After Retiring to the Countryside, I Was Recruited as a Matrilocal Husband - Chapter 5

“You say Vice Commander Zhang delivered the grain and coin directly to Sergeant Zheng’s residence?”

When the update hit her ears, Cui Jun had just finalized paying her respects to her late father and mother.

Standing before the graves of her parents, she wore a simple, unadorned outfit, her hair pinned back into a modest bun using nothing more than a wooden hairpin and a standard hair comb. Her face was entirely free of rouge or powder.

Qingxi replied, “Yes. The private retainers tracking my path that day spotted the garrison troops under Vice Commander Zhang’s command driving the transport wagons past the fields. The burlap sacks concealing the coin and millet were explicitly stamped with the official emblem of the Cui Clan.”

Cui Jun murmured, “She calculated the logistics beautifully.”

Delivering the reward commodities straight to Sergeant Zheng under the watchful eyes of the entire encampment would inevitably trigger malicious gossip from the other two camps, leaving Sergeant Zheng too embarrassed to accept the windfall.

Yet, transporting it directly to Sergeant Zheng’s private residence preserved her superior’s honor while ensuring the rival camps lacked any logical leverage to seize a vulnerability. Furthermore, even if Sergeant Zheng harbored a desire to return the commodities, his household members wouldn’t necessarily concede to parting with such a windfall.

Naturally, had they encountered a rigid, unyielding commander, such tactical mechanics would have struck a wall. But since Zhang Zhaoge possessed the audacity to execute this move, she had undoubtedly decoded Sergeant Zheng’s exact personality parameters.

En route back to the villa after completing the commemorative rituals, the twin-bun maid, Chaoyan, sprinted down the path to intercept them, calling out breathlessly: “Young Mistress, expedite your steps back! Lady… Lady Dou has arrived! It was Vice—”

Cui Jun, who had been leisurely savoring the autumn mountain scenery along the road, halted her stride instantly. After a fraction of a second, her steps accelerated into a brisk walk, then dissolved into an absolute sprint.

Reaching the main gates of the country villa, the sight of the garrison troops standing guard instantly snapped her back to reality. Resting her hand against the carriage frame, she panted softly to master her breathing.

Chaoyan finally caught up, catching her breath to finalize her sentence: “…It was Vice Commander Zhang who escorted her here.”

Cui Jun had already decoded the mechanics of the situation. Maintaining her poise, she glided through the entrance. Crossing the threshold of the secondary inner gates, her eyes mapped Nanny Du standing in the front reception hall, backed by a defensive line of servants who looked entirely on edge.

Before she could even step into the room, a graceful silhouette leaped forward, enveloping Cui Jun in a sudden, tight embrace.

“Qiang’er.”

Hearing the familiar, long-absent calling, Cui Jun could no longer rein in the tears flooding her eyes.

“Elder Sister,” she wept, locking eyes with her twenty-one-year-old cousin, Dou Ying, whose journey over these past years had been fraught with immense adversity and upheaval. She possessed an absolute mountain of grievances she desperately wished to voice.

Meanwhile, leaning against the doorframe just outside, Zhang Zhaoge witnessed the grand family reunion, a subtle ripple of emotion stirring in her chest. I wonder how my own father and mother are doing back home. Did they seize the opportunity while they were still relatively young to aggressively produce a second child? Years ago, the massive fortune the family gathered from the municipal demolition tracks remained entirely untouched we had three full resettlement properties along with six commercial storefronts. As long as they refrain from gambling, launching high-risk startups, or playing the market, their retirement funds are more than sufficient.

Sigh. Who on earth could have anticipated that a young mind like hers would suddenly execute such a blind transmigration?

Had it not been for that catastrophic flood sweeping across the entire province… had she not rushed out in the dead of night to evacuate the civilians trapped in the mountainous sectors… had that sudden landslide not triggered…

Forget it. At the end of the day, she was still vertical and breathing.

