The gaze followed along, but did not detect anything unusual.
Qi Huan directly asked, "What are you all looking at?"
"...Nothing." After being discovered, Yan Qinghe hurriedly sat up straight and casually praised, "Your scarves look so nice, I couldn't help but take a few more glances."
As he answered, Yan Wu's eyes also drifted to the window, as if looking at the scenery.
At this moment, Xiu Wen touched the scarf around his neck and smiled sweetly, "It really is very nice and warm."
The ivory-colored scarf made his delicate doll-like face even softer, though he was a young man, he seemed like a youth.
Qi Huan looked at him thoughtfully, elbowed Lu Yueming beside her, and leaned in to whisper, "Yueming, was Xiu Wen's scarf knitted by you?"
"Yes," Lu Yueming readily admitted, but then tried to cover it up, "He is my teacher, so it's like a thank-you gift."
"...Yan Wu and Yan Qinghe are also your teachers, why don't they have one?"
"How can it be the same?" Lu Yueming instinctively refuted, "Just like how you only knitted a scarf for Young Master Lai, I only wanted to knit one for Xiu Wen."
After saying this, she belatedly covered her mouth, blushing unusually.
Qi Huan immediately understood her thoughts.
At the same time, she also had a vague sense of worry.
Xiu Wen's identity meant that their relationship would not be smooth sailing, she didn't want to see her friend get hurt, but she also didn't want to interfere with others' feelings rashly.
Her arched willow-leaf brows slightly furrowed, and they remained so until she returned home.
When Qi Huan is in a troubled mood, she likes to sleep. She climbed onto the bed, covered her head and fell asleep, only waking up as dusk approached.
After simply combing her slightly messy hair from sleeping, she picked up her thermos and went out to find water to drink.
With the sound of the door opening, Li Shuchen put down the letter in his hand and handed her a red wooden box from the side.
His voice was cold and his tone was flat as he said, "A gift."
"Why did you suddenly decide to give me a gift?" Qi Huan asked as she took the red wooden box and opened it.
Inside the box, six Night Bright Pearls the size of chicken eggs were neatly arranged on the orange lining, emitting a lustrous glow.
She picked up one and couldn't put it down, liking it more and more the more she looked at it.
Seeing her brows finally relax, Li Shuchen was satisfied and curled his lips into a slight smile.
"Shu'er, thank you, I really like it," Qi Huan said with a beaming smile, and her previous worries had mostly dissipated.
Suddenly, she guessed the reason why Li Shuchen gave her the pearls, and with a smile on her face, she slowly explained, "Shu'er, I wasn't unhappy at noon, I was just thinking about a problem, whether to follow my heart or weigh the pros and cons? Now I have the answer. Attempting a difficult task will certainly encounter various difficulties and obstacles, but there will be no regrets. So, let everything take its natural course."
Considering Yueming's privacy, she did not directly mention the details of the matter, only simply expressing her change in feelings.
Seeing that she had completely opened up, Li Shuchen did not ask further, and handed her a copybook, "Since there's nothing wrong, then let's practice calligraphy."
"......"
Qi Huan, who hates studying, twitched her eyebrows and thought, "Is it too late to pretend to be unhappy now?"
*
By the time she finished this copybook, it was a few days later.
Today, she was resting her face in her hands, watching Li Shuchen check her large-character calligraphy, when she heard the footsteps of Yan Qinghe and the others, and looked up at them.
Catching sight of Yan Wu and Yan Qinghe's matching black scarves, Qi Huan was surprised and widened her eyes.
"Your two scarves are exactly the same! Quickly tell me, who gave them to you?"
Yan Qinghe scratched his head awkwardly and complained, "No one gave them to us, we knitted them ourselves. One skein of yarn can knit two scarves, so Yan Wu and I bought one skein together to save money."
Hearing this, Yan Wu nodded in agreement and reminded him, "It cost one hundred coins, remember to pay me back fifty."
Yan Qinghe was greatly alarmed, "Do we still need to talk about money between us?"
"Yes, talking about feelings costs money, this money must be paid back."
The two of them amused Qi Huan into a hearty laugh, and then she thought about how they were always broke, so she decided to give them some precise assistance.
"Five silver ingots per person per month, how about helping me expand the underground cellar?"
The matter of the underground cellar has been on her mind for a long time.
There are occasionally people in the restaurant and noodle shop asking about where her tomatoes and cucumbers come from, and she has always evaded the question under the pretext of business secrets.
Fortunately, most commoners are relatively simple-minded, and as long as they can eat delicious and affordable dishes, they are already happy after she dodges the question, and rarely dig deeper.
After all, the food at Qi's is both delicious and inexpensive, apart from getting fat, there is no other problem. They wish she could keep her business going, so they don't bother asking too many questions. Qi Huan stubbornly insisted that it's a business secret, and the others had no choice but to mutter a few words behind her back about how strange she is.
But this is not a long-term solution.
As her business grows bigger and she earns more silver, it also becomes more conspicuous. Worried that she might be targeted by people with power and intelligence, she wants to solve this problem in advance.
After much thought, she decided to hurry up and build an underground cellar to store some ingredients.
If she is forced into a desperate situation, she can use this to prove her innocence, explaining that she had the ingredients delivered by a merchant caravan in the summer and stored them in the underground cellar for use.
In her previous life, she had seen a TV program that interviewed an old mansion, and the temperature in the underground cellar was much lower, allowing them to store vegetables for a month. Now in Mo County, the climate is even colder, so storing them for a longer period of time is not a problem either.
The only problem is that the frozen soil underground is quite difficult to dig, and it is not suitable for outsiders to know that she is just starting to expand her underground cellar, so she had the idea to rely on the poor but strong Yan Wu and Yan Qinghe.
The Qi family originally had a small underground cellar, which had been looted by thieves before she arrived, and the one she now wants to expand is this one.
After hearing her idea, Yan Qinghe puzzledly looked at her, "Huan'er, why are you expanding the underground cellar for no reason?"
"Don't ask about the immortal lady's business." It was too troublesome to explain, so she just evaded it.
"......"
Everyone was at a loss for words.
After a while, Yan Wu quietly raised the most critical question, "The weather has not warmed up yet, the soil is too hard to dig."
"...Six silver ingots."
"Okay, I have strong strength."
Fortunately, Lu Yueming has also been immersed in studying literature lately, with no time for martial arts. He and Yan Qinghe then requested half-day leave in the afternoon to work on the expansion of the underground cellar at Qi's.
When they were exhausted, they would think about the shiny silver ingots, and their strength would be replenished.
Meanwhile, their employer Qi Huan was playing on a snow sled with Li Shuchen on a gentle slope.
Wearing a down jacket and a long dress with a mandarin collar covering it to conceal her identity, Qi Huan took out the snow sled set she had obtained from dismantling a package before.
Following the instructions, she bent down and firmly secured the ski boots to the snow sled with the fasteners, then helped Li Shuchen put on his shoes.
Imitating the skiing posture of the world champions she had seen on TikTok, she squatted down, tightly gripping the ski poles, and gently glided down.
The cold wind hit her face, and the thrill of the speed quickly caused her brain to secrete more dopamine. The snowy white world, the girl's speed like the wind on the sled, a heart full of unrestrained joy.
Just as she was having fun, a group of black-clad men suddenly came charging towards her, wielding long knives and exuding a murderous aura.
Qi Huan wanted to brake but couldn't, and watched helplessly as she slid towards the approaching unfriendly black-clad men.
