Chapter 4
When Mi Yao opened her eyes and felt a tightness in her chest, she thought she had been reloaded into a new game.
Only when Yu Xiu handed her the medicine while crying did she turn her face away in disappointment.
The first six months after she transmigrated were the most relaxed time for her. She spent her days either lying in bed or figuring out how to pamper herself. She wouldn't mind repeating the same things again.
Unfortunately, she clearly doesn't have the cheat code to rewind and start over.
"Sister, you're awake..."
Yu Xiu sobbed as she placed the medicine aside, looking at Mi Yao pitifully with tears in her eyes. "I didn't expect my sister to get sick. If I had known that my sister would fall ill because of this, I wouldn't have listened to Cousin Huan and let him take you away."
Realizing that the dull pain in her chest was due to wind-cold stagnation, Mi Yao propped herself up on the edge of the bed and said, "Go and prepare some refreshing tea for me, and some candied fruit to mask the bitterness."
Yu Xiu carried candied fruit and tea with her. After she made the arrangements, Mi Yao drank the medicine in one gulp, swallowed the rice cake, and then looked at her again, her face covered in tears.
As half-sisters, Yu Xiu bears some resemblance to the original owner of this body.
Both have almond-shaped eyes, but Yu Xiu's face is more square, making her look less clever and more dull and obedient.
In the original owner's memory, Yu Xiu was not very smart. She would secretly plan to release the raccoon dog that had scratched and injured the original owner because she did not want to kill it. After the original owner found out, she was afraid that the original owner would no longer take care of her, so she knelt in front of the original owner for two days.
Because she treated everyone around her like NPCs in a vacation game, this was the first time Mi Yao had carefully observed Yu Xiu and pondered what she was thinking.
The book does not analyze Yu Xiu's specific thoughts, so she does not know whether Huan Guanbin was able to take her away this time unintentionally or deliberately.
He touched the tears welling up in Yu Xiu's eyes.
Fearing that she would cry endlessly, Mi Yao spoke up: "Why didn't you tell me when Huan Guanbin asked you for help?"
Hearing that Mi Yao's voice was hoarse due to illness, Yu Xiu felt guilty and uneasy: "Cousin Huan said that my sister had to marry into Shu to put Father's mind at ease. For the sake of the Yu family, my sister would not go with Cousin Huan no matter how painful it was, so we could only keep it from her..."
Seeing that Yu Xiu was sobbing and unable to continue, Mi Yao continued, "So you're in front of me every day, and you think I'm in pain?"
this?
Yu Xiu stared wide-eyed in disbelief, her mind already a jumbled mess, completely confused by those words.
“I can eat and drink whatever I want every day, I have endless money, I am waited on hand and foot, and I don’t even have to wash my face myself. Where do you think I am suffering?”
"But... my sister likes Cousin Huan."
"Did you like it before or do you like it now?"
"……before."
“You understand the logic, so stop pretending to be stupid with me.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Mi Yao saw Yu Xiu kneeling on the ground, bending over and kowtowing, her forehead hitting the ground hard, one thud after another, as if she wanted to smash her head apart.
"What good does it do me to kowtow? Just thinking about how you kowtow until your head is bleeding makes me feel sorry for you, that you've had a hard time, and that I'll forgive you for your malicious intent in letting me be kidnapped by evil people and almost dying from the cold wind?"
The loud thumping of her kowtows stopped when Mi Yao spoke. Yu Xiu raised her head, her face pale. There was no blood on her forehead, but it was bruised.
"Sister..."
"I don't buy into that kind of kowtowing and kneeling. To me, people are only categorized as useful or useless. Even if you make me suffer a loss and kowtow until my head is torn to pieces, I won't gain anything."
After speaking, Mi Yao coughed a few times, lost interest in talking, and lay down to rest with her eyes closed.
Yu Xiu knelt on the ground, seeing that Mi Yao was asleep, and anxiously pondered what Mi Yao had just said to her.
She could sense that her older sister was different from the older sisters of the past.
In the past, my elder sister liked Huan Guanbin. She didn't mention it to outsiders, but in front of the maid who served her closely, she often mentioned what Huan Guanbin said and did, and how she liked his ideas that were different from ordinary people.
Six months ago, after her sister fell ill, she never mentioned Huan Guanbin again. Instead, she collected many ancient remedies and became obsessed with how to make herself more beautiful.
She stopped binding her chest and eating less, and became increasingly satisfied with her shapely and plump figure.
It was only when she realized that Mi Yao was different that she began to feel afraid.
