Chapter 170 I knew you couldn't bear to kill me

Fu Yucheng's hands that were twisting the hemp rope suddenly stopped, and his eyes fell on Yun Tangyin's hair.

A strand of hair, gilded red by the sunlight, stuck to her temple, stained with a little powder from embroidery thread.

He reached out and tucked it behind her ear, his fingertips brushing against her warm earlobe, like touching a ball of melted snow.

"The stitches are becoming more even," his Adam's apple moved, and his voice was a little hoarse from waking up in the morning.

When Yun Tangyin raised her eyes, she saw the smile in his eyes, like the flames leaping in the stove.

She put a needle into his palm, with a ball of blue thread tied to the end of the needle: "Then help me thread the needle. The eye of the needle is too small and I can't get it through."

Fu Yucheng held the needle close to the windowsill. The sunlight shone through the ice flowers, casting tiny shadows on his eyelashes. It took him three tries to thread the needle through, and a thin layer of sweat seeped out of the tip of his nose.

"You're the best," he handed the needle back, his fingertips stained with wool. "I'm a good shot, but my hands always shake when I'm threading a needle."

Suddenly, there was a "clang" sound outside the yard, followed by Xiaolan's scream.

Yun Tangyin looked out the window and saw the little girl slipping on the snow and falling beside the firewood pile. The cloth bag in her hand rolled far away, and the red cloth was particularly eye-catching in the snow.

When Fu Yucheng stood up, he knocked over the wooden stool behind him. His military boots made a "crunching" sound as he stepped on the snow. He walked a few steps to Xiaolan.

"Did you fall?" He helped the child up and brushed the snow off her cotton-padded jacket. Seeing that her trouser legs were covered with ice, he simply bent down and picked her up. "Look at how you ran. Don't you know the snow is slippery?"

Xiaolan hugged Fu Yucheng's neck to steady herself, then blushed and retracted her hand: "Hehe, my mother asked me to give her some new half-finger cotton gloves to wear when she embroiders a tiger-head hat for my sister-in-law."

She pointed at the cloth bag that rolled away and said, "There were freshly steamed glutinous rice cakes with red dates in it. I broke them."

When Yun Tangyin picked up the cloth bag, her fingertips felt the warmth of the glutinous rice cake, and she could smell its sweet fragrance even through the coarse cloth.

She stuffed a hand warmer into Xiaolan's red, frozen hands. The copper surface was heated by the charcoal fire and said, "Hurry up and cover your hands. Look at your hands, they are frozen like carrots."

Fu Yucheng put Xiaolan on the small stool in front of the stove door and added a piece of firewood to the stove.

The flames licked the bottom of the pot, illuminating the little girl's face with a flushed red. She stared at the tiger-head hat embroidery frame in Yun Tangyin's hand, and suddenly pointed at the brim of the hat and said, "We should embroider a plum blossom here. My mother said plum blossoms are cold-resistant and auspicious to wear."

Yun Tangyin picked out a red thread and said, "Then help me hold the embroidery frame and we can embroider together."

Xiaolan immediately sat up straight, holding the stretcher with her little hands without moving. The red hairband on her braid swayed gently with her breathing, like a red butterfly resting on her shoulder.

While she was embroidering, Zhou Desheng's wife came in, a light layer of snow on her head. She stamped her feet as soon as she entered the door and said, "It's snowing so hard that the chicken coop is about to collapse!"

She put a bowl of pickled cabbage on the stove, "Just pickled, I'll make you some fried pork ribs."

Seeing the hand warmer in Xiaolan's hand, he suddenly laughed out loud, "Your big brother Fu is so considerate. My wife didn't even bother to give a warm thing to the child when he was crying from the cold."

Fu Yucheng was hammering nails into the wall. He was planning to make a wooden stand for Yun Tangyin's embroidery frame. Upon hearing this, he turned around and smiled, "It's not that he's not careful, he just doesn't know how to do it. He just needs to learn."

Zhou Desheng's wife looked into the yard and saw that the firewood chopped by Fu Yucheng was neatly stacked. His military green cotton jacket was draped on the pile of firewood, and it looked particularly bright against the snow.

"Your Yucheng is such a good man," she said, stuffing a pair of insoles into Yun Tangyin's hands. "Just made them. Look at the stitching. Is it better than last time?"

