“So you do know how.”
Xu Ao muttered this and turned his head away, the back of his head seeming to have eyes as he said casually, “Even if you know, just stand there.”
“There’s a lot of smoke over here. Just tell me what to do.”
Sang Zhixia didn’t insist on showing off her skills. She simply sat on a stone a few steps away and said unhurriedly, “When building a fire, the person should be steady, but the stove should be hollow.”
“Start by putting in some fine kindling, prop it up a bit, and once the flames catch, add more firewood.”
Xu Ao silently followed her instructions. As the flames leaped up, he murmured in a daze, “Did you learn this back at your parents’ home too?”
Sang Zhixia rubbed her nose and dodged the question. “Yes.”
“When you’re hungry, don’t you have to do it yourself?”
Xu Ao’s handsome face, mostly covered in black smoke, was half-hidden by the leaping flames. Before Sang Zhixia could detect that hint of strangeness, it quickly vanished.
But he truly managed to keep Sang Zhixia from intervening.
Rice was rinsed and put into the pot, water added, and it was left to boil.
As for the rest…
The former Young Marquis opened the flour sack, took a look, and chose to tie it back up.
No need to force what you don’t know how to do.
With rice porridge to drink, they wouldn’t starve.
Xu Ao personally took charge of the kitchen. The result for dinner: a pot of extremely thick rice porridge.
The already famished family looked at the single pot of porridge on the table and frowned one after another.
“Just this?”
“Is this all we’re having for dinner?”
Faced with the doubts, Xu Wenxiu seemed somewhat flustered, but Xu Ao was completely unruffled.
“This is all I know how to make.”
He picked up a bowl, ladled porridge for Old Master and Old Madam, then added some for Xu Wenxiu. With a casual gesture toward Sang Zhixia, he said, “Here, yours.”
After searching around, they only found five stools, so most people were standing.
Sang Zhixia took the bowl of porridge and instinctively took a few steps back, distancing herself from the potential storm center.
Sure enough, complaints soon followed.
Auntie Xu the Second said, “I saw there was still flour in the sack. Wouldn’t making some flatbread or noodles be better than just drinking plain porridge?”
“Who’s going to make it?”
Xu Ao placed the ladle back into the pot with an ambiguous expression and said unhurriedly, “The little cooking skills my mother had before were all about having servants chop the vegetables, heat the stove, and toss them into the pot—someone else would stir-fry and serve them.”
“She doesn’t know how, Second Aunt and Third Aunt don’t either, and the younger siblings have never touched a stove. If not this, what should we eat?”
For the first three months, they gnawed on Dry Steamed Buns every day.
At first, some threw tantrums and refused to eat, but in the end, didn’t they survive?
Auntie Xu the Second’s criticism was thrown right back at her, leaving her so angry she could barely hold her bowl.
“We are elders. How could we be the ones to cook?”
“If this chore must be learned, it should be the younger generation who does it!”
If the marquis’s estate hadn’t been raided, Sang Zhixia would have been the first granddaughter-in-law to marry into the Xu Family.
By seniority and age, she was indeed the lowest in status.
Before Sang Zhixia could even take a sip of porridge, a huge pot was already placed over her head.
Just as she was about to retort, Xu Ao said, “Second Aunt is right. This chore should be done by the younger generation.”
“So isn’t that what I’m doing?”
He reached out to wipe a grain of rice from Xu Mingxu’s mouth and said leisurely, “Second Aunt, rest assured. As long as no one in this household takes charge of the stove, I’ll cook rice porridge for another day.”
“The taste of rice porridge might be lacking, but at least it’ll keep us from starving.”
After hearing this, Sang Zhixia lowered her head again.
Xu Ao was usually a man of few words, but he would step forward when faced with any provocation.
This suited her just fine—she had no intention of forcing herself into the spotlight.
Auntie Xu the Second, however, was visibly seething with anger.
Just as she was about to unleash a torrent of harsh words, Old Madam said coldly, “Having porridge to drink is already a blessing. What more are you fussing about?”
Everyone in the household knew the situation all too well.
Before this, whether it was the women, children, or the elderly, none had ever lifted a finger to cook.
At a time like this, being picky was truly unreasonable.
Auntie Xu the Second swallowed her discontent and forced down two bowls of rice porridge, only to be assigned the task of washing dishes afterward for eating too slowly.
The muttering in the kitchen never ceased. Afraid that lingering longer would land her with more chores, Sang Zhixia hurriedly slipped away.
Western Shed.
