Su Duan leaned on the open window, looking down at Qin Zhi from afar.

Qin Zhi had very handsome and refined features. Due to malnutrition during his growth spurt, he looked tall and slender, extremely good-looking. Dressed in a black and white vest uniform, standing amidst the flowers, he was so attractive that one couldn't take their eyes off him.

As a spiritual herb that had lived for several thousand years, Su Duan had of course seen many outstanding men, women, and spirits, many of whom were more beautiful than Qin Zhi. But he just felt that Qin Zhi was very pleasing to the eye.

When they first met, the impression wasn't deep. But after interacting with each other for a period of time, this feeling naturally arose.

However, now was not the time to ponder these things.

Judging from Qin Zhi's disheveled appearance, it seemed like he had been bullied?

Qin Zhi's action of looking up also naturally attracted the attention of the servant beside him. He suspiciously followed Qin Zhi's line of sight and looked up. When he saw Su Duan leaning out the window looking this way, the expression on his face quickly froze.

But Qin Zhi had no mind to care about him. Seeing the young master's head moving back and forth at the window, his heart was in his throat.

Although there was a protective railing outside the window, with a small platform below, he still felt that it was too dangerous for Su Duan to make such movements.

After all, the young master was always clumsy. If he bumped into something again...

Just thinking about it made one worry.

He looked up and raised his voice, calling out to Su Duan who was still leaning out: "Young Master, close the window!"

The servant beside him showed a subtle expression, with a hint of contempt in his eyes, as if he despised his behavior of seizing every opportunity to flatter the master.

Su Duan glanced at him, nodded, obediently withdrew his head, pulled the screen and sat back on the bed. Except for when he first stuck his head out, he didn't spare another glance at the servant beside him.

He knew that Qin Zhi would come up to find him soon. He poked the system in his mind: "System, can I see what just happened?"

The 24/7 system immediately replied: "Received. Please wait a moment, host!"

The next second, a screen that only Su Duan could see lit up, replaying the scene that had just occurred downstairs two minutes ago in front of Su Duan--

Qin Zhi was pruning flowers. He bent over, selecting the most lovely blooms from countless branches, intending to bring them to Su Duan's bedroom to replace the day-old flower arrangement.

He had not learned professional flower arrangement techniques, nor did he understand color matching or height variation. He simply relied on his intuition to carefully select the few he felt were most suitable together.

He was so focused on his selection that he failed to notice the approaching figure behind him.

Just as he was about to stand up, he was suddenly bumped from behind. Due to his posture, and with flowers and shears in his hands, he couldn't maintain his balance. Unable to control himself, he fell forward, forced to kneel on one knee, the flower branches in his hands also falling to the ground.

Some flowers were knocked crooked, some petals were rubbed off during the fall, and some were stained with dirt from the ground, becoming filthy.

In short, this carefully selected bouquet of flowers had become a mess, completely unusable.

Looking down at the fallen flowers, Qin Zhi didn't pick them up. He picked up the sharp, slender shears from the ground and stood up.

He turned around to look at the person who bumped into him.

It was one of the servants specifically in charge of tending the garden at the Su residence. Because he usually followed the young master around, there weren't many opportunities for interaction, so Qin Zhi wasn't familiar with him.

But the other party obviously recognized Qin Zhi. Not only did he recognize him, he was also full of malice towards him.

Because when Qin Zhi turned around, the other party had already revealed that mocking expression, and allusively explained: "So it's you, busy delivering flowers to curry favor with the young master? I thought it was some blind little thief who climbed into the Su family's courtyard and got carried away."

Was this a sarcastic remark directed at him?

--Although he wasn't an old hand who had been rolling in the ways of the world, Qin Zhi could still hear the almost explicit mockery.

But before he could respond, Su Duan pushed open the window.

The scene on the screen stopped here.

After watching, Su Duan carefully thought about it, and only found the shadow of that servant in the corner of the original owner's memory. He was a servant who had worked at the Su family for quite a while, previously responsible for cleaning the front villa, and was recently transferred to work in the garden.

On the first day he transmigrated over, he fractured his coccyx and hardly left his own room, naturally never going to the garden either.

Sometimes Su Duan would glance down at the flowers in full bloom from the window, but he wouldn't deliberately remember the servants working in the garden, so he didn't have a deep impression of this person.

The system said: "According to the over one thousand examples of human society that I just analyzed, in a large family like the Su family, because there are too many servants, complex interpersonal relationships often arise."

Interpersonal relationships again, Su Duan thought, human emotions are really complicated.

System: "Generally speaking, new servants don't have the qualifications to immediately serve by the master's side. Although the original Su Duan was moody and very difficult to get along with, if one could gain his favor, the benefits that could be obtained were also huge. So in the eyes of many servants, serving 'Su Duan' was a cushy job. Qin Zhi started serving by his side as soon as he arrived, quickly arousing the dissatisfaction of some senior servants in the Su residence, and subsequently suffered exclusion."

After hearing this, Su Duan asked: "Does Qin Zhi's illness also have something to do with the exclusion by these servants?"

The system said: "Although there is no clear explanation in this regard in the information of this world, based on normal logic, there should be some connection."

