Chapter 520 - 43: The First Mat
Xuerou had seen a Purple Vine Mat before.
The mat laid in Grandma Zeng’s room was a Purple Vine Mat; the elderly lady’s back was afraid of hardness, and she didn’t like to sleep on buffalo hides, so Mrs. Zeng specifically picked a set of valuable rattan mats from the market, saying that it was soft to sleep on and made one feel grounded.
Although that mat was good, it was still not even close to the effect of the Black Purple Vine described by Xiao Xian. More importantly, Xuerou had never heard of Xiao Xian weaving mats.
A month before summer vacation, a southerner selling embroidered items came to the gate of Sacred Heart Middle School. The so-called embroidery he sold on his stall (in the summer of 2000, cross-stitch wasn’t popular yet).
A circle framed with bamboo strips, then a piece of cloth that could be considered silk fabric, followed by several needles much thicker than embroidery needles, and threads of various colors available for selection, all together making a complete embroidery set.
Teenaged students, perhaps poisoned by the idea from ancient drama series that noble ladies must know embroidery, each surrounded the southerner, almost everyone bought a set, even rough types like Zhang Yiyi.
Thus, at the desks of Sacred Heart Middle School, by the artificial lake, and even in the cafeteria, there would be several female students discussing: "I embroidered a flower yesterday," "What’s so special about that, I even sewed a bird," whether sewing or embroidering, under the wave of embroidery popularity, the only ones exempt were Xiao Xian and Xuerou. One was too busy to "mend", and the other would rather take a hoe to dig soil than repeatedly prick her fingers for a "fake flower".
This memory of Xuerou’s was just to prove one thing, Xiao Xian was probably someone with little talent for handicrafts.
"I just learned it today," to facilitate Xiao Xian’s memory, Mao Dazhu taught a mnemonic, "Horizontal is horizontal, vertical is vertical, horizontal on top, vertical beneath, interweave horizontally and vertically," weaving a mat with bamboo slats was more complex, it also required first splitting the slats, but using Black Purple Vine could skip this step, as Black Purple Vine was naturally soft and grew regularly and neatly, only requiring a bit of trimming with scissors, connecting the joints between the vines, then pressing it tight, like a girl knitting a sweater, weaving and weaving downward.
The materials Xiao Xian brought back weren’t much, definitely not enough for a mat, at most it could only make a pillow mat. Before beginning to weave, Xiao Xian glanced at Xuerou, her look meant, if you stand there, I can’t weave it.
Xuerou clicked her tongue, it was her room, yet she couldn’t stay in it. She went back to the balcony to continue "sensing exercises". "Xuerou, the method you used just now was wrong," to make up for her endless poor character, Xiao Xian pointed out the issue with Xuerou’s "sensing exercises" earlier.
When Xiao Xian approached the balcony earlier to ask Xuerou, her reaction clearly didn’t sense Xiao Xian’s arrival. Xuerou’s superpower was still very unstable, focusing too much attention on sensing, instead closed off her own senses to nearby stimuli, "You need to learn to multitask."
About multitasking, Xiao Xian had some insights, whether it was back in Ge Village or later in the dorm or at her aunt’s house, when she entered the space, she always paid close attention to changes in the environment outside the space, exiting the space immediately upon detecting the slightest footsteps.
Over the past five-plus years, Xiao Xian had already perfected the art of keeping multitask under any circumstances. And the last time she overused the Spiritual Rhinoceros Scissors, she fell unconscious for two whole months, only to discover that this ability had improved further.
Even when her body was sleeping or in a coma, part of her consciousness remained vigilant.
"Learn to multitask," Xuerou took the words to heart and walked out.
Xiao Xian grabbed a newspaper, spread it on the ground, and poured out the Black Purple Vines.
To do a good job, one must first sharpen one’s tools, which is just like Mr. Yu’s personality, although weaving a Black Purple Vine mat did not require that many vines, he had already trimmed all the vines to the same length.
What Xiao Xian wanted to do was not trim the vines at the moment; she wanted to do something else.
With a thought, Xiao Xian reappeared in the room with a handful of water in her hand, Silver-grade Space Water.
Xiao Xian had never understood why, after the space advanced, there appeared such Silver-grade Space Water with a state between solid and liquid.
Although Little White Jiao and Xiao Xian both preferred to call it "Space Water," now held in her hands like this, "Space Water" wouldn’t leak through the fingers like water from the outside world.