"Bai Qianluo, Bai Qianluo? How are you doing?" Qiao Suluo’s face paled. She prayed nothing serious had happened, otherwise people would think the food she made was poisoned. Heavens knew she had absolutely no intention of harming them; she actually wanted them to stay alive and well.
When Bai Qianluo collapsed, a gust of wind happened to blow off the white cloth covering his eyes, revealing a pair of breathtakingly clear eyes. When he lowered his head and looked at her with those cold, glass-like eyes, it was like a cold moon falling from the sky into an icy pool, crisply reflecting Qiao Suluo’s face. Her eyes widened in sheer fright, her face losing its color as she grew terrified that something worse might happen to him.
Bai Qianluo coughed softly, enduring the discomfort of his dizziness as he slowly stood up. "I’m fine. I just felt a little dizzy just now."
Qiao Suluo let out a slow sigh of relief. As long as it wasn’t her green sticky rice balls poisoning him, everything was fine. She said, "You might be feeling unwell from falling into the water just now. Hurry back to your room and rest."
Bai Qianluo’s voice was clear and ethereal. "But I need to help my Wife with the chores. How can I let you work so hard?"
Qiao Suluo waved her hand. "No, you really don’t need to. I can do it myself. Your priority right now is to recover. You can help me work once you’re feeling better."
She recalled how her predecessor used to force Bai Qianluo to work, hurling all sorts of humiliating insults at him and even dragging his family into the verbal abuse. No sane person would have tolerated that. Yet, Bai Qianluo had always seemed aloof and profoundly indifferent. He never said a word out of turn to her. Even when insulted, he would simply listen in silence without losing his temper. The only boundary he drew was refusing to let her get close to him. Their physical contact just now had been purely because of his dizzy spell, not because she had deliberately approached him.
"I might have said some very harsh things to you in the past. That was my fault. Please don’t take it to heart, and just forget about it from now on," she said.
"Your eyes aren’t in good condition, so you should rest. It’s fine if you don’t do certain chores, but if a person doesn’t rest, it can cost them their life.
"Also, don’t go to the river to wash clothes anymore."
Using an almost coaxing tone, Qiao Suluo urged Bai Qianluo to go inside and rest immediately. She was terrified he would pass out right there. Perhaps the cold medicine she had mixed for him contained a sedative, which was why he felt dizzy. Only after Bai Qianluo had returned to his room did Qiao Suluo breathe a sigh of relief and sit back down to continue her work.
As Que Hongjin burned plant ash nearby, he watched the scene unfold with a thoughtful expression. Bai Qianluo’s attitude toward Qiao Suluo had changed. In the past, even if he were dizzy, he would have rather collapsed onto the hard ground than take a single step closer to her, let alone fall against her.
"Wife, the plant ash is ready."
Qiao Suluo gave him a smile. "Thank you."
A faint smile graced the corners of Que Hongjin’s lips. He thought it was truly rare for her to say thank you.
"What else can I do next? Please give me your instructions, Wife."
Qiao Suluo froze for a moment. She felt that Que Hongjin had been acting a little strange since noon. In the past, he couldn’t even be bothered to say an extra word to her, let alone actively ask what she needed him to do. However, no matter his motives, as long as he helped with the work, she was fine with it.
"I might have to trouble you to boil some hot water and pour it over the plant ash. Then, use a clean cloth to filter out the ash water. Filter it three times..." Qiao Suluo explained the necessary tasks in detail, and Que Hongjin went off to do them.
Since there was no grater at home, Qiao Suluo had to use a knife to slice the Konjac before finding a wooden stick to mash it. It couldn’t be helped; without a grater or a wooden or stone mortar in the house, she had to endure the hard manual labor. She worked diligently, treating it as an exercise to lose weight.
After boiling the hot water and filtering the ash water, Que Hongjin watched Qiao Suluo struggling. He sighed, walked over, and said, "Let me do it."
