After Retiring to the Countryside, I Was Recruited as a Matrilocal Husband - Chapter 8

Faced with such an ambiguous and highly suggestive proposition, Zhang Zhaoge rejected her with absolute bluntness.

“No way.”

She had already decoded Dou Ying’s recurring playbook: “Every single time you refer to yourself as this maiden, you are bound to be hatching some wicked scheme. I am absolutely not falling for it.”

Dou Ying let out a soft chuckle, murmuring with a trace of nostalgia, “Eldest Young Master is growing increasingly difficult to handle. How crystal clear you were when we first crossed paths…”

The corner of Zhang Zhaoge’s mouth twitched violently. Having just transmigrated back then, she had faced a severe drought of baseline common sense. In the eyes of the locals, did that crystal clarity not look exactly like a pristine pool of absolute stupidity?

Years ago, when she was aggressively elevated to the rank of Shock Guard within General Chen Xian’s inner gates, she had been granted the operational freedom to clear the threshold of his private residence at will. Consequently, she frequently ran into Dou Ying, who visited Chen Xian’s primary wife on a routine basis.

On one particular occasion, as the female retinue glided past the courtyard path, Dou Ying had suddenly halted her momentum directly before her silhouette. Tilting her phoenix eyes up, she had aggressively reached her hand out to pinch Zhang Zhaoge’s cheek, her eyes brimming with pure curiosity: “This young master possesses such a breathtakingly elegant framework and a pristine, radiant complexion. Could it be that you are actually a beautiful maiden in disguise?”

Prior to that exact second, although Zhang Zhaoge had mapped Dou Ying’s presence from afar, the two had processed zero verbal interaction or physical contact. Being suddenly subjected to such flagrant workplace skinship, she was pinned to the spot in absolute bewilderment.

Chen Xian’s primary wife and the surrounding ladies had clamped their hands over their mouths, laughing heartily: “We knew you would harbor that exact query. Yet, when this Zhang Da entered the military enlistment tracks, he underwent a comprehensive physical examination. He is definitively a young lad your guess has completely struck empty air.”

Zhang Zhaoge had internally clutched her private identity framework with extreme vigilance specifically the cosmetic skin she had extracted from her cheat interface titled [Huaining Army Uniform · Male].

The outfit functioned strictly as a visual overlay; it didn’t alter her natural features, re-engineer her vocal register, or sprout any additional biological components to convert her into a true male. Should anyone aggressively slide a hand down toward an unauthorized zone at this threshold, her identity cover would be instantly blown.

Dou Ying had retracted her hand, offering a playful tease: “If a calendar day surfaces where this maiden is permitted to thoroughly inspect the parameters, it would be truly magnificent.”

Chen Xian’s wife had interjected mischievously, “Merely inspect the parameters?”

Dou Ying had let out a soft chuckle. “What else? Advancing a step further would simply result in this maiden suffering an economic disadvantage.”

The ladies, including the primary wife, had erupted into a chorus of thoroughly delighted laughter.

Zhang Zhaoge: “…”

Dammit, this is a textbook execution of workplace sexual harassment!

Following that exact interaction, it was as if Dou Ying had unlocked a premier source of entertainment, aggressively seizing every available opening to tease her mechanics.

Initially, Zhang Zhaoge had wrestled with a wave of profound anxiety and internal dilemma. The cheat system backing her horizon operated with such immense efficiency; should Dou Ying genuinely assume she was a biological male and let an authentic affinity blossom, wouldn’t that be a catastrophic tragedy?

It wasn’t until she subsequently exhumed the historical details of Dou Ying’s journey that she realized she had completely overthought the script. To measure a woman of Dou Ying’s caliber who commanded such towering strategic courage and had willingly sacrificed her person for the greater good by the standard baseline metrics of an ordinary noble maiden was nothing short of absolute vulgarity.

Furthermore, Dou Ying’s proactive campaign to draw close back then had been executed with a highly calculated target. Following the execution of Zhang Zhaoge’s former employer, the rebel leader Li, his entire territory and military assets had been smoothly assumed by Chen Xian.

Bypassing the glamorous veneer Dou Ying projected before the ranks after helping Chen Xian engineer the warlord’s demise, in the eyes of the predatory men policing the compound, she remained nothing more than a premium piece of trade commodity to be aggressively contested and exchanged. An immense mountain of operators harbored ravenous designs upon her profile.

Her sporadic, outrageous advances toward Zhang Zhaoge were executed strictly as a self-preservation mechanism.

Simply because Zhang Zhaoge operated as one of the absolute few entities within that toxic environment who harbored zero illicit desires toward her person, projecting pure sincerity.