Throughout the six-month calendar window since her transmigration, she had rigorously policed her own mind, forcing herself to avoid dwelling on her parents’ frantic reactions to her disappearance, nor permitting herself to actively miss her dual parents and close companions. Yet, emotional affinity functioned exactly like a rising tide; she had zero comprehension of which exact circumstance on which day would cause the dam to completely burst.

Refusing to disrupt the emotional synchronization of the reunited cousins, Zhang Zhaoge turned on her heel to leave.

Dou Ying called out to stop her: “Zhaoge.”

Zhang Zhaoge turned her head back. “I am returning to the barracks. Should an operational bottleneck surface, dispatch someone down to the camp to hunt me down.”

Cui Jun smoothly released her cousin, drying the moisture from her face as she directed an expression of genuine gratitude toward Zhang Zhaoge.

The exact second Zhang Zhaoge departed the grounds, Cui Jun having zero desire to permit Nanny Du and her crew to police their conversation from the sidelines hooked her arm through Dou Ying’s, guiding her deeper into the privacy of the northern chambers to exhume their history.

“Elder Sister has endured an immense mountain of suffering over these years.”

Dou Ying’s eyes crinkled into a soft smile, teasing playfully, “Do you perceive my features as weathered by the elements, or have the grievances ground me down into an old woman?”

Cui Jun interjected in rapid succession, “Elder Sister remains absolutely radiant.”

During her youth, her cousin Dou Ying’s extraordinary beauty had already reigned supreme across Bianzhou; upon reaching her adulthood, her allure bordered on the legendary.

When the rebel leader Li had captured Bianzhou years ago, catching wind of Dou Ying’s absolute beauty, he had aggressively breached the Dou residence to demand her hand as a concubine.

The Dou lineage was a prominent family of literati and scholar-officials; the active Imperial Chancellor Dou happened to be Dou Ying’s grand-uncle. Given her elite pedigree, marrying into the imperial bloodline or high nobility would have been a seamless match. How on earth did that crude warlord Li whose biological son was a few years older than Dou Ying possess the sheer audacity to demand she serve as his concubine?

Yet, to preserve the collective survival of the entire Dou household, and to shield her maternal aunt and cousin who had fled to their residence for sanctuary, the sixteen-year-old Dou Ying had proactively stepped forward to surrender herself.

Under her absolute protection, the thirteen-year-old Cui Jun whose features had barely begun to bloom—successfully avoided being distributed like a common plaything to the warlord’s crude lieutenants.

Cui Jun would hold this boundless sacrifice and debt of honor in her heart until her bones turned to dust, refusing to permit a single line of disrespect to ever cross her mind.

Dou Ying let out a magnanimous laugh. “I didn’t actually suffer any physical torment, so there is truly no need to look upon my profile with pity.”

Although the historical trajectory Dou Ying had survived was coded as an absolute tragedy by conventional societal standards, she herself had completely released the weight of those past tribulations. Over these three years, her breathtaking countenance remained untouched, and her character retained its signature magnanimity and free-spirited grace.

Facing her, Cui Jun felt a wave of absolute self-loathing.

Dou Ying reached out, affectionately patting Cui Jun’s head. “Back then, when I surrendered my person to the rebel Li, my mind was firmly anchored on a strategy of self-sacrifice to dismantle his empire from within. It wasn’t entirely a passive display of submission executed solely to preserve your horizons, so there is zero need to harbor this lifelong grievance.”

As Dou Ying slowly delivered the details of the script, Cui Jun finally decoded the historical landscape. Years ago, after successfully engineering a path to secure the rebel leader’s trust, Dou Ying had leveraged the banner of stabilizing the connection between the warlord and his elite inner-gate general, Chen Xian, to formally swear a bond of sisterhood with Chen Xian’s wife, Lady Dou.

Dou Ying understood the lethal power of pillow talk flawlessly. Consequently, she launched a relentless campaign of psychological suggestion against Lady Dou. After years of meticulous cultivation, she successfully engineered a desire within General Chen Xian to surrender his forces to the imperial court.

