"Hmm?" Xinian anticipated.
Chiang Xiao said, "Tall."
Good-looking and tall.
Did he not have any substance?
His handwriting was also really nice! With a darkened face, Xinian continued to labor.
However, he soon forgot about this minor grievance, as all his thoughts were captivated by Chiang Xiao. She was genuinely researching, taking each hefty tome into her hands, sitting down beside the bookshelf, not uttering a word, and diligently flipping through page by page.
Except when asking for his help, she never even lifted her head.
While she read, he watched her.
Accompanied by the exceptionally peaceful summer air.
Which child could sit quietly for such a long time doing research without finding it tedious? Moreover, those hefty tomes contained many words that even he found abstruse. Could she, a sixth-grader—well, a kid who had skipped grades but not yet in junior high—really understand it all?
Xinian squatted in front of her, and once she finished a book, he timely passed another one. Chiang Xiao took the book and immediately started reading again.
An entire afternoon passed, and he clearly remembered she had turned through eleven thick books that seemed to carry a slight musty odor. These books appeared as if nobody else had browsed them, looking quite challenging and obscure.
Yet Chiang Xiao never even frowned; she kept flipping and reading, occasionally stopping to take out a little notebook to write and draw, looking utterly serious.
When the light had already grown dim, Chiang Xiao wanted to keep reading, but Xinian placed his hand on the book in front of her, declaring unequivocally, "No more reading."
"Just let me finish this one..."
"You’ve been reading for so long, do you even care about your eyes?" Xinian gathered up the books, putting away the ones she had looked through back onto the shelf, lifting an old book with a slightly damaged cover, and said, "I flipped through this one just now, it has some resemblance to what you’ve written in your notes, borrow it and take a look tonight. Come on, let’s go eat."
Chiang Xiao, feeling helpless, muttered ’bully’ under her breath and stood up.
In fact, in her heart, she didn’t harbor much hope because after checking so many books, she hadn’t seen any text from the Bamboo Hut pamphlet.
When they left, it was already evening, breezes wafted by, and stomachs were growling.
"Hungry, aren’t you?" Xinian rubbed her hair, "Without me calling you, you’d keep reading. What are you looking for exactly?"
"I’m looking for that kind of ancient script," Chiang Xiao hesitated for a moment, and somehow, despite herself, couldn’t help but tell him, "I have a book, acquired accidentally, and it’s all written in that ancient script. I want to figure out what it means."
Xinian asked, "The kind you were writing in your notebook a moment ago?"
Xinian lifted the book in his hand, "It’s very similar to the script in this book."
"Really? Let me see!" Chiang Xiao was immediately overjoyed, reaching out to grab the book from his hand. But Xinian merely raised his hand higher, and the book became as unreachable as the sun in the sky, eluding her grasp even when she jumped.
After Chiang Xiao jumped a few times to no avail, she became annoyed and slapped his back, saying, "I take back what I said earlier! Being tall isn’t your advantage, it’s your disadvantage!"
It was too much to bully her ; did he find it amusing?
Xinian watched her jumping with a flushed face, a hint of laughter in his eyes, "You’ve read for so long, let’s eat first, I’ll give it to you after the meal."