The insoles were embroidered with a pair of mandarin ducks. Yun Tangyin touched the fleece on the insoles and said, "It's thicker than the ones from the Quartermaster's Office. Desheng will definitely be warmer if he wears them."

When the sun reached the top of his head, Fu Yucheng had finished the wooden frame. The dark pine wood exuded a fresh fragrance and was polished to a shine by him using sandpaper.

He placed the embroidery frame on top, at a height that was just right for Qi Yuntangyin's chest: "Now you don't have to keep your head down all the time, and save yourself the strain on your neck."

Yun Tangyin touched the marks on the wooden frame. He had actually carved a circle of small plum blossoms on the edge. Although the petals were crooked, they made people's hearts soften.

"When did you learn carving?" She looked up at him, the sunlight filtering through his shoulders, casting tiny spots of light on her face.

"Last time when I was repairing the stage, I watched the carpenter carve it," Fu Yucheng's ears turned red, "I secretly learned a few tricks, but I'm clumsy and can't carve well."

He walked to the kitchen, "I'm going to stew the ribs and add pickled cabbage, so that it won't be greasy."

The water in the pot was bubbling, and he chopped the ribs into pieces. The blade of the knife hit the iron pot, making a "clang clang" sound, mixed with the sound of falling snow outside the window.

Xiaolan finished her glutinous rice cake and was about to leave. Before leaving, she stuffed a frozen pear into Yun Tangyin's pocket and said, "I put it in the freezer by the well."

Her hands were numb from the frozen pear icing, but Yun Tangyin couldn't bear to throw it away and kept it in her arms to keep it warm.

When Fu Yucheng saw it, he took it out and put it in the bowl: "I'll melt it for you and eat it later."

He poured some hot water into the bowl, and the frozen pears slowly softened in the water, with sweet juice oozing out of the skin.

The snow stopped in the afternoon, and the sunlight made the snow look white, making it difficult to open one's eyes.

Yun Tangyin was sitting by the window basking in the sun, while Fu Yucheng was squatting in the yard repairing the chicken coop. Zhou Desheng had just come to call him, saying that the chickens were squealing from the cold again.

He bent the bamboo strips into an arch shape, tied them tightly with hemp rope, and stepped on the snow with his military boots, leaving a series of deep footprints.

Yun Tangyin stuffed a pair of cotton gloves into his hands: "Wear them to keep your hands from getting cold."

Fu Yucheng put on the gloves and tried them on, then suddenly laughed: "This floral fabric is really fancy."

The rabbit in the bamboo cage was probably used to the noise, so it clung to the bars and looked out, its mouth trembling constantly.

Yun Tangyin threw a cabbage leaf into the cage and suddenly found that the rabbit's fur was much longer and denser than when it first arrived, and it was round like a snowball.

"Look how fat it is," she called out to Fu Yucheng with a smile, "If it keeps eating, the cage won't be able to hold any more."

When Fu Yucheng turned around, he saw the rabbit chewing on a leaf with its front paws. He suddenly said, "Build it a nest in the spring, in the corner of the yard, and let it give birth to a few little rabbits for the children to play with."

In the evening, Fu Yucheng came back with an old hen, which Zhou Desheng had forced upon him. "He said it would nourish your body,"

He put the chicken on the stove, with snow still on its feathers. "His chickens lay a lot of eggs, so this one won't make a difference."

Yun Tangyin touched the fluff on the chicken's wings and suddenly felt reluctant to let it go: "Why don't we keep it? It can still lay eggs."

Fu Yucheng pointed to the corner of the wall, where there was a small chicken coop, shielded from the wind and snow with cotton cloth: "I prepared it for you a long time ago. I knew you wouldn't want to kill it."

The fire in the stove gradually grew stronger, making the New Year pictures on the wall look particularly bright. A fat baby was holding a carp, and the gold thread on his red bellyband was shining in the firelight.

Yun Tangyin leaned on Fu Yucheng's shoulder and listened to him talk about interesting things during training.

Zhou Desheng always missed the target when shooting and was punished by the company commander.

She was laughing when she suddenly yawned and her eyelids became heavier and heavier.

Fu Yucheng hugged her in his arms and added a piece of coal to the stove: "If you feel sleepy, take a nap. I'll call you when the ribs are cooked."