Chapter 56
Lu Lou was also surprised. “Secretary Lin—what’s this about?”
So good at farming, and willing to toil under the blazing sun instead of sitting here in air-conditioning reading contracts.
Lu Yushu said, “On a business trip.”
Lu Lou asked, “You arranged that trip?”
Lu Yushu replied, “You can stop asking pointless questions.” As if it wasn’t obvious—Lu Xiao was the one who’d deliberately sent him away.
As the eldest brother, Lu Lou tried to mediate the sibling conflict. “It’s only one day. Think of it as finishing summer vacation and then taking a weekend. It won’t affect your work.”
Lu Yushu answered reluctantly, “Mm.”
Lu Lou added, “Good thing Bai He can’t farm, otherwise it would really affect the group’s operations. In the future, for short trips like this, just send Secretary Lin.”
So that was what he was waiting for.
Lu Yushu smiled. “What, are we discussing whose secretary is more important to the company now?”
Then he went in for the kill. “I remember Meng Xueyuan is very good at keeping things balanced—when he gives clothes as gifts, the quantities are always exactly the same. Next time, it should be your secretary.”
Lu Lou frowned. “How do you know that?”
Lu Yushu said calmly, “I just know.”
Ever since he learned that the celebrities’ secondhand haute couture worn by the secretary ultimately came from Meng Xueyuan—and indirectly from Lu Xiao—he’d recalled the clothes Lin Xilan had worn. The ones he bought himself and the ones Meng Xueyuan gave were easy to tell apart.
So Lu Yushu immediately ordered the same number of outfits and sent them to Lin Xilan. His secretary wearing clothes sent by Lu Xiao would just be ridiculous.
Back then, Lu Xiao had always been suspicious, wondering why they both dressed their secretaries and treated them so well.
A classic case of a thief crying thief.
He’d even wanted to ask Lu Xiao why it had taken him so long to notice.
Lu Lou raised his hand, signaling a ceasefire. “That vinegar king of a third brother actually invited his love rival to be a helper.”
Although the secretary’s unconditional help toward Meng Xueyuan was strange, Bai He had explained it as their “hometown mutual-aid agreement,” passed down through generations. Since Meng Xueyuan and Lu Xiao were already legally married, that meant they were family. The secretary helping them didn’t count as benefits flowing to outsiders, and when Lu Lou thought about it, he could accept it.
The secretary was strange, yes—but taking ten thousand steps back, Lu Xiao himself was the strangest one.
Lu Lou had hoped that Lu Xiao’s love-brained obsession would completely isolate Meng Xueyuan from the secretary. Clearly, that hope had been wildly misguided.
Lu Lou wasn’t stupid. “There must be something else going on here.”
Lu Yushu said, “I agree.”
The question was, who could they ask? Go home and have their father judge the matter?
…
The four of them worked together efficiently. First, they finished reclaiming Meng Xueyuan’s plot. Then the other three went to loosen the soil on another field, while Meng Xueyuan was in charge of sowing seeds.
Planting at this time—no one knew which episode’s guests would eventually get to eat the harvest.
Meng Xueyuan carefully chose seeds suitable for the current season: baby bok choy, cabbage, and lettuce.
Lettuce wasn’t prone to pests, so he planted more of it.
Lu Xiao led the two “worker bees” in loosening the soil, putting his back into it. With his wife not around, there were effectively no cameras on him, so he could chat while hoeing.
“Brother Shancha, do you have a partner?”
Meng Shancha wiped sweat from his brow and said, “I’m straight. How would I have a partner?”
Lu Xiao was puzzled. “So if you were gay, you’d automatically have one?”
Meng Shancha paused, resting his elbow on the top of the hoe handle in the classic posture of a farmer chatting in the fields. “If I were gay, there’d be one person who’d enter my pool of potential partners.”
Lu Xiao and Lin Xilan both fell silent for a moment. With such a clear target, and he still called himself straight?
Lu Xiao asked, “How do you know you’re straight?”
Meng Shancha replied confidently, “Xueyuan, Xilan, and Bai He—when I look at those three, none of them seem straight to me. I can tell at a glance that I’m a completely different type from them. That proves I’m very straight.”
