Chapter 62 We’re Married! (Story Ends)

Chapter 62 We Are Married! (End of Main Story)

The several tea mountains in Chi Family Village, blessed with perfect timing and geography and nourished for years by mountain mists and sweet spring water, were inherently superior in quality and had always enjoyed excellent market demand.

The land there was fertile indeed, and with He Angxiao's adept networking in the business world—holding top-tier connections that others could only dream of—within just a few short years, the spring and autumn teas produced over several seasons in Chi Family Village had reached such high demand that supply couldn't keep up.

The tea leaves had a fine base; when pan-fried and brewed in a white porcelain cup, they carried a unique, special sweetness on the palate.

To avoid tarnishing the brand's reputation, the villagers tightly controlled every step from picking, rough processing, fine processing, to final packaging, keeping it firmly in their own hands.

In the beginning, most people were barely literate and knew little to nothing about modern machinery or complex fermentation processes. It was all thanks to He Angxiao, who spent a fortune to hire the most skilled master artisans from outside to live in the village and teach them hands-on.

By now, these tea mountains had essentially solved the employment problem for all the men, women, and children in the entire village.

Sitting on their own doorsteps, working under the elders' watchful eyes, they could steadily support their entire families. With life getting better day by day, who would want to leave their hometown and go to a big city to grovel for work?

Since Chun Sheng had been reluctantly forced into managing the tea company, he had been studying with gritted teeth and great effort.

All the obscure technical knowledge and financial reports were things he first had to bite the bullet and slog through himself. Once he fully understood them, he would patiently lead the unschooled villagers through them step by step.

Although he struggled somewhat with formal exam-based learning, Heaven had gifted him with an unusually sharp mind for business and management.

Add to his stubbornly single-minded nature—he controlled tea quality more strictly than anyone—and over the years he hadn't messed up even once, not once disappointing He Angxiao, who had placed such high hopes in him.

With life going smoothly, settling down and starting a family came naturally.

Chun Sheng got married last year to a middle school classmate from his school days. The girl had a gentle temperament, and together they managed everything smoothly, living a life sweet as honey and perfectly harmonious.

In the beginning, Chi Family Village's tea was mostly sold as raw material to test the market. The brand name of the tea and the underlying parent company were all decided and chosen by He Angxiao, called "Fog Mountain Collection" (Wu Shan Ji).

The name carried profound cultural depth, evoking a rustic, scholarly fragrance of ink.

Later, through an omni-channel marketing strategy involving online e-commerce and offline physical counters, the name Fog Mountain Collection quickly became a household name in the tea community.

Chun Sheng was quick-witted and wasn't content with just selling a few ounces of tea leaves.

He seized the opportunity to develop a series of well-spaced, picturesque homestays on the fragmented wasteland around the tea gardens, and also set aside specific routes for urban customers to visit the gardens.

The main purpose of all these gimmicks was to confine tourists to fixed areas, preventing them from stepping into the core tea-growing zones and damaging the ecological balance of the mountains.

One afternoon, after finishing his accounting in the office, Chun Sheng suddenly called Chi Luoxi, who was far away in Jiangzhou, out of the blue, and shouted for him to come back to the village to shoot photos for a brand endorsement for their new tea.

Chi Luoxi was stunned and couldn't believe it: "What? Why me?"

On the other end of the phone, Chun Sheng said, "Yeah, exactly—you're the one."

"Just the other day, I heard from those marketing planners that to make our tea more famous and upscale, we need to find a big star for endorsement. I took the time to look into it—boy oh boy, the endorsement fees those stars demand are crazy expensive, running into millions or even tens of millions. I looked at their photos carefully, and none of them look as good or as spirited as you. Besides, you're from our village, so doing this saves a bundle. That way, I can take the few million we saved and directly distribute them as year-end bonuses to the villagers—how practical is that?"

Chi Luoxi thought it was a reasonable point. He grumbled out loud but was actually quite happy to contribute to his hometown, so he agreed immediately.

But the news reached He Angxiao's ears the very next day.

He Angxiao called Chun Sheng directly and questioned him: "I say, now that you're a general manager with rising worth, why are you getting stingier as you climb the ladder? How much budget does a star endorsement need?"

Was it necessary to have Chi Luoxi show his face in public?

Chun Sheng chuckled on the other end, his words full of true miser nature: "President He, you're a rich big boss, so you don't know the price of rice until you run the household. Hiring those stars dolled up with heavy makeup is so expensive—better to let our own Little Radish do it. His skin and looks—aren't they better than any star? The endorsement fee we save from not hiring a star is enough to cover several months' wages for our tea factory."

He Angxiao snorted coldly, his tone full of dismissive criticism: "The traffic and sales pull that a big star brings naturally—can that compare to that of an ordinary person?"

He felt that although Chun Sheng had learned a lot in business, in the end he still didn't have that much foresight in long-term investments.

