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"I'll carry them. Where do they need to go?"

"Just to the laundry by the river. Thank you, sir, thank you."

Xie Jin still needed a crutch to walk, but it did nothing to stop him from carrying the heavy baskets. The two made their way down the road, one behind the other, until the laundry came into view.

"You can set the baskets here, sir. I'll call someone to take them."

"All right."

The servant ran into the laundry while Xie Jin waited at the entrance with the two baskets.

"Miss! Miss, slow down!"

Across the street from the laundry, a slightly plump woman of average height rode a horse, with two breathless servants trailing behind her.

The woman had not seen the man of her dreams in days and was in a foul mood. She lashed her whip at the two servants.

"If you two useless fools hadn't let my dream man get away, would I be this bored?!"

The two servants winced in pain but dared not talk back. They could only smile awkwardly.

The woman was still swinging her whip when her gaze suddenly fixed on something.

Wasn't that the man she had been dreaming of day and night, standing outside the laundry?

She was about to ride over when she thought better of it. If she approached him so rashly, he might flee again. She studied him. A man with such a striking presence was wearing old clothes and standing guard outside a laundry. Could he be a laundry worker?

Far from being upset by his low status, she was delighted. Poor people were easy to bend to her will. She had only been afraid he wasn't poor.

"You two, get over here if you want to make up for your mistake!"

A servant finally