Chapter 157: Ch 157: A Laugh That Wasn’t His

After they finished settling where the checkups would take place, Jingxue lifted a hand in farewell.

Su Wanyan returned the wave without ceremony, a light smile already in place, and turned toward the rows. Her steps carried her straight back to Mo Xingxue—past the staff, past the lingering awkwardness of the earlier shouting, as if the only destination that required urgency was the omega still working under borrowed shade.

Jingxue watched her go. Only when her figure had put a clear stretch of ground between them did he lower his hand.

Then he turned.

The men behind him flinched as if the air itself had shifted temperature. Whatever courage had fueled their earlier outrage had not fully recovered from his silence. Facing him alone, without the cover of a crowd’s volume, made more than one set of shoulders draw in. A few pairs of eyes found the grass. Others found each other, searching for a shared script that would not make the next minute worse.

He sighed. The sound was quiet, almost private. He shook his head once—not in dismissal of them, but in something closer to regret for the shape the morning had taken—and then, without theatrics, he inclined his upper body in a slight bow.

"I apologize for being rude earlier," he said.

The cold that usually lived in his voice had softened around the edges. Sincerity did the work volume never could. The words landed plain and unadorned, the apology of a man who did not practice them often enough to make them smooth.

"And for insulting you all."

"No, no—it’s okay, boss!"

The first response came in a flustered scramble. One man waved both hands as if physical motion could erase the need for the bow, for the softness, for the fact that their second-in-command was standing bent in front of them over something they had partly earned.

"Ye-yeah! It’s okay, boss!" Another followed, sincerity threaded with a nervous half-laugh that tried to turn the moment lighter and only made the honesty clearer. "We know we were wrong too!"

Others joined in a rough chorus of the same reassurance—hands lifting, heads dipping, voices overlapping in the particular haste of people who had been scolded, had deserved the scolding, and now wanted the matter closed before Jingxue stayed bent any longer under a debt that was not only his. He held the bow through the first wave of denials, letting their insistence finish its work, then straightened and offered them a small smile.

"I’m truly sorry," he repeated.

The words still carried weight. He did not rush them or dress them in excuses about pressure or the children’s fever or the cost of points. He simply said them again, as if once had not been enough to balance the cold he had poured over them when their noise became unbearable.

The nearest man stepped closer, waving the apology aside as if it were smoke that needed clearing.

"It’s not a big deal, boss."

He turned to the alpha they were talking about—toward the field, where Su Wanyan had paused long enough to bow in thanks to the staff member who had stood in as a human umbrella. The man watched that exchange for a beat, guilt and something quieter settled on his face.

"In fact," he said, tearing his eyes away and meeting Jingxue’s clear phoenix gaze, "we should thank you."

A small chuckle escaped him, involuntarily and ruefully, the sound of someone finding his own earlier behavior absurd.

"I don’t know what came over us—to be that rude to someone offering our village help."

Agreement rose around him in softer tones than the shouting of minutes before. No one tried to rebuild the accusations. The feverish children, the refusal to swallow, the three days of dismissal—those facts still stood. What no longer stood was the idea that an outsider was the greater threat. Jingxue’s smile deepened a fraction at the shift. Then his attention returned to the pair in the rows.

Su Wanyan had reclaimed her post in front of Mo Xingxue without ceremony, body angled once more to cut the light, the staff member released back to whatever task did not include being furniture. Then, whatever teasing Su Wanyan had started earned an immediate and practical reply. Mo Xingxue, without looking particularly repentant, managed—with a deliberate nudge of earth and the kind of timing that suggested the idea had arrived fully formed—to soil the alpha’s shoes.

Su Wanyan’s startled scream carried across the short distance.

Loud, undignified, and thoroughly unguarded. The sound of someone who could stand calm through a wall of curses and then lose all composure over a pair of dirtied shoes and the omega responsible for them.

Jingxue watched them.

The smile that took his face then was larger than anything the men had seen from him in ordinary days. Cold lines eased. Something almost blooming settled in their place as he stood at the field’s edge and let the small domestic chaos hold his attention: shade offered and accepted, mischief returned in kind, the particular language of two people who had known each other long enough that a spoiled shoe could count as conversation.

The stories Su Wanyan had told him that morning rose without effort—rivers they should not have played beside, trees they should not have climbed, a defiant child who treated rules as suggestions and an alpha who had followed her into every bad idea. He could almost map those old scenes onto the woman placing seeds and the alpha who refused to stop hovering. A soft chuckle left him before he thought to stop it.

Behind him, the men looked at one another.

Confusion passed between them in silence. The Jingxue they knew produced smiles so slight they required intent to notice—tiny upturns at the corners of a mouth that otherwise stayed closed against the world. Wide smiles. Open laughter. Those belonged to other people, to festivals and rare victories, not to a morning of field work. The thought that surfaced among them, half joke and half genuine unease, was simple and shared:

Is the world ending tomorrow?

As if the speculation had weighed enough to reach him, Jingxue turned.

The warmth vanished on contact. Cold composure slid back into place as cleanly as a door shutting—expression, posture, the particular stillness that made people remember why they did not test him lightly. He clapped his hands once, sharp enough to reclaim every wandering gaze and cut the last of the private speculation short.

"Okay. All of you—get to work."

The men moved at once.

Nods. Quick steps. A collective retreat toward the rows assigned for tilling and the ordinary labor the morning still required of them. No one lingered to ask whether the cold face would soften again on request. No one mentioned the smile or the chuckle or the way their boss had looked at the guest alpha and the omega in the seed line as if the rest of the field had briefly become background. They put their hands on tools and their attention on soil, and the pocket of halted time at the field’s edge dissolved back into the broader rhythm of the day.