Chen Xian subsequently bought off the medical officers policing the rebel leader’s health, leveraging a standard medical consultation to smoothly administer a slow poison to the warlord.

On the second day of the fourth lunar month of this year, the poison had fully executed its lethal target. The rebel leader’s son immediately enacted an absolute media blackout to contain the data, but Dou Ying successfully concealed an urgent cryptographic dispatch inside a pastry box, delivering it straight to Lady Dou. Armed with the intelligence, Chen Xian mobilized his elite guards, slaughtering the rebel leader’s entire immediate family to self-appoint his own track as the supreme Jiedushi.

Regrettably, before a brief three-month window could elapse, another of the late rebel’s core confidants Wu Cheng had executed an assassination against Chen Xian under the banner of extracting vengeance.

Even if Wu Cheng lacked definitive data on what exact role Dou Ying had played in the assassination of his former master, mapping the reality that the rebel leader’s bloodline had been completely wiped clean while she alone had been granted a safe pass by Chen Xian was more than enough to decode her as a core accomplice.

“I didn’t happen to be inside the Chen estate when the purge launched, so the rebel forces failed to secure my coordinates at the first immediate second. Zhaoge subsequently accelerated his deployment, successfully extracting me right before the enemy guards swarmed the perimeter. I managed to dodge a lethal execution, but unfortunately, Jingyan…”

Dou Ying’s eyes darkened with grief. Jingyan had been her personal maid; when she was initially plundered by the rebel leader years ago, the attendant had tracked her path into the inner gates. When Wu Cheng launched his campaign of retaliation, terrified that her mistress would fail to break the perimeter, Jingyan had decisively slipped into Dou Ying’s signature robes, actively drawing the focus of the assassinating forces to buy Zhang Zhaoge the precise window required to execute the extraction.

“No wonder Elder Sister arrived today without Jingyan accompanying your path.” Cui Jun couldn’t help but let out a profound sigh of grief for the brave attendant. “And what followed that threshold?”

“Following the extraction, Zhaoge tracked Chen Xian’s trusted lieutenant to march toward the Eastern Capital of Luoyang to seek refuge under General Jia. He subsequently escorted me back to the safety of Bianzhou. The exact second I gathered word that his track was being redeployed to Ruzhou to assume an officer post, I commissioned him to run an absolute campaign of inquiries to locate your coordinates.”

Catching the distinct trace of familiarity and closeness texturing her cousin’s references to Zhang Zhaoge, a wave of pure possessive jealousy involuntarily flared in Cui Jun’s chest.

Dou Ying was remarkably sharp, decoding the Seventh Young Mistress’s subtle facial micro-expressions instantly. Remembering a critical variable, she offered a reassuring explanation: “You have likely gathered data indicating Zhaoge entered the ranks via the Huaining Army track, correct? In truth, your assessment misjudges his profile completely; he does not belong to the primary, regular lineage of the Huaining military.”

Cui Jun felt a trace of bewilderment. Since when did the Huaining Army split into regular and non-regular tracks?

“Zhaoge originates from the Guanzhong region. When a severe famine decimated the local sectors back in the third month, he tracked his village compatriots to execute a displaced journey down to Caizhou, running straight into the rebel leader’s aggressive military recruitment drives. A mere fraction of a moment after he entered the service, Chen Xian executed the assassination against the warlord to self-appoint his command. Zhaoge was subsequently handpicked to join Chen Xian’s elite inner guards, and you can easily deduce the subsequent mechanics of his deployment. Consequently, during those early years when the rebel Li led the Huaining forces to breach our city walls and plunder our estates, his presence was entirely absent from the ranks.”

Hearing the narrative, the residual trace of friction Cui Jun held against Zhang Zhaoge’s history vanished completely into thin air.

“Let us desist from focusing further on his parameters or my own history,” Dou Ying murmured, shifting the focus to direct an expression of deep care toward her cousin. “How has Qiang’er fared throughout these years?”

