around and did notice that a lot of bitter gourds were gone, but…
Catching the admiring thumbs-up from the staff members across the camera lenses, the two of them finally registered the reality of it.
Wang Lanyin marveled: “That’s incredible, aren’t you tired?”
Chen Yuxi’s eyes widened too: “How are you so fast?”
Qi Xun paused, glanced sideways at Chen Yuxi, and replied to Wang Lanyin: “I work out regularly, so this amount of workload is easy for me.”
Wang Lanyin: “…Awesome!”
Chen Yuxi felt a bit guilty—Qi Xun was glaring at me just now, right? Right, right?
However, Qi Xun didn’t look at him again, hoisting the final half-basket of bitter gourds and taking the lead in walking back.
The two of them hurried to follow.
They didn’t need to haul all the harvested bitter gourds back; they only needed to pack up the portion they needed to eat over the next two days.
Qi Xun turned to ask Chen Yuxi: “How much should we pack?”
Not paying attention, Wang Lanyin started calculating: “There are seven of us, a few should be enough.”
Chen Yuxi didn’t think much of it either, pondering aloud: “We need to eat three meals, right? A few probably won’t be enough, let’s pack a bit more.” He started stuffing them into the back-basket, and didn’t stop even after putting in over a dozen.
Wang Lanyin gasped in alarm: “So many, can we even finish eating them?”
Chen Yuxi looked confused: “Will we get penalized if we take too much?”
Wang Lanyin: “That shouldn’t happen… but we aren’t only eating one dish either.”
Chen Yuxi: “The other dish is chili peppers, and we don’t know how spicy they are. Just in case it’s too spicy and people can’t handle it—plus, Brother Qinghe doesn’t really eat spicy food.”
“Besides, if we can’t finish the bitter gourds, we can juice them. Nothing will go to waste.”
Wang Lanyin: “Makes sense.”
Chen Yuxi filled his back-basket to the brim, pulled the straps, and prepared to hoist it onto his shoulders—
“I’ll take it,” Qi Xun pressed down on it.
Chen Yuxi frowned: “No way, you just carried—”
“Then we’ll split it into two portions.” As if anticipating this, Qi Xun dragged over another empty back-basket and tossed a few gourds into it.
Chen Yuxi: “Fine, then I’ll carry the heavy one—”
Qi Xun had already shouldered the heavier basket.
Chen Yuxi: “…”
I’m seriously going to get flamed.
Qi Xun glanced at him, reached behind to grab a few bitter gourds, threw them into Chen Yuxi’s basket, and strode forward.
Chen Yuxi looked at him, then looked at his own basket—at least it was nearly half full now.
Wang Lanyin sidled over: “Even though Teacher Qi has a sharp tongue, he’s actually a really great guy. You can tell at a glance he’s a responsible, reliable man.”
Chen Yuxi glanced at the camera, silently shouldered his basket, and replied: “Yeah, extremely responsible.”
He weighed it in his hands; it genuinely wasn’t heavy.
Wang Lanyin: “Hey, I used to hear rumors that Teacher Qi had a huge temper, but I think Teacher Qi has a wonderful temper. He can work for two hours straight without getting angry once… I wonder what kind of blessed person will end up capturing him.”
Chen Yuxi looked ahead at Qi Xun, who was definitely within earshot of their conversation, and chuckled under his breath: “Sister Lanyin, you wouldn’t happen to want to play matchmaker for Teacher Qi, would you?”
Wang Lanyin: “Haha, you caught me. I have way too many single young ladies in my social circle, it gives me headaches.”
She then began venting playfully about the modern dating views of today’s youth.
Smiling, Chen Yuxi listened along, chiming in every now and then.
Chatting all the way, they quickly returned to the courtyard.
The team sent to harvest chili peppers had returned a step ahead of them.
With both sides reassembling, they exchanged greetings of “Good job,” swapped complaints about their respective workloads, and then had to begin preparing lunch.
Duan Xirui, who knew how to cook, took charge of assigning tasks: handling the chili peppers and bitter gourds, preparing ginger, scallions, and garlic, washing rice to cook, chopping meat… all seven people had assigned jobs, filling up the schedule completely.
