The Ger's Contract Marriage [BL]
Chapter 544: Rumor Has It

Chapter 544: Rumor Has It

Despite all the strange dreams over the last few days, Xu Feng knew neither Xuan Jian nor Xuan Yang were in Nanshan Estate. He didn’t need Lu Lizheng or the guard to tell him that much. If anything, he was hoping his arrival would line up with what he knew from his dreams.

Both men should be on their way home, or at least, they should be preparing for a journey back to Nanshan Estate. Even if they weren’t home now, they should be soon enough.

What the silver-haired "Master" of Nanshan Estate wasn’t expecting was that there were people inquiring about what was going on within his estate with all three of its masters absent.

Not only were they absent, from the caution the guard had shown, and his haste to pull Xu Feng inside and cover him up from both those outside and inside, but there was a lot more going on than just a few curious eyes focusing on them.

Xu Feng reached a hand out to rub his temples. There was a building ache behind his brows. He’d left home for a few months, and he hadn’t even set foot into his own courtyard before trouble came knocking on his door.

Well, not trouble... yet. It was more like a plethora of rumors. And Xu Feng wasn’t sure exactly how to answer Lu Lizheng, or if the old man was even looking for answers.

For one to survive as the leader of a village, one had to have at least a little bit of a gossip heart, well at least that’s what Xu Feng thought. If you didn’t have a gossip heart, then someone in the family needed one.

To keep a pulse on the people, you needed to know what was going on at any given time, and Lu Lizheng seemed to know a lot. At the very least he knew what his people were talking about.

"At first, in the springtime, when we began to see less and less of Master Xu, the villagers had some doubts, but the news from Yilin town was too strong for most to continue to disagree with." Lu Lizheng seemed a bit bashful as he poured his heart out, sharing all the gossip he’d amassed over several months.

Xu Feng was too amused to feel any kind of way. He was more interested in how this calm-looking old man, had kept so much gossip to himself for so long.

The gossip from Yilin town was obviously malicious. Its source wasn’t reasonable at all. Xu Feng had been... "liberally" with his relationships, this was true, but the source of these rumors was very hostile.

Even as the village head tried to reframe this gossip in a more neutral light, Xu Feng’s lips curled up as he willingly took the insult the old man was verbalizing and not verbalizing.

It was true. He had openly taken two husbands. He had a legitimate husband, Xuan Yang, and was married—mostly secretly—to the heir of the Xuan family. He was married off like he was a stain on the family, but at the very least, he was married.

Then Xu Feng had taken it upon himself to start bedding, his husband’s closest confidant—Xuan Jian—and even given him the status of a second husband. Xu Feng knew he had been bold at the moment, and even now, he was still quite... bold.

He wanted to give Xuan Jian status in their home, but also, it was a status he felt Xuan Jian deserved... If he was being completely honest, Xu Feng also wanted to annoy the old farts of the Xuan family.

He didn’t really feel tied to this world, and he wanted to inflict as much sorrow in an upright way. But, if he could do it all again, he might have planned better. Becoming a scholar didn’t matter so much anymore, but the harsh words thrown at his lovers were something that was leaving a painful scar in his heart.

"The gossip." Ahem, Lu Lizheng carefully reworded the sentence, "The rumors, about the masters of Nanshan Estate settled after some time. There was no rebuttal from the Xuan household in the capital, so the people from Yilin stopped coming to the village for news."

It was around this time that Xu Feng’s scarce sightings became even more scarce. It didn’t take long for there to be rumors about a pregnancy and a miscarriage. The ger master had won honor during the xuicai exams.

Most people were more than willing to pour dirt on his name. But, Xu Feng never came out to defend his own name.

It seemed like the rumors would diffuse for some time and then they would be even stronger each time it resurfaced. This should have had something to do with his husbands, Xu Feng smiled.

Even if Xu Feng wanted to serve in the palace, Xuan Jian and Xuan Yang would have done their best to clean up his reputation to make all his wishes possible.

Xu Feng wasn’t sure who was leading the smearing campaign against him, but at that time, safely delivering his children was what was most important to him. With the way Lu Lizheng was looking at Da Long, he had a similar mindset.

The rumors may have been pulled from nothingness, but there was still some truth to some of them. They got the timeline wrong. Xu Feng wasn’t lying about his pregnancy for months, he’d just spent too long in his husband’s ancestors’ space which defied time and space, and also happened to be a piece of his husband’s spirit...

Even he thought the reality seemed more far-fetched than the truth. Even if he went to Lady Xuan now and told her he wasn’t hiding his pregnancy from her—initially—who would believe him? He had two large healthy babies that he wasn’t willing to hide anymore, so what type of lies would he tell to make up for the unbelievable truth?

Listening to Lu Lizheng’s retelling of the rumors, Xu Feng was more inclined to let the less outrageous rumors stand. They didn’t hurt him, they actually helped him.

But, there was obviously more than one source of the rumors. Both were malicious, and it seemed like one or both were onto the fact that he hadn’t shown his face in several months.

That was until, "he" boarded a carriage to Bai Mo’s home over a week ago, and then set of on a journey with the Master of the Bai Residence of Yilin. This "him" had a deep red mole at the center of his forehead—Xu Feng asked several times just to make sure.

So the fact that Lu Lizheng ran into Xu Feng this morning, made the old man ecstatic. He likely knew more than Xu Feng knew, but as the "Master" of Nanshan Estate, Xu Feng couldn’t let on about this.

Either way, the rumors, the head of Nanshan village shared with him weren’t all baseless, and they helped Xu Feng paint a picture of what had happened over the last few months.

According to the stories he had a good picture of where everyone was, or at least who wasn’t in Nanshan Estate. Xu Zeng was unaccounted for, but Xu Si and Xu San should both be somewhere in the estate, and they would have any answers he needed.

"It’s good you told me," Xu Feng said when Lu Lizheng finally took a breath from all the rumors. Xu Feng kept his voice level, though inside his thoughts were already racing. "No matter the reason, no one should be making the people of Nanshan Village feel unsafe in their own homes."

This was how he truly felt. If he and his children would be living here for any amount of time, this was doubly true.

"You made the right choice to come to me," he assured Lu Lizheng. "Things will change."

How would they change? He wasn’t sure yet, Xu Feng was sure there was more he didn’t even know about yet. Probably a lot more.

Who would benefit from any of these rumors? Could it be someone on the inside? The people at the Xuan main house couldn’t be trusted at all, but were there people closer to home that couldn’t be trusted either?

Even after all his hard work in vetting those who worked at Nanshan Estate, there could always be people who made it through the cracks.

Whether people believe he was having a difficult pregnancy, he had an entire secret harem, or that Xuan Yang was impotent—hence the need for Xuan Jian to gain some status in their household—they would need to do something about the rumors... probably...

The rumors about the loss of his first child were closer to the truth than most of the others. Instead of losing the child—children really—he’d been the one to lose his life, but no one in the Estate had let it slip to the outside.

"Thank you for letting me know what’s going on."

The village chief nodded, his expression filled with both gratitude and relief. He felt like he’d said too much, or maybe not enough. "Thank you, Master Xu. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to help."

At least the truth was still a trump card.

But how much of the truth could be used? Was this even something Xu Feng should involve himself in? If Xuan Yang had been here, he would have been better at handling these things. Xuan Jian, even with his violent streak, would be better at dealing with the rumors.

Xu Feng looked out at the moving figures in the distance as the estate was waking up. He had an idea of what was going on outside his home, but what was going on within his walls?