Since they talked about having steamboats for dinner, the three ladies discussed it and decided to find some mountain ingredients.
Su Wanyu remained where they were to pick mushrooms, while Shen Chang’an went to the mountain’s fruit orchard. Qin Nuan returned to the bamboo forest since she had noticed several crisp and white bamboo shoots sticking out when she walked past earlier.
She returned to the courtyard to find a small hoe, then carried a bamboo basket and set off to dig for bamboo shoots.
It was towards the end of spring, so the bamboo forest was extremely humid, and bamboo shoots grew primarily near wet lowland areas. Qin Nuan slowly waddled her way across and dug out several young bamboos shoots out from the mud with a well-practiced hand.
Before long, her entire bamboo basket was full.
But Qin Nuan didn’t stop there and continued digging. She only stopped after she had filled up both of the baskets she had brought.
She massaged her palm that had turned red from using the hoe. The whitish blisters were very apparent. She blew on them gently but wasn’t bothered by them. After that, she picked up both baskets full of bamboo shoots and headed back down the mountain.
The cameraman saw that she was carrying two bamboo baskets all by herself and offered to help her to carry one of them.
But Qin Nuan shook her head and smiled. “Mr. Cameraman, I’ve touched the sort of camera that you’re carrying on your shoulder right now, and I know it’s cumbersome. It’s even heavier than these two baskets I’m carrying. It’s already very hard on you, so you don’t have to share my burden. I’m a young lady who’s so strong. I could push a 90-kilogram man to the floor.”
After saying that, Qin Nuan even pushed up her sleeves to show the cameraman how strong her arms were.
But her skinny arms didn’t have the slightest bit of muscle on them, so she sheepishly pulled her sleeves back down again.
She had nearly forgotten that she was now the delicate and fragile daughter of a wealthy family.
Qin Nuan got to the village and started calling out to all the residents as she started promoting her freshly dug bamboo shoots to them. She was pretty and knew all the right things to say, so she sold those two baskets in no time and could get the ingredients she wanted.
As she looked at how her bamboo baskets were now left with two bamboo shoots she had set aside for herself and was filled with all sorts of other ingredients instead, Qin Nuan felt very pleased. She hummed all the way back to Xiaoxiang Pavilion.
But before she reached Xiaoxiang Pavilion, she could already hear a commotion and shouting coming from within Xiaoxiang Pavilion even though she still had to cross one last patch of bamboo forest.
She hurriedly carried the bamboo baskets and ran into the courtyard.
The minute she pushed the door open, she saw Gu Zhengxi standing in the middle of the courtyard as he looked like he was lost in his own world. He had put his fingers together effeminately as he held the corner of his shirt and danced in a coquettish manner. No matter how hard the people around him yelled at him, he continued to behave like he was in a trance. He would even talk to himself from time to time as if he was really speaking to someone else.
Qin Nuan heard bits and pieces of it. “I, your dearest concubine…a girl like me…my darling husband…” Her eyelids started twitching violently.
She quickly started asking everyone else what happened.
Su Wanyu looked guilty as she pointed to a plate of mushrooms that had been cooked in an air fryer and said, “Xiaoxi said that he doesn’t think mushrooms could be poisonous, so he took a bite and became like this.”
If she had known this would happen, she wouldn’t have brought all those pretty mushrooms back.
“He must have been poisoned!” The program staff broke into a cold sweat, and nobody dared to film anymore. They quickly sent some staff members down the mountain to call for an ambulance.
When the ambulance arrived, the assistant helped to bundle Gu Zhengxi into the ambulance.
But Gu Zhengxi absolutely refused to get into the ambulance. He gripped the ambulance door, and his eyes lost focus as he screamed hysterically, “My husband…I, your dearest concubine, will not leave…I will always be willing to be by your side, Your Highness…”
Everyone was too stunned for words.
Gu Zhengxi’s assistant was so embarrassed but so anxious at the same time as he tried to hold onto Gu Zhengxi to prevent him from flailing about. But Gu Zhengxi was in a world of his own. The more his assistant forced him into the ambulance, the more violent his resistance became.
Qin Nuan couldn’t stand watching this anymore. She jumped into the ambulance, grabbed the stretcher, and just strapped the stretcher onto him instead. She patted him and consoled him gently, “Alright, alright, Your Highness is here! Your Highness is right here!”
When he heard Qin Nuan’s voice, Gu Zhengxi quietened down.
Qin Nuan then proceeded to say, “Send him to the hospital quickly, and get him to regurgitate whatever he ate as soon as possible. Getting poisoned by wild fungi is a solemn thing.”