The scraping sound of the whetstone finally stopped.
Su Jinxiu tested the blade with her thumb pad. A thin red line of blood immediately welled up. She didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, she calmly sucked the finger into her mouth, tasting the mixture of rust and blood.
“Much better.”
She tossed the sharpened boning knife back toward Huo Chen’s side. The handle struck the wooden bed with a dull thud.
Huo Chen didn’t catch it. Leaning against the wall, his gaze landed on her rain-soaked sleeve. The fabric clung to her arm, outlining a pitifully thin layer of muscle underneath. Too weak. So weak that if he wanted, two fingers would be enough to snap her neck.
Yet this same body had just applied medicine to wounds without changing her expression—and extorted ten taels of silver with complete calm.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll come back for revenge?” Huo Chen asked. His voice was slightly hoarse, likely from exerting force earlier.
“I am,” Su Jinxiu replied as she stuffed the heavy pouch of ten taels of silver into her inner clothing pocket, even patting it to confirm it was still there. “That’s why money has to be secured first. As long as the silver is in our hands, even if this broken house is burned down tomorrow, we can still stay in an inn in town.”
Her extremely pragmatic attitude toward money left Huo Chen’s instinctive “eliminate the threat at the root” strategy with nowhere to apply.
He withdrew his gaze and rested his fingers on the knife handle.
“Sleep.”
That night was destined to be restless.
By the second half of the night, the rain intensified. The earlier drip-drop leakage turned into continuous streams of water. The only dry area left in the room—the corner where their bed was—was now being slowly swallowed by rainwater.
Moisture seeped up from the muddy floor. The smell of mildew mixed with the lingering blood scent, drilling straight into the nose.
Su Jinxiu woke up from the cold.
The original body of this host was severely deficient in both qi and blood. Once her body temperature dropped, her limbs turned into ice blocks. Half-asleep, she instinctively searched for warmth.
Huo Chen was a furnace.
Despite his severe injuries, his young and powerful male body still radiated astonishing heat. Like a moth drawn to flame, Su Jinxiu couldn’t resist moving closer—even if it was fire.
Huo Chen was already awake.
He had been awake the moment her breathing pattern changed.
Feeling the cold body inching into his arms—and those thin hands shamelessly grabbing his collar—Huo Chen’s entire body stiffened. Instinct almost made him drive the knife straight into her ribs in that instant, but reason stopped him at the last moment.
Not an assassin. That greedy woman.
“Su Jinxiu,” he warned in a low voice.
“Shut up… cold…” Su Jinxiu wasn’t fully awake. Only her survival instincts were in control. Her cheek pressed against his warm chest as she even rubbed against him comfortably, finding a better position. “If you keep talking, I’ll sell you for charcoal money.”
Huo Chen: “……”
Even in her dreams, this woman was calculating how to sell him.
He looked down at the curled-up figure in his arms. She was light, almost weightless—like a hairless cat clinging to him. Pushing her away would be easy. But the room really was too cold, and such bone-deep damp chill was extremely harmful to his leg injury.
Sharing body heat was more efficient than enduring it alone.
This was tactical warming.
Huo Chen silently gave his behavior a perfect military justification in his mind, then slightly relaxed his body, allowing the “ice lump” to hang onto him.
The next morning, the rain stopped.
The mountain air after rainfall was especially fresh. If not for the muddy courtyard and the giant hole in the roof, it might have passed for a peaceful paradise.
When Su Jinxiu woke up, the space beside her was empty again.
That familiar situation made her suspect the tyrant might be part cat—silent when walking, early to rise.
She stretched, her joints cracking loudly. Despite the discomfort of the hard boning knife pressing into her waist last night, this was actually the best sleep she had since transmigration.
Lifting the door curtain, she saw Huo Chen sitting under the eaves.
He had already changed into the black coarse cloth clothes they bought yesterday. The fabric was stiff and cheap, the tailoring imperfect, yet this man somehow turned a few dozen copper coins’ worth of cloth into something resembling a battlefield uniform.
He was holding the knife, cutting bamboo.
The bamboo strips in his hands behaved like noodles—uniform in thickness, equal in length.
“Up so early?” Su Jinxiu yawned as she walked over, glancing at the bamboo strips on the ground. “What are you making this time? Yesterday’s trap didn’t work anymore?”
“Too slow,” Huo Chen said without looking up, his hands still moving.
“Yesterday’s kind of trap only works on fools like Su Daqiang. Against someone who actually knows combat, it’s just handing them a path in.”
He was referring to the stone projectile from yesterday. Although accurate, if the enemy had archers or organized blade units, such defenses would be as fragile as paper.
“I’m going to set up defenses around this courtyard.”
Huo Chen laid out the sharpened bamboo sticks. Each one gleamed with a cold, lethal edge.
“Not just animal traps. I want tripwires and bamboo spike formations too. We don’t have enough materials—you’ll go to the back mountain and cut some moso bamboo.”
The corner of Su Jinxiu’s mouth twitched.
Good grief. Was he turning their home into a military fortress?
“Husband, we’re trying to live a life here, not occupy a mountain stronghold.” Su Jinxiu squatted down and poked one of the bamboo spikes. “With this kind of setup, the villagers will think we’re refining elixirs inside.”
Huo Chen paused. His dark eyes fixed on her.
“If you want to live, do as I say. Luck like last night won’t always be there.”
Su Jinxiu looked into his eyes.
He was serious—completely serious. In this future tyrant’s worldview, safety was never about luck. It was about absolute control.
Fine. Who asked him to be the golden thigh she had to cling to?
“No problem cutting bamboo,” she said, standing up and brushing off her hands. A bright smile appeared on her face. “But that’s physical labor. Husband, our food standards need to keep up. We can’t just eat meat—we need balanced nutrition. And the roof has to be repaired too, or the next rain will turn both of us into soaked buns.”
She took out yesterday’s bag of silver coins, counted out two taels, and carefully hid the rest against her body.
“Money has to be spent where it matters.”
Her mental abacus rattled loudly in her mind.
“Later I’ll go find Old Li from the village to fix the roof, and I’ll also buy a few catties of pork fat from the butcher to render some lard. As for cutting bamboo…”
She glanced at Huo Chen’s leg, still wrapped in bandages.
“I’ll do it myself.”
Huo Chen was slightly surprised.
He had assumed this woman would either throw a tantrum and demand he do it, or simply spend money to hire someone.
“You can handle it?”
“Don’t underestimate me.”
Su Jinxiu raised an eyebrow and casually picked up the axe in the corner.
“I can saw through bone, let alone bamboo. As long as you find the grain correctly, bamboo is much more obedient than people.”
With that, she casually tied up her hair, slung the axe over her shoulder, and walked out the door.
Her figure was so carefree she didn’t look like a village woman at all—more like a bandit heading out to rob someone.
Huo Chen watched her figure disappear beyond the courtyard gate, his fingers resting on the handle of his blade, a trace of deep thought flashing in his eyes.
Saw through bone?
This woman’s occasional strange vocabulary—and her disturbingly calm attitude toward human anatomy—was becoming more and more interesting.
Rainy night. Abacus beads.
Something was quietly starting to take shape.