Quick Transmigration: Underdog Turns out to be Untouchable

Chapter 962: Chapter 873: Defending Our Homeland 3

During the tea-serving process, Du Zongze and Fang Meijuan maintained a gentle smile. When serving the tea, Du Zongze gave Shuangshuang a pair of jadeite jade bracelets, which were of excellent quality and invaluable. Fang Meijuan was even more generous, giving Shuangshuang a tray full of jewelry, enough for her to wear without repeating for a long time.

During the meal, Fang Meijuan frequently placed food onto Shuangshuang’s plate to express her satisfaction with Shuangshuang, and Shuangshuang reciprocated respectfully.

After the meal, Du Zongze’s sixteen concubines finally appeared. Du Zongze casually introduced them to Shuangshuang, with no intention of having her regard these concubines as elders.

Of course, as the daughter-in-law of the main wife, Shuangshuang naturally stood in opposition to these concubines and couldn’t possibly get along well with them. They simply exchanged brief greetings and let it be.

Throughout, Du Haokun’s face remained indifferent. After leaving the dining hall with Shuangshuang, he casually said, ”I have something to attend to, you can go back by yourself,” and then left on his own, without any joy of newlyweds, showing no interest in spending time with his new wife.

Shuangshuang’s expression remained unchanged, with a warm smile, showing no anger towards Haokun for leaving her in front of so many servants. Once Haokun left, she immediately went back to her room to take inventory of her dowry.

The Kou Family provided Shuangshuang with a substantial dowry of over thirty chests, four of which were large chests filled to the brim with silver coins. This money seemed like Shuangshuang’s dowry, but in reality, it was the Kou Family’s tacit agreement to send money to the Du Family through Shuangshuang.

However, such matters are quietly understood between both parties, with no one asking questions or speaking of it. In other words, as long as Shuangshuang, the intermediary, kept silent and withheld the money for herself, neither the Kou nor Du Family would inquire or pursue where the money went. They would just silently speculate.

Given this, Shuangshuang felt justified in keeping the money for herself. With many years still left before the war would start, besides studying medicine, Shuangshuang hoped to establish a network. This network should ideally help her purchase medicine and gather intelligence during times of conflict.

No matter what kind of network, establishing it inevitably requires a significant amount of money. Although the money in her hands seemed plentiful and impressive, it was still a bit insufficient as a fund for setting up a network.

Currently, Shuangshuang’s priority is to quickly learn medical skills. Although her medical skills were excellent in Nangong Shuangshuang’s past life, in this life, they are just memories and cannot be flexibly used.

However, Shuangshuang has a strong ability to learn, and by studying based on Nangong Shuangshuang’s memories from her past life, she would soon be able to restore her former medical skills.

Of course, traditional Chinese medicine on the battlefield is quite limited, not because Chinese medicine is bad, but because it struggles the most with battlefield injuries.

The best medications on the battlefield are antibiotics, anesthetics, and pain relievers; these western medicines are the rarest and most precious. The most effective medical technique on the battlefield is performing surgeries to treat various traumas.

But this doesn’t mean Chinese medicine is useless. In past life memories of Nangong Shuangshuang, Shuangshuang found many highly effective hemostatic medicines and herbal formulas for cleaning wounds to prevent infections.

These were specifically developed by Nangong Shuangshuang in her past life to improve the survival rates of soldiers at the border, and they were improved to be quickly produced on a large scale, perfectly applicable now.

After marriage, Shuangshuang feels quite free; her husband Du Haokun hasn’t even shown his face these couple of days, so she’s completely spared the effort to interact with him, leaving her feeling quite relaxed.

As for her father-in-law, Du Zongze, he’s equally busy, and when he’s free, he indulges outside, and spends more time mingling with the concubines upon returning home, avoiding interaction with Shuangshuang.

Originally, Shuangshuang would have to attend to her mother-in-law, Fang Meijuan, but Fang Meijuan has a particularly good habit — gathering a group of wealthy women every day to play mahjong.

At the mahjong table, they talk about clothes and cosmetics, listen to compliments, enjoying her time without having the time to bother with Shuangshuang, her daughter-in-law.

This has actually given Shuangshuang far more freedom than she expected. These days, she has been going out every day, purchasing a large number of Chinese medicine books, planning to pick up traditional Chinese medicine first, though she doesn’t really intend to self-teach medical skills from the books she bought.

Instead, Shuangshuang wants to demonstrate her existing knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine, making sure people know how she came to have her skills, since she can’t inexplicably transform from knowing nothing to becoming a master of traditional Chinese medicine. As for Western medicine, further planning is required for now, mainly because she hasn’t found a way to get into a Western medicine school.

Time flew by, and even the day of returning home three days after the wedding quickly passed. On that day, Du Zongze and Fang Meijuan helped Shuangshuang prepare return gifts. To show importance, they forced Du Haokun, looking stern and serious, to accompany Shuangshuang back home.

On the way, neither Shuangshuang nor Haokun said a word. Haokun, with a cold expression, sat upright, obviously in a bad mood, while Shuangshuang closed her eyes and rested quietly, completely ignoring Haokun. The thought of what Father and Mother Kou would say once she returned home irritated Shuangshuang more and more.

Upon returning home, Father and Mother Kou warmly welcomed them, treating Haokun with great enthusiasm, as if he were an honored ancestor. In private, just as Shuangshuang expected, their words to her were all about advising her to win over Haokun.

Shuangshuang simply responded with vague agreements for the night, since she didn’t plan to return to the Kou Family anymore afterwards. Whatever they said didn’t matter. After the visit, she and Haokun returned to the Du Family in silence, where she resumed her free post-marriage life.

Though the servants at the Du Mansion were cold and distant toward Shuangshuang, they dared not slack off in cleaning her room, washing her clothes, or preparing her meals. Shuangshuang completely ignored their exclusion.

The attitude of these servants was clearly under someone’s instruction, but Shuangshuang did not take such a tactic seriously. Directing servants to exclude their master showed a lack of intelligence, an approach she didn’t understand.

Shuangshuang roughly had an idea who it was. In the original story, Haokun had two major admirers. One was Haokun’s cousin, Liu Feifei, who was staying with the Du Family. Her status was somewhat awkward as she was Du Haokun’s father, Du Zongze’s sixteenth concubine.