Despite the underlying mechanics, Zhang Zhaoge hadn’t allowed herself to harbor anger over being leveraged, eventually forming a robust bond of friendship with Dou Ying.

Sending Dou Ying off, Zhang Zhaoge returned to the military camp. The garrison soldiers who were currently idling during their rest break immediately began to aggressively wink and nudge one another, calling out, “Eldest Young Master’s rendezvous with the glamorous lady concluded with such impressive speed?”

“Rendezvous your great-grandmother’s seventh grandson! Who granted your unrefined hides the baseline authority to slack off on my clock? Move your hides out to the training field this instant! Any operator who fails to finalize their daily drill quotas shall be subjected to a mandatory midnight extension camp across the entire unit,” Zhang Zhaoge barked aggressively.

Unleashing a volley of strict discipline was an absolute necessity; had she failed to anchor her stance today, by tomorrow morning, the entire camp would be actively spreading a narrative that she and Dou Ying shared an illicit romance.

She was an operator aggressively striving to be the absolute vanguard successor of the 8th-century Old Era New Youth archetype; how on earth could she tolerate the unchecked growth of such toxic rumors within her ranks?!

Having successfully dispatched the garrison troops to the training fields under a mandatory extension order, Zhang Zhaoge finally remembered that she had yet to execute her daily check-in.

To be precise, this didn’t refer to registering her attendance at the morning roll call within the barracks, but rather executing a check-in on the [Old Era New Corporate Workforce System], casually dubbed the Worker System].

This was the premier cheat interface activated immediately following her transmigration, yielding a random reward box for every single business day she successfully clocked in for work.

Once upon a time, she had firmly believed that leveraging this digital cheat would allow her to scale the absolute peak of human existence.

Regrettably, concrete reality had delivered a swift, brutal execution to her expectations.

Her system did not belong to the tier of limitless tycoon systems; it was strictly anchored as a blue-collar worker’s utility. Not only was its economy stingy to a horrifying degree, but the item yields were almost entirely dictated by her active social standing and immediate structural environment.

Case in point: when she first transmigrated into this realm, her profile was that of an absolute undocumented vagrant. Although she had successfully blended into the columns of displaced refugees fleeing the severe famine decimating the Guanzhong region, her legal status remained nothing short of an absolute “unemployed vagabond.”

During that initial track, her daily check-in reward consistently yielded a baseline bundle of two steamed buns one meat, one vegetable. The allocation failed to even touch the minimum nutritional metrics required for three square meals a day!

Furthermore, there were calendar days where she failed to extract even a single bun. She vividly recalled surviving a full twenty-four hours without a drop of food or water, only for the check-in interface to deliver a visual overlay package: [Vagrant · Male (Trial Edition)].

Cosmetic Skin: Vagrant · Male (Trial Edition) Visual Profile: A classic synchronization of midnight black and ash grey tones. The charcoal-toned tunic offers a minimalist yet textured framework, clashing with the slate trousers to ignite an absolute flash of modern fashion parameters. Meticulously engineered structural patches and organic soil stains function as the definitive highlight of this piece, perfectly articulating the core matrix of a displaced refugee ensuring you aggressively break through conventional aesthetics to project a towering personal style! Operational Note: Trial edition parameters remain locked at a strict seventy-two-hour duration.

Zhang Zhaoge: “…”

The absolute core matrix of a displaced refugee is nothing but grinding poverty and starvation, alright?! And what on earth do you mean by ‘breaking through aesthetics’? How does this layout differ a single fraction from the rags the surrounding refugees are actively donning?

She was already bordering on a threshold of starvation where she might have to aggressively ingest clay (Guanyin tu) to fill her stomach; what operational utility did a cosmetic skin yield under those parameters?

Despite her internal critiques, refusing to let the bright neon branding of her modern disaster response uniform cause the locals to code her as a demonic entity, she ultimately activated the cosmetic overlay.

The functional efficiency of the skin was remarkably stunning; the predatory, dangerous eyes that had previously tracked her silhouette vanished into thin air almost instantly.

With her visual disguise successfully anchored, the parameters of basic survival remained an urgent bottleneck that demanded immediate resolution.

Having failed to extract a single food ration from the system for two consecutive days, her consciousness was swirling with absolute starvation when she caught word among the refugee columns that the Jiedushi of Huaixi was aggressively launching a military recruitment campaign.

Who exactly was the Jiedushi of Huaixi?

His historical identity was entirely irrelevant to her parameters; the sole detail that mattered was the reality that he had staged an open rebellion years ago. After successfully seizing control of the vast expanses of Anhui, Hubei, and Henan, he had aggressively self-appointed his track as the Emperor of the Chu state.

