A husband found in the village? I bought a regent for a penny!

Gu Xixi bent down and looked closely at the hidden poem combination lock, her eyes filled with the look of someone facing an enemy.

"Do you know how to solve this? I want to throw it away!"

He Jinglan said, "Naturally, you can solve it by matching the four-character poem that is pre-set in the text."

She bent down and touched heads with Gu Xixi to examine the lock, stroking her chin thoughtfully:

"Normally each roller has six to nine characters, but this one has nine characters, which is the most difficult."

As Gu Xixi scrolled through the scroll wheel, she asked, "Do you know what poem it is?"

"Let's think about it together, starting from the first sentence, eliminating possible options."

There are only these few words on the copper lock, including works by famous authors and three hundred poems, as numerous as the sea.

With He Jinglan, an ancient liberal arts student, present, she should be able to answer the question quickly.

However, there was no sound from her side for a while. When Gu Xixi turned her head and met He Jinglan's eyes, she suddenly realized something.

She shouldn't have asked for the answer at all!

Given Mu Nanzhao's perverse tastes, how could he possibly stoop to copying other people's poems as a code?!

Therefore, only Mu Nanzhao knows this password!

Seeing that Gu Xixi understood on her own, He Jinglan shrugged and gave a helpless smile.

"There's nothing we can do. No matter how annoying he is, his talent in poetry and prose is still widely praised."

Gu Xixi looked at the copper lock again. In addition to the code on the front of the horse's belly, there was also a keyhole in the horse's mouth, which could be described as double security.

Moreover, the entire piece is made of extremely thick brass, so even if you use brute force, it would probably be very difficult to open.

He Jinglan glanced at Gu Xixi's expression and tried to persuade her, "I think we should just let it go..."

“He’s not even here. Getting angry at a brass lock will only make you angry. It’s not worth it.”

Gu Xixi took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. "That's right."

There's no need to get worked up over an inanimate object.

Just as the two were about to leave, Aunt Zhang came out of the main room and immediately saw the gleaming lock.

She walked over and looked at the two girls. "What's going on? Where's Xiao Chen? Did Xixi lock Xiao Chen in the room?"

He Jinglan laughed and said, "Auntie is joking. In broad daylight, why would Xixi lock a grown person in a room?"

Gu Xixi said helplessly, "Auntie, look at this infuriating thing, is it something we should have in our home?"

Aunt Zhang was also drawn to the copper lock. "Wow, it's so exquisitely made! How come the parts in the middle can move?"

Are those... words engraved on it?

She reached out and weighed it in her hand, saying, "It's quite heavy."

"With this level of craftsmanship, exchanging it for a large silver ingot shouldn't be a problem."

He Jinglan said, "If we can dismantle it, selling it for fifty or sixty taels of silver wouldn't be a problem."

"What?" Aunt Zhang was shocked. She turned her head and saw that the door was not closed. She quickly lowered her voice.

"Fifty, fifty or sixty?"

She looked at the brass lock again. "If this isn't Xixi's, then it must be something Xiao Chen made himself?"

Gu Xixi and He Jinglan nodded in unison.

Aunt Zhang was even more confused. "Where is Xiao Chen? There's nothing to steal from his house."

Gu Xixi answered directly, "She ran away and won't be coming back."

Aunt Zhang felt as if a thunderbolt had struck her head, and she almost lost her balance.

She leaned against the wall and asked, "What? You're saying Xiao Chen ran away? How did you know?"

"He's always come and go without anyone noticing in the past, so don't think you've misunderstood him this time!"

At this moment, Gu Xixi had a straightforward "what's the use" attitude.

"No misunderstanding, he has a better place to go. From now on, we'll pretend he never existed in our family."

"You don't need to worry about whether he will come back or not anymore. Just live your life as before."

He Jinglan was also surprised by Gu Xixi's words. She glanced at her in surprise, then lowered her head to avoid Aunt Zhang's gaze as much as possible.

But Aunt Zhang still called on her, "Jinglan, you tell me, what exactly happened between those two?"

"Did they have a fight? Or did Xixi bully Xiao Chen and kick him out?"

He Jinglan couldn't escape the questioning, so she could only smile and say, "Look at this copper lock, it doesn't look like Xixi kicked him out at all."

Aunt Zhang asked in bewilderment, "If Xiao Chen ran away, why lock this house?"

He Jinglan glanced at Gu Xixi and decided to stand on her best friend's side.

She spoke with difficulty, "He... he just wanted to cause trouble before he left, making it so you couldn't open the door."

Aunt Zhang was completely puzzled.

Is it really possible for someone to spend fifty or sixty taels of silver just to lock someone else's door... to cause trouble?

Gu Xixi tugged at Aunt Zhang's hand and said sweetly, "This matter is over, don't worry about it anymore, okay?"

"But..." Aunt Zhang wanted to say something more.

Gu Xixi quickly added, "Anyway, we only spent one coin back then. He did a lot of work at home, and he gave all the tuition fees he earned as a teacher to his family. So we basically evened things out, and we didn't lose out."

Aunt Zhang frowned and thought for a while, then finally understood. She looked up and said, "That still won't work. Xiao Chen was arranged to marry here by the government."

"He's not entirely innocent. If he ran away without a clear explanation, shouldn't we report him to the authorities?"

"Otherwise, what will we do if they investigate someday?"

Gu Xixi and He Jinglan exchanged a glance.

I forgot about that question.

Let alone the fact that the current Qingtian County government wouldn't care about this matter.

In just a few days, the situation outside will change, and Chen Fang's slave record will probably soon become a piece of waste paper stating "this person is dead".

But these inside stories were not easy to explain to Aunt Zhang.

So Gu Xixi said, "Okay, I'm going into town to buy things tomorrow, I'll go to the yamen to report it on the way."

Aunt Zhang nodded, sighed with a worried look, and walked away.

She muttered to herself, "We finally developed feelings for each other, and I thought he could really become my son-in-law."

"He just turned around and ran away, what am I going to do with my Xixi... "

Gu Xixi wanted to chase after Aunt Zhang to comfort her, but after thinking about it, she had no choice but to give up.

You develop feelings for cats and dogs, so how much more so for a person? Let Aunt Zhang adjust on her own first.

She sighed, "Let's go to Sister-in-law Qin's house."

"Aunt Zhang likes to eat cherries, so I picked some for her."

Aunt Zhang walked into the main room and looked up to see the memorial tablets of Gu Bapi and Xixi's mother.

Her bent back suddenly straightened, and her eyes rekindled her fighting spirit.

"These outsiders, whose backgrounds are unknown, are definitely no good."

"Therefore, I have to personally oversee my son Xixi's marriage, whether it's a marriage proposal or a wedding!"

There was no one in Sister Qin's orchard.

Gu Xixi asked the neighbors who were doing farm work nearby and learned that Sister-in-law Qin and her husband had gone to the city early in the morning.

The neighbor auntie laughed and said, "They've been digging up medicinal herbs non-stop lately. They just dried a batch, and this morning I saw them fill two full loads. They're going to the city to sell them for money."

The auntie gestured with her hand to make a "three" shape and said enviously, "It seems like they've already sold it three times. I asked them how much money they made, but they wouldn't tell me, they just smiled."

"Judging from his expression, he definitely made a lot of money!"