Chapter 59#
The Cross-dressing Wife#
After Old Master Gu was buried, Lin Xiaodong spent a period of leisure time.
Every day, servants would bring food and hot water to his room. The housekeeper was nowhere to be found lately, and Gu Xingzhai had begun to avoid him because of previous events, not even sparing him a glance.
“This is so boring,” Lin Xiaodong said after a long time. “System, I want to go to town for free medical consultations.”
System: “Do you know acupuncture or how to treat illnesses?”
“I don’t understand medicine, but you do,” Lin Xiaodong said with confidence. “Scan them, and any illness will be clear as day, right? Then I’ll prescribe medicine according to your instructions. Isn’t that more powerful than any quack doctor?”
He was always efficient in his actions. That same afternoon, he took his medicine box and a rickshaw to the town. But as the system watched him sitting in the theater listening to opera with interest, it couldn’t help but ask: “What about the medical consultations?”
“Crunch, crunch, crunch…” Lin Xiaodong was busy shelling sunflower seeds and listening to the music, acting as if he hadn’t heard.
The Gu family was wealthy, and neither Old Master Gu nor Gu Xingzhai had ever been stingy with his pocket money, so Lin Xiaodong was generous with his spending.
He didn’t like listening to opera in the dark private rooms on the second floor, so he sat in the first row. Whenever a song was finished on stage, he would start throwing handfuls of money onto the stage—this was something the succubus often did.
His personality was always like this, with clear loves and hates, and as passionate as fire.
People sitting in the back rows saw the familiar figure appear in the theater again and began whispering to each other:
“Hasn’t Old Master Gu only been gone for a short while? He can’t wait already?”
“Oh, this person is beautiful, but his heart is too black. This is all the Gu family’s money being wasted.”
“Isn’t it? I heard the Young Master of the Gu family was also enchanted by him after he returned; truly a source of disaster.”
“No way? Doesn’t that mean father and son incest—”
“Shh! That word must not be spoken!”
Lin Xiaodong pricked up his ears and heard these bits of gossip.
He tsked, picked up a peanut from the plate, turned around, and threw it fiercely in the direction the sound came from, hitting the person talking in the head—“Ouch!”
“Is everyone idle with nothing to do?” The beautiful and generous “woman” raised an eyebrow and looked at the man covering his forehead with a half-smile, who was now too afraid to speak. “Coming to the theater not to listen to opera, but to gossip behind someone’s back? How about I tell the theater manager to swap you up there to sing a song for everyone?”
As the words fell, the whole audience burst into laughter.
Amidst the cheers, the man’s face turned bright red, staring at Lin Xiaodong for a long time without a word. Finally, he could only curse viciously: “Shameless woman!”
“Shameless?” Lin Xiaodong gave a cold laugh. “Still better than being scandalous.”
He lost interest in the opera and simply picked up his medicine box, tossing the last bit of silver he had to the theater manager who wanted to come over and mediate: “Take it; consider it a tip for the interrupted performance.”
Watching his departing back, a middle-aged man sitting in a second-floor private room stroked the beard on his chin, a look of deep interest appearing on his face.
“Who is this woman?” he asked the person beside him. “Go check it out; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a woman with personality in a small place.”
“Yes, Master.”
Lin Xiaodong didn’t know he was being watched, but even if he did, he probably wouldn’t care, because with his current looks and figure, he was the center of attention wherever he went.
The town was small. One street away from the theater was his usual medical consultation site. Lin Xiaodong hadn’t been there for a few days. Shortly after he sat down with a chair on the street, someone came over to strike up a conversation: “Miss Lin, do you smoke?”
“No, I’ve quit.” Lin Xiaodong waved his hand, declining the man’s flattery. “Any patients lately?”
“This…” The man was momentarily stuck, but having finally found a chance to talk to the beauty, he wracked his brain to remember, and finally recalled one: “Right! The child of Wang Er from the dock fell into the water a few days ago. After being rescued, he’s been having a fever and talking nonsense. I don’t know if he was saved.”
Lin Xiaodong stood up: “I’ll go to the dock and take a look.”
“Hey, wait—” The man watched as Lin Xiaodong returned the chair and headed toward the dock without looking back. He couldn’t help but slap his own mouth with his hand in annoyance.
“You and your big mouth!”
The town was next to a lake, and the so-called dock was where the fishermen usually gathered and lived. Lin Xiaodong smelled a strong scent of aquatic weeds from a distance. While feeling glad he didn’t wear a cheongsam today, he also couldn’t help but drool at the lively green crabs in the fishermen’s nets—these were absolutely pure, natural, and unpolluted fresh crabs!
But now saving people was the priority. He asked a fisherman for the location of Wang Er’s house, and a man with a worried face opened the door for him. Upon seeing Lin Xiaodong, the man’s eyes immediately lit up, and he said with tears in his eyes: “Miss Lin, please save my son!”
“Don’t worry, let me see him first.”
Lin Xiaodong comforted him.
With the system’s help, he quickly determined the symptoms and prescribed medicine for Wang Er, specially instructing the man to mention his name for a discount when picking up the medicine. Wang Er was deeply moved and walked him all the way back to the town, specially giving Lin Xiaodong a net bag of freshly caught green crabs before they parted.
Because crabs were not expensive at this time and were not precious items, he was also very embarrassed: “Sorry, Miss Lin, our family is poor and has nothing valuable.”