Lin Xilan, who definitely wasn’t straight, chimed in, “Brother Meng, maybe compare yourself with President Lu and think about it again?”
Meng Shancha said, “Compare what? Farming? I’m not slower than him.”
Lin Xilan: “……”
Lu Xiao: “……”
Meng Shancha continued, “We worker bees are emotionless and desireless. We only want to work. We don’t want to fall in love.”
Lu Xiao had never thought about it this way before. Turns out their low sex drive was also one manifestation of their spiritual veins.
“So that means, in your entire clan, only Yuan-yuan and the drones have an urgent desire to be in relationships?”
No wonder Papa Meng and Mama Meng slept in separate rooms. Human worker bees could develop love and responsibility, but their interest in “sex” itself was still quite low.
Meng Shancha said, “No. The drones don’t want to either.”
Lu Xiao was shocked. “But isn’t their mission—”
Meng Shancha cut him off. “But fear of castration outweighs obedience to bloodline.”
Even though human drones wouldn’t, like real drones, throw themselves away in a single mating, use their organs once, and then snap them off inside their partner—
Still… the shadow of castration was very real, okay? Being sexually indifferent was pretty nice. Drones were also mostly just lazy—too lazy to find partners.
Sigh. Xiang Jin and Lian Qiao not wanting wives—honestly, they were more suitable for going gay than he was.
Lu Xiao felt luckier than ever. He really was the luckiest person in the world.
The lucky ones fought all morning and successfully plowed two plots of land.
Everyone was drenched in sweat. Lu Xiao and Meng Shancha covered the seeded vegetable beds with soil, then said to Meng Xueyuan and Lin Xilan, “You two go back first and take a shower.”
The small house assigned to them had only two bathrooms. If everyone went back together, they’d have to line up.
Meng Xueyuan nodded. “Okay. Xilan, come with me.”
“Thanks so much today. Come on, get up—I’ll give you a ride.” Meng Xueyuan steadied the tricycle and helped Lin Xilan on.
Lin Xilan said, “Let me do it.”
Meng Xueyuan replied, “You haven’t ridden in a long time.”
He pedaled the tricycle, feeling a bit more relaxed than yesterday when he’d been hauling sacks.
Recently, he’d been secretly studying some management knowledge. He wanted to surprise Lu Xiao, so he hadn’t asked him to be his teacher—instead, he’d been asking Lin Xilan.
Lin Xilan answered everything one by one.
[Stunned.]
[Damn it, an elite secretary can farm, a celebrity spouse can manage a company. Meanwhile, the only thing I have in common with them is that I can pedal a tricycle.]
[If I married any one of these four, I’d be eating soft, luxurious rice for life.]
[So the requirements written on Lu Group’s recruitment ads were fake—you actually hire all-rounders, don’t you?]
[I thought it was a domineering CEO and a delicate wife, but elite families never lower their standards for daughters-in-law. It’s just as strict as hiring a secretary!]
[Anyone who can pass the Lu Feng Pavilion’s criteria for eldest daughter-in-law must be top tier. Forward, they can make a name in the entertainment industry; retreat, they can go back to the company and be their husband’s secretary.]
[Who still doesn’t know our Yuan-yuan is a top student?]
[Lu Xiao, help Yuan-yuan less in the future. Our Yuan-yuan is independent and radiant!]
[Hah, weren’t you the ones begging my brother to go in and take care of him back then?]
When Meng Xueyuan rode home, he heard the director’s voice over the broadcast.
“Everyone worked hard this morning!”
“You reap what you sow. Plant hope today, harvest results tomorrow.”
“You can’t succeed without help from friends.”
“After finishing your work, please treat your respective friends to lunch with authentic farmhouse flavors.”
“The guest whose food tastes the most ‘farmhouse’ will receive one hundred jin of feed.”
When Lu Xiao heard that, he thought to himself: Isn’t this reward basically made for me?
Go back, kill a chicken, make firewood chicken—free-range local chicken, high heat stir-fried. Sides should be potatoes, celtuce, green peppers. Best with a bottle of beer to remove the gaminess, and flatbreads slapped around the edge of the pot.