While the warlords policing the Hexi sectors operated as a pack of undisciplined, rebellious brats, baseline wisdom dictated that the bird that cranes its neck out first attracts the arrow. Before an operator’s wings were fully fledged, not a single warlord possessed the suicidal courage to openly self-appoint an independent imperial house. Now that a flagrant rebel had emerged to openly scream defiance before the face of his imperial parents, the outcome was entirely free of surprise he was subjected to a centralized campaign of absolute violence spearheaded by the court (his parents) and a coalition of rival warlords (his siblings).

The Jiedushi of Huaixi had executed a rapid succession of retreats. After a handful of years on the battlefield, his extensive empire had downsized until nothing remained outside of Shenzhou, Guangzhou, and his absolute central base of Caizhou.

His former elite generals had either been captured, cut down in battle, or proactively shifted their allegiance to the court. The total military manpower under his banner had plummeted from a towering peak of over one hundred thousand down to a thin margin of less than thirty thousand.

Having been thoroughly battered into submission, the prodigal son attempted to launch a reconciliation campaign with the imperial court I shall completely strip my imperial titles; can we please return to the baseline parameters of our former relationship?

The Emperor delivered an absolute refusal. Sailing with the wind when you hold the upper hand, only to petition for surrender the exact moment the trajectory plummets how on earth could such a cheap equation exist in my universe?

Consequently, the warlord withdrew his silhouette to turtle inside Caizhou, refusing to clear his gates.

His inner circle calculated the parameters: This track is completely unsustainable. Our common infantry reserves are spread far too thin; at this rate, we won’t even possess the numbers to anchor our central base. We must aggressively supplement our manpower to execute low-profile development.

Thus, the current military recruitment proclamation was dispatched down the channels.

Because the tax yields of the three remaining provinces of Huaixi were delivered entirely into the personal coffers of the Jiedushi, the material benefits and welfare packages governing the Huaining Army under his command operated at an exceptionally premium tier:

Even a soldier occupying the absolute bottom of the rank tracks was guaranteed two full meals a day. Every fiscal quarter yielded a liquid salary of six guan of copper coins, and the onboarding package delivered two distinct sets of robes two for spring, two for summer. An operator had zero need to track down to the East Market to purchase a magnificent steed, or march to the West Market to procure a saddle; the onboarding track delivered a comprehensive set of premium martial hardware straight to your kit.

Zhang Zhaoge possessed zero comprehension regarding what exact purchasing power six guan of coins translated to, yet the volume of civilians registering for the draft was exceptionally heavy.

Warlord recruitment tracks enforced absolute zero political background checks. The vast majority of applicants were drawn straight from the refugee columns; even an undocumented vagrant like herself could casually forge a fictitious identity background without a single official running a campaign to verify the data.

As for the variable that their supreme employer was an anti-imperial rebel… they were bordering on absolute starvation; who on earth possessed the luxury to sweat those abstract parameters?

Even if their destination was death, collapsing on a battlefield with a stomach completely packed with solid rations was miles superior to starving to death like a dog in the wild wastes.

Zhang Zhaoge’s motivations were twofold: on one hand, she was genuinely navigating a desperate emergency of starvation; on the other hand, the system interface had suddenly initialized an urgent notification. It stated with absolute clarity that under an unemployed status profile, the rewards extracted from her daily check-in would remain tightly restricted to low-tier items. Only by successfully executing an onboarding track into a formal profession would premium reward paths unlock, accompanied by the immediate deployment of a primary onboarding mission.

Squeezed by the immediate variables of survival and enticed by the premium lures of the system, she bypassed a single line of hesitation, marching straight down to register for the draft.

This specific recruitment drive targeted standard infantry, and the physical selection parameters were by no means steep. In this grim era where the vast majority of the civilian population suffered from chronic malnutrition, her towering stature of over 1.7 meters instantly caused her profile to be selected out of the ranks.

Naturally, while the recruitment officers desisted from checking identification documentation, they still executed a standard manual verification to determine gender parameters. At that exact, critical threshold, the visual overlay of the [Vagrant · Male (Trial Edition)] skin successfully executed its function, neutralizing the bottleneck.

She finalized her onboarding seamlessly.

Completing the primary mission, outside of extracting a permanent visual upgrade package titled [Infantry · Male], the system interface smoothly showered her kit with a premier passive skill: [Mastery of Gambling Mechanics].

Initially, evaluating herself as a flawless, pristine youth who strictly steered clear of the traditional vices of gambling, alcohol, or drugs, she had decoded this specific skill yield as an absolute, useless white elephant.

That was until she reported to the barracks and mapped the reality that her new colleagues the elite mercenary troops of the Huaining Army harbored an absolute, ravenous obsession with gambling.