"Indeed!" He Zhilan laughed, "Only those who lack sophistication look down on entrepreneurs."
Once He Zhilan made her decision, she responded to Otto in M-country, letting them know she was going to try setting up a plantation for production. Otto and his wife were thrilled and assured Zhilan that they would soon send someone to assist her.
Upon returning to school, He Zhilan was busily running around for quite some time. She needed to catch up on the week’s worth of missed lectures as quickly as possible, as well as request leave from school in advance. Undoubtedly, she would have to personally visit S Province for which she needed to understand the local conditions firsthand. On her way, she planned to check in on Bian Xiulin, who must be heavily pregnant by now as they hadn’t met in three months.
That weekend, Zhilan made a solitary visit to He Teng’s military base. Unfortunately, when she arrived at the train station, He Teng was attending a meeting in the city. She found a food stall nearby to eat and wait for him. It was nearly an hour later before Teng showed up in his car to pick her up.
"Didn’t Dongxue come?" He Teng asked as he saw Zhilan alone.
"She has extra classes at school during the weekend, so she couldn’t get leave." Zhilan replied, "Most of the time, the schedule for freshmen is the tightest."
This was a serious answer. After finishing, Zhilan smiled and asked, "Are you upset that I came alone?"
He Teng rolled his eyes and didn’t respond to Zhilan. If he said he was unhappy, Zhilan would definitely cry; if he said he was happy, Zhilan would push for more sweet words. Therefore, He Teng wisely kept silent at that moment.
In his view, today’s Zhilan was no longer the timid girl who always deferred to him. Nowadays, she was anything but ordinary with her sharp wit and eloquence.
When they arrived at the base, Kang Xing seemed a bit disappointed having seen only Zhilan. He repeatedly asked why He Dongxue hadn’t come. Upon hearing that Dongxue was busy with her studies, Kang started to worry that she was overworking herself, and so on.
Even someone as slow as Zhilan could tell something was up. So when she was alone with Teng, she asked him if Kang Xing had taken a liking to He Dongxue.
"He says it was love at first sight. The first time he saw her, he told me he wanted to be my brother-in-law," Teng replied without concealing anything, then looked at Zhilan, "Has he been pestering you about Dongxue?"
"Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed!" Zhilan laughed, "Love at first sight, huh? This Kang Xing, sure knows how to be romantic, even using such a phrase!"
"Just ignore him. Who knows if this is just a phase, he might forget it all in a while." He Teng casually responded, "And you don’t need to worry about Kang Xing and He Dongxue. Let’s leave them to their own devices. If it works out for them, great. If not, we won’t interfere."
Zhilan nodded, all the while having a faint feeling that Dongxue with her composed and sensible nature was likely incompatible with someone as naive as Kang Xing.
Perhaps it was due to that accidental kiss from the last time at the guesthouse, but this time He Teng was always maintaining a slight but noticeable physical distance from Zhilan throughout their stay.
When they got to the guesthouse, he didn’t leave Zhilan to look after everything herself. He helped clean up the room as well. However, whenever Zhilan was on one side of the room, he made sure to keep himself on the other side.