Xu Ao crouched on the wall, clutching a bundle of straw in his arms as he frowned in deep thought.
He had declared he would live in the Western Shed without hesitation, but the place was hardly fit for human habitation.
Repairs were absolutely necessary.
Yet, the task of patching the roof was even more unfamiliar to Xu Ao than cooking—it felt utterly absurd.
He simply didn’t know how.
After brooding for a long while, Xu Ao finally propped up a few sticks and tried to lay the straw over the frame.
But the breeze paid no heed to his troubles. A gust of wind swept through, and the carefully laid straw vanished in an instant.
Xu Ao then attempted to tie the straw to the frame with cloth strips.
But when he looked down, the bundled straw hung in clumps, leaving gaps through which daylight streamed freely.
This still didn’t work.
He tried again and again, until most of the straw in his arms was gone, and the drafty roof remained as perplexing as ever.
Xu Ao stood frozen for a long moment, then abruptly slammed his fist against the rough, uneven earthen wall.
Sang Zhixia was startled by this sudden outburst. Watching the trail of blood trickle down the dusty wall, her emotions grew complicated.
It was almost laughable. Among the Xu Family members who had ended up here, everyone was crying about their discomfort, lamenting their misery as if life wasn’t worth living.
Yet Xu Ao, the long-disdained prodigal son, was like a resilient bamboo stalk, bent but never broken, never showing a hint of defeat.
Only at this moment, from his hunched and strained posture, did Sang Zhixia sense a flicker of suppressed rage.
A man born in the clouds, suddenly cast into the dust—how could Xu Ao adapt any better than the others?
Sighing inwardly at her own fate of endless toil, Sang Zhixia gathered a bundle of dry straw at the base of the wall and walked over, teasing him, “I know the Young Marquis is delicate and precious, but the weather is about to turn.”
“Are you a child? Throwing a tantrum here?”
Xu Ao jolted in surprise, turning to meet Sang Zhixia’s calm gaze.
“Enough of this,” she said, tilting her head back to look at the high earthen wall, her expression puzzled. “There’s no ladder here. How did you even get up?”
Xu Ao’s eyes were red-rimmed and strained. He turned away awkwardly, his voice hoarse. “I just climbed up.”
Sang Zhixia measured the height from the ground to the top of the wall and asked skeptically, “Are you joking with me?”
Could someone really jump straight up onto a wall???
Perhaps her naive astonishment was too amusing, or perhaps it was the shame of being caught in a moment he never wanted others to see.
Whatever the reason, when Xu Ao turned back, his expression was tinged with mockery.
“You want to come up?”
Sang Zhixia retorted impatiently, “What do you think?”
If she didn’t go up there to offer some technical guidance, this roof would likely remain unfixed forever.
Just as Sang Zhixia was figuring out where to find leverage, Xu Ao suddenly jumped down from the wall.
“Hey, how did you…”
“Whoa!”
The abruptly elevated Sang Zhixia instinctively grabbed the nearest object, completely unaware that she had wrapped her arms around Xu Ao’s waist.
After a startled gasp, she horrifyingly discovered she was now standing atop the wall!
Xu Ao tilted his chin toward the ground.
“See? You’re up now.”
Sang Zhixia looked down in disbelief, staring at Xu Ao as if seeing a ghost: “Can you fly?”
Xu Ao seemed slightly puzzled by her astonishment, chuckling: “Is it strange that I can fly?”
Jiaxing Marquis Manor had built its foundation on military achievements, passing down through generations where predecessors and descendants all took pride in martial arts and military command.
As the legitimate eldest grandson, Xu Ao naturally hadn’t neglected his martial training.
But the fact that he could fly still seemed utterly unbelievable in Sang Zhixia’s eyes.
She dumbfoundedly looked up and down, stunned for a long moment before finally wanting to free a hand to give a thumbs-up, when she belatedly realized both her hands were still clamped around Xu Ao’s waist.
She had been holding him like this all this time…
Sang Zhixia jerked her hands back as if electrocuted, clearing her throat and rubbing her hands: “The skill of flying is quite useful, saves us from finding a ladder.”
“Come on, I’ll teach you how to repair the roof.”
When boasting earlier, Sang Zhixia genuinely believed she knew how.
After all, this task didn’t seem particularly technical – the reason for failure might just be that Xu Ao had never done manual work before.
But after actual practice, Sang Zhixia fell silent.
Something seemed slightly off…
Why couldn’t the thatch stay in place no matter how they laid it???