Jingxue watched until their focus had fully settled—until the last backward glance had ended and the work had claimed them. Only then did he look back toward the seed line.

Su Wanyan and Mo Xingxue were still there. The warm smile returned to Jingxue’s face, quieter this time, and stayed.

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"Ahh. Finally done."

Mo Xingxue said it as she sat down at the edge of the field, legs stretching out in front of her with the careful relief of someone who had spent too long crouched over seed and soil. The ache in her thighs announced itself the moment she stopped moving. She did not complain beyond the stretch—only let the tension ease in slow increments while the morning’s work settled behind her as finished.

Su Wanyan chuckled and sat beside her without ceremony, dirt and all. Whether the ground left marks on her clothes did not appear to register as a problem worth solving. Proximity mattered more.

Then she ruffled Mo Xingxue’s hair again.

The omega squirmed under the touch at once, angling her head in a half-hearted attempt to shake the hand free. Su Wanyan only laughed harder, taking in the annoyed expression with open satisfaction.

"Good job, Xuexue."

"I told you—don’t mess up my hair."

The reminder landed with the familiar weight of a rule that had never once stopped the behavior it named. Su Wanyan, as if the words had passed through empty air, continued the ruffling until the careful arrangement of dark strands gave up entirely. Mo Xingxue’s face puffed. She stretched out a hand and poked—precise, retaliatory—into Su Wanyan’s side.

"Ack—!"

Su Wanyan jerked sideways, the reaction immediate and undignified. The potion had improved endurance, strength, and a long list of useful resistances. But unfortunately, tickling had not made the list. Whatever enhancement lived in her body did nothing for the particular helplessness of fingers finding the exact spot that attacks composure.

Mo Xingxue’s laugh rang out like bells—soft, easy, and bright enough to carry.

"Why do you look like you got electrocuted? Haha—"

She doubled over, one arm clutched around her stomach, the other useless against the fresh wave of amusement. Su Wanyan’s face went red. She fixed her posture in a scramble that only made the aftermath clearer.

"I-I didn’t expect you to tickle me!"

The pout that followed was pure grievance. Mo Xingxue, offered the chance to feel sorry, took the opposite route and laughed harder at the sight of it. Su Wanyan watched her for a beat, lips pressed tight as if holding something back—then the hold broke. She burst out laughing too, the sound joining Mo Xingxue’s until the edge of the field held nothing more complicated than two people who had finished a task and found, in dirt and ruined hair and a failed defense against tickling, a reason to stay seated a little longer.

The cameraman filming them had one private thought and no professional distance left to hide behind it. The barrage, less constrained by employment, said the rest out loud.

[They’re so fucking cute... I’m so jealous TvT!]

[WHEN’S THE MARRIAGE???]

[JUST CONFESS ALREADY, DAMN IT!]

[Jolly little fuckers, ain’t they? (I’m bitter, please leave me be).]

[ACKKK!! THEY’RE SO CUTE! ISTG, IF THEY DON’T END UP TOGETHER I’M GOING TO MARRY A SIXTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MAN!]

[WOAH, WOAH, WOAH! HOLD IT, BROTHA/SISTAH! I KNOW THE ECONOMY SUCKS RIGHT NOW, BUT THERE’S NO NEED TO LOOK FOR A SUGAR DADDY THAT OLD!]

[OMG THEY’RE LIVE! WHERE’S MY WIF—?! EXCUSE ME?! A SIXTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MAN??]

[Upstairs, why are you already awake? You just slept like three hours ago. Go back to bed or I’ll sleep next to you. Your choice.]

[....FINE! I’LL SLEEP!]

[Damn, girly folded fast LMAO!]

While the chat drifted, as it always did, into side arguments and sleep threats, plenty of voices stayed fixed on the simpler fact of how the pair looked when no one was asking them to perform. Gushing filled the gaps between the jokes. On the field, none of it reached the two still catching their breath at the row’s edge.

However a different attention did.

The gaze fixed on them was piercing and hot, and it was not the good kind of heat. Jealousy and hatred burned in equal measure behind it. Gu Chengze had finished his own tilling earlier. He had been standing watch over Lin Xuanyu, who worked the seed line a short distance away in quiet concentration—until the bell-like laugh cut across the ordinary noise of the morning and pulled his head around without permission.

Mo Xingxue’s face, caught mid-laughter, was carefree in a way he rarely saw aimed anywhere near him. The sound of it brushed against something cold in his chest and, for a fraction of a second, softened it. He stared. Awe sat openly on his features before he thought to manage them. Then a cold smile took its place.

That face. That laugh. That woman—

The thought darkened as it formed, murky and possessive, an old claim rearranging itself around a present he did not control. His attention snagged on the figure beside her. Su Wanyan was laughing too—open, unguarded—and whatever she had said or done only pulled another brighter wave of amusement from Mo Xingxue, more carefree still.

Gu Chengze’s expression blackened.

Jealousy closed over him like a tide that did not negotiate. He stared at the alpha seated in the dirt as if proximity itself were theft, a cold glint hardening in his eyes while his jaw set.

All of that is for me. For me only.

The words stayed locked behind his teeth, but the look he fixed on the pair did not soften. At the edge of the field, Su Wanyan and Mo Xingxue kept laughing, unaware of the weight aimed at their backs—or of how thoroughly one finished task and one shared joke had, for someone watching from the wrong distance, become an offense.

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So sorry for the late Chapter, y’all! Yesterday, I was SUPPOSED to update but my aunt gave birth and I couldn’t think about anything other than that. And after that, I had to sub for my unc who hasn’t gotten any sleep. That’s why I couldn’t update yesterday. The other day, however, ...cough.. well, let’s just say... I gotta put me first y’all.