Translator: 549690339
Noticing the gaze on him, Xiao Qinghe looked up at her, and saw her staring intently at him, as a suspicious red flush appeared unconsciously on her pale face.
Feeling nervous, the fish-scaling knife in his hand slipped, cutting away a little bit of his fingernail, luckily avoiding cutting his hand.
“Hey, be careful!” She chided lightly, walked to the table, and removed the tiny piece of fingernail that had fallen on the cutting board, “You are a grown man, what if you cut your hand?”
Xiao Qinghe felt a gentle happiness inside, Imowing that she cared about him.
Su Qingyue thought, losing a bit of fingernail was nothing, she had been tired all day and there was still much work to be done. In case he cut his hand, he couldn’t help her clean the fish. They had to deal with the back basket half full of fish tonight, otherwise, the fish would go bad tomorrow. It would be great to have someone help with this.
“I’m fine, I will be careful.” His voice was elegant and cheerful.
Not paying attention to his mood, Su Qingyue took two pieces of burning firewood from the stove after fetching it from the fireplace and placed them in the separate medicine broiling furnace to decoct the medicine for the second brother to eat.
As if thinking of something, she said, “Fourth brother, you are supposed to take a dose of medicine every day, and you have three doses left. I haven’t decocted them for you these past few days. The third brother said that if you do not take the medicine, you will soon have pain all over your body. If it hurts, tell me. Your medicine only treats the symptoms, not the root cause, so it’s fine if you don’t take it.”
Xiao Qinghe nodded slightly. In fact, he had already been in unbearable pain last night but held it back, not wanting to cause her any more trouble. The second and third brothers wanted to wake up his wife who was sleeping in the secondary bedroom last night but he stopped them, “I wish I could feel pain all over my body, but still, my legs are numb.”
Su Qingyue knew that the most troublesome thing was the numbness of the fourth brother’s legs. Numbness meant that there was no hope of recovery, and if he had sensation, perhaps there would be a possibility of treatment.
She picked up the hatchet, walked into the yard, and took six straight pieces of wood from the woodpile, cutting them into lengths of about one and a half meters each.
Choosing an area in the yard that wouldn’t affect its usability, she stuck three firewood pieces vertically into the ground in a triangle shape and tied them with a vine about ten centimeters below their tops. She then inserted the other three firewood pieces at the same height as the initial ones.
She placed a long bamboo pole on the tied corners of the two triangular stands, forming a simple drying rack about one and a half meters off the ground.
Today, she cut three long pieces of bamboo and a bundle of two-finger-thick straight logs.
With one of the long pieces of bamboo, she built a clothing rack in the front yard, and with the other two pieces, she built two drying racks in the backyard with the same method.
Only the bamboo poles were made from the bamboo she had cut down, and the supports were made from the firewood at home. She intended to use the long straight wood she cut down today to build medicine drying racks.
She planned to dry the laundry in the front yard, and the fish in the back yard.
The medicine drying racks were also to be built in the backyard.
The front and back yards of the Xiao Family were both spacious.
Both the master and secondary bedrooms had two windows facing each other. One could see the front yard from one window, and the backyard could be seen from the other.
The reason for drying the fish in the backyard was that there were mountains beyond the backyard, and unless someone deliberately went around to the Xiao Family’s backyard, they couldn’t see what was being dried. There were always people passing by the front yard.
She didn’t want anyone to see every detail of what her family had, and besides, neither the second nor third brother could move now. Although the fish weren’t worth much, Wushan Village was a large village, and it was inevitable that some people in the village would be dishonest.
It’s always best to be cautious..