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

Inside the military tent, the man was dressed in a dark blue light silk narrow-sleeved Hu-style robe, with a dark brocade belt with bamboo patterns around his waist. From behind, he had broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and a tall, elegant figure.

He was fiddling with a game of Chinese chess on the table, his slender index finger lightly tapping the board with a touch of indifference and nonchalance.

"understood."

Meng Chengping ran over in a few steps, "Hey, besides saying 'I know,' what else can you say?"

"Huachidu Village! Those medicines were made by Gu Xixi's family, Gu Xixi's master, Old Doctor Jiang, from Huachidu Village!"

Mu Nanzhao picked up a chess piece with a red flag and the character "Xi" engraved on it, and stared at the chessboard in thought, saying, "I ordered the medicine myself, you don't need to tell me its origin."

Meng Chengping was heartbroken at not getting the reaction he expected, crying out, "Huachi Ferry, Gu Xixi!"

"Don't you want to ask a few more questions?!"

After a moment, Mu Nanzhao placed a chess piece on the board and finally raised his eyes to look at Meng Chengping.

Just as Meng Chengping was filled with anticipation, thinking he was about to say something...

Mu Nanzhao shifted his gaze back to the chessboard. "I don't want to."

Meng Chengping swayed, grabbing the corner of the table for support, and roared, "Keep pretending! In the end, your fiancée will be running a business with someone else. Don't come crying to your brother then, begging him to drink with you in your misery!"

Mu Nanzhao's hand, which was about to place a piece, stopped in mid-air.

The air inside the military tent seemed to freeze.

Meng Chengping felt inexplicably guilty and tactically took three steps back.

Since being cured of the poison, Mu Nanzhao's health has been gradually recovering. Recently, Meng Chengping has realized that he can no longer defeat him.

Only after establishing a safe distance did Meng Chengping dare to continue, "What's wrong? Did I touch a nerve?"

"But what I said is true! You can't lie to yourself and pretend it doesn't exist."

"Don't forget, the one who's truly by Gu Xixi's side is that barbarian, not you!"

Mu Nanzhao suddenly shot him a sharp glare.

The air felt as if frost and snow were swirling in, stinging Meng Chengping's face.

He said warily, "Now is the time when we need manpower. If you dare to kill someone to silence them, the General will never agree!"

Mu Nanzhao looked at Meng Chengping, sneered, and his eyes were full of disdain.

"General Meng should worry about himself first."

"After all, you've never been on the list of potential husbands for the eldest daughter of the He family."

Meng Chengping was taken aback, and his entire being visibly weakened and became depressed.

"Ah...you're right..."

“I can’t even make the shortlist, I’m not as good as you, my nominal fiancé.”

A nominal...fiancé?

Mu Nanzhao frowned. The knife he thrust out had unexpectedly turned into a boomerang and pierced himself again.

The two stood facing each other, both silent.

After an unknown amount of time, Meng Chengping spoke with a sense of loss, "All I know is that Jinglan has been living at Boss Gu's house, and everything seems to be going well. She's even a little too happy to leave."

Mu Nanzhao glanced at him disdainfully, "You don't actually think she'd become haggard for him, do you?"

Meng Chengping said, "I hope she will remember me at least a little bit, otherwise if she forgets me, wouldn't I have no hope at all?"

As he spoke, a smile returned to his face, his eyes seemingly fixed on that unattainable person. "But she's found a place she likes to live and is happy every day, so of course I'm happy for her."

“I noticed it a long time ago: when she lived in the capital, no one could accompany her to play freely.”

"So I must work hard to be on par with her as soon as possible, so that she can do whatever she wants in this life."

Mu Nanzhao sighed and shook his head speechlessly.

Gu Xixi seemed to have said something about what this symptom was called again.

Love-struck, yes, that's the name.

Meng Chengping turned to Mu Nanzhao, "I have no way of knowing what's going on in the village. Didn't you release the shadow guards?"

"I see you receiving secret letters all the time. Do you know a lot of things and are you keeping them from me?"

Mu Nanzhao sighed heavily, looking at Meng Chengping with a "you're hopeless" expression.

"Do you think I would use the opportunity of sending secret messages to inquire about trivial matters in the village?"

Meng Chengping countered, "Can't I?"

Mu Nanzhao closed his eyes, feeling suffocated.

He was usually the one who could calmly infuriate others, and Meng Chengping's level of anger was far from enough to make him furious.

But for some reason, he's feeling very irritable right now.

It felt like a pile of dry grass was stuck in my heart, and just one more spark could ignite it and cause things to spiral out of control.

"Anyway, I won't ask what He Jinglan does every day at Gu Xixi's house. If you want to know, don't try to find out from me."

Meng Chengping remained calm. "Why can't Master Liu write a few casual remarks while he's at it?"

"Aren't you even a little bit curious about what's going on with Boss Gu lately?"

"Especially that Hu man, I heard that we'll be doing business with him in the future."

……

One sentence after another, until finally, Mu Nanzhao heard the thread of "reason" in his mind snap.

"She thought my concern was just me spying on her and trying to control her! She hated that I did that, so before I left I promised her that I would no longer have bodyguards staking out her house or have anyone record her activities and pass them on to me!"

"Now you know the reason? Are you satisfied?!"

Meng Chengping felt a sudden sense of relief. "So Boss Gu dislikes you too."

"I'm relieved that I'm not the only one suffering like this."

Looking at Mu Nanzhao, he felt a sense of kinship and mutual understanding, like two brothers in distress.

Mu Nanzhao was no longer able to judge Meng Chengping's thought process.

Then he asked, "You just said that Gu Xixi is going to open a shop in partnership with someone surnamed An. How did you find out that?"

Meng Chengping's smile slowly froze. "Well..."

Faced with Mu Nanzhao's icy gaze, Meng Chengping knew he couldn't delay any longer and had no choice but to say:

"Weren't some of your people among those escorting this batch of medicines?"

"Seeing that the brothers had worked hard, I treated them to something to eat and chatted with them for a while."

Mu Nanzhao raised an eyebrow slightly, "If you want to work under me, the first rule is not to gossip."

"Tell me exactly who it is so I can deal with him."

Meng Chengping broke out in a cold sweat. To avoid implicating innocent people, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and say, "I was just hinting to them that you wanted to know about Boss Gu and his family's current situation, especially what important things had happened. But you were too embarrassed to ask them yourself, so as their brother, I had to do it for you..."

His voice grew softer and softer as he spoke, until finally only humming sounds escaped his lips.

Looking again, Mu Nanzhao's face was as black as the bottom of a pot.

"Fine," he laughed in fury, his stunningly beautiful face resembling a beautifully blooming poisonous flower.

"Meng Chengping!!!"

Seeing that things were going badly, Meng Chengping quickly made his escape, leaving behind the words, "I don't regret it! I did all this for your own good. If you keep being so stubborn and suffering like this, you'll end up hollowing out the whole wall!"

"Get out!!!" A roar came from inside the military tent.

Summer harvest has begun in Huachidu Village.

The whole village was busy, and with the added task of rotating patrols, things were even busier.

This year's harvest is good, but there isn't much joy in the atmosphere as people face the upcoming bumper harvest.

The village chief said that bandits in the surrounding area had also set their sights on this batch of grain, and that nearby villages had already been robbed.