“Everyone in the village! If you’ve got stock at home, or if you just picked some up, bring it all to my courtyard! Cash on delivery — money for goods, right on the spot!”
Standing atop the millstone, Su Qinghe raised her voice loudly.
Zhao Tiezhu tapped his tobacco pipe against his shoe and stared suspiciously at the plump woman directing everyone with such confidence.
Was this really the same Su Qinghe who used to borrow money from everyone she met, and throw tantrums when refused?
As the crowd dispersed, Su Qinghe wiped the sweat from her forehead. The moment she turned around, she ran straight into a pair of dark eyes so deep they seemed bottomless.
Xiao Hanyuan stood beneath the shade of the locust tree, arms crossed. His eyes were like freshly sharpened blades, dissecting her inch by inch.
“Let’s go home.”
Being stared at like that made Su Qinghe’s scalp tingle. She gave an awkward laugh and tried to leave.
“Who are you?”
The man’s low voice sounded behind her.
There was no warmth in it, only a terrifying pressure that made one’s heart tighten.
Su Qinghe froze mid-step, her heart suddenly clenching.
As expected, this man wasn’t easy to fool.
The original owner of this body had been an illiterate shrew. Yet suddenly she understood business, knew how to manage people, and even her temperament had changed completely. If Xiao Hanyuan didn’t suspect something, that would be strange.
Taking a deep breath, she turned around with tears already welling in her eyes.
“I’m Su Qinghe — who else could I be?” She slapped her thigh dramatically, her eyes reddening instantly. “Husband, you don’t know what happened! Last night I dreamed of my dead parents!”
Xiao Hanyuan frowned slightly, clearly not expecting that opening.
“They’ve been restless in the underworld! Pointing at me and cursing me for being unfilial! They said if I kept acting like this, they’d drag me down there themselves so I’d stop disgracing the Su family ancestors!” She wiped at nonexistent tears with her sleeve. “Especially after they saw all your injuries. My father was beating me with a stick in the dream… When I woke up, I realized I really can’t keep living like this anymore.”
She stepped closer and looked up at him earnestly.
“Husband, nothing matters more than us living a good life together. I was awful before, but I’ll change. I really will!”
Xiao Hanyuan lowered his gaze to her.
The excuse sounded absurd, yet coming from a village woman, it somehow felt oddly believable.
He withdrew his gaze and turned toward home. His back remained cold and rigid, but the murderous aura around him had noticeably faded.
Su Qinghe finally let out a long breath and patted her chest.
That was close. Good thing she was quick-witted.
When they returned home, the courtyard was already bustling.
Villagers arrived carrying baskets and sacks. Though suspicion still lingered on their faces, their footsteps were honest enough.
“Old Li, five jin — ten copper coins!”
“Aunt Wang, eight and a half jin… let’s round it to nine. Eighteen copper coins!”
Su Qinghe sat on a small stool behind a battered table, counting copper coins with rapid clattering sounds. Her movements were swift, her calculations faster than a shopkeeper’s, and she didn’t even need an abacus.
Xiao Hanyuan stood beneath the eaves, watching the plump figure bustling about.
In the past, this courtyard had only been filled with debt collectors’ curses and the crashing sounds of the original Su Qinghe throwing tantrums.
Now, it brimmed with the lively atmosphere of ordinary village life and the laughter of villagers who had finally earned some money.
“Daughter-in-law of the Su family, I used to gossip too much. Don’t take it to heart.” Aunt Hua from next door counted her thirty copper coins, smiling so hard the wrinkles on her face bloomed like flowers. “If there’s good business like this again, don’t forget your auntie!”
“Of course. Neighbors are closer than distant relatives,” Su Qinghe replied with a grin.
By the time dusk fell and the last villager left, Su Qinghe collapsed into her chair, feeling as though her waist no longer belonged to her.
This purchasing run had practically collected every chestnut the village could gather — over five hundred jin in total.
“We’ll have to get up early tomorrow.” She rubbed her sore back. “There’s no way the two of us can carry all this ourselves. We’ll need to borrow a cart.”
Xiao Hanyuan handed her a cup of water. Though he said nothing, the gesture felt much more natural now.
After a full day of work and another trip up the mountain, Su Qinghe felt like every inch of fat on her body had been marinated in sweat. Sticky and uncomfortable.
She glanced at the tiny wooden basin in the corner — barely large enough for washing feet — then looked down at herself and sighed deeply.
“This isn’t bathing. This is trying to blow up the basin.”
She plopped onto a stool and absentmindedly drew on the ground with a twig.
“If only there were a showerhead. A nice rinse would feel amazing.”
Xiao Hanyuan, crouched by the stove adding firewood to heat water, paused and looked at her.
“Showerhead?”
