Chapter 153: Ch 153: Farming and Brewing Trouble

Morning had settled over the village. The sun’s light reached roofs and paths in a gentle wash rather than the hard glare it would carry later, and the production crew was already in place at the edge of the fields, adjusting tripods and checking angles for the day’s first stretch of filming.

Just then a familiar, energetic voice cut through the quiet bustle.

"Good morning, everybody!"

Qin Yuran arrived with the kind of energy that seemed determined to outpace the hour itself—wide grin already fixed in place, stride loose and ready. The crew looked up, warmth answering warmth, and returned the greeting in a scattered chorus before bending back to their tasks. She did not linger to disrupt them. Obedient to the morning’s real business, she walked on toward the tools waiting behind Jingxue.

"Good morning, sir," she said, bowing her head politely while still keeping the bright smile.

Jingxue turned, nodded once, and answered with the same indifference he gave most people. "Good morning." Then his attention went back to the open ground in front of him, as if the exchange had been a small stone dropped into water and already finished rippling.

Qin Yuran did not take the coldness personally. She had met that temperature before. He’s just like Mo Xingxue, she thought—only a little older, and somehow even more thoroughly chilled. The comparison pulled a quiet chuckle out of her. She shook her head at her own mind, claimed a hoe and shovel, and headed into the rows without waiting for a camera to film her.

The sooner the soil was turned, the sooner she could stop and spend the rest of the morning with the others. That alone would have been enough fuel. She drove the shovel into the earth with a grin already planning which of her two alpha friends she would torment first once break time arrived.

Then, without warning, another image rose behind her eyes: Leilei’s small, careful frame, and the length of path that child had been prepared to walk alone just to reach the main village and her friends. Qin Yuran’s hands paused on the handle. Something shifted under the playful agenda. When she moved again, the pace had sharpened. The grin widened without her deciding it should.

Finish this. So Leilei can play with her friends—and with our Xing’er.

She did not stop to examine how quickly the attachment to the child had formed. She only knew that she liked the kid, and that liking did not need any reason for it to be justified. After that, the work took the rest of her attention. From a distance she might have looked locked in—rhythm steady, effort climbing, an invisible heat in the way she attacked each length of ground as if the points and the morning and the child’s route home were all buried in the same soil.

While that quiet fire was already burning through Qin Yuran’s section, Zhao Yichen reached the field.

He greeted the staff with the same polite respect, received the same distracted nods in return, and made his way to the tools still waiting behind the indifferent man who had not stopped studying the land—and, whether he meant to show it or not, the clean work Su Wanyan had left behind earlier.

"Good morning, sir." Zhao Yichen’s smile was smaller than Qin Yuran’s, but genuine.

Jingxue turned, nodded, and offered the identical cool return. "Good morning." Then the field reclaimed him.

Zhao Yichen let out a soft breath of laughter as he collected his tools. He reminds me of Mo Xingxue. The thought arrived fully formed and required no debate. He started toward his assigned stretch and, on the way, passed Qin Yuran’s plot.

He almost slowed.

Whatever had gotten into her, it was working. Her progress was already outpacing any reasonable morning pace, shovel rising and falling with a determination that looked personal. Zhao Yichen watched for a second, shook his head, and kept walking. What’s with her?

He found his own row, set the blade to the earth, and felt the first real resistance travel up his arms. A tired look settled over his face before the second strike was done.

Farm life is hard, he thought, shedding imaginary tears.

Respect for the people who did this every day without cameras or points or a production schedule multiplied on the spot. He exhaled, adjusted his grip, and began—slower than the alpha burning through the ground nearby, but steadier than his own complaints.

+-+-+-+-+-+

While Qin Yuran burned through her rows and Zhao Yichen learned, again, that soil did not and would not negotiate, the broadcast finally went live.

The barrage arrived on schedule, as chaotic before breakfast as it ever was after midnight.

[OMG! GOOD MORNING, Y’ALL!]

[Is it just me, or don’t they look fine as hell?]