As soon as Lu Xiao listed the dishes, Meng Shancha swallowed hard. Even Lu Xiao’s dumplings were delicious—he was extremely looking forward to firewood chicken. “I’ll help you.”
Making firewood chicken meant starting with killing the chicken.
Lu Xiao rushed to the chicken coop and saw his beautiful wife, holding a basket of corn kernels, feeding the chickens.
His chickens had run off and wrecked the vegetable plot, yet his wife bore no grudge—still rubbing corn kernels to feed them, and while loosening the soil, he’d even remembered to toss earthworms into a bucket to bring home as chicken feed.
His wife was always forgiving of the mistakes his chickens made.
“Come here!” Meng Xueyuan called to the chickens and ducks. “Little Flower Sparrow, how are you so greedy and yet the smallest?”
“Don’t fight—fighting makes you lose feathers.”
Probably because they’d been fed earthworms earlier, the chickens and ducks were extremely enthusiastic toward Meng Xueyuan. At the sound of his voice, they ran over full tilt, eating whatever he fed them. It was deeply satisfying.
Lu Xiao skidded to a halt. Oh no. His wife had named the poultry.
Humans start forming emotional attachments to everything from the moment they give it a name.
His wife worked so hard cutting corn and collecting vegetable leaves as feed, feeding them three meals a day like he was caring for something precious…
This was bad. Lu Xiao thought. He couldn’t bear to eat them anymore either.
He turned to Meng Shancha and said, “Killing a chicken and plucking feathers takes too long. Let’s just eat something simple.”
Meng Shancha asked eagerly, “What’ll we eat?” Simple didn’t have to mean bland.
Vegetables—
Lu Xiao improvised quickly. “I’ll go net a couple of fish from the pond.”
Meng Shancha asked cautiously, “The fish don’t have names, right?”
Lu Xiao reassured him, “Don’t worry. They’re in the water. They haven’t met my wife yet.”
Lu Xiao went to the fish pond, cast a net, and tossed a few stones onto the surface to drive the fish.
He was in a hurry. After ten minutes, he hauled in the net. There weren’t any big fish like he’d imagined, so he picked out four medium-sized ones to braise in red sauce. The rest he had Meng Shancha throw back into the pond.
Carrying the fish past the doorway, Lu Xiao called to Meng Xueyuan and Lin Xilan, who were rubbing corn kernels inside, “Lunch in half an hour.”
Meng Xueyuan asked, “Want some bread?”
Lu Xiao replied, “I’m not hungry.”
From the previous guests, Meng Xueyuan had inherited a pregnant cow. Feeding corn kernels to the chickens was just incidental—the main task was feeding the cow.
A pregnant cow had a huge appetite, able to eat a lot in a single meal.
Meng Xueyuan didn’t have a moment to spare. After coming back from the fields, there were still poultry and livestock to care for. Human hunger often came last—this was real farmer life.
Both Meng Xueyuan and Lin Xilan adapted easily.
Bai He adapted easily too.
The only ones who didn’t, probably, were Lu Lou and Lu Yushu.
Lu Lou called Bai He over to watch the livestream of Meng Xueyuan and Lin Xilan rubbing corn kernels together to feed the pregnant cow. He asked tactfully, “Secretary Bai, what do you think about this?”
Bai He answered seriously, “This cow looks like it’s about to give birth. Before delivery, the birthing area needs to be disinfected. After the calf is born, the dehydrated mother must immediately be given rich food to replenish her strength.”
“Wheat bran, salt, calcium, and thin porridge are common formulas. If conditions allow, you can also prepare warm motherwort and brown sugar water.”
Lu Lou: “……”
Honestly—standing in a Lu Group skyscraper where every inch of land was worth a fortune, calmly discussing postpartum cow care—didn’t you feel anything was off?
Lu Yushu said lightly, “They seem a bit overwhelmed.”
Bai He caught the hint. “If President Lu wants me to go help, I’ll do so without hesitation.”
Lu Lou: “……”
Which President Lu are you talking about?
The second? Or the third? It doesn’t sound like me.
Lu Yushu lowered his eyes. That was enough. One sentence—big brother didn’t need to say any more.
