After the whole family was swept away, I lay down flat

Chapter 871 Negotiation
Jin Jiashu was worried, so to be on the safe side, he went to see his teacher Xie Wenzai first.

After communication between the teacher and the student, Xie Wenzai confirmed Jin Jiashu's sincerity in marrying Haitang, and took him to meet his cousin Hai Xiya.

No one knew what the three of them talked about. About half an hour later, Hai Xiya led his cousin Xie Wenzai and Jin Jiashu to get on his wife Ma's carriage. For this reason, Hu and Haitang were sent back to their own carriages. Chunyu saw the commotion from afar, but did not dare to come over to disturb them.

Haitang felt that her grandfather's eyes looked at her differently than usual. She turned to look at Xie Wenzai. Her great-uncle was very calm and even smiled at her.

Is this telling her not to worry?

Haitang made up her mind and watched the two elders enter the carriage, then turned to look at Jin Jiashu who was walking at the end. He looked at her nervously and wanted to say something, but because his teacher Xie Wenzai called out "Jiashu" in the carriage, he dared not say more and had to quickly get on the train.

It was lunchtime, and the convoy found a place to rest by the woods. The guards of the three families were scattered around the perimeter, and the servants of each family were busy boiling water and cooking. Grandfather Hai Xiya had cleared the area in advance, so there was no one else beside the carriage.

Haitang hesitated and stood by the carriage for a while. She could vaguely hear the people in the carriage still chatting about family matters and not getting to the point. She wanted to stay and listen, but she was afraid that the elders would see her. She wandered by the carriage for a while, but she didn't hear anyone in the carriage talking about her marriage with Jin Jiashu. Xiangcao was already walking towards her with food in her hands. She had no choice but to leave her grandparents' carriage and return to her own carriage.

She and Vanilla had a simple lunch, which was just boiled dry food prepared in advance and added homemade food. She had been eating this taste for more than a month and was tired of it. Even though Vanilla prepared her special pickled cucumbers bought from a town she passed by yesterday, it did not distract her from what was happening in her grandparents' carriage to the food in front of her.

After a quick lunch, Vanilla took the utensils to wash. Haitang stayed in the carriage for a while, but couldn't help jumping out, pretending to digest the food after the meal, and paced around the carriage. As she walked, she approached the direction of her grandparents' big carriage.

When she was still about two feet away from the carriage, a burst of laughter suddenly broke out in the carriage, as if Hai Xiya and his wife, as well as Xie Wenzai, were amused by something. Haitang could still vaguely hear Jin Jiashu's slightly dry and deliberate laughter mixed in, probably echoing the elders?
What were they talking about? How was the conversation going? Did her grandparents agree to her marriage with Jin Jiashu? Since they were laughing, the atmosphere must be friendly and the marriage must be settled, right?

Just as Haitang was hesitating whether to move closer and look for an opportunity to eavesdrop on the conversation of the four people in the carriage, the curtain was lifted and Jin Jiashu came out.

He jumped off the carriage and looked at Haitang from more than two meters away, with a happy smile on his face, so happy that he seemed a little silly.

Does this mean... it's done?
Haitang couldn't help but smile, but when she saw her great-uncle Xie Wenzai coming out of the carriage, followed by her grandfather, she quickly hid behind a nearby carriage, using the carriage to conceal her figure so that the elders wouldn't notice her peeping.

Jin Jiashu respectfully helped his teacher and future great-grandfather-in-law get off the car, and he also had to distract himself to answer his great-grandmother-in-law Ma in the car. During the whole process, he never suppressed the smile on his face. His originally handsome face looked particularly silly today.

Hai Xiya looked at his silly smile and couldn't help laughing: "Okay, stop standing in front of us. Go and have lunch quickly, we still have to travel soon!"

Xie Wenzai also patted Jin Jiashu's head gently: "Keep it to yourself, don't let others see it easily. If things don't work out, our girl still has her reputation to protect!"

Jin Jiashu straightened his back and said seriously, "It will work. I will do my best!" Xie Wenzai smiled and said nothing. Since he was determined to make this marriage happen, it would work out. But he still had to tell Jin Jiashu what he should say. He had to let Jin Jiashu remember who was the one who really wanted this marriage. He had to let Jin Jiashu always remember all the efforts he had made for this marriage, so that after the marriage, he would always cherish Haitang as his wife and would not easily say words of disgust.

If Jin Jiashu's sincerity could disappear easily, then what would his current diligence and hard work mean? If he could easily belittle the wife he had worked so hard to marry, then he would be belittling himself as well. How could he achieve success in his career if he was like that?

Haitang didn't know what her three elders had said to Jin Jiashu. They didn't seem to want to tell her the inside story. Even her grandmother, Ma, didn't tell her that someone had proposed to her when they were with her in private. She just held her granddaughter, touched her face lovingly, and said, "Tangtang has grown up and will get married next year. Grandma is old too! If your parents knew that you have grown up so well, I don't know how happy they would be!"

Haitang could only blush slightly, lie in her grandmother's arms and act like a spoiled child, trying to find out what was going on: "What are you talking about, grandma? Getting married? That's a pipe dream. Your granddaughter will always be with you!"

Ma just laughed and continued to hug her granddaughter and reminisce about the past, not even mentioning her marriage. When did the grandmother become so tight-lipped?

When they arrived at the inn at night, Haitang saw from afar Uncle Xie and Grandpa Cao and Grandpa Lu playing chess and talking in the house. She didn't feel like disturbing them, so she wanted to find Jin Jiashu and ask him how the conversation with her grandparents went today.

But for some reason, the curfew at home seemed to be stricter today. There were people guarding outside the courtyard where the women lived. She wanted to go out for a walk to digest her food, but she was always persuaded to go back by the maids. Ma even asked Madam Li to find her: "Miss, the madam asked you to go back to your room. Now we are getting closer and closer to the capital, and officials often stay in this post station. It would be bad if we ran into outsiders."

Haitang blinked and said, "I know. I'm not going anywhere else. I just want to see how my cousin uncle and his family are doing, whether the horses at home have been fed, and whether the dry food and water for tomorrow are ready."

Mother Li smiled and said, "Don't worry, young lady. We are keeping an eye on these things. Nothing will go wrong."

Haitang walked towards her room while chatting with Mother Li: "The weather has been good recently. I heard that we are only a few days away from the capital, so I am very happy. It has been a difficult journey, but now we are almost there. By the way, Xiangcao once mentioned that her home is in a village outside the capital. I wonder how far it is from here?"

Mother Li replied, "It's more than a hundred miles away, and it takes several days to get there by car. But Madam agreed. After we get settled in Beijing, she will give Xiangcao and me a few days off so that we can go back to the village to visit our relatives."

"That's a good thing..." Before Haitang finished speaking, she heard a commotion coming from the direction of the post station gate. After a while, someone asked loudly, "Is Jin Xiucai from Chang'an here?"

Soon someone told the man that Jin Xiucai was not living in the post station, but was staying in an inn a hundred steps east of the post station, and asked the man to go to the inn to look for him.

The man rode away quickly. Haitang watched him disappear outside the door from afar, but she was a little curious: "Is this man here to look for Brother Jin? I wonder why?"

(End of this chapter)