As soon as Mu Mianhong returned to her own tent, several men eagerly surrounded her asking, their expressions excited and expectant.
“Did she acknowledge you?”
“Did she call you Mother?”
Mu Mianhong looked at everyone and smiled. “No.” Before everyone could react, she pulled out the command token and waved it. “However, she gave us the fifty thousand troops that Prince Zhongshan surrendered.”
The several men froze, seeming not to understand.
“Fifty thousand,” Mu Mianhong repeated. “What bandit in all the world has this many troops? From now on we’ll truly be the number one bandits under heaven.”
She spoke with a laugh. Two of the men laughed along, but another man came to his senses.
“What do you mean, Sister Hong,” he said. “This is a troublesome task. How easy is it to manage fifty thousand troops?”
Moreover, these were rebel troops raised by Prince Zhongshan.
This was clearly asking them to tame them.
The other two men also came to their senses.
“Chief, this is making us do work again!”
“You’ve done so much for her, and she won’t even call you Mother!”
“She won’t call you Mother but still has the nerve to make you do things. What does this mean?”
“Her surname is Chu, she’s Chu Ling’s seed—black-hearted and ruthless.”
“Father and daughter, neither are any good, just know how to manipulate you.”
Complaints came one after another. When the last sentence slipped out, the man was poked by someone beside him. He awkwardly stopped and looked at Mu Mianhong.
“Chief, I, I didn’t mean that,” he stammered to explain. “I’m not complaining about you.”
“Chief, we’ll do whatever you want us to do,” the earlier man also said. “We’re not afraid of anything. We’re just worried you’ll be wronged.”
The other man also nodded, his expression aggrieved. “Exactly. She can’t bully people like this.”
Mu Mianhong looked at the three of them and smiled. “I know how you all feel, but don’t worry. She’s not manipulating me, much less bullying me. She’s doing this for our benefit.”
She didn’t hide anything from her brothers and told them what Chu Zhao had said.
The three men’s expressions improved considerably.
“Being an Empress isn’t easy either,” one man muttered.
Mu Mianhong said: “Nothing is easy. Being an Empress, being the most superior person in the world, requires enduring the greatest hardships in the world.”
Another man hesitated, but couldn’t help saying: “But not acknowledging you publicly, not telling the world—in private she should at least acknowledge you, right?”
Mu Mianhong was silent for a moment.
“She dares to look at me now, doesn’t avoid me,” she said with a smile. “In her heart, she’s accepting me. There’s no rush.”
Saying this, she let out a soft sigh and looked up at the night sky.
“Though I acknowledge her and think of her, actually, I don’t know if I’m truly doing this for her.”
The three men exchanged glances. What did that mean? If not truly for her, then for what?
“I treat her as my daughter because I gave birth to her. A mother should, must, care about her daughter,” Mu Mianhong said. “But actually, I don’t know whether the one who cares about her is me, or merely a mother.”
Even more confused now, the three men stared at each other with wide eyes.
Mu Mianhong saw their expressions and laughed herself. She herself couldn’t explain it clearly either.
“However, just now, watching her eat in front of me and talk with me, I suddenly understood,” she said softly. “It’s me who cares about her. It’s me who is very happy to have a daughter. It’s me who feels very sad about abandoning her back then. I—”
As she spoke, she lowered her head to hide her suddenly tear-filled eyes.
The three men exchanged glances. Though the Chief acted delicate and feminine in front of everyone, in reality she killed without blinking and beat people without stumbling—shedding tears was almost unheard of—
“I don’t know how to say it either,” Mu Mianhong raised her head and smiled. “Just that everyone doesn’t need to worry. I’m very well, very happy.”
They could see that. The three men nodded and said no more: “Then Chief, you go ahead with your business.”
Watching Mu Mianhong enter the tent, the three men exchanged glances.
“But you know,” one man said in a low voice, “I think Chu Zhao is just like Chu Ling—smooth-talking, black-hearted devil. Look how the Chief is enchanted by just a few words—”
The other two men kicked him. “Say less.”
The three walked into the night with laughing and joking, while at this time, the black-hearted devil Chu Zhao sitting in her tent was staring blankly at the bowl before her.
In the bowl was a braised phoenix claw and a radish meatball.
These were what Mu Mianhong had placed in her bowl as a gesture of reciprocity just now.
What a coincidence—these two were her favorites. A’Le had specially asked the restaurant to make them.
Mu Mianhong knew her tastes.
She didn’t know Mu Mianhong’s tastes and had hosted her according to Xiao Man’s preferences. She was very familiar with Xiao Man now, and Xiao Man had always been together with Mu Mianhong.
But Mu Mianhong had never been together with her—only these recent days. But on military campaigns, eating and sleeping outdoors, drinking milk tea and gnawing on dry biscuits, there was no room for discussing taste preferences.
How did she know?