“It’s something that lets water pour down from above so I don’t have to figure out how to cram myself into a basin.” Excited now, she sketched a rough design on the ground by the firelight. “Look — put a bucket up high, make some kind of switch at the bottom, and the water flows down…”
Xiao Hanyuan stood and walked over.
He still carried the faint scent of firewood. His gaze fell on the crude lines she’d drawn. Without a word, he stared at them for a long moment before turning and leaving the house.
Thinking he found it troublesome, Su Qinghe pouted and was about to settle for a simple wipe-down when she heard the sound of bricks being moved in the courtyard.
Two hours later—
The storage shed now contained a half-man-high brick platform.
Xiao Hanyuan had somehow found a hollow bamboo tube. One end was fitted into the bottom of a large wooden bucket raised overhead, while the other end had been shaved thin and plugged with a removable wooden stopper.
“Try it.”
He poured heated water into the elevated bucket and motioned to her.
Skeptical, Su Qinghe pulled out the stopper.
Warm water immediately cascaded down through the bamboo tube.
The stream wasn’t strong, but in this era, it was practically a five-star luxury.
“This is incredible!” Her eyes lit up as she turned to the man standing in the shadows. “Xiao Hanyuan, your craftsmanship is amazing! If this were modern ti— ahem, if you went to the city, you could make a fortune with skills like this.”
Expressionless, Xiao Hanyuan wiped the dust from his hands.
“If it works, then wash up.”
After speaking, he turned and closed the door behind him.
Yet in the instant the broken wooden door shut, the tips of his ears seemed faintly red.
Su Qinghe enjoyed the most satisfying bath she’d had in ages and felt two pounds lighter afterward.
When she finished, Xiao Hanyuan also went in for a quick rinse.
The sound of water in the side room soon stopped.
Not long after, the wooden door opened.
A wave of moisture carrying the fresh scent of soapberry and cool night air drifted into the room before he did.
Xiao Hanyuan stepped over the threshold.
The old inner robe he wore — washed so many times it had lost all color — hung loosely from his body, the belt tied carelessly. Perhaps because he’d dried himself in a hurry, droplets still clung to the ends of his hair. Crystal-clear beads of water slid down his sharp jawline, rolled past his prominent Adam’s apple, and disappeared beneath the open collar of his robe.
The oil lamp glowed dimly, shadows shifting across his body.
Su Qinghe had been sitting cross-legged on the bed doing accounts. The moment she looked up, her gaze froze.
The damp fabric clung tightly to his chest and abdomen, outlining clearly defined muscles. Every inch of his body, honed through years of war and surviving life-and-death battles, radiated restrained explosive power.
Several wet strands of hair fell across his forehead, softening the cold sharpness of his features and giving him a rare trace of lazy allure.
As he raised his arm, the hem of his robe lifted slightly, exposing a lean, powerful waist and the V-lines disappearing beneath his trousers.
Suddenly, Su Qinghe felt the room grow unbearably warm.
She immediately rolled to the inner side of the bed, carefully straightening the pillow she used as a “border line” between them.
Xiao Hanyuan glanced at the pillow, his expression unreadable. Then he lay down on his side, back facing her.
The narrow bed felt cramped with another adult man on it.
The masculine scent mixed with soapberry aggressively invaded Su Qinghe’s breathing space. The warmth radiating from beside her slowly heated her once-cold hands and feet.
She turned over, facing away from him, silently reciting tomorrow’s business plans in her mind and forcing herself to ignore the man whose presence was impossible to overlook.
Then she closed her eyes.
In the darkness, Xiao Hanyuan opened his.
Listening to the gradually steady rhythm of her breathing behind him, the tension in his body slowly eased.
That strange sweet chestnut fragrance still lingered faintly in the room, mixed with the subtle medicinal scent on her body.
For the first time in months, the heart he had kept constantly guarded felt inexplicably at peace.
The next morning, when Su Qinghe woke up, the man had already prepared breakfast and was splitting firewood in the courtyard.
The male lead is pretty hardworking, she thought.
After breakfast, Su Qinghe went next door to Aunt Hua’s house and borrowed the family’s old ox cart for twenty copper coins.
Five hundred jin of chestnuts filled several large sacks stacked high on the cart.
“You stay home and rest. I’ll take the goods to town.”
Xiao Hanyuan gripped the whip and was just about to climb onto the driver’s seat.
“No!”
Without hesitation, Su Qinghe grabbed the ox’s reins.
Xiao Hanyuan paused, narrowing his dark eyes slightly.
“Why?”
Why? Because of that face of yours, obviously!
What if one of his subordinates recognized him as the Regent Prince? What if they discovered he wasn’t dead after all?
Given everything the original owner had done to him, wouldn’t she get chopped into pieces on the spot?