Of course, Qin Xiangyang and Qin Xiangnuan could never have a good impression of Hu Li. They had suffered too much at her hands, enough to never consider returning to the Qin Family, a home that devoured without spitting out bones, regardless of what might happen. They would never again walk into the mouth of the tiger.
After returning home, Granny Lu had already brought out quite a few old newspapers, provided by Aunt Hua, knowing the children had just started the new school term and needed them for covering their books. Qin Xiangyang was especially skilled at wrapping books; his work was meticulous and beautiful. Qin Xiangnuan didn’t understand — it was just wrapping a book, but her elder brother treated it like a critical job, insisting on perfection without a single crease, redoing it repeatedly; he was happily busy with it for days.
Meanwhile, Qin Xiangnuan took this opportunity to learn shoemaking from Granny Lu, who passed on all her skills to Qin Xiangnuan because she enjoyed learning and was extremely dexterous, resembling Du Ping in this aspect.
Back then, Granny Lu’s daughter, Qin Xiangnuan’s mother, also possessed such crafty hands; her creations were famous throughout the village. She was already a skillful crafter in their village. If not for Mr. Lu’s preference for sons over daughters, with Du Ping’s skills, character, and looks, she certainly would have married well. But leaving that aside, at least she would still be alive instead of having left behind two young children and passing away too early.
Hence, whenever Granny Lu saw Qin Xiangnuan skillfully learning to make shoes, her heart would sour, and she couldn’t help but feel as if her daughter was still there, still young, just like Du Ping was at that age. It was just a pity that such a blooming age had silently withered away.
While Qin Xiangnuan spent her days making shoes with Granny Lu, at night she practiced her writing in the system, read a few books, and then embroidered patterns. During dull moments, she would also create various shoe uppers using designs provided by the system.
She crafted several pairs and sold them to the system, earning some silk threads and embroidery needles. The needles from the system were very hard, thin yet durable and far easier to use than other needles. She planned to make more and exchange some for Granny Lu to use, but her progress was slow — it took over ten days just to replace one needle, as those colorful silk threads were quite expensive, and she couldn’t afford them yet.
She continuously made and sold shoes, surprising Granny Lu, as Qin Xiangnuan’s shoe patterns seemed to get better and better. If one didn’t look closely, they might even think the shoes were store-bought, with the stitches so neatly done without a single thread showing.
In fact, buying and selling seemed almost similar, at least for Qin Xiangnuan it was .
She bought what she made, and she bought what was made by others.
Finally, after several days of effort, she managed to buy a very useful sewing needle for Granny Lu. She actually felt that buying Granny Lu a sewing machine would be even better, making it much easier for her to make clothes for them in the future. However, not now — they would wait until they went to junior high school and moved away from the village, by which time nobody from the Qin Family would be able to trouble them.
She refused to believe, if they truly had everything, that Hu Li and Qin Guohua wouldn’t be envious. She had lived with them for a year or two; how could she not know the ambition in their eyes and the greed in their hearts?
Only by staying far away might they one day have good days to live.