Cui Jun replied, “The exact second Elder Sister was plundered away, I waited out an immense stretch of time without ever receiving a single dispatch from your end. Furthermore, my mother, having suffered a profound psychological shock from the crisis, remained confined to her sickbed for a long duration. The medical treatments ultimately yielded zero operational utility, and she passed away shortly thereafter. I had no choice but to transport my mother’s remains back to Ruzhou. I scoured Lushan County for a long time before successfully verifying the coordinates of my late father’s grave, interring them together. Following that, my eldest paternal uncle aggressively relocated my person to Dengzhou…”

She had likewise continuously petitioned her eldest paternal uncle, Cui Yuanfeng, to dispatch envoys to gather data concerning Dou Ying. Yet, Caizhou operated entirely under the iron control of the anti-imperial insurgents, and with Dou Ying anchored in the deepest sectors of the warlord’s inner gates, establishing a communication link was an exceptional hurdle.

Subsequently, the rebel Li was assassinated, Chen Xian assumed the mantle, and Wu Cheng swiftly butchered Chen Xian… the entire realm was locked in a chaotic firestorm of shifting battle lines. The intelligence network was plagued by severe latency, making it impossible to separate verified reality from absolute fiction.

“I desperately wished to forward a dispatch to register my safety at every single second, but I lacked the operational freedom,” Dou Ying sighed. Operating merely as a low-profile concubine back then, her domestic status couldn’t match the authority of the primary wife, and her physical movements were tightly policed. Consequently, she had refrained from transmitting a single line of data to her lineage.

Yet, it was precisely that flawless display of isolation that had gradually allowed the rebel leader to completely lower his psychological defenses.

Even when Chen Xian subsequently slaughtered the warlord, she hadn’t extracted true civilian freedom.

Naturally, there was zero need to exhume the absolute bitterness of those inner-gate years, lest it cause Cui Jun to sink into an even deeper valley of grief.

Right on cue, Cui Jun likewise had zero intention of letting a magnificent, long-awaited family reunion devolve into a competitive exchange of grievances, choosing instead to select only the most lighthearted, triumphant anecdotes to voice.

Having survived such a profound separation, the two cousins naturally possessed a boundless reservoir of words to process. Completing their evening meal, the two women shared a single bed, conversing through the long hours of the night until the first crows of the roosters signaled the dawn before finally drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, the two cousins prepared to travel to the nearby Zhaoping Lake to enjoy a casual excursion across the scenic waters.

The exact second they stepped out of the villa’s main threshold, their eyes caught the sight of a civilian woman locked in a violent, thrashing struggle with Nanny Du right by the gates. Nanny Du loudly summoned her maids to physically pry the woman away. Catching the escalation, two small children barely a few years old who stood by the woman’s side lunged forward to scratch and tear at Nanny Du and her attendants. Yet, given their severely malnourished, emaciated statures and tender ages, they were effortlessly shoved flat onto the dirt.

Mapping the raw cruelty of the display before her face, Cui Jun’s complexion shifted instantly.

Xilan stepped into the slot, delivering a sharp bark to halt the violence: “What on earth are your ranks executing here? To engage in a primitive, chaotic brawl directly before the Young Mistress where on earth is your sense of baseline decency!”

The civilian woman caught sight of Cui Jun. Swiftly plonking her body straight down onto the dirt, she launched into a loud campaign of weeping, and the two small children instantly followed her cue, letting out an absolute howl of grief.

Her robes thoroughly disheveled from the physical struggle, Nanny Du felt she had lost an immense amount of public face. Fueled by a surge of pure rage, she lunged forward to violently strike the woman, only to be firmly restrained by the maids.

Watching the senior servant operate with absolute zero regard for the Seventh Young Mistress’s presence, Dou Ying turned her chin slightly to evaluate the expression detailing her cousin’s face, a profound realization quietly clicking in her mind.