Thankfully, Xu Jing had only bitten once and quickly let go.
"You, what are you doing?"
Zhang Xiaoshan withdrew his hand, only to find a distinct set of teeth marks about ten centimeters up his wrist, oozing fresh blood.
"You choked my throat, I bit your arm, we’re even now,"
Xu Jing said indignantly.
Zhang Xiaoshan was so angry he was at a loss for words. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅•𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾•𝗇𝖾𝗍
However, there were more pressing matters at hand, and Zhang Xiaoshan cautiously asked Xu Jing.
"Now that you’ve cursed and bitten, you should tell me, what exactly did you do at Wei Bao’s house?"
"And, how long were you outside, what did you hear, what did you see?"
Ding Jing saw Zhang Xiaoshan’s stern expression and realized that he was truly anxious. If she continued to mess around, it wouldn’t end well.
So she wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and stood up to say to Zhang Xiaoshan.
"I wasn’t eavesdropping or spying. I arrived before you. I was just hiding in a corner of the yard. You simply didn’t look carefully when you came in."
Hearing this, Zhang Xiaoshan was quite surprised,
That meant all the conversation he had with the noblewoman had been overheard by Xu Jing.
Damn it, he should have been more careful.
But, who would have thought that Xu Jing, a primary school teacher, would be lurking around in the middle of the night?
It was utterly inconceivable.
"Don’t you know Wei Bao is the biggest scoundrel and bully in the village? What were you planning to do at his place in the middle of the night?"
Zhang Xiaoshan probed.
This time Xu Jing answered quite readily.
"Don’t worry. I know the rules of the village. I won’t speak of your affair with that woman. Besides, my goal is the same as yours. I’d be glad if you could rescue that woman."
"Huh? What do you mean? You went there for that woman too?"
Zhang Xiaoshan gleaned some meaning from her words.
"Yes, I went there for that woman. I heard from the villagers about how Wei Bao bullied her daily, and I wanted to rescue her."
"And then I ran into you."
Remembering how Xu Jing had previously clashed with the villagers over the issue of buying a wife, her reasoning seemed entirely plausible.
Xu Jing was known for her strong sense of justice and stubbornness.
Relieved, Zhang Xiaoshan breathed a sigh of relief.
"As long as you don’t betray me, that’s fine."
"Of course. What you did was a good deed, how could I possibly betray you?"
"But let me ask you, are you trying to help that woman because of a ’deal’ you made with her?"
Xu Jing stared at Zhang Xiaoshan with a degree of seriousness.
"Deal, what deal?" Zhang Xiaoshan was somewhat confused at first.
Xu Jing spoke fiercely,
"The one where you save her, and then she has to sleep with you."
Zhang Xiaoshan flatly denied it.
Firstly, because he genuinely didn’t harbor such thoughts at the moment, and secondly, admitting to such a thing in front of Xu Jing, a woman of strong virtuous conviction, would be like asking for trouble.
"If I really wanted to sleep with her, couldn’t I have simply taken advantage of her today? When she begged me for ’that,’ I rejected her. You were outside the window, you should have seen everything clearly. My later words were just to stabilize her emotions, right?"
"If I hadn’t said that, do you think she could have calmed down?"
"What if she lost hope and sought to end her life?"
With a barrage of moral reasoning, Zhang Xiaoshan left Xu Jing speechless and at a loss for a retort.
"Well, okay then, I knew you weren’t that kind of person."
"So you really want to help her, right? Is there anything I can do to help?" Xu Jing asked eagerly.
Zhang Xiaoshan nodded.
"I always keep my word. Besides, looking at her plight, if I don’t rescue her, she won’t survive much longer anyway. As for help, no need."
"Tsk, you really don’t understand gratitude."
Xu Jing tugged at Zhang Xiaoshan’s arm again, batting her eyelids at him,
"Well, rescuing one is a rescue, and rescuing a bunch is also a rescue. Why don’t you help out and rescue the other women too?"