RWWAI 36

Chapter 36: I Don't Dare Make Too Much of This Black-Hearted Money

Following Qi Lu's death, Yangshan welcomed a brand-new commandant.

By sheer coincidence, he shared the exact same surname as me—Commander Zhang.

Now, it's not like I'm prone to pre-existing biases, but this Commander Zhang was genuinely cut straight out of the Zhang Fei mold: rough-hewn, stocky, with sideburns and a thick beard melted together into one massive furry pelt where it was completely impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Commander Zhang turned out to be a reasonably decent, upright fellow. Ever since we moved out of the commandant's estate, he made it a point to dispatch men to check up on us practically every single year.

In his eyes, even if Qi Lu couldn't technically be classified as having died in the line of duty, the man had still served diligently at Yangshan for many long years, dedicating himself heart and soul to the common folk, which meant his surviving orphans deserved a measure of ongoing care.

While he couldn't hand out an official government pension, he could easily pull executive rank to send a couple of guards over once a year to patch up our roof, chop firewood, and handle heavy manual labor around the house.

After all, in a turbulent world like this, trying to raise two toddlers with two women managing a household alone—even with a roof over our heads—was no walk in the park.

So, how did life actually pan out for Qin Miaomiao and me in the years that followed?

Sigh...

It's a long story!

Even though we were sitting on a comfortable stash of cash and real estate, neither Qin Miaomiao nor I possessed any practical money-making trade skills, which meant I always kept a tight leash on our spending rather than throwing money around like water.

The moment we moved out of the commandant's estate, I trimmed down our household staff significantly, keeping only three maids on payroll.

One was assigned to look after Qin Miaomiao, another took charge of sweeping and cleaning the house, and the third acted as my general assistant.

With no man cluttering up the household, all those formal hunting excursions and wedding banquets naturally fell off our calendar, leaving us free to attend only ladies-only gatherings, which instantly made our social schedule wonderfully relaxed and leisurely.

I was well aware that since Qin Miaomiao and I both carried the social status of widows, parading ourselves out in public every single day was a surefire way to invite unwanted gossip and bad luck...

Oh, who am I kidding!

To be completely honest, we were living an absolute dream!

Who needs a man when you've got money?!

Besides, looking back, that man hadn't even been particularly useful most of the time, seeing as I spent half my life cleaning up whatever messes he left behind.

Now that all those annoying chores from Luo Fan's era were gone, Qin Miaomiao and I only had to focus on raising two chubby babies every day, leaving the remaining housework to our trio of maids. Honestly, you couldn't imagine a more pampered, blissful lifestyle!

Because Qin Miaomiao hadn't even finished her traditional month-long postpartum confinement period when we moved, I had felt a lingering thread of guilt in my heart over it, prompting me to stubbornly hire a professional postpartum nanny to give her a full sixty-day confinement regimen, terrified that her physical health might suffer down the road.

As a result, the babies' full-moon celebration had to be postponed until they hit two months old.

Initially, I worried that since the two of us were widows, making a massive public spectacle out of the party might look inappropriate, so I only extended invitations to a handful of our closest aristocratic girlfriends, carefully noting on the cards that anyone bound by traditional taboos who found it inconvenient to attend needn't worry—sending a gift over would suffice.

Imagine my surprise when every single person I invited showed up!

Even those ladies residing all the way up in the capital, finding themselves unable to travel easily, went out of their way to dispatch lavish congratulatory gifts.

As for the male guests who hadn't been invited, word had it they spontaneously organized a separate celebration banquet of their own at a local tavern that very same day, and I even heard Commander Zhang dropped by to hoist a cup with them.

All in all, on the day of the babies' two-month celebration, the entire town of Yangshan felt like it was throwing a festival.

As for those tracts of farmland I held, although they technically constituted the ancestral property of the Qi family, neither Qin Miaomiao nor I knew the first thing about actual agricultural management, so we simply liquidated the whole lot, converting the land assets into commercial shops and residential housing to live comfortably off the rental income, which finally secured us a steady, reliable stream of passive revenue.