Qiao Suluo looked at him with doubtful eyes. "Can you handle it?" He was in poor health and so weak—could he really handle this kind of physical labor?
Thinking about this, Qiao Suluo couldn’t help but sigh. No wonder those people in the Capital City mocked her. She really did have five sickly Beast Husbands. Each one looked like a gust of wind could blow them over, or that they could drop dead at any moment. She couldn’t even order them around to do chores with a clear conscience.
As soon as those words left her mouth, Qiao Suluo felt the surrounding air freeze for a second. She immediately noticed the faint smile in Que Hongjin’s eyes vanishing, as if suddenly covered by a thin layer of frost. His thin lips pressed into a tight line. She looked at him in sheer bewilderment. Had she said something wrong? She hadn’t said anything out of line.
Que Hongjin leaned in slightly and whispered in her ear, "Whether I can handle it or not, my Wife will know once she experiences it herself."
His voice was clear and melodious, but the end of his sentence lingered like a sweet, honeyed whisper, weaving around her. His dark, jade-like eyes reflected her dazed and slow-to-react expression as an amused smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.
Qiao Suluo quickly took a few steps back and handed the wooden stick to him. "I’m sure you can handle it perfectly! I’ll leave this hard work to you then. Everything needs to be mashed."
She figured that even weak and sickly people had their pride and disliked others doubting their abilities.
The system was practically speechless. Its host was incredibly dense when it came to romance. When Que Hongjin talked about "handling it," was that really what he meant?
Seeing her reaction, Que Hongjin shook his head helplessly and began using the wooden stick to mash the Konjac slices. This made things a bit easier for Qiao Suluo.
Once everything was mashed and soaked in the plant ash water, it would need to rest until evening before it could be boiled in the pot and made into Konjac. By the time they finished all this, it was already mid-afternoon.
Qiao Suluo planned to take the finished Konjac to sell the next day. Once she had Copper Coins, she could do so much more. However, she couldn’t afford to sit idle right now; she couldn’t rely solely on the Konjac.
After returning to her room, she rummaged through her chests and cabinets but didn’t find anything useful, except for a large number of clothes and a sewing kit in her wardrobe. She closely examined the cosmetics on the table and muttered, "These feel so inferior, yet they actually cost dozens of taels of Silver. I can make these myself later, and the quality will definitely be much better."
However, making cosmetics was quite troublesome and required a lot of raw materials. She decided it was better to start with a low-cost business to play it safe.
As she flipped through the clothes, a sudden thought made her eyes light up. She murmured, "I can’t wear all these clothes anyway. I can cut them up and make cartoon plushies!"
According to her predecessor’s memories, there were no cartoon plushies in this world. Cotton was expensive, but she could stuff the plushies full of mugwort. There was a pile of dry hay in the corner of their courtyard, used as kindling for the fire, and she had noticed that some of it was dried mugwort.
With this idea in mind, Qiao Suluo immediately grabbed a pair of scissors to cut the fabric. She sewed the pieces together, leaving a small opening to stuff the mugwort inside, and then stitched it closed once it was completely full. In her previous life, Qiao Suluo had always enjoyed doing handicrafts in her spare time. By evening, she had finished six small, round plushies—two cats, two dogs, and two bears.
When Qiao Suluo was about to go to the courtyard to grab more mugwort, she heard a commotion at the door. Stepping outside, she saw a large group of villagers gathered around her entrance.
"What are you all doing here?" she asked.
Seeing Qiao Suluo come out, the villagers felt a bit embarrassed, remembering how they had badmouthed her earlier. Still, they bit the bullet and placed their items by the door. "Qiao Suluo," one of them said, "thank you for teaching us that first-aid method today. My family doesn’t have any valuable items, but our hen just laid two eggs. These are for you."
Everyone else stepped forward one after another to drop off their gifts. "This is some coarse grain flour from my house."
"These are onions grown in my yard. Please don’t despise them."