After moving everything out, Su Qingran stepped out of the secret room and carefully locked everything back up.
Then she pushed the cabinet back into place. After making sure it looked exactly as it had before she arrived, she nodded in satisfaction.
Just then, voices came from outside the room.
“Still haven’t found her?”
It was Pei Xingzhou’s voice.
Seeing this, Su Qingran immediately vanished into her space. Though hidden inside, she could still hear every word outside clearly.
“Reporting to Master, we haven’t found her,” another person replied.
“Master, isn’t it better if she’s gone? Then that dowry will—”
“You’ve made it so obvious. Do you think everyone else is stupid?” Pei Xingzhou interrupted coldly.
At this moment, he looked nothing like the respectful, grateful gentleman he usually pretended to be.
In public, Pei Xingzhou always portrayed himself as a man of loyalty and gratitude, someone who had reluctantly agreed to marry his benefactor’s granddaughter in order to repay a debt of kindness.
But now, he looked like a man whose heart and mind were filled entirely with schemes and calculations.
“Master spent so many years acting in front of the Pingyang Marquis because the Marquis only had one granddaughter and possessed enormous wealth, didn’t he?” the subordinate said flatteringly.
“Master truly is remarkable. So many people coveted the Marquis’s fortune and wanted to marry Miss Su, but in the end the Marquis chose you. If you ask me, it would be even better if Miss Su died. Then you could openly take possession of her dowry.”
“No,” Pei Xingzhou said.
“We haven’t actually married yet. If something happened now, it would be too obvious. The collateral branches of the Pingyang Marquis’s family wouldn’t let it go.”
“Su Qingran cannot die yet. We must wait until her mourning period ends and we are married. Only then can we…”
He left the sentence unfinished.
Then Su Qingran heard him continue:
“Tell Aunt Rong to persuade my mother to calm down lately. Don’t let her push Su Qingran too hard and accidentally drive her to death. And all the chaos in the inner household has been exhausting me recently.”
Listening to the conversation, Su Qingran nearly exploded with rage inside her space.
She wanted nothing more than to rush out and shoot both of them.
As expected—
Men shed three drops of tears, and before you know it, they’ve acted their way straight into your heart.
Ever since transmigrating into this body, Su Qingran had found Pei Xingzhou’s behavior strange.
He constantly acted as though he was endlessly grateful to the Pingyang Marquis, yet whenever the original owner was bullied, he never once stepped in to help. Instead, he deliberately turned a blind eye.
So all of this had been orchestrated by him from the very beginning.
That damned bastard.
When she eventually left the capital, she absolutely wouldn’t rest until she killed him.
But debts had to be settled one at a time.
Silently, Su Qingran left Pei Xingzhou’s courtyard.
The moment she was gone, Pei Xingzhou suddenly frowned and asked his trusted aide,
“Did you feel like there was someone else in the room just now?”
The aide looked bewildered.
“No… no, Master.”
Pei Xingzhou frowned and walked toward the wardrobe.
When he saw that the lock on the hidden door was completely intact, he finally relaxed.
Meanwhile, after leaving his courtyard, Su Qingran headed directly toward Li Qiuju’s residence.
After spending the entire day searching for her, Li Qiuju was exhausted and had already fallen asleep.
Sensing that no one else was in the room, Su Qingran emerged from her space.
Walking to the bedside, she fed Li Qiuju a sleeping pill.
Then she began her grand project.
Taking out an ultra-silent electric hair clipper from her space, she started shaving Li Qiuju’s head.
Ancient people really had incredibly long and thick hair.
She could keep it and sell it later.
It should fetch a decent amount of money, right?
Years of surviving in the apocalypse had made Su Qingran frugal. Everything she saw automatically translated into potential profit.
Within moments, Li Qiuju’s hair was completely gone.
After neatly gathering the shaved hair, Su Qingran tossed it into her space.
Excellent.
Next stop—Wen Yuyan.
Things went even more smoothly there.
Only a single maid was guarding the door.
The girl was sleeping so soundly that Su Qingran couldn’t even be bothered to drug her.
Once she finished, Su Qingran looked at Wen Yuyan’s shiny bald head and admired her masterpiece with great satisfaction.
She really wanted to shave Pei Xingzhou’s head too.
Unfortunately, that bastard seemed to know martial arts.
His vigilance would certainly be much higher than ordinary people’s.
If they fought directly, she wouldn’t stand a chance unless she pulled out a gun.
Besides, if she shaved his head now, how could she enjoy the upcoming drama?
Still, there was no way she would forgive a man who had schemed against her grandfather—an elderly man with no one to rely on—and against her, an orphaned young woman.
Happily, she rummaged through her space and found a realistic disguise mask.
After putting it on, changing into a servant’s outfit she had casually taken from the Pei residence, and tying up her hair, she appeared near an inn before pushing the door open and walking inside.
For the foreseeable future, Su Qingran would no longer appear as herself.
Only now had she remembered that her space contained disguise masks.
Whenever she scavenged for supplies, she found all kinds of strange items hidden in odd places.
She had thought she’d never use them in her lifetime.
Who would’ve guessed they’d come in handy now?
“Waiter, I’d like a room,” she said upon entering.
By this hour, the city was already under curfew.
The waiter had no idea where this guest had suddenly appeared from and nearly thought he’d seen a ghost.
Glancing nervously outside, he hurried over and shut the door.
“Sir… where exactly did you come from?”
If the person standing before him weren’t such an ordinary-looking man, he would have been convinced he was dealing with a ghost.
“Oh, I got drunk and passed out by the roadside. When I woke up, it was already this late,” Su Qingran lied casually.
Only then did she remember that the capital enforced a nighttime curfew.
“Fine, but there aren’t any good rooms left at this hour.”
The waiter yawned.
“That’s okay. I’ll take whatever’s available.”
She had no intention of resting anyway.
She needed to enter her space and count her newly acquired fortune.
After paying fifty copper coins for a low-grade room, Su Qingran’s heart ached.
Property in the capital was truly expensive.
Fifty copper coins could buy fifteen meat buns.
As expected, no matter the era, real estate was always a profitable business.
After entering her room, she looked around at the shabby conditions with obvious disgust.
Forget it.
She’d make do.
Things were different now.
She had just moved her entire dowry into her possession.
The first thing she needed to do was see exactly what her grandfather had prepared for her.
After securing the door latch, Su Qingran entered her space again.
Everything had been dumped into the shelter building.
She headed straight to the first floor.
Looking at over a dozen beautifully crafted chests, she guessed these must contain her dowry.
As for the other boxes of varying sizes, they likely belonged to Pei Xingzhou.
Originally, she had thought that no matter how scummy Pei Xingzhou was, he had at least extended a helping hand when the original owner had nowhere else to go.
Because of that, she had only planned to take what rightfully belonged to her.
But now?
That bastard had spent years plotting, all for the sake of stealing the dowry left behind by the Pingyang Marquis.
Fortunately, she had transmigrated into this body.
Otherwise, the original owner would have been doomed.
Once they married and Pei Xingzhou gained control of the dowry, Su Qingran would certainly have ended up dead.
The man was simply too good at acting.
Even she had almost been fooled.
Once again, life had proven a timeless truth:
If men were truly reliable, pigs would be climbing trees.
Excitedly, Su Qingran opened one of the chests.
The moment she saw what was inside, she nearly exploded.