Chen Yuxi took on the task of processing the bitter gourds. After washing them, he pulled over a small wooden stool, sat down obediently in the corner, and quietly sliced them into sections before scraping out the seeds.
Once gathered together, Wang Lanyin no longer needed him to warm up the atmosphere. Teaming up with Duan Xirui, she tossed conversation topics to Xu Qinghe, bantered with Jiang Yunhai and Jiang Xinwen (the two young actors who had just wrapped up playing a couple), and occasionally got Qi Xun to say a few words with Xu Qinghe’s assistance.
Amidst laughter and chatter in the exquisite rural courtyard, Chen Yuxi—whose conversational burden and camera time were greatly reduced—finally relaxed, listening to everyone chat while fighting back giggles.
If Xu Qinghe hadn’t occasionally tossed a topic his way, he would have loved to turn invisible.
With several people who knew how to cook pitching in, lunch was prepared in no time and served outside in the courtyard for a lively, bustling meal.
Duan Xirui and Jiang Yunhai handled the cooking, leaving Qi Xun, Xu Qinghe, and the two female guests, while Chen Yuxi proactively claimed the dishwashing duty.
Xu Qinghe wanted to stay behind and help, but the female guests felt embarrassed to let him.
Chen Yuxi joked: “With just these few bowls, are you afraid I’m going to smash them? Don’t worry, if I break any, I’ll definitely organize a crowdfunding campaign among you all to pay for it.”
He easily brushed away everyone’s pressure with a lighthearted remark.
Just as Xu Qinghe was about to speak, Duan Xirui hauled him away.
Chen Yuxi breathed an inward sigh of relief, stole a glance at the wall-mounted camera, rolled up his sleeves, and started washing dishes—quiet chores like this suited him best.
He had barely washed two bowls when footsteps echoed from outside.
Chen Yuxi turned around.
Qi Xun, having put his ball cap back on, walked in while rolling up his sleeves, finally stopping right next to him.
Chen Yuxi: “…Teacher Qi, my station really doesn’t need any help. Why don’t you go inside and drink some tea?”
Qi Xun replied calmly: “Can’t. Just got chased out.”
He picked up a soapy bowl, turned on the faucet, and started rinsing.
Chen Yuxi: “…Who dares chase you out?”
“Brother Qinghe.”
Chen Yuxi: “…What did you do?”
Qi Xun: “I just critiqued their acting, that’s all.”
He let out a click of his tongue: “Honestly, their psychological endurance is way too poor.”
And so he got chased out by Xu Qinghe, who couldn’t stand it anymore?
Chen Yuxi: “…”
Qi Xun placed the rinsed bowl on the rack, picked up another one to rinse, and asked, “Do you want me to critique your work as well?”
Chen Yuxi was surprised: “You know music too?”
He had never heard of the Film King Qi studying music.
Qi Xun glanced at him and said coolly, “I have ears, and I know how to listen.”
Chen Yuxi: “…”
Fine, fine. It was just his shallow assumption.
Perhaps because of the shared camaraderie from eating breakfast and picking bitter gourds together, he no longer felt quite as nervous around Qi Xun and even grew curious: “Then what’s your evaluation of my works?”
Qi Xun: “Do you want the honest version or the fake version?”
Amused, Chen Yuxi chuckled: “Can I choose both? I want to hear the fake version first.”
Qi Xun didn’t hesitate: “The fake version—pretty good, very melancholic and lyrical.”
Chen Yuxi: “…And the honest version?”
Qi Xun: “Very hypnotic.”
Chen Yuxi: “…”
He was beginning to doubt himself: “Is it really that terrible? What do you usually listen to then?”
Qi Xun: “Financial reports.”
Chen Yuxi: “…I meant music.”
Qi Xun: “It’s all sound, no difference. Music isn’t even as substantive as a financial report; just a bunch of instruments clanking away, you listen for half a day and all you hear is noise.”
Chen Yuxi: “…”
He wants to chase people away too.