Lin Xiaodong looked at the large, plump crabs in the net bag, smiling until his eyes were invisible: “Sufficient! Sufficient!”
This is a huge profit, isn’t it?
He remembered when he went to buy crabs during the Mid-Autumn Festival before—good lord, eight crabs would cost several hundred. It wasn’t crab meat he was eating; it was his own flesh!
He counted; there were at least twenty crabs in this net bag, enough for him to eat to his heart’s content. Lin Xiaodong hummed the tune he heard today, called a rickshaw, and returned to the Gu mansion with a heart full of joy. As soon as he entered the door, he saw Gu Xingzhai questioning him with a somber face: “Where did you go today?”
The man’s gaze swept over the crabs in Lin Xiaodong’s hand, and his tone became even more aggressive: “Your father only passed away recently, yet you go to the theater to listen to opera and cause trouble. And these crabs, where did they come from?”
Lin Xiaodong instinctively asked: “Who told you?”
“That’s none of your business,” Gu Xingzhai said stiffly. “Answer my question first.”
This attitude immediately annoyed Lin Xiaodong.
He thought, what does Old Master Gu’s death have to do with me? As an outsider, kneeling in the mourning hall for two days was already showing enough respect. So Lin Xiaodong walked in front of Gu Xingzhai, ignoring the man’s sudden stiffening, took a look at him, and laughed softly: “I was wondering if Young Master Gu ate firecrackers today. You’ve been avoiding me for the past couple of days, and today you come looking for trouble? Oh, so you want to cross-examine me on whether I’ve ‘followed the rules,’ fearing I’ll tarnish your Gu family’s reputation or something?”
Gu Xingzhai clenched his teeth: “I didn’t. Don’t—” Don’t get so close to me.
The lotus leaf scent on the young man again made him recall that dark red curtain and the white skin that was indistinctly visible behind it. Gu Xingzhai’s Adam’s apple bobbed unconsciously. He wanted to take a half-step back, but because of his pride, he was inexplicably unwilling to show weakness to the person in front of him.
Lin Xiaodong understood him far too well.
Seeing the man’s appearance of stubbornly pretending not to be moved, the smile in his eyes deepened, and his original annoyance vanished in an instant.
It wasn’t hard to guess that some servant in the mansion must have said something to Gu Xingzhai; otherwise, with the character of this old vinegar jar, why would he come looking for trouble for no reason?
But…
He really should be properly disciplined.
“Never mind,” the young man took a step back on his own initiative, lifting the crabs in his hand with a beaming smile. “Young Master Gu, would you care to join me for a meal?” As he spoke, he looked up at the moon in the sky. Though not full, it was already close to being round.
He lamented: “It seems Mid-Autumn is approaching soon.”
Gu Xingzhai looked at Lin Xiaodong. He was only wearing a very simple blue cloth robe today, but when he smiled, the corners of his eyes and brows carried a brilliant glow.
Like the moon hanging high in the night sky.
Bright and clear, yet also high and unreachable.
The man lowered his head, silent for a moment, and still didn’t give in: “No, eat them yourself.”
But Lin Xiaodong stared at him relentlessly, his clear black and white eyes almost making Gu Xingzhai unable to hide.
“Tell me,” he asked, “it’s just a meal. What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t deny it; you can’t lie to me,” Lin Xiaodong interrupted him.
“And, even if you can lie to me, you can never lie to your own heart.”
The slender and beautiful “woman” with a beaming smile extended a finger and tapped the position of his left chest.
She seemed very confident, Gu Xingzhai thought desperately, and she was indeed right.
It’s no wonder, a voice came from the bottom of the man’s heart. She looks so beautiful when she smiles; how could anyone not love her?
Gu Xingzhai, who had once taken on ten people at a training ground and kept all his vital points guarded without a leak, could only stand stiffly now, watching that onion-white fingertip slowly tap on his most fatal weakness.
Like a drop of water falling into a thousand-year-old deep pool.
With a tick, ripples spread, and a heart was thus willingly thrown into chaos.
Enchantress, meditation—all were thrown to the winds by Gu Xingzhai at this moment.
In his eyes now, only one Lin Xiaodong remained: the smiling Lin Xiaodong, the Lin Xiaodong wearing a cheongsam, and the Lin Xiaodong who had been lying behind a dark red curtain, with a flushed face because of a persistent fever, curled up in the covers and moaning in distress.
Lin Xiaodong probably didn’t know, Gu Xingzhai thought, that during the days he was sick, the person who brought him water and medicine was himself.
The words he heard from the driver in the afternoon—“the Miss went to the theater, and seemed to have an argument with a spectator because of an actor on stage”—had made Gu Xingzhai almost unable to sit still at home. He wanted nothing more than to rush out onto the street immediately and bring the person back to be locked up at home. He hated why Lin Xiaodong was so flamboyant in his actions, and hated even more that he had a beauty that could topple cities, bewitching others so much that they couldn’t move…
But to put it plainly, he was just jealous.
All the men in Qingxie Town were jealous of him.
They dreamed of being Gu Xingzhai, with great wealth and a beauty by their side; yet Gu Xingzhai would rather he didn’t have the surname Gu, was a porter, a waiter bringing tea and water… even the lowest laborer.
At least then…
The man clenched his fists in endurance, his nails deeply embedding into his palms, bringing a heart-piercing sting.
At least then, he would have the qualification to desire her.