Chun Sheng retorted, "How's that any different? A big star is just someone with a face better than average, when it comes down to it. If you ask me, if our Little Radish became a star, he'd be no worse than any star on TV. Besides, our Radish is now a top graduate—his education level is far higher than theirs! Our tea, from now on, is on a solid, hardcore quality route. It doesn't rely on some fans buying into empty hype."

Chi Luoxi, sitting nearby, felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as every word struck the perfect chord with his ego.

He immediately nodded eagerly and chimed in, "Exactly, exactly! Brother Chunsheng is absolutely right."

He Angxiao, watching the two of them in cahoots, felt a headache coming on. He simply couldn't have a normal conversation with them.

Knowing he couldn't win them over, He Angxiao crossed his arms and poured cold water: "Hmph, just you wait. No budget, no promotion—when it goes online, it won't even make a ripple."

At the bottom of it all, his sneaky, selfish motive was that he simply didn't want Chi Luoxi's face to be shown off to the public, to be stared at by others for no reason.

But in this household, once Chi Luoxi made the call and nodded, it was as good as a unanimous vote.

President He's dissenting vote had never counted for even a bubble in the family hierarchy.

For this matter, Chi Luoxi specially went back to Fog Mountain to shoot the promotional video.

Because He Angxiao had opposed it earlier and had been quite sarcastic, Chi Luoxi found him a hindrance who would ruin the on-set atmosphere. So before leaving, he simply ordered He Angxiao to stay put in Jiangzhou and not follow him back to the village.

The photographer Chun Sheng hired wasn't some big name, just a local crew that had shot government promotional videos for the town for a few years.

He had put thought into it, though, going out of his way to bring in professional makeup artists and stylists from the city to do Chi Luoxi's look. As the saying goes, "save where you should, spend where you must." Chun Sheng firmly believed every penny he spent hit the nail on the head.

Nowadays, Chi Family Village was a far cry from the muddy, backward, impoverished look it had a few years ago.

Well-arranged small houses were built along the mountainside. For the sake of visual uniformity, the exterior walls of every household were painted a clean, crisp white. Outside the fences, large patches of blooming roses and hydrangeas were planted in a scatter.

The sprawling, lush tea mountains in the back hills had been expanded twice in succession, thanks to capital injection from Xiaoheng Technology.

Last year, Chi Luoxi had fully renovated the ancestral home.

Now, when He Angxiao returned home with him, he could ride a smooth SUV all the way to the front door, no longer suffering through the muddy paths with full professional climbing gear like in the old days.

Chi Luoxi's makeup and styling that day was actually very simple. The stylist just changed him into a modified cross-collar linen robe.

The moon-white fabric made his already fair skin glow even brighter. When the wind blew, the hem swayed amidst the fragrance of tea leaves over the hills, making him look ethereal, radiating a clean, immortal aura.

Chun Sheng directed from the side, insisting that Chi Luoxi burn incense and play the guqin in a bamboo pavilion halfway up the mountain, claiming it would create a very artistic atmosphere.

He Angxiao, secretly watching through a WeChat video call from faraway Jiangzhou, looked at the tacky-meets-sophisticated scene on the screen and coldly delivered two words: "So tacky."

Chun Sheng, holding the phone, immediately got annoyed and pretended the signal was bad: "...President He, I can't see your face anymore. Hello? Hello? Bad signal. I'll hang up now."

He Angxiao: "…………"

Though the equipment was rudimentary, the beauty of the tea mountains and Chi Luoxi's own good looks made the final shots surprisingly stunning.

A high-altitude drone buzzed over the layered, emerald tea gardens, capturing magnificent scenery like splashed-ink landscape paintings.

And in the shots, Chi Luoxi—whether tenderly brushing past tea leaves or turning around with a fleeting, breathtaking glance—the final edited footage practically turned into a personal artistic photo album dedicated solely to Chi Luoxi.

When the new tea hit the market and He Angxiao was reviewing the footage personally at his computer, he was momentarily stunned seeing Chi Luoxi's bright and beautiful smile in the sunlight. He almost cupped his face and started drooling over the screen.

And so, the spokesperson for Fog Mountain Collection naturally fell to Chi Luoxi.

Later, as the fame of Fog Mountain Collection grew online and sales soared, more and more consumers and tea enthusiasts grew curious, asking on social media platforms who the spokesperson on the packaging was.

The way he fits the brand is almost too perfect.

Without a speck of makeup, he looked ethereal and stunning. When he had a stern face and didn’t smile, he seemed too cool and distant to belong to this world. But the moment his lips curled into the faintest smile for the camera, a wave of vibrant charisma came rushing through the screen.

Later, someone in the know spilled in the comments that this unreal beauty wasn't some minor celeb, but a local villager born and raised there.

They even claimed he got his looks from drinking tea since he was a kid.

