Miss and farmhand

As Huang Muyun walked into the garden, he had already guessed that Huang Chu had intercepted his people.

I don't know how she did it, but it must have been her.

A strange anxiety stirred within him. He wasn't worried that Huang Chu would do anything bad to that person, not at all. Huang Chu had intercepted the person without any attempt to conceal it, and had deliberately left Ambassador Ku, a messenger, to tell him that it was the Huang family who had done it, just to put him at ease and prevent him from panicking before returning home and doing anything foolish.

But it was precisely this meticulous and thoughtful arrangement that finally made him a little flustered.

It felt like the guilt and shame of not having memorized the lessons the night before and being exposed by the teacher in front of the students at the academy the next day.

He rushed to the pavilion, but before he could see anyone, he heard laughter coming from the other side.

Huang Muyun suddenly stopped in her tracks, stood still to catch her breath, patted her clothes, and then walked around the flowerbed.

Huang Chu sat and chatted with a man in the pavilion. The man was burly, with round eyes and thick eyebrows. He was not tall but very sturdy, but his shoulders were uneven and his back was somewhat twisted, like a dockworker whose body had been deformed from a lifetime of hard labor.

The man's clothes were slightly loose, and Huang Muyun recognized them at a glance as her old short-sleeved shirt. Upon closer inspection, although the man looked somewhat haggard and had some obvious wounds on his face, hands, and feet, his eyes were lively and relaxed, sparkling, indicating that he had slept well. His hair and body were clean, and his wounds were treated with powder and medicine.

The man said to Huang Chu, "...Either you'll be bullied to death, or one day you'll rebel against him and we'll all die together! Young lady, you don't know, the people at sea are a hundred times more barbaric than those on land. If you're captured by him, you'll be forced to be his slave. It's a disgrace to our ancestors! If you hadn't come looking for me, I might have actually started a rebellion one day."

Huang Chu smiled and nodded in agreement: "Yes, you don't look like someone who can stand that kind of temper. You look like someone who can't stand even the slightest bit of anger."

Such a smile and such a familiar tone left Huang Muyun utterly bewildered.

When did they become acquainted?

He couldn't help but cough, interrupting the conversation inside the pavilion.

The two men turned to look at him at the same time, and the man almost instantly stood up from the stone bench, his joy soaring to his ears.

"elder brother!"

He rushed over and hugged Huang Muyun tightly, slapping her back hard several times with his outstretched hands. Huang Muyun almost choked from the slaps, quickly grabbing his shoulders to pull him away and looking him up and down.

"You're alright," he said, his brow furrowed, a mixture of worry and joy welling up inside him. "Thank goodness you're alright. I knew you'd be alright."

"Who knows," the man grinned. "Perhaps in a few days, I'll either sink into the sea and feed the fish, or the uprising will succeed and I'll become the captain myself!"

A soft laugh came from inside the pavilion. Huang Muyun looked up at Huang Chu, who had already turned her head away, picked up her teacup and was drinking tea. Her smile was not as relaxed as before.

Huang Muyun blinked, trying to shake off the strange feeling. He pulled the person next to him to the pavilion to bow and pay his respects to Huang Chu.

"Young lady... I can't thank you enough for such a great kindness."

Huang Chu laughed and said, "You don't need to be modest. You put in all the effort and ran around. I just benefited from your efforts in the end. If you want to thank someone, thank yourself."

She turned her head to Huang Muyun's back and said, "Little Stone, you too, just remember your brother's kindness and repay him properly in the future. He sacrificed a great deal to find you and save you."

Only two people understood the unspoken meaning. The man nicknamed Stone, unaware of the details, clapped his hands blankly and exclaimed in realization, "Right, brother, how much did you pay to get me back? I was sold to a ship back then, did you get my indenture back?"

Before Huang Muyun could speak, Huang Chu said, "It's with me. The fat master gave it to me yesterday when he picked you up. He wouldn't dare to tamper with something like this."

Huang Chu took out a thin, yellowed piece of paper from his sleeve and carefully unfolded it, laying it flat on the stone table.

She smiled and glanced at the document above: "Little Stone, you weren't cheap. Four taels of silver for your status. How old were you back then?"

Stone grinned again: "I've been sturdy since I was little, otherwise I wouldn't be called Stone. I can handle any beating when I'm working. It's just that my head isn't long, unlike my brother, who only knows how to grow tall. I was so envious of him back then."

He nudged Huang Muyun with his elbow, saying, "Brother, haven't you grown taller again? You're even taller than when we broke up."

Huang Muyun remained silent.

Huang Chu casually replied, "What's so enviable about being tall? Growing fast means being weak inside. I think you're better off this way, solid and honest. You have a great personality, down-to-earth and earnest, and it's easy to make you happy."

He didn't understand the first half of the Yin-Yang Stone explanation, but he understood the second half when it praised him, and he laughed even more happily.

"Young lady, you have a good eye for people. There are two or three fellow villagers on my boat besides me, all of them quite old. They all say I have a good temper, and that my temper will help me live a long life. And look, not only have I lived a long life, but I've also grown this big. I can be happy all day if a mushroom grows on the deck, and I'll eat it as an extra meal, not wasting a single thing. Young lady, it's so pleasant to talk to you. I don't need to say anything, you understand me, as if we've known each other for a long time."

Stone spoke frankly, without any intention of currying favor. He was simply a former slave at sea who had finally returned home and met kind people from his hometown, and he felt genuine affection for them.

Huang Chu seemed to sense something, and looked at the face that was somewhat familiar but more youthful, and was momentarily dazed.

"...Yes, we are destined to meet, perhaps we met in a past life," she said with a smile.

It was indeed someone she had met in a past life. The young man who came to find her at the last moment of her past life with the luminous pearl, the one entrusted to her by the yellow dog in her past life, wasn't that the little stone?

Huang Chu hadn't expected that Huang Muyun's meticulously planned task was to find out which ship Shi Tou had been sold to and redeem him. What had initially been a passive indifference and a resigned disappointment was rekindled by Shi Tou, rekindling a touch of nostalgia.

She already knew the man wasn't the one from her past life; she had transferred her affections, one-sidedly searching for a shadow, which naturally wouldn't work. It wasn't Huang Muyun's fault; he certainly had reasons to be someone else, and he owed her nothing. It was only her own fault. Yet, she still couldn't help it; after seeing the stone, she still wanted to draw a bit of familiar nostalgia from it.

The look in her eyes as she gazed at the stone was one of longing, a gentle, still tenderness.

Stone didn't understand what this meant, he just thought that Miss Huang had a good temper and was willing to help people like them.

Huang Chu didn't shy away from looking at the stone this way. Unlike the men, there wasn't much entanglement between them, and she didn't have many demands on the stone. Just looking at it, she saw a familiar shadow in it, which told her that everything that happened in her past life wasn't a completely ungraspable void, and that was enough to comfort her.

In her past life, she had only met the young Shi Tou once, yet that one encounter at the brink of life and death was enough to see through a person's true nature. She knew Shi Tou's character well; he would never think twice unless she laid his words bare before him. Just like his face, he was the most honest and kind person imaginable.

Fortunately, the stone remains a stone in this lifetime; the stone has not changed.

Whenever she thought of this, she couldn't help but smile whenever she looked at the stone.

After laughing, she sighed, turned her gaze to Huang Muyun, and saw his brows furrowed in a knot, his face dark as he stared at her.

Huang Chu's face gradually fell.

His face was sour, but hers was even sullener.