Chapter 118 - 115: A Brand New Look
After resting for a while, Li Xiu carried their child and went with his wife to the subdistrict office in the afternoon. After they explained their reason for being there, a helpful woman with the surname Zhang quickly assisted them in processing their household registration. Holding the maroon registration booklet, Zhou Lian smiled. Because they owned a house, their family of three didn’t receive a collective registration, but a genuine Capital City residency permit.
Perhaps because he was living a second life, his luck was heaven-defying. After the registration was settled, the office recommended several returning educated youths. They had all been sent to the countryside for over ten years, specifically to the Northeast. For them, tasks like building heated brick beds and renovating houses were a piece of cake. Now that they were back in the city, they had no suitable work units to accept them and could only stay at home, unemployed. But with many children and heavy burdens, they couldn’t afford to just freeload and risk being resented. They had to swallow their pride and go out to try their luck. It was hard to say whether it was their good fortune or Li Xiu’s.
They agreed to start work the next day. The plan was to renovate the east wing and the two westernmost rooms of the main building, while also constructing a new four-room building on the south side to serve as a bathroom, a toilet, and two storerooms. This would make the house much more spacious, ensuring it wouldn’t feel crowded even with their son.
The dozen or so men were honest people and skilled workers. In about ten days, Li Xiu’s small courtyard was completely transformed. The four newly built southern rooms were finished and tidied up inside. New plumbing was installed, so the water pump system Li Xiu had devised proved to be a great help. At least now they didn’t have to carry buckets of water to flush the toilet—they just had to pull a lever.
The bathroom wasn’t as convenient as those of modern times, but it was certainly as comfortable as could be. Li Xiu had brought the large wooden tub from their old home all the way to the Capital City. It was made of aromatic cedar, and the massive basin was more than large enough for two people to soak in. Li Xiu had truly spared no effort to ensure Zhou Lian could enjoy a comfortable bath.
The east wing was fully renovated, following the same layout as their old home. It was divided into two rooms. One room had a large, earthen heated bed, and was furnished entirely with Zitan rosewood furniture: a kang cabinet, a dining table for six, and six matching chairs.
The other room was the kitchen. It had a wood-burning earthen stove, and running water had been piped in, which was far more convenient than their old home. Two coal-briquette stoves made cooking much easier. They had also brought things like the pickling jars from their old house, along with the wooden frames and barrels used for growing vegetables during the winter.
The two westernmost rooms of the main building were renovated into two bedrooms and a study. This would be the children’s territory in the future, and getting it all done now was a long-term solution. The two bedrooms were furnished identically with 1.8-meter-wide Zitan rosewood beds, large wardrobes, and writing desks. In the study, a large bookshelf lined one wall, with large desks placed against the other two. The layout was fundamentally the same as their old house, only the rooms were comparatively smaller.
Li Xiu also rearranged their own bedroom, adding a small bookshelf and a desk for his wife. Although she could use the study in the west wing, placing this set in their bedroom was part of a thoughtful little plan of his. He just longed to be with her at every possible moment!
Li Xiu had also completely redone the courtyard. He placed a stone table and stools under the grapevine. In the narrow passage between their bedroom and the east wing, he set a large wooden barrel planted with gardenias, Zhou Lian’s favorite flower. He had initially wanted to plant them directly in the ground, but he decided a barrel was better, as it could conceal the future entrance to a cellar. In the roughly 300-square-meter courtyard, he used bricks to build a half-meter-high flower bed that ran along the west wall, covering nearly 100 square meters. It was empty for now, waiting to be filled with the earth excavated from digging the cellar. He also built a brick border around the grapevine. Since the rest of the courtyard was still dirt, Li Xiu, fearing it would turn to mud in the rain, paved the entire remaining area with bricks.
Zhou Lian was overjoyed as she looked at the transformed courtyard. The layout of the entire house and yard perfectly suited her tastes. Though she had been illiterate in her past life, she possessed a poetic and artistic soul. What Zhou Lian loved most was the aesthetic of the Jiangnan Water Village—not to live there, but to visit from time to time. To be a bit sentimental about it, she loved to occasionally soak in the atmosphere, the kind of artistic mood captured in the lines, "Spring waters greener than the heavens, listening to the rain from a painted boat. A beauty by the wine-stove, fair as the moon, with wrists like frosted snow."
To say she was unobservant would be putting it nicely. She never stopped to wonder—this being the second time, including at their old home—how Li Xiu had managed to arrange everything so perfectly to her liking without ever asking her. The interior design was one thing; it involved just a few standard pieces of furniture, so that could be explained away as coincidence. But the courtyard was undeniably laid out according to her exact tastes. Take their old home, for example: what farmer’s courtyard would be filled with flowers instead of vegetables? Only Li Xiu would indulge her like that. It was a shame that, even now, Zhou Lian hadn’t grasped the true depth of his intentions.
"Li Xiu, it looks amazing!" Zhou Lian exclaimed, her voice filled with excitement as she gazed at the scene before her.
"I’m happy as long as you like it, Bao’er." Li Xiu had just put their child to sleep and came out to see what his wife was doing. Seeing her so jubilant, he spoke with a smile in his eyes. Winning his wife’s favor had been his only goal from the start.
She turned to look at Li Xiu, who stood tall and elegant, gazing at her with a tender smile in his eyes. Zhou Lian felt her heart begin to race. The quaint, antique-style courtyard, the tall and dashing man, the gentleness in his gaze that seemed to overflow... Li Xiu’s features didn’t quite conform to the current aesthetic. At the time, square-jawed faces with thick eyebrows and large eyes were popular. Li Xiu’s oval face, sharp brows, star-like eyes, and high-bridged nose were handsome in their own right, but the key was his "peach blossom eyes"—naturally charming and alluring. If not for his powerful aura, those eyes alone would not have been well-received in this era.
Zhou Lian, however, adored his looks, especially those peach blossom eyes. ’Whenever he looks at me,’ she thought, ’I feel a cozy warmth spread through me, like I’m soaking in a hot bath!’ But those eyes only held that constant, warm smile for her. For anyone other than her and their child, Li Xiu’s gaze was not nearly so pleasant. To hear Li Bao tell it, his older brother’s eyes were like poisoned daggers; a hard stare from him was enough to make you feel like you’d lost a few days off your life.
Seduced by his gaze, Zhou Lian did something she would spend the next several days regretting. She threw herself into his arms. As he lifted her up effortlessly, the way he might their child, she couldn’t resist the allure of his peach blossom eyes and gently kissed them.
Li Xiu shuddered, his eyes fixed on the delicate woman in his arms. His gaze was no different from a wolf that had starved for days in the forest—it practically glowed. His wife’s rare initiative sent a thrill through him. He had always known his wife loved his eyes most of all, and the look of captivated delight she’d given him just moments before had already stirred him deeply.
’My wife seems to have forgotten everything about our past life,’ Li Xiu thought. ’She’s like a genuine young woman in her twenties—she gets angry, she pouts, she shares all of her joys and sorrows with me.’ That adoring gaze made Li Xiu secretly vow that he would do whatever it took to have her look at him that way every single day.