After playing for a while, Hua Zhi left first, and Yu Weiwei took her place and continued playing, while talking to Wang Yu, half jokingly and half seriously trying to dispel her doubts. Some things are not necessarily more useful the more people know about them.
In the carriage, Hua Zhi lifted a corner of the curtain and asked, "Is there a tail behind?"
"No, I have been keeping an eye on it."
Hua Zhi breathed a sigh of relief. The absence of a tail meant that the other party did not suspect her and Yu Weiwei. She had armed protection, but Yu Weiwei did not.
Taking out a narrow piece of letter paper from her bosom, Shaoyao asked in surprise, "Did Yu Weiwei give it to you?"
"Well, she doesn't trust the owner of that house and didn't say a word about it." Hua Zhi unfolded the letter as she spoke. The handwriting was illegible and was written with a carbon stick. It didn't look like it was written normally.
Shaoyao didn't like reading. She felt dizzy just looking at the words. So she didn't lean over to read. She just asked, "What did she say?"
"There were six new faces in the Yu family, but Qi Qiu couldn't produce the indenture, so she took advantage of this to lock Qi Qiu up. She also went to the Zeng family and made a scene to calm Zeng Xianglin down, so that he wouldn't get suspicious and would not interfere in the Yu family's affairs."
After closing the letter, Hua Zhi touched her chin thoughtfully. Shaoyao knew she was thinking about something and stopped asking.
After returning home, Hua Zhi did not see Yan Xi, and asked curiously, "Where is your master?"
Wang Hai, who stayed behind to pass on the message, replied: "Someone downstairs found some clues, and the master went to check it out."
"Did you say when you can come back?"
"Maybe we need tomorrow. The destination is a county town below Jinyang, about 140 miles away."
But that night Gu Yanxi came back, and regardless of the dust on his body and the late hour, he entered Azhi's room.
Hua Zhi was wearing loose clothes. She stood up quickly when she saw him. "Didn't you say you can't be back until tomorrow? You haven't had dinner yet, Bao Xia, is there any soup boiling on the stove? Bring some over first and heat up some food."
Gu Yanxi drank two cups of water in one go before she was able to relieve some of her thirst. "The people below discovered that someone was using silver of low quality. At first, they thought that someone was bold enough to tamper with the silver. Later, after investigation, they found that the person who used the silver was just a poor commoner, and there were other people who used the silver in the local area. What they had in common was that they worked in the same quarry."
"No hurry to talk." Hua Zhi took a few quick steps, took the soup from Bao Xia's hand, blew on it and handed it to him, "Let's eat first."
After traveling hundreds of miles back and forth without drinking a sip of water or eating a grain of rice, Gu Yanxi was really hungry. He immediately drank the bowl of soup, and his body finally felt a little warm.
Hua Zhi was not idle either. She poured some hot water into the basin and put her own face towel in it. "If you don't mind, use my towel to wash your face first. Why don't you rest over there? It won't delay anything if you come back tomorrow."
Gu Yanxi wrung out the handkerchief and covered his face with it. The faint fragrance from the handkerchief lingered at his nose. He couldn't help but raise the corners of his lips. If he hadn't come back, he would never have had the chance to wash his face with Azhi's handkerchief. Such words sounded hypocritical. In fact, he really rushed back overnight because he wanted to see Azhi.
Hua Zhi poured two more cups of hot tea and held the cups in her hands as she thought about the many possibilities of the matter.
"There is indeed a quarry. If the people below hadn't been careful enough to sneak in and investigate, this matter would have been covered up by them." Gu Yanxi took a sip of the teacup and looked up and said, "The quarry is just a cover. There is a silver mine inside."
"Silver mine?" Hua Zhi immediately thought of the key point, "Zeng Xianglin's?"
Gu Yanxi shook her head, "On the surface, it's not. We are still investigating whether it belongs to Zeng Xianglin."
Hua Zhi suddenly remembered the letter Yu Weiwei wrote to her. Her heart moved, and she stood up, found the letter and handed it to Yan Xi.
Gu Yanxi frowned, "Look at the map?"
"Yes, why did Qi Qiu look at the map of Jinyang? What did he want to do? I thought about it for a long time but couldn't figure it out. If this silver mine is related to them, is it possible that his purpose of looking at the map is related to this matter?"
"Hidden silver?"
"Or maybe it's the route for transporting silver." Hua Zhi stroked the teacup, "How long has the silver mine been mined?"
"I asked around locally and it should have happened early last year."
"Yu Weiwei said that her father's accident happened in April, and he had been out with Zeng Xianglin for a few days before the accident." The more Hua Zhi thought about it, the more possible it seemed to her. This would explain why Zeng Xianglin wanted to take action against his uncle, because the benefits were great enough to tempt him.
Gu Yanxi had obviously thought of this, "We'll know if this is the case once we find out who is behind this silver mine. Don't contact Yu Weiwei too often. If it really involves a silver mine, especially if Qi Qiu is captured by Yu Weiwei, they might send someone to keep an eye on the Yu family."
"I see."
Bao Xia came in with a plate of food. Hua Zhi immediately stopped talking and helped to set the table. Just as Gu Yanxi picked up the chopsticks, a head popped out of the door. "I had fallen asleep, but the fragrance woke me up again."
Baoxia couldn't help but burst out laughing. She quickly covered her mouth and turned away. Miss Shaoyao was really obsessed with eating. She had obviously eaten so much for dinner, but now she couldn't take her eyes away.
"Either come in or go back. It's too dark and dewy, so don't even wear a cloak." Hua Zhi glared at her, "Don't even think about eating. You don't even worry about indigestion."
"Brother Yan won't have indigestion if he eats it." Shaoyao muttered softly. Seeing that she couldn't get any food, she turned back to the house. Huahua was so mean. She let him smell it but not eat it.
Hua Zhi just pretended that she heard nothing and insisted on going to get the medicine secretly if she was asked to do as she pleased.
"Eat quickly." Hua Zhi took the chopsticks and served the dishes to Yan Xi. "I'll ask them to prepare more meat jerky when we get back. Bring some with you when you go out. Don't always go hungry. Your stomach will get damaged."
"good."
"It's almost time." Hua Zhi glared at him, but she couldn't say that he didn't love himself. With that kind of experience, he probably didn't know what it meant to love himself.
One of them quietly picked up the food, and the other ate without raising his head. The atmosphere was so wonderful that it seemed as if the two of them had been living like this for many years. Baoxia couldn't even remind her young lady of the differences between men and women. There were so many such moments that she had almost gotten used to it.
"I'm afraid that all the money I saved will be squandered." After dinner, Hua Zhi didn't chase him away, but chatted with him about family matters. "But if this can make the emperor less prejudiced against me, it will be worth it."
"It's more important for Xiaoliu to remember."
Who says it isn't true? One sets in the west, the other rises like the morning sun. As long as Xiaoliu remembers her contribution, the money will not be wasted.
"By the way, did Chen Qing tell you that I asked him for some people to form a caravan to go to Yan Country to collect grain?"
"I told him that he should just follow your instructions and he doesn't need to report everything to me."
Hua Zhi tilted her head, with a hook in her eyes, "You trust me so much?"
"If I don't trust you, who else can I trust?"
It's amazing, her man seems to have activated his skill of sweet talk. Hua Zhi smiled, no wonder women like to hear nice words, they really are nice!