In the afternoon, after all the guests had left, the old man happily took the blueprints and the herb and was driven back to Nanshan Village by Zhou Lin and Zhou Lai Niu in Zhou Lai Niu's oxcart.

Nanshan Village is only two miles away from Zhoujia Village, which is not far. From now on, Zhou Lin can go to Nanshan Village every morning to learn carpentry from his master.

After they all left, the house became quiet. Li Mai set up a kang table on the kang inside the house. Seeing that the kang table was not very flat, she went to ask Old Man Zhou to help her find a flat wooden board to put on the table as a drawing board.

She first laid out a sheet of hemp paper, then covered it with cotton paper, and began to draw seriously.

She had already promised to pay the fifty taels shortfall, but hadn't earned the money yet, so she had to start working seriously.

To make the room brighter, she took over the spot on the front kang (heated brick bed) near the window and placed the kang table next to the windowsill.

She sat facing the window, where the light was very bright.

Zhou Quan moved to the lower part of the kang (a heated brick bed) on his own initiative, sat against the wall, and stared blankly at her as she drew seriously.

After Li Mai drew a ring, she felt it didn't look very good, so she looked up and asked Zhou Quan. When she looked up, she found that he was holding the Travelogue of the Immortals, and his eyes were staring straight at her.

Even though Li Mai was usually quite easygoing, she felt a little embarrassed by the stares.

"Hey, can you take a look and tell me if this looks good?" She handed him the finished drawing.

This time, she didn't use red paint; she only used a fine black brush to outline the design.

Zhou Quan met her gaze, his ears instantly turning red. He then snapped out of his daze, coughed lightly, took the book, and began to read it seriously.

What's this?

"This is a finger ornament, the kind that young girls wear on their fingers. It's similar to a ring or thumb ring, but it's prettier. It looks even better when worn on the finger and paired with pretty clothes and headdresses."

"Oh, it's really pretty!" Zhou Quan thought Xiaomai's drawing was very beautiful. So, her drawing skills were this good? Who did she learn from?

Li Mai nodded and picked up another piece of paper to draw seriously.

After a while, she called Zhou Quan to look again, "Do you think this one is prettier, or the one from before?"

Zhou Quan compared the two, looking at this one and then at that one, and instantly felt that they were both beautiful. He seemed to have some difficulty in distinguishing which one was more attractive.

Li Mai looked at him expectantly, "Which one looks better?"

Zhou Quan hesitated for a moment, then said, "They all look good!"

Okay, he's visually blind. He probably thinks everything he draws is beautiful.

Li Mai thought for a moment, then took the two pictures and jumped down to find Zhou Tao. If they were for people of this era, they should be shown to women of this era.

Zhou Tao and Zhu Zhu were reading the Thousand Character Classic and recognizing the characters inside when they saw Li Mai's two pictures. The two of them came over and looked at them seriously.

“I like this one!” Zhou Tao said, pointing to the second one drawn by Li Mai.

“Mom, I think this one is pretty too!” Zhuzhu said, pointing to the second one.

Li Mai nodded, "Understood!"

She also liked the second one.

"Where's Mother?" Li Mai asked as she left the house.

"Mother went to visit the aunt in the front yard. Sigh, I guess she went to brag about how Second Brother was taken in as an apprentice by his master." Zhou Tao waved her hand and said helplessly.

She just couldn't understand the aunties in the village. Whenever they had a happy occasion, they didn't keep it a secret, but instead went all over the village to tell everyone. When they received words of envy and praise from others, they seemed very happy.

Now her own mother has become like this; she remembers that her mother was not like this before.

I really don't understand!

Upon hearing that her mother-in-law had gone to visit someone, Li Mai went back to continue drawing.

Zhou Quan had been sitting for a long time and his back was getting uncomfortable, so he lay down against the wall to take a nap.

Li Mai saw this, went over to the kang (heated brick bed), pulled out the mattress for him to sleep on, and said, "Come sleep here, don't sleep directly on the kang!"

"I'm not that delicate!" Zhou Quan waved his hand. "I'll just lie down for a bit. My back gets uncomfortable if I sit for too long!"

"Come over here!" Li Mai gave the order without giving him a chance to argue.

She discovered that whenever she took a firm stance, the man would obediently comply, which might indicate an compliant personality.

Zhou Quan obediently moved over and lay down on the mattress.

"Lie down, I'll give you a massage for a while!" Li Mai rolled up her sleeves.

"No need, you can continue drawing!" Zhou Quan felt that he was disturbing her while she was drawing jewelry.

“I don’t like repeating the same thing to you all the time. It makes me feel like you’re my child, not my husband.” Li Mai’s expression turned cold as she looked at him indifferently.

Seeing that she was angry, Zhou Quan quickly and obediently turned over and said in a low voice, "No!"

"What is it?" Li Mai stood up and knelt on either side of his body, placing her hands on his back and massaging along both sides of his spine.

When Zhou Quan realized their current position, his face flushed red again. He quietly covered his face with his free hands and buried his face in the pillow.

A sentence floated from between her fingers: "Not your child, but your husband!"

With her back to him, Li Mai couldn't see his expression, but she earnestly massaged his entire back to soothe his muscles and nerves and improve blood circulation.

Hearing his words, he chuckled twice, "Heh, of course I know you're not, I can't have a son as big as you!"

Zhou Quan's face flushed even more between his palms.

Li Mai massaged Zhou Quan for fifteen minutes, then stopped when she got tired and went back to look at the design of the hairpin.

She was decisive and efficient, just like she was doing business.

But Zhou Quan was enjoying the sweet torment throughout the process.

Only when he sensed that Li Mai had gone back to painting did he secretly turn around, lie on his pillow, and silently stare at her back in a daze.

"You've just had a massage, you can turn over and lie down for a nap!"

Suddenly Li Mai's voice came from behind, startling Zhou Quan. Had he been caught peeping?

Only after the feeling of being watched on her back disappeared did Li Mai quietly turn her head to look and find that Zhou Quan was really asleep.

She quietly moved to a spot in the direction he had been sitting, leaned her head on the table, and stared at him blankly.

After spending a few days together, she gained a deeper understanding of him. She found him to be a fragile and sensitive person with a kind heart and a strong sense of responsibility.

If he hadn't encountered this disaster, he would probably be a very promising young man in the surrounding area, and his child might already be three or four years old by now.

After all, he was already twenty-two years old. In the original owner's memories, young people in this era generally started getting married at the age of seventeen or eighteen, and by the time they were twenty-two or twenty-three, their children were already running around.

What puzzled Li Mai was why her grandmother had betrothed him to a disabled man before she passed away.

She couldn't very well ask her mother-in-law about this directly, so she decided to ask Zhou the matchmaker another day when she had the chance.