[Nah. You ain’t the only one, bro.]

[And just when I’m about to fall asleep..... FUCK!]

[LMAO! Get that sleep later, twin. They must come first.]

[You right, you right.]

[WHERE’S MY WIFE? GET ME MY WIFE! MY WIFEEEEEE GRAHHHHH!!]

[Upstairs, I’m literally beside you. Why are you looking for me on the internet?]

[WHAT THE FAWK, PSYCHO?! I SWEAR YOU WERE DEAD ASLEEP!]

[And my favorite couple is here, LOL]

The comments scrolled without mercy or volume control. On the field side of the cameras, the morning continued as if the internet were only weather.

Su Wanyan and Mo Xingxue reached the edge of the work area together. They greeted the crew first—brief, polite, the practiced courtesy of people who had learned where the lenses lived—then continued on toward Jingxue for the seeds.

He heard her voice before he saw her.

The effect was immediate. His shoulders tightened in a motion small enough that a careless observer might have missed it, and his head turned toward the sound with a speed that had nothing to do with ordinary greeting protocol. When his eyes found Mo Xingxue, the longing in them was faint and carefully banked—but it was there, clear to anyone who knew how to look for the crack in a cold surface.

However, fortunately or unfortunately, Mo Xingxue did not notice.

She approached with a small, correct smile, the distance in her tone as habitual as breathing. "A pleasant day to you, sir."

Polite and contained. The same measured warmth she offered most of the world. Closeness, for her, was a short list: her daughter, Xing’er, and Su Wanyan. Everyone else remained on the far side of a line she rarely moved.

Jingxue looked at her and swallowed whatever else had risen behind his teeth. "A pleasant day to you too."

The words came out softer than the ones he had given Qin Yuran and Zhao Yichen. Warmer, by a degree he did not fully control. His voice wavered once on the way through and settled into something that would have sounded, to anyone who had only met his cold morning face, like a different man entirely. Mo Xingxue, accustomed to her own distance and uninterested in cataloguing strangers’ temperatures, only smiled in return.

"Where are the seeds, sir?" She tipped her head slightly as she asked.

The practical question cut through the spiral he had been about to step into. Jingxue straightened, walked to a bag set near the tool line, and drew out several packets. He returned and held them out with a care that did not match the indifference he wore for everyone else.

"Here."

"Thank you."

Mo Xingxue accepted the seeds, turned, and took Su Wanyan by the wrist, and drew her toward the open rows without ceremony. Su Wanyan went where she was led, a small smile already in place, as if being pulled into field work by this particular person were simply the correct order of the morning.

What neither of them lingered on was the camera angle that caught the whole exchange: the handoff, the tug, the unresisting follow. The barrage did not miss it.

[Jolly little fucker, ain’t she?]

[She’s exactly where she wants to be LOL!]

[I don’t know if I should get jealous of Su Wanyan or Mo Xingxue....]

[Don’t be jealous of either of them, twin. Just like how you don’t have a chance with either of them.]

[DAMN! I WAS JUST JOKING! NO NEED TO BREAK MY HEART LIKE THAT!]

[Damn. It was supposed to be targeted to just one person, but for some reason it hit me right at the balls—oh I meant, the..... Walls. It hit my walls.]

[....Right.]

While the chat sharpened its knives on Su Wanyan’s unhidden willingness and Mo Xingxue’s quiet claim of her, the field held its ordinary shape: seeds in hand, rows waiting, Jingxue still standing where they had left him with a softness in his expression.

Meanwhile, farther into the village, something else had already begun to move.

It had not reached the cameras yet. It had not reached the barrage. It would, soon enough—and when it did, it would not stop at rankings or housing or a single morning’s work. It would press against the village as a whole, and against the careful, hard-won space Su Wanyan and Mo Xingxue had built between them, with a force neither of them had taken into account when they walked onto the field asking only for seeds.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

I’m sleepy as hell, guys, so if there are mistakes there, please tell me and I’ll fix it as soon as I’m done with school. Thank you in advance!