If it were the old sister, she might have received some affection from the master if she had become a concubine. But now, the sister has a temper that she can control at will, and she is as beautiful as a goddess. How could the master possibly give her a second glance?
That's why she intentionally or unintentionally mentioned to Huan Guanbin that Mi Yao didn't want to marry far away, but only because she didn't want to upset her father, so she had to compromise herself.
Huan Guanbin, however, clearly thought more deeply than she did, and concocted his own explanation for Mi Yao's current suffering.
She helped Huan Guanbin drug her, thinking that he could really take Mi Yao away and make her, his concubine, the only bride to go to Yizhou. Who knew that Huan Guanbin was so useless, and Mi Yao returned in just one day.
Thinking of what Mi Yao had just said, Yu Xiu couldn't help but tremble, unable to understand what use kowtowing was if it was useless.
*
Mi Yao lay in bed for three days and drank five or six bowls of herbal soup. It wasn't until the fourth day that she felt the lesions being removed and her body returning to normal function.
In the past few days, in order to prove her usefulness, Yu Xiu took advantage of the fact that Mi Yao's other maids were not around and was extremely attentive to Mi Yao, wishing she could chew up the food and feed it to Mi Yao.
"Where are Shuanghua and Shiya? And where is this place?"
After lying in bed for a few days, Mi Yao began to wonder why she wasn't at the post station and why her maid wasn't by her side.
Yu Xiu had long been accustomed to her elder sister's carefree and lazy attitude towards everything, and found it strange.
She explained, "I don't know why my sister is here. My brother-in-law sent someone to pick me up from the inn and asked me to take care of her."
"You were the only one they picked up?"
“The visitor asked who was closest to my elder sister. I said I was my elder sister’s younger sister. The visitor then asked me to pack some of my elder sister’s clothes and brought me to my elder sister’s side.”
Yu Xiu pursed her lips and then shared her guess: "This should be my brother-in-law's private residence, a small two-courtyard house, with only the gatekeeper serving as a servant."
Speaking of her luggage, Mi Yao thought of the jewelry that Huan Guanbin had thrown away. She went to the dressing table and saw that the box was still intact on the table, and she immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
The original owner, the most beautiful woman in Jiangnan, was only superficially glamorous.
Yu's father only held a sinecure position, and because the original owner's birth mother died early, Yu's father had a second wife at a young age. If it weren't for the original owner's outstanding appearance, even with the status of a legitimate daughter, she would not have been valued by the Yu family.
Even though the Yu family valued her highly, they were unwilling to offer her many truly valuable items as part of her dowry. Most of the jewelry in her bridal dowry was a betrothal gift from Xiao Chuan.
After examining all four layers of jewelry, Mi Yao found Yu Xiu to be strange. She said Yu Xiu was full of malice, but when she packed her belongings, she packed almost all of the original owner's valuables.
"Sister, is your brother-in-law upset with us?"
These past few days, Yu Xiu has been worried about Mi Yao settling scores with her, and she's also uneasy about Xiao Chua's behavior. She doesn't know why he abandoned them here and doesn't care about them. Could it be that he doesn't plan to take Mi Yao back to Shu to get married?
But Mi Yao didn't dare to speak up until now, and only then did she dare to release her panic: "Brother-in-law, have you never seen what my sister looks like before?"
If they had seen it, how could they bear not to bring it back to their residence?
"He probably has something to do in Jingzhou."
The foundation for Xiao Chuan's proposal to marry the original owner was that he led troops to quell the internal strife in Jingzhou.
Jingzhou was a grain and supplies transit point for several southern states and was also next to Shu. She remembered that in the book, Xiao Chuan spent a lot of effort in Jingzhou, suppressing rebellions and stirring up trouble. After completely eliminating the major forces, he took the fat piece of Jingzhou and then took Huainan up the Yangtze River.
Xiao Chuan threw her here, probably hoping to use her kidnapping as an excuse to cause trouble in Jingzhou.
In a way, her being taken away by Huan Guanbin should have created a good opportunity for him. Even at top speed, it would be impossible to travel from Kuizhou to Jingzhou in a single day.
But he found her in just one day.
This means that he wasn't waiting for her in Kuizhou at all, but was already in Jingzhou.
Having figured this out, Mi Yao continued to lie down.
But when it was lunchtime, she found it difficult to lie down.
When she was still recovering from her cold, she had no appetite, but now that she is well and her sense of taste has returned, eating coarse food is simply torture.
The roasted duck smelled fishy as soon as it was placed on the table, the steamed meat buns were mushy, and the cabbage soup was cooked just right, but we couldn't just let her drink plain porridge and eat cabbage.
"Can you really eat this?"
Mi Yao looked at Yu Xiu. Although Yu Xiu was not favored, she had always stayed by the original owner's side and was not usually so miserable as to eat such things.
"The meals were made by the old woman who works at the gatehouse. I mentioned it to her, and she agreed, but the food still turned out like this. I originally thought she really didn't know how to cook meat, but these past few days she's made all the things you don't eat, with the hot oil and spices just right, and the aroma of the cooking is wonderful. It all ended up in the stomachs of her whole family."
Mi Yao was ill and anxious, so she didn't bother arguing with the gatekeeper's family. Now that Mi Yao had mentioned it, she immediately brought out food and went to the gatekeeper's family.
Yu Xiu went off with a fierce aura, and returned empty-handed a moment later, only with an old woman by her side.
The old woman was wearing a grayish-brown cotton-padded jacket without any patches, but she was very slovenly. Her hair was greasy and messy, and there were black stains on her collar and cuffs. Even before you got close, you could smell a strange odor.
Not only was she slovenly and filthy, but the old woman squinted and scrutinized her from head to toe as soon as she saw her, clearly trying to overpower her at first glance.
Thinking of Yu Xiu's comment that the old woman deliberately cooked the food badly, Mi Yao covered her mouth and gagged without any hesitation: "Don't tell me that the medicine I drink and the food I eat are all made by her?"
"Don't worry, sister. I personally prepare all the medicines, the porridge is cooked by the gatekeeper's wife, and the meat is prepared by this old woman."
Mi Yao was immediately relieved that she hadn't eaten meat in the past few days.
"How dare you touch my food like this?! How could Xiao Lang possibly keep your whole family here to serve you?!"
When Wu Ao saw Mi Yao's true face, she was stunned for a moment. Mi Yao was sent over overnight. The town magistrate only told her son to take good care of Mi Yao and her sister and not to let them run around, but did not give any other instructions.
Yu Xiu usually forbade her to approach the main house, so she didn't know that the woman recuperating in the house was actually as beautiful as a fairy and so domineering, unlike an ordinary woman.
Wu Ao originally wanted to act fiercely to stop Mi Yao from causing trouble, but when she heard Mi Yao's stern questioning, she subconsciously knelt down on the ground.
"My lady, you don't know, my son originally served under the garrison commander. After he was wounded on the battlefield, the garrison commander took pity on him and asked our family to guard his house..."
"I thought Xiao Lang gave your son this house out of pity for him. Since he's just a servant looking after the gate, why are you telling me all this? Do you think I'll be wary of your son because he's your master's subordinate?"
Mi Yao scoffed. Now that she was better, all the loss of appetite she had lost over the past few days came rushing back. She interrupted Wu Ao's incessant chatter, "Stop talking nonsense. I feel disgusted just looking at you, and I can't eat the food you cook. Take out the gold and silver that your husband left behind and have someone take my sister to buy me something edible."
"The town magistrate ordered that you be kept under close watch and not allowed to run around."
Seeing Wu Ao straighten her chest and regain her confidence, Mi Yao snorted: "A beauty like me can't just run around, otherwise what's the point of having servants like you?"
With Mi Yao backing her up, Yu Xiu felt emboldened and glared at the disgruntled Wu Ao: "You still won't obey orders? Are you planning to wait for my brother-in-law to come back and kick your whole family out of the house?!"
While muttering to herself about the town magistrate's instructions and how much her son had been favored by him, Wu lingered for a while. Seeing that Mi Yao had raised her beautiful eyes arrogantly and wouldn't even look at her, she could only reluctantly give Yu Xiu some money and ask her daughter-in-law to take Yu Xiu to buy food and drinks for Mi Yao at noon.
After eating, Mi Yao was torn between taking another nap or asking Yu Xiu to find her some books to pass the time. Just then, she overheard a commotion in the courtyard.
After putting on her shoes and socks and pushing open the door, Mi Yao looked up and bumped into the man walking in her direction.
The man's face was no longer covered by a leather mask as it had been that night, revealing his pale lips, but she still recognized him by his indifferent and wild phoenix eyes and the murderous aura surrounding him.
She stepped forward to greet him, her almond-shaped eyes shimmering as she looked up at him reproachfully: "Xiao Lang, you know that delicate flowers need to be carefully nurtured, so why do you still torment me like this?"
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