Chapter 269: Unexpected Visitors

Chapter 269: Unexpected Visitors

Time seemed to have stopped.

Every muscle in Qiao Hui's body felt like it was being roasted in a blazing fire.

He seemed to lose his ability to speak instantly, instinctively opening his mouth. Reason told him he should say something.

A joke, some small talk, or even a few song lyrics would do!

He had to make some noise, right?

But nothing came out of his mouth.

He swore that even when the dwarf's blade was at his throat on the East China Sea, he had never felt this tense!

Qiao Hui was silent for a long time, and in a moment of desperation, he instinctively stretched out his arms, tightly wrapping them around his chest, and blurted out a sentence that had not passed through his brain, a sentence that would haunt him for the rest of his life, "No matter how big it gets, you can’t touch it!"

"Crack—" Half a tile from the quarters fell off.

Xianjin was wide-eyed in disbelief, then covered her mouth and laughed loudly, "I wouldn't touch you even if you begged me!"

Do guys really understand girls' genuine love for muscles?!

This love is pure, noble, free from base interests, and beneficial to health!

After expressing her sincere feelings for muscles, Xianjin peeked her head out. Seeing that the sweaty crowd had dispersed by night, she tiptoed and slipped out along the wall.

Qiao Hui followed closely behind.

Xianjin waved goodbye to Qiao Hui.

Qiao Hui followed silently, waving back absently. He returned to Baige Hall in silence, and as soon as he closed the door, Liu Shanhu, the head of the death guards, flipped down from a pillar, his face contorted from trying not to laugh.

"No laughing," Qiao Hui gritted his teeth, "If anyone else learns about today’s incident, you're going back to the East China Sea to move coral!"

Liu Shanhu’s mouth was almost twisted into a wavy shape, his hands flying to sign.

Judging from his curved palms and tantalizing fingers, it seemed to be some censored taunting.

Qiao Hui turned his face away, closed his eyes, and completed a simple refusal.

Liu Shanhu continued to output tirelessly, while Qiao Hui walked back to his room with his eyes tightly shut, pulling down the bead curtain, standing with his feet apart and his arms crossed, silently watching the moonlight filter in through the narrow gap, appearing steady and peaceful.

After about fifteen minutes of quiet, Qiao Hui buried his head and pulled a heavy stone lock from beneath the bed, assumed his horse stance, and lifted it with one hand, skillfully landing it on his extended elbow, and began to practice.

Around the third quarter of the night, young master Qiao, drawing the curtains, secretly worked out in a hidden corner of the room.

By the next meeting, his chest muscles needed to be even bigger—perhaps it was the moonlight mingled with wine, Qiao Hui thought dazedly and dizzily.

...

Qiao Hui noticed that three people were missing from Chen's. After the posting of the "Twenty Rules," some folks in the training camp gradually noticed as well.

Being discovered wasn't a big deal.

Everyone knew about Zhou Ergou's leg injury, and summer heat made wounds prone to itching and infection; the Director's eldest son had only recently been promoted by Xianjin, and he was usually very low-key and introverted; as for Nan Xiaogua, forget about it, apart from Chen's people, most of the clerks from other businesses had never heard of him and could find no information about him.

Thus, the discovery didn't cause any ripples.

The work in the paper-making workshop continued to move forward. The production of Eight-Zhang Xuan Paper had stalled for the past ten or twenty years, a topic that Xianjin and Li Sanshun had discussed many years ago.

Li Sanshun believed that the reason they couldn't produce Eight-Zhang Xuan Paper was that today's paper makers no longer pursued artistry. Instead, they took shortcuts, blindly chasing "novelty" and pursuing the idea of "I have something you don't."

"…For example, your engraved Xuan paper, is it difficult to make? Not really. Just paint the bamboo curtain well, choose some nice and auspicious patterns, and any ordinary craftsman can manage it," the old man said, smoke swirling around his old eyes as he puffed on his cigarette. "What's truly difficult, the things that require skill, no one does anymore—it’s not profitable, so why bother? When you can make big money through back channels, who would still quietly create traditional items?"

Xianjin smiled without saying a word, listening to the stubborn old man's opinions and his hidden agenda.

"If no one does it, it’s manageable for a year or two, but after ten or twenty years, this craft will be lost, and no one will be able to revive it," the old man said, tapping his cigarette pipe on a stool.

Xianjin had a different view. "Merchants need to make money and have food to eat before they can quietly make things. Why haven't any Eight-Zhang Xuan Papers been produced in Jing County or even Xuancheng in the past ten or twenty years? Because these years, paper merchants have had a hard time."

"Making Eight-Zhang Xuan requires a large paper pulp pool, at least fifty or sixty workers to lift the paper at the same time, and repeated trials of the pulp mixture ratio and the technique of cooperation."

"All of these require money. Without money, we can't buy sufficient raw materials or hire fifty or sixty experienced master craftsmen."

Xianjin always enjoyed chatting with the old man Li Sanshun. The clash of old and new always sparked inspiring ideas. "Now that the Chen family is making money, they can afford to provide food and raw materials for nearly a hundred people every day. Just think, three years ago, even if the court asked us to make Eight-Zhang Xuan, would we have had the confidence to do it? Would we have dared?"

The old man's cigarette still burned, having smoked old leaf water tobacco for a long time. Now switching to supposedly "healthier and more advanced" cured fine tobacco, he always felt it lacked potency.

The old man took a few deep puffs and said in a gruff voice, "You can read and write. This old man will listen to you."

Xianjin took a few clusters of tobacco from a pouch, rolled it into a ball, and stuffed it into the smoking pipe for the old master. Her eyes looked towards a canopy in the distance. "You, you—you know I'm right, but you still argue."

Li Sanshun took another puff of the new tobacco. Yes, this flavor had enough strength.

In the white mist, Li Sanshun put down his pipe satisfactorily. "If you say do it, then let's do it. After following you for three years, your master Li has never been a coward. Now, I'll risk my old life to help you produce Eight-Zhang Xuan Paper."

Xianjin opened her mouth, wanting to ask, "If I leave the Chen family, will you still follow me?"

But she didn't say it in the end.

Poaching someone was unforgivable.

Things hadn't reached that point yet.

Xianjin's hands naturally dropped down, her face calm, not revealing what she was thinking.

By June, the weather grew increasingly harsh. Mornings and evenings were still tolerable, but around noon and the afternoon before sunset, it felt like being in a steaming hot cage.

Entering an enclosed canopy in such weather was practically torture.

The temperature in the canopy was high. The men took off their jackets, exposing their tan arms, standing in a row by the fifty-meter-long pulp pool, stirring.

Xianjin had her hair tied high, casually wearing a thin long shirt, joining the men, bending over to touch the pulp, gently rubbing her thumb and forefinger.

"We need to add kiwi vine sap, right? It's not viscous enough?" Xianjin asked Li Sanshun for his opinion.

Li Sanshun also touched the pulp and succinctly said, "Add."

A bucket of sour-smelling liquid was poured into the pulp pool.

Xianjin wiped the sweat from her forehead and was about to say something when Suo'er rushed in, tiptoeing over to whisper in Xianjin's ear, "…the old madam is here, Third Master is also here, and there's an unfamiliar gentleman."