And what about our resident Ferrari—Doctor Zhou?

The moment we packed up and left the commandant's estate, I officially granted him his freedom and sent him packing back home.

Perhaps out of lingering pity for our lonely band of orphans and widows, he still drifted back every now and then to show his face and check in on us.

And that breathtaking face of his ended up giving me a brilliant flash of inspiration.

Ever since the hunting expedition, thanks to Princess Yong'an's glowing review, Doctor Zhou's reputation for peerless beauty had spread through the noble women's social circles like wildfire, turning into a legendary exaggeration.

Capitalizing on that peak hype wave while it was still hot, I dreamed up an excuse to host a ladies-only exclusive "Medical Consultation Party" right at our home.

I paid Doctor Zhou his full day's consultation fee upfront, effectively renting out his time, but I billed the aristocratic ladies eager to secure a "consultation" at a steep rate per quarter-hour.

Naturally, the profits rolled in so fast I nearly broke my fingers trying to count the cash.

Only, I didn't dare milk that black-hearted money tree too aggressively, so I only hosted a single paid consultation party.

After that, whenever the noble ladies clamored for follow-up consultations, I stopped charging admission entirely.

I still paid Doctor Zhou his standard consultation wages out of my own pocket, ensuring everybody went home happy.

My circle of girlfriends turned out to be fiercely loyal; they kept every whisper of gossip tightly contained within the noble ladies' inner circle, preventing a single word from leaking outside.

Several years flew by, and Doctor Zhou still remained completely oblivious to the fact that he was breathtakingly handsome, never once suspecting that those aristocratic women beating down our door for "consultations" were purely there to feast their eyes.

He merely remained faintly perplexed as to why these noble ladies always insisted on making him check their pulses with extra agonizing slowness, telling him not to rush.

Oh, right—remember Lady Jiao?

She was the wife of the late Supervising Imperial Censor.

Just like me, she had been transformed into a widow in the wake of the painted barge massacre.

Shortly after, she migrated down to Yangshan, hoping to carve out a modest little business for herself.

Sharing the same bitter fate of shared bereavement, I generously handed over one of my commercial shops for her use, without breathing a word about collecting rent, telling her to settle in and get her business off the ground first.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that through my introduction, she would end up crossing paths with Madam Liu, the wife of a wealthy Yangshan merchant, after which her business ventures exploded, growing larger and larger by the day.

Lady Jiao stubbornly insisted on retroactively labeling those months of waived rent I gave her as an initial "investment stake," and now every single year she bullied her way to my doorstep to hand over a massive cut of her profits, threatening to tear my head off if I refused to accept the cash.

Turns out when a person's luck finally turns, stopping the flood of wealth and prosperity is practically impossible.

Living through such a smooth, unburdened existence naturally made the years slip by in the blink of an eye.

Before I knew it, several years had already vanished into the past.

Now seven years old, Qi Sile was growing increasingly identical to Qi Lu in both looks and temperament, while Qi Sien took after neither Qi Lu nor Qin Miaomiao—word had it she looked entirely like her maternal grandmother.

And thanks to the factory-default skill set inherited straight from Liang Jingjing, both children received an exceptionally well-rounded education.

Only, for reasons beyond me, Qi Sile turned out to possess a remarkably petty, grudge-holding personality.

Fearing he'd upset his stomach, I refused to let him gorge himself on watermelon, and the little monster held that exact grudge for a solid year, stubbornly forbidding anyone else in the household from eating a single slice more than he did, ignoring every scolding or reasoning I threw his way.

Qin Miaomiao claimed Qi Lu had been exactly like that, but hearing comparisons like that made my skin crawl.

No matter what, he was officially registered as my son; there was zero chance I was going to let him turn out like that walking trash heap of a man.

So I poured an immense amount of effort into reshaping that little brat's personality from the ground up.

He'd live to thank me for it later.

Even so, what was bound to happen eventually caught up with us all the same.

Right around the time Qi Sile and Qi Sien turned seven years old, the collateral branches of the Qi family finally came knocking on our door.

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