Su Duan thought for a moment and asked, "Is this the first time something like this has happened?"

The system paused for a while, perhaps searching for information, and only answered after a dozen seconds: "No, there have been a few instances before."

Su Duan didn't speak to the system anymore. He got up from the bed and went to the bathroom to wash up in his pajamas.

He had just carefully brushed his teeth a couple of times when there was a knock on the bedroom door.

Su Duan's mouth was full of foam and he couldn't speak.

But because Su Duan rarely spoke, Qin Zhi had obviously adapted to this style of often not getting a response. After pausing for a dozen seconds, he said outside in a volume that Su Duan could hear: "Young Master, I'm coming in."

Although the other person couldn't see it, Su Duan still nodded at himself in the mirror.
Immediately there was the sound of the door being opened. Hearing the noise, Qin Zhi felt his way to the bathroom.

In the mirror, Su Duan saw his face. The young man's eyebrows and eyes had a gentle arc, and the gloominess from before was no longer visible.

The stains on his body had also disappeared without a trace. Su Duan guessed that he had gone to change into new clothes before coming up.

Qin Zhi stood behind him, quietly waiting for him to finish brushing his teeth. After spitting out the foam from his mouth, he picked up a towel to wipe the water traces from his face.

Su Duan slightly raised his head, allowing him to move over his face.

When Qin Zhi was helping him put on his clothes, Su Duan lowered his eyes and asked him, "What happened just now?"

Although he had already seen the ins and outs of the matter from the system, he still had to ask perfunctorily.

Qin Zhi was helping him arrange his cuffs. Hearing this, he looked up at him and explained simply, "When I went to the garden to cut flowers, I bumped into someone and had a small dispute, which has been resolved."

His expression was calm, not mentioning at all that he was deliberately knocked down by someone and then sarcastically criticized. It was as if he was describing an ordinary little thing in life.

Su Duan stared at his face for a few seconds. After not seeing any emotions, he could only nod to indicate that he understood: "Mm."

He pursed his lips and stared at Qin Zhi's face for a short while.

He felt that he seemed to be too indifferent to Qin Zhi. The other party served him so diligently every day, yet he had overlooked so many things. If he hadn't gotten up early today and happened to see it, who knows when he would have found out that Qin Zhi had been excluded by some of the servants in the Su family.

The system hurriedly took the blame for this: "It's my dereliction of duty. I didn't observe the treatment target enough. If it weren't for the host discovering it early, it might have had a significant impact on the mission."

Su Duan wanted to say that it wasn't just because of the mission. He actually hadn't thought of this matter at all just now... But facing a system that was solely focused on the mission, it seemed a bit difficult to speak up, so in the end, he didn't say anything.

Qin Zhi folded his cuffs as neatly as tofu blocks, revealing his slender wrists. He glanced at the purple-pink flower branch that had been placed on the bedside table for a day and had already wilted a bit, and said softly, "After eating, I will cut a new bouquet for you."

Su Duan, for once, reacted quickly and said, "I'll go with you."

But Qin Zhi didn't seem to approve of his idea and only said, "You need to rest well."

Su Duan withdrew his wrist from his hand and said, "Mm... I'm not in pain anymore and want to go for a walk."

It actually still hurt a little, but now Qin Zhi's matter, no, the mission's matter was more important.

As a servant, Qin Zhi had no decision-making power, so after eating, at Su Duan's insistence, he still took him to the garden to cut flowers.

Qin Zhi held the flower shears in the hand away from Su Duan and led him into the flower bushes.

The garden had probably just been watered in the morning. The stone bricks on the garden path were hard and slippery, and the fallen petals on them became even more slippery after being stepped on and releasing their juices. So after walking a few steps, Su Duan unsurprisingly swayed and stumbled.

—Then he was caught in the arms of Qin Zhi, who had been waiting.

When catching him in his arms, Qin Zhi even let out a sigh of relief.

He knew there would be such an accident.

After helping the young master up, he didn't dare let him walk alone again. He gently supported him with one hand on his back to prevent him from falling again.

Seeing that the young master showed no signs of aversion, Qin Zhi slightly increased the force of his hand and got a little closer.

It was just that halfway through, Su Duan suddenly paused, slightly lowering his head and looking towards the side of the path.

As a result, Qin Zhi's palm unexpectedly pressed against Su Duan's back. His arm stiffened for a moment, but instead of moving his hand back, he followed Su Duan's line of sight and saw a bouquet of flowers lying scattered on the side of the path.

Su Duan's gaze lingered on the bouquet for a while.

It was the bouquet that had been knocked to the ground this morning. Qin Zhi should have been in a hurry to go up and find him at the time, so he didn't deal with it, and the servant originally responsible for maintaining the tidiness of the garden may have been startled by his sudden appearance and also forgot to dispose of it.

So this bouquet had been lying here all this time.

More than an hour had passed, and that bouquet was covered with more dirt, lying there in a pitiful mess, forming a stark contrast with the flowers rooted in the fertile soil beside it, blooming with vitality.

Looking at the completely wilted bouquet on the ground, Su Duan calmly said, "That person knocked over my flowers. I'm angry. Go tell the housekeeper to fire him now."