His fame blew up, and more and more netizens spread the word, raving that the tea left a lingering flavor and was absolutely delicious.

So under the official account of some social platform, people built massive comment threads almost every day, relentlessly asking: "Who is this spokesperson guy? With a face like that, is he really just a regular person?"

The top comment replied with certainty: "He's a genuine regular person, not an influencer, and not signed to any agency."

Below that, a bunch of exclamations followed: "With looks like that, he can just chill as a regular person in the mountains? I don't buy it. Where's the justice?"

Amid this fervent chorus of praise, a mysterious low-key account with no profile picture replied: "He's indeed a regular person. Married with three kids, living a happy family life."

Netizens: "Wait, what? He looks so young and fresh, and he already has three kids? That's wild."

That account stated it so firmly, keeping a low profile.

On the day of Chi Luoxi's formal graduation, Jiangzhou had the clearest sunny day since summer began.

The tree-lined paths on campus were drenched in large patches of scorching sunlight, casting dappled, interlaced shadows on the asphalt. The air was filled with the slightly bitter fragrance of camphor leaves thoroughly baked by the sun.

He Angxiao canceled a meeting, got behind the wheel, and drove straight into the university that had held Chi Luoxi's four years of youth.

Before this, Chi Luoxi had already officially signed an employment contract with the key middle school where he had previously interned and stirred up a huge fuss.

With this Radish Spirit, who was fiercely protective at heart, taking charge in the classroom, no matter how powerful anyone's connections were, they would never again get away with any serious school bullying under his watchful eyes.

Outside the graduation ceremony venue, it was a madhouse—crowds of young faces in caps and gowns, laughing and taking photos everywhere.

He Angxiao stuck out like a sore thumb among all those college kids.

His custom-made dark gray suit made him look even taller and more imposing, and tucked in the crook of his arm was a big bouquet of Juliet roses still glistening with fresh dew.

He Angxiao cut through the noisy crowd straight toward Chi Luoxi.

As soon as Chi Luoxi saw him coming, he rushed over, grabbed He Angxiao's suit cuff, and dragged him into a secluded tree-lined path.

He ducked his head guiltily, scared that He Angxiao might accidentally find out he'd become the "exam-passing koi god" that his entire class—and even the whole department—would burn incense and pray to before finals.

Chi Luoxi kept muttering, "Babe, babe, let's go somewhere less crowded," insisting on dragging He Angxiao to the Lovers' Slope behind the school for photos.

The school’s landscaping was truly top-notch.

Neatly trimmed lawns rolled over the hillside in large sweeps, bordered by lush shrubs.

Chi Luoxi quickly set up a tripod on the grass and adjusted the DSLR camera's focus.

While Chi Luoxi was fiddling with the gear, He Angxiao stood with one hand in his pocket, his gaze idly drifting, and happened to spot a young student couple under an old locust tree not far away, in the middle of some cheesy proposal.

The guy wasn't even wearing a decent suit; he was on one knee, holding a cheap little silver ring, surrounded by a few friends hollering and hyping it up.

The girl quickly covered her mouth and said yes.

Seeing this, He Angxiao raised an eyebrow. "Tsk, way too casual. No proper venue or planning. How are students nowadays so easily fooled? Agreeing so quickly—total love-blindness."

But before he could finish savoring his own sarcasm, he turned and completely froze.

Chi Luoxi, who had just been messing with the camera, was now standing right in front of him, looking adorable.

Chi Luoxi's gorgeous almond eyes sparkled, as if they held the crushed starlight of the entire sky. Looking both nervous and dead serious, he snapped open a velvet ring box in front of his chest.

He Angxiao's mind went blank. Without even a second of hesitation, he eagerly shoved out his well-defined hand, his voice trembling with undisguised joy: "...Baby, this is so creative. I say yes, a thousand times yes!"

Seeing his eagerness, Chi Luoxi slid the band onto He Angxiao's ring finger, then held his hand, lowered his head, and reverently kissed the ring.

"I bought this with money I saved from my salary. The brand isn't fancy, nowhere near as good as the ring you gave me. But I've graduated, He Angxiao. We can get married now!"

He Angxiao stared at the ring on his finger, feeling like he was dying of happiness.

He couldn't even wait for Chi Luoxi to finish; he wrapped his arms around him and lifted his beloved off the ground, holding him by the waist.

"We're married!"

Amid the sidelong glances and cheers of unsuspecting onlookers, he bent down and without a word, pressed his lips to Chi Luoxi's warm mouth.

In the lingering kiss, the pure white balloons from the distant ceremony drifted past the edges of their eyelashes, slowly floating up into the vast blue sky.

In the dizzying haze of being breathless, Chi Luoxi vaguely thought: when he first came to Jiangzhou, the long, seemingly endless train tracks had brought him to a strange and cold world a thousand miles from home.