Chapter 752 Asking the Women's Opinions
Wang Jianguo was so shocked that he almost bit his tongue - when this girl was in Beijing, she could stuff her math book into the stove to use as fire starter, but now she actually said the word "school".
"Dujuan? Can you tell me again?"
He condensed an aura magnifying glass and moved closer to the passage, only to see that Li Dujuan's aura was proudly sticking out her "chest", while Jingru's aura next to her was tinged with a pink color of unwillingness.
Yu Li's voice came with a smile, like crushed moonlight:
"This girl is competing with Jingru. The other day, Haitang was teaching her to recognize the herbal atlas, but she wrote 'He Shouwu' instead of 'He Shouwu', which made Jie Di laugh."
"Now, you're pestering Jie Di to teach you how to write, and you're even using spiritual herbs to do math problems with Jing Ru."
In his consciousness, Wang Jianguo seemed to see Li Dujuan squatting beside the medicinal garden in the space, scratching crooked words on the ground with a branch, her nose tip stained with mud but she was unaware.
Jingru was holding an old textbook that she had gotten from somewhere, frowning as she did calculations on a stone bench, while Jie Di was knitting a sweater nearby.
He gave some pointers from time to time, and Yu Haitang picked a crabapple flower and put it in Li Dujuan's hair, which made her stamp her feet in anger.
"elder brother!"
Li Dujuan's spiritual energy rubbed against the communication symbol.
"Sister Jingru said that there are blackboards and chalk in the schools outside, and I can study with many other children! I want that too!"
Wang Jianguo felt a heat in his throat as he recalled how his sister had to hide in a dilapidated temple in Beijing and write on the wall with charcoal pencils even though her fingers were frozen and purple, but she still refused to stop.
He took a deep breath, and the spiritual compass in his palm suddenly lit up, with the needle pointing steadily to the open space at the entrance of the village:
"Okay! I'll build you a school! It'll be next to the clinic, with the best bricks and the brightest glass for the windows!"
Cheers suddenly broke out in the passage, and Li Dujuan's spiritual energy ball somersaulted with joy, knocking Yu Haitang's spiritual flowers to the ground.
Yu Li's breath gently enveloped his consciousness:
"Don't tire yourself out. Building a school is no small matter..."
"Small thing!"
Wang Jianguo interrupted her, remembering that Zhao Shuzhuo had said that there was a piece of idle land in the production team, and Yang Xiaohua's father was an old carpenter.
"The folks in the Great Northern Wilderness are all willing to help. When you come out, let Haitang teach the children to read, Jie Di teach needlework, Jingru be the arithmetic teacher, and you ..."
He paused, and his voice suddenly softened.
"Just take care of me and don't let me get tired, okay?"
Yu Li's face turned red, covering half of the corridor. Even the herbs in the medicine garden shyly closed their leaves.
He Yushui heard the noise outside the house. When she pushed the door open, she saw Wang Jianguo grinning foolishly at the air with a faint glow on his palms. She knew he was talking in private.
I quietly put the hot herbal tea on the table and turned around to hear him mutter:
"Sister Yu Li, when the school is finished, put a pot of crabapple on the windowsill. When I get home from work, I can see it from afar..."
The snow outside the window stopped at some point, and the moonlight sprinkled on the frozen soil of the Great Northern Wilderness. Wang Jianguo looked at the 80% progress bar jumping on the space panel and felt that it was no longer a cold number.
It was Li Dujuan's eager eyes, Yu Li's shy promise, and He Yushui's silent putting down of the teacup.
He knew that this school, which had not yet been built, would be the first gift given to them and to this land after the ban was lifted.
Just as Yu Li said, popularity nourishes spiritual energy, and these hopes that grow from space will eventually grow into the most luxuriant form under the sunshine of the Great Northern Wilderness.
He stared at the ice flowers condensed on the window frame in a trance, until the charcoal fire in the copper basin "crackled" and burst into sparks, and then he realized that the enamel cup in his palm had become completely cold.
He tapped the mottled pear wood table with his knuckles, and his eyes swept over the three figures sitting around the fire pit one by one:
"Haitang, Jingru, Jiedi, if you three leave this door, what do you want to do for a living?"
The coarse cloth apron on Qin Jingru's knees was twisted into a knot. Upon hearing this, she sat up straight, and the red velvet flowers on the ends of her hair trembled with her movements:
"Brother Anquan, didn't you just say that you were going to build a blue brick school? I've already used needle and thread to write it down on a handkerchief!"
She leaned forward, and the patch on her sleeve rubbed against the edge of the charcoal basin.
"I don't know enough characters to complete the hundred family names, but I know that before building a wall, you need to compact the foundation, and when applying lime, you need to mix it with fine sand that has been sifted three times."
"If I can go to school to help, even if it's just boiling water for the kids, mending their school bags, or reciting a few lines from 'The Beginning of Man' when I have time, that would be great."
Before she finished speaking, she suddenly remembered something and nervously picked at the apron strings:
"Oh, and the clinic you just mentioned. When I was in the village, I saw the piles of herbs that Doctor Li in our village had turned over and dried into small hills. I couldn't move when I smelled the bitter fragrance."
"If you can learn to recognize Bupleurum and Platycodon, you can be more careful when changing the bandages for the wounded..."
She became more and more excited as she spoke, and beads of sweat broke out on her forehead.
"Anyway, I work for everyone, fetching water, chopping wood, grinding flour and spinning thread. I can do everything. I will go wherever there is a shortage of people!"
Yan Jiedi, who was squatting by the fire and fiddling with the charcoal ash, shrank her neck because of the heat. Seeing everyone's eyes looking at her, she subconsciously curled up against the earthen wall.
Her worn open-toed cloth shoes scraped against the ground, making a sound as thin as leaking air:
"I...I think the same as Sister Jingru."
Her nails dug deep into her palms, and she thought of how she would never get a new cotton quilt back home, and how her parents always said, "A little girl will belong to someone else's family sooner or later." Her throat suddenly tightened.
"As long as I don't go back to that old house that eats people, even if I have to wash a hundred or eighty pieces of clothes by the river or pull weeds in the fields all day, I can... survive it."
The last few words were shrouded in tears, but the tip of his nose, which was red from the cold, was buried even lower.
Wang Jianguo silently added a new piece of coal into the charcoal basin, and sparks flew onto Yan Jiedi's patched trouser legs.
The light in Qin Jingru's eyes was like a burning torch, but Yan Jiedi's huddled appearance reminded him of a sparrow looking for food in the snow.
For these girls whose dignity was crushed in the old days, even the word "future" seems a luxury.
He suddenly turned his head to look at Yu Haitang, who had been leaning her chin to look at the flames. Her moon-white cotton gown made the red phoenix lilies on her fingertips look particularly bright:
"Haitang, you have been pampered by your family since you were a child. You are very smart and different from them. What do you want to do outside?"
Yu Haitang used a silver hairpin to brush away the loose hair on her temples, with orange-red flames dancing in her pupils:
"I?"
She drew out the last syllable and circled her fingertips around the red velvet rope at the end of her braid.
“I’m not going out.”
The charcoal fire was burning brightly, but the hot air from the edge of the copper basin suddenly condensed in mid-air.
Wang Jianguo paused with his hand holding the teacup, remembering that in the past in the space, Yu Haitang munched on a crisp melon and said, "The grape trellis in this space is rounder than the moon outside."
At that time, I just thought it was a joke made by a greedy little girl, but looking at Yu Haitang's expression when she said